Japanese school girl going pro in baseball

Believe it. Eri Yoshida, 16, will be joining the professional baseball league in Japan when the season starts up in April of next year. I'm usually not one to follow baseball (since this is a women in sports blog...and softball is the usual path for females) but this is pretty exciting.

Check out this article in today's SF Gate.

I'll be curious to see how she performs. Apparently she's only 5 feet tall and 114 pounds--but she must have quite an arm!

Where are the fans??

So here's what I really want to know. Why did we have to come up with Title IX in the first place? And what I mean by that is, why haven't women's sports ever been enough on their own to earn equality and recognition?

Why do women's teams continue to struggle to fill their stadiums? I thought girls' participation in sports was higher than it's ever been, and growing exponentially! So why don't we see more of them in the bleachers, cheering obnoxiously for the home team?

Why don't the Sex and the City girls ditch their swanky clubs and dirty martinis for a $4 Coors Light and a foot long hot dog at the ballpark? Why does every professional women's team have to pander to youth leagues, senior citizens, and lesbians?

Where are all the straight women ages 20-50? Why do they simply disappear from the sports world entirely? Unless they're playing "team mom" for the night and dragging the carpool to a local college women's game, they are sorely missing from these events. And what makes it even worse is that their husbands are still rabid season ticket holders. The guys are still dawning their over-sized jerseys and foam hands and packing into the stadiums, even if they never touched a football in their life. They're still making small-talk about "last night's game" when they show up to work each morning.

We may be back to the age-old nature/nurture debate. Are guys simply more interested in sports because they are generally stronger, taller, and faster than girls? Maybe. But I know a LOT of guys who are about as coordinated as the mismatched socks they're wearing. Guys who don't play sports still watch 'em. So why isn't it the same with women?

I'll be looking into this as an ongoing research question for this blog. If you participated in sports but now you can't remember the last time you attended a professional women's game, tell me what you think happened. I want to know.

A quick shout out to the WNBA

Detroit beat San Antonio in the WNBA finals. It only took 3 games for them to sweep the series...their 3rd national title in 6 years. Congrats to Katie Smith, Deanna Nolan, and their amazing crew.

And by the way, congrats to Candace Parker who managed to bring home a WNBA MVP award, a WNBA Rookie of the Year award, a collegiate national championship, and an Olympic gold medal. All in 2008.

Watching Game 2 of the WNBA finals, I realized that the WNBA has come a long way. They actually had fans in the stands. They had major partners like T-Mobile presenting the MVP award. IHOP sponsored the half-time show, Discover card was all over the commercials and the arena, and the usual suspects Nike and Gatorade had their own signage up. Overall, I have to say that I was impressed. I was impressed by Katie Smith's ridiculous athleticism (and rather muscular physique) and I was impressed by the general professionalism of the event. It didn't feel like a rec league for overgrown children. It felt like a professional basketball game.

I ran across this letter written by the President of the WNBA, Donna Orender, and posted by Seattle Storm blogger, Jayda Evans. Here's the par t of the letter that struck me the most:

After 12 years, the WNBA deserves more credit for what it has accomplished -- for the athleticism of the players, for the power of the game, for the emotional connection created when our teams nakedly put their passions on the floor.

The product is great; these women are fantastic. Our fans have responded to the high level of play by pushing increased attendance -- including a record 46 sellouts -- TV ratings, Web traffic and merchandise sales. These women are spreading this work ethic and universal language around the world -- note the 41 current-and-former WNBA players on Olympic rosters in Beijing, including the 12 members of Team USA who brought home their fourth consecutive gold medal.

So here we sit after the Finals, with one team -- San Antonio -- coming up short after bringing the excitement of a championship round to their city for the first time, while another team -- Detroit -- cements its legacy as a dynasty by winning their third title in six years. We were squeezed in with the baseball playoffs and football season, competing for the eyes of sports fans, but it is worth noting that just over a decade ago, the choice to tune in to the WNBA didn't exist at all, and that is something worth recognizing.

We do need to recognize the WNBA for its success. I can't believe they actually had 46 sellouts this season. But I'm still a little disappointed about a few things:

1. The Finals could only be found on ESPN2...regardless of the baseball and football seasons, they should have had at least the FINALS with a primetime spot on ESPN.

2. The Finals didn't appear to be sold out, despite the other 46 sellouts in the league this year. If you still haven't filled your stadium at that point, start giving the tickets away. Players should never have to see empty seats in the lower bowl during the WNBA Finals.

3. Please change the color of the damn orange and white basketball. For some reason, that ball makes the athletes seem less athletic. I'm being totally serious. When that ball bricks off the back of the rim, it looks worse than the standard brown basketball doing the same thing in a college or NBA game.

Considering those are my only real complaints, it looks like things are going pretty well. Madd props to you, WNBA, for boosting your ticket sales and improving your web traffic and fan interaction throughout the season. More madd props for getting better-qualified broadcasters with cooler graphics for the half-time analysis. And madd props for staying afloat for 12 whole years--you've proved a lot of people wrong.

I look forward to next year's season already.

The WNBA: Finals are here, critics appear

For all the hype around the team, it was pretty disappointing for me to watch the Seattle Storm die a slow, painful, early death in the WNBA playoffs this year. And as if that weren't enough, Lisa Leslie and Candace Parker couldn't even carry the LA Sparks through the series against San Antonio. Now the Stars are headed into the finals against the winner of the tied series between New York and Detroit in the East.

So how many of you consider yourselves sports fans? And how many of you have actually watched a WNBA game this season? And out of curiosity, how many of plopped down to watch an NBA game during their season? I have to admit that I've been slightly shocked that the WNBA is still around after 12 years. Professional women's sports teams are notoriously impossible to sustain in the US, and elite female athletes have often fled to Europe in hopes of pursuing an actual career. But the WNBA is still here. And it's stronger than ever.

I came across an opinion piece from the LA times by a woman named Melissa Rohlin. You should read her piece first before you go any further. If you don't want to take the time, here's her basic point: the WNBA is boring and professional women's basketball sucks.

Ms. Rohlin claims that she played basketball her whole life. She had dreams of playing professionally someday herself. She was "the first to get to the gym and the last one to leave," and she worshipped local role models like Kobe Bryant.

Rohlin doesn't seem to have continued playing ball in college, but she's still an avid NBA fan. An an avid WNBA hater. She thinks the women are just plain un-athletic. I mean, men are jumping 4 feet in the air, throwing down dunks like nobody's business, and sprinting down the court at the speed of light, dishing no-looks passes to their teammates and working the crowd into a frenzy. It's exciting!

And the WNBA is just plain boring.

Candace Parker--I don't care if you won the McDonald's All-American dunk competition when you were in high school (over 5 male competitors). So what? Kobe would school you any day. And Sue Bird? Are you even related to Larry? Because his passes were so much more crisp and accurate.

Wait, wait, wait. Is Rohlin actually claiming to be a FAN of basketball? Or here's the bigger question. Is she actually claiming that the WNBA is boring because women just aren't good athletes?

There's a fundamental issue underlying Rohlin's claims that makes me sick to my stomach. She's saying that the WNBA is boring because women are inferior athletes. She's chomping into an apple, then sucking on an orange, and complaining that the orange just isn't crisp and crunchy enough for her taste. And the apple just doesn't have enough citrus.

Ms. Rohlin--I, too, was that kid in high school showing up early to practice and leaving late. I, too, had the dream of playing hoops in college. I didn't end up following that path, but good LORD do I love the WNBA.

In fact, I'm going to say that any legit female basketball player with an appreciation for the game should love watching the WNBA. I even argue that those of us who were the true gym rats in high school and college are the ones who can appreciate the women's professional game the most.

Should we really be embarrassed that it was such a big deal to see Candace Parker dunk in a game, when it would be "laughable" to make such a hoopla around an NBA player doing the same? Ms. Rohlin, you are an idiot.

I doubt you ever threw down a dunk. In fact, I doubt you were ever much of an athlete at all. I dare you to body up against Tina Thompson in the post, or try to drive past Sue Bird. Just try to stop one of Lisa Leslie's bank shots. Maybe you'll only be impressed if Candace Parker actually jumps over you to slam the basketball. Is that what it would take?

I watch the NBA and I grew up with posters of Michael Jordan on my walls. And yet I knew that I wasn't going to grow up to BE him. When the WNBA came along, I couldn't imagine anything better for every girl growing up in America who needed to have their own role models to look up to in their sport. How can you, as a self-proclaimed athlete, claim that the WNBA is boring? Answer: you never learned how to appreciate the game, and that's why you have to hate on it.

There's my scathing review of your article. If you want an amazing perspective from one of the best women's basketball players in the world, check out Diana Taurasi's response here.

And let's play a little 1 on 1 sometime. I'll kick your ass.

The L Word - Homophobia in Sports

You can't talk about women in sports without addressing the L word issue. It affects every aspect of women's participation in sport--from a woman's personal comfort on a team, to the role models she has in coaches and older players, to the team dynamic, and all the way up to pro athlete marketability. People crack jokes about how lesbianism runs rampant in women's sports and yet there are still only a handful of athletes who are "out and proud."

Unless you're Ellen DeGeneres and you can laugh your way through it, it's really hard to navigate sexuality when you're a public figure. (Actually, I take it back. It's never easy to navigate your sexuality when you're a public figure...especially when you're gay).

And when your sport becomes your career, you have to make careful choices about what you're willing share about your personal life and how it could affect your next endorsement deal. Sheryl Swoopes officially "came out" in 2005 with an endorsement deal with Olivia (a San Francisco-based travel and entertainment company for lesbians) and she seemed to weather it well. But then again, she's Sheryl Swoopes. She was the first woman to have her own line of Nike basketball shoes and she is a 3-time WNBA MVP. She made numerous appearances with Olivia for years, talking about her decision to come out and embrace her sexual identity despite the consequences it may have on her endorsements. Read this article for her own words on the matter.

When you take a step back from the pros and take a look at collegiate sports, homophobia is also prevalent. Coaches are constantly trying to recruit the best talent for their program and many won't hesitate to suggest that competitor teams are full of lesbians. This negative recruiting tool is designed to scare parents into preventing their daughters from joining a program where they may fall victim to lesbian attacks (whatever those are).

But there are a number of female athletes who have been very successful even after coming out. Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Rosie Jones to name a few. And more recently, Natasha Kai from the gold medal winning US women's soccer team in 2008.

This year, Billie Jean King celebrates the 35th anniversary this year of her victory over Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match. She now runs the Women's Sports Foundation, which promotes girls and women's participation in athletics, and even has a task force for addressing homophobia in sports.

The times may be changing a bit, but homophobia still runs deep in our society. The California Supreme Court recently made a ruling to allow gays and lesbians to marry in the state, however there's a proposition on the ballot this November that could amend the California state constitution to remove that right (again).

If you're a female athlete, chances are you've had to deal with homophobia before. Whether it's your own or one of your teammate's or gossiping about other teams and coaches. It's very real. I intend to blog about this more but I wanted to open up the forum and get people thinking about their own experiences with this issue. Please feel free to comment on the post and let me know what you've witnessed.

WNBA Playoffs are here!

After a long break for the Olympics, the WNBA heads into the Playoffs today. More than a few of these women have a gold medal under their belts and they're hungry for more success. I'll be watching the Seattle Storm pretty closely this year. They lost star player (and Aussie) Lauren Jackson to bone-spur surgery right after the Olympics, but she's on track to recover by the time the Finals rolls around--if all goes well. Sheryl Swoopes is back from a concussion and Swin Cash is battling through her back pain, but things are looking up. Sue Bird, one of the leading league MVP candidates this year, will lead the Storm through the Playoffs.

You should also keep your eye on the LA Sparks. The Candace Parker-Lisa Leslie duo is incredible to witness. They're the only two women who have dunked in regulation WNBA games. Leslie is now a four-time Olympic gold medalist and Parker left the Tennessee Lady Vols a year early (yep, first woman to skip the degree and dive right into the pros) and she is undoubtedly the league's rookie of the year.

Unlike collegiate March Madness, with 64 teams crashing onto the national bracket and clawing their way forward, the WNBA Playoffs features only the top 4 teams from each conference. In the Western Conference, the San Antonio Stars take on the Sacramento Monarchs, while the LA Sparks battle with the Seattle Storm. On the Eastern side of the bracket, the Indiana Fever face the Detroit Shock, and the Connecticut Sun will duke it out with the New York Liberty.

Check out the WNBA website for all the juicy details.

McDonalds and The Economy

Marketing and sponsorship big wigs convened in New York over the past two days for the 6th Annual Relay Worldwide Sports Sponsorship Symposium. The two main topics on everyone's mind this year were 1) the Beijing Olympics and 2) the less-than-Olympic-performing economy.

I've been appalled each time I've seen McDonald's as a major partner with the Olympics. I loved the commercial this year with a U.S. female gymnast chowing down on a chicken sandwich. I mean, how many times do these female gymnasts actually wolf one of those puppies down? Never--if they're at all concerned about keeping their mostly prepubescent bodies trim and lean. But the Golden Arches was the first official restaurant of an Olympic games in 1996 in Atlanta, and they've been feeding the world's athletes ever since. This year, US swimmer Ryan Lotche bragged about his huge MacDo meals in the Olympic Village in Beijing. For someone like Ryan, who's burning more calories per day than he can actually ingest, that might make a lot of sense. Just don't check his arteries in 20 years.

Apparently McDonald's considers their time in Beijing a success. They installed their first drive-thru restaurant (where confused customers drove through the line, then parked their cars and went inside to eat), and they have grand plans of infiltrating the Chinese fast-food scene in the same way they've conquered the U.S. market. We'll see if they show up in London in 2012.

As for the more serious question facing the sports industry, much of the focus of this conference was how to continue to grow your business in a time when consumers are massively cutting back on extraneous expenses. They're not gonna slap down thousands of dollars on season tickets anymore if they've already traded in their Chevy trucks for a more fuel-efficient Prius. Priorities have shifted.

But many sports marketing executives argued that this is an opportunity for companies to provide a better product for their consumers in order to keep driving the business. Improve the in-stadium experience with enhanced media features, deliver more channels for keeping tabs on your local team, like mobile TV and video, and make your customers feel like they're putting in the same amount of money for those season tickets but they're actually getting a vastly improved product--it's almost a steal! Mark Tatum, Sr VP of Marketing and Partnerships for the NBA, claims that the sports industry might even be at an advantage right now. People will need an outlet from all their financial fears and concerns, and many will likely turn towards sports as a way to blow off some steam. I mean, what could be better than drowning your sorrows in a $17 plastic beer cup at a Giants game in AT&T park with all your 41,000 closest friends?

Unfortunately, there did not appear to be females on the keynote speaker lineup, nor could I find any commentary about the conference from them. I guess men continue to dominate this industry the way Big Macs dominated China this August...