Trish gets the spotlight, again, in 'Female Firsts' book

Women’s sports have been enjoying a moment in the sun, with the recent WNBA finals, top-level soccer, and finally having team names for the Professional Women’s Hockey League. It’s all well deserved but it’s simplistic to say it’s overdue.

They have always been there, albeit often as a gimmick or on the sideline.

Babe Didrikson was one of the greatest athletes in history, period, and had plenty of time in the spotlight. (Tying it into this website, she married pro wrestler George Zaharias.)

In Canada, Bobbie Rosenfeld won in just about everything she competed in, and set the bar very high for everyone to follow; there’s a reason the Canadian Press’ woman athlete of the year is named after her.

Just because there wasn’t a massive media machine behind someone at the time doesn’t mean they weren’t great at what they did, or were important. The Edmonton Grads touring women’s basketball team didn’t last the way the Harlem Globetrotters did, but still made an impact in their own way.

These facts are a roundabout way to bring up In a League of Her Own: Celebrating Female Firsts in Sports. The hardcover book, published by Rowman & Littlefield, came out in February 2024, and is written by Bonnie-Jill Laflin, who has a fascinating story of her own. She was a cheerleader before moving into scouting and then the executive offices, along with the acting, the modeling, the broadcasting, the philanthropy…

The best way to describe In a League of Her Own is that it’s Laflin seeking out like-minded trailblazers (another overused term), women who helped change the landscape of their sports, whether on the playing surface or in the office. And it is most definitely about how there’s more than just the action on the field, and the agents, coaches, scouts, trainers, lawyers, PA announcers, and more that help shape what we see.

Laflin basically has conversations with well-known people like Billie Jean King (tennis), Julie Krone (jockey), Danica Patrick (race car driver), Laila Ali (boxer), and Jackie Joyner-Kersee (track and field) that are turned into chapters, but not in a question and answer manner. And it’s important to note that it’s an interview with that person, and rarely anyone else providing secondary quotes.

Some of the key names aren’t around. Al Davis talking about hiring Amy Trask to be an NFL executive would have added to that piece, for example; then when there is another voice, like Nadia Comăneci voicing her thoughts on Mary Lou Retton, it feels like a bonus.

They are all interesting names for sure, but there’s an inconsistency to them and a repetitiveness too. In some, we might learn about life away from the spotlight, having kids, a quiet post-sport career, and in others that isn’t there at all. It’s also tough jumping from sport to sport, as what matters in one means nothing in another.

Where In a League of Her Own shines, though, is in talking to the people who never got the headlines of, say, Manon Rhéaume, the first woman to play in an NHL exhibition game (and who I interviewed once for my hockey book column). How could you not take away something from the tale of Paralympian swimmer Melissa Stockwell or Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, the first Muslim woman to play college ball in a hijab?

But back to my point — Rhéaume’s story has been told countless times, as has the tale of Trish Stratus, the pro wrestling entry.

We’ve come so far in society in so many ways, but teenage me used to hunt down references to pro wrestling in pop culture, which were few and far between in the late 1980s. No book like this in the 1990s would have included Leilani Kai or Madusa. Now we have wrestlers everywhere, and pro wrestling has just been accepted as a part of the greater society.

Therefore I’m pleased that Trish was included, as I genuinely like her as a person and professionally, but I can’t help to think that she was a safe, easy choice too. The opening description of her noted that she was “ranked the greatest women’s superstar of all time by the WWE.” But no mention that wrestling is a work — as was that ranking.

Trish Stratus and Lita at the Legends of the Ring fan fest on Saturday, June 11, 2022, at the Apa Hotel, Iselin, NJ. Photo by George Tahinos, https://georgetahinos.smugmug.com

None of these entries offer more than a cursory history lesson, if that. So the Danica Patrick write-up mentions Lyn St. James but not Janet Guthrie; it’s the more famous Laila Ali instead of Christy Martin.

The Stratus piece notes her contemporaries, like Jazz and Lita, but no one who came before (or after). In this case, the simple approach gives short shrift to women’s wrestling history, especially in Japan. WWE didn’t invent anything and just changed with the times in the U.S., going from T&A to Divas, small progress. (And, while Trish and Manon may be Canadians, this is very much an American book; don’t look for Norway’s Marit Bjørgen, with her eight gold medals in in cross country skiing, or India’s badminton legend Saina Nehwa.)

As for the actual profile, I’m not sure I learned anything new about Trish that I didn’t already know. She has always been very media-savvy and well-spoken — there’s a reason she’s out there all the time, as she knows the game.

Having been there myself, I suspect there was a debate at the publisher about the title. In a League of Her Own works fine, and the blurbs on the back cover toss out words that fit, like inspiring, trailblazing and empowering, but the “Female Firsts” aspect is wrong.

But everything else is pretty right.

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