Fans for the Ages Made a Difference

When the Milwaukee Braves won the World Series in 1957, it certainly wasn't just men who found it worth celebrating. (Francis Miller, Life magazine)

(A version of this post first appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal)

March Madness brings out all kinds of things.

It’s the time of the year when the malls in cities that host state tournaments are full of kids in letter jackets. It’s the time of the year you turn on the TV and hear all sorts of screaming teenagers. It’s the time of painted faces and oh, so many tears.

And for me, it’s the time of the year when I miss getting yelled at by my mom.

My mom, who died 2 1/2 years ago, always had one big rule you dare not break: You did not call her during the state basketball tournaments.

Problem was, I lived out of state for most of my adult life and in the pre-Internet days didn’t always know exactly when the tournaments were on. So I’d call her to say hello on a Saturday afternoon and the "hello" would be followed with "Don’t you know not to call me when the tournament is on?"

Yes, I knew that. I knew that because my mom was a huge sports fan. She didn’t play sports, she didn’t advocate for them per se but she was part of an important force that is often forgotten when there are discussions of women’s sports equality:

She loved sports, plain and simple.

My mom, who graduated from high school in the 1950s, was not alone in that regard. I have a friend whose mom yells at her if she calls when the Iowa Hawkeyes are playing. I had a college classmate whose mother sent valentines to her favorite college basketball players. One of my favorite work assignments in recent years was spending an afternoon with a fanatic 83-year-old woman who loved her Packers. I have an aunt who broke her wrist a couple years ago when she fell changing a light bulb so she could see the computer better to cast an All-Star vote for the Brewers’ Corey Hart (and as she lay injured, she asked her daughter to please cast the vote for her).

Beyond battles about girls getting to play, women like this made a difference just by loving sports. For every advocate who battled for opportunity on the playing field, there were also women who just loved their sports and made it perfectly fine for their daughters to love them, too. It’s an important part of the women’s sports equation that is often overlooked.

And if you look for them, these women are everywhere. Go to a baseball game sometime – minor-league or major-league – and you’ll see them. Look in a back row somewhere and you’ll see an older woman, scorebook on her lap, keeping track of the Ks and noting a 6-4-3 double play. I chatted with one of these women once at a Milwaukee Brewers game, expressing admiration for her vest that was loaded with buttons of current and former players and she told me all kinds of stories about who was her favorite and why.

My dad loved sports, but my passion for them came from my mom. It was my mom who stood out on the deck one day in 1969 and yelled, "Al Sindor is on TV." I was 8 and didn’t know who this rookie Al Sindor guy was, but if my mom thought it was important to watch, then I’d come inside and check it out. It was the start of my lifelong love of basketball, which included clipping out pictures and articles of Lew Alcindor/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for a scrapbook.

The passion to watch sports held by my mother’s generation and the generations before them isn't what people normally equate with helping to tear down the walls of sports equality. But it was their love for this stuff that made it OK for little girls of the past to put on a baseball cap and go outside to play with the boys; my first ballcap was a birthday present from my aunt who hurt herself trying to vote for the All-Star. That love of sports is what made them eagerly sign up their daughters when the opportunities to play finally started to come. It’s so routine now; 40 or more years ago it would not have been.

It was this passion that made it OK with these women if their daughters grew up wanting to be sports writers (as I was) or TV sports producers (as my sister is), even if girls seemingly didn’t grow up to do such things. Their fierce love of sports, of just being a passionate, knowledgeable and unashamed spectator, is part of what laid the foundation for what came to pass in later generations in terms of opportunities on and off the field.

I just wish I could call my mom to tell her that. She probably wouldn’t even yell at me.

Fans of all ages show up for the Green Bay Packers' annual women's-only event and enjoy their chance to work out with players, including Jermichael Finley.