When great ideas throw you for a loop: the 2022 International Women's Baseball Conference

Today was one of those days when I had some amazing experiences and learned a great deal—so much that it brought up emotions and thoughts that are proving hard to sort through. I don’t see this negatively. But being the researcher that I am, I’m used to looking at ideas and facts very dispassionately. This month’s Women in Baseball conference, sponsored by SABR and the International Women's Baseball Center, has brought up some ideas that are fascinating, and vexing, and for that reason have been hard to wrestle with. 

I'm a husband and a father of daughters, one of whom is LGBT and has struggled with issues around her identity and place in the world. As a man in this world, it's very important to see and honor the embedded forms of sexism that women have to deal with in every phase of professional life, and that includes everything around baseball, whether involving playing or coaching on the field, working on the medical or training staff, or writing about the sport.

The conference was truly eye-opening -- and exhausting. I found myself listening to the presentations and struggling with two key threads.

The first was around sexual and gender identity, with two panels about this year's Amazon reboot of A League of Their Own, which featured historian and author Kat Williams, and female umpires, led by Perry Barber. I was struck very deeply by their stories about identity, and how they struggled both against stereotypes about women and athletes, and to be seen as full human beings with the right to be who they are. The research presentations were extraordinary -- including one that traced the development of mistaken assumptions about whether women's bodies can handle the rigors of professional sports -- and learning that those assumptions have historically been one more way of keeping women out of male-dominated environments. It helped me understand what my daughter struggles with every day.

The second was around the roles of female sportswriters, including the Chicago Tribune's Shakeia Taylor who talked about the issues that she faces interacting with fans on social media, which suggest that despite the huge inroads made since writers like Melissa Ludtke fought to get into locker rooms.

I finished that day very much drained -- being surrounded by strong, intelligent women who are proud of who they are, and completely dismayed by the lack of progress in our society. With a couple of weeks of hindsight, the achievement that this conference shows--not only in scholarship, but in the ability of all of the presenters to bring issues about gender, identity, and equity to the top of the agenda.

All of the presentations are now posted on the conference website at SABR, and well worth a listen. I hope they inspire you as much as they have me.