Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader

PIONEERS

Pioneering Women in Sport 33 y PIONEERS J. E.Vader How do things change? We think of video clips on the evening news, of banners held high amid chanting throngs, of charismatic leaders speaking out. We think of mass movements, forces of history, swelling orchestral music. On a chilly April morning 25 years ago, Roberta Gibb crouched in the bushes in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and waited for scores of runners to pass her before she stood and blended in with the pack. She wore a hooded sweatshirt to disguise her hair and face. This was the way she had to start the 1966 Boston Marathon, the first marathon run by a woman. Gibb knew something that few people thought possible—that women can indeed run long distances. It was a shocking idea, so scandalous that some of the people who knew that women could not run long distances would naturally prove their point by stopping her before she ran 10 feet. But the fact that she could run more than 26 miles was about all Gibb knew about distance running. The four days before the Boston races she blithely spent traveling on a bus from San Diego, sleeping in her seat, eating at the bus stops. The night before the race she feasted on pot roast, and then had cheese for breakfast, foods she would carry in her stomach, undigested throughout the race. She thought it was a mistake to drink fluids while exercising, and she wore brand new running shoes (made for boys). “I did everything wrong,” Gibb says. Diane Crump was sure of one thing: She didn’t have a chance. She had never seen the horse before, or the trainer. “They told me: He’s not much horse,” Crump says. “He probably doesn’t belong in here, but do the best you can. Those were my orders: Do the best you can.” At Hialeah Park in February 1969, Crump became the first woman to ride in a pari-mutuel race. She was 19 years old, and passionately obsessed with horses. In the starting gate she hunched in the saddle on her bay horse, Bridle ’N Bit, and waited for the bell to ring and the doors to slam open. “I really wasn’t that nervous,” she says. Crump was a veteran exercise rider; she knew what she was doing. She was ready to go. The From A Kind of Grace: A Treasury of Sportswriting by Women, Ron Rapoport, ed., Berkeley : Zenobia Press, 1994. First published in The National. “Pioneers” by J. E. Vader © The National. 34 WOMEN AND SPORTS IN THE UNITED STATES jockey in the next stall, Craig Perret, looked over, looked her up and down. He reminded her to put her goggles on. Maria Pepe didn’t have the faintest idea she was doing something signi ficant. She just wanted to play baseball. Over and over again, before, during and after the furor, she kept repeating it like a mantra. Baseball, baseball, baseball. What do 11-year-old kids know from history, from politics? Maria was a nice Catholic girl. She was just playing a game, like always, with the kids in her neighborhood in Hoboken, New Jersey. Only this time they were all wearing real uniforms, and there were real umpires , real coaches—all the trappings of Little League. Of course, in 1972 girls were not supposed to play organized baseball, but nobody on her team was going to make a big deal out of it. They didn’t know then, as others would declare, that their very manhood was at stake. Maria’s brown, curly hair was cut short under her baseball cap. In the local paper, Maria is in the background of the traditional picture of the mayor of Hoboken at the Little League opening ceremonies. The mayor takes his traditional awkward swing, and the caption notes: “. . . While Naria Pepe waits his turn at bat.” “Naria?” the editor must have thought as the caption was typed. “What an odd name for a boy.” How quaint it all seems, how distant. Of course women can run farther than a mile and a half. Of course women can ride racehorses, and the world does not fall apart when little girls play baseball with little boys. How could anyone think anything else? The amazing thing is that this was all so recent. It is startling to look at the faces of these women—these pioneers—and realize that they are not ancient curiosities. They are young...