Let's Row Together

We might not always be in sync, but let's challenge each other with our ideas, insights and reflections.

I row in the early morning. It’s why I chose this title for my new Substack newsletter.

You are receiving this because I’m hoping you’ll stay with me as a subscriber. And if you enjoy the experience, which will be weekly in 2024, then please pass word on to your friends. You can always opt out. Your choice. But please remember this – I love having YOU in this growing community.

On my Substack, you’ll see splendid sunrises from the Charles River and ocean shots, as I do my best to enliven your life with observations about the world we inhabit. I’m a voracious reader of news and views, so I’ll sprinkle in prompts about stuff that you might have missed along with suggestions about being active citizens in preserving our democracy and a livable climate.

If this sounds pretentious, just know I’ll do the best to add joy to your life and spark curiosity and encourage action.

Let’s start with a bit about the book project that has been consuming much of my life for the past decade. For more years than I care to admit, I’ve stared back at myself as a 26-year-old baseball reporter as I’ve puzzled over how best to tell my story of what my life as a young, single woman working in a sea of men felt like in the mid-1970s. When I became the plaintiff in a much-publicized gender discrimination case against Major League Baseball, I was thrust suddenly into the intense glare of the public eye while my personal life imploded.

My book lives at the intersection of these experiences.

Photo courtesy of New York Sports Tours

Locker Room Talk; A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside will be published in August 2024 by Rutgers University Press. On its pages, I return readers to this time when most Americans saw no merit in my request to be treated equally by baseball’s men. Because the editors and writers who controlled journalism’s megaphone were men, they got to tell my story, employing sometimes vicious, often demeaning words about me.

Now, I am reclaiming my story and telling it as I lived it. While I don’t sidestep the men’s obsessive characterization of my case as being about ballplayers’ below-the-belt anatomy being met by my supposedly roving eyes, I write about what my case actually was – a meaningful step in the centuries-long battle that American women continue to wage for equal rights.

Starting in early 2024, I’ll send you a weekly email with my Substack newsletter. In it, I’ll touch on topics ranging from women and girls’ participation in sports at all levels – reserving a special place for baseball. Alongside updates on my book, I will highlight humans rights struggles while offering glimpses of civic activism. I’ll pass along insights and ideas I come upon through my own climate activism and efforts to strengthen our democracy.

In being part of my Substack community, know that your input matters and will play a guiding role in all that we will contemplate in our together time.