Finding a place for female athletes in the Drab Slab’s “all-MALE” sports section

It was with considerable interest that I read Jason Bell’s weekly newsletter, Behind the Bench, on Friday.

For those who haven’t been introduced, Bell is puppeteer in the toy department at the Winnipeg Free Press and, as such, he determines which stories appear on the sports pages of the Drab Slab, and I assume that means he also has a voice in where and how the articles/briefs/pics are displayed.

There is, of course, a pecking order to follow: 1) Winnipeg Jets, 2) Winnipeg Blue Bombers, 3) curling, 4) everything else.

It’s an entirely logical priority list and it would be folly for Bell to stray too far from it, lest an angry mob bearing pitchforks and tiki lamps and waving “We (heart) True North!” and “Long Live Mike O’Shea!” placards descends upon his bunker at 1355 Mountain Ave.

“The Jets and Bombers will always get a greater preponderance of the local space on our pages. Readers demand it,” he confirmed in his newsletter. “Then, there’s the Goldeyes, Sea Bears, Valour FC and Moose coverage. And there’s also a strong appetite for stories from beyond our borders on the Blue Jays and the MLB, the Vikings and the NFL and the Raptors and the NBA.”

Fine. So where do female athletes/teams fit in?

Well, that’s precisely what one female reader wanted to know, and the Drab Slab’s track record on the female file became the focus of Bell’s latest instalment of Behind the Bench.

“The reader admitted taking only the Saturday paper, noting she is discouraged and disappointed that all she reads is an “all-MALE sports section,” Bell writes. “I didn’t think that assertion was accurate. Or particularly fair.”

Not accurate? Not fair?

Hmmm. The idiom “there are none so blind as those who will not see” comes to mind, because the Freep SE definitely isn’t seeing what I see when I call up his sports pages every morning.

What I see is a Drab Slab sports section that’s as close to “all-MALE” as the membership at Augusta National Golf Club.

I mean, I expected to read something on Canada’s most decorated professional golfer when I called up the Freep yesterday morning, but there was nary a word on Brooke Henderson’s play in the HGV Tournament of Champions. Yet, they found room for a lengthy yarn on Pascal Siakim’s “lasting impact on Toronto” and a brief on Shane Pinto signing a one-year contract with the Ottawa Senators.

In three Saturday editions this month, this is the scorecard for articles/briefs exclusive to either male or female athletes/sports: 35 male, four female (including one local). Two of the three sports sections had zero (0!) local content exclusive to females.

Meantime, here are some noteworthy findings from monitoring the Freep for its coverage exclusive to female athletes/teams in 2023:

• In May there were just four (4!) local female articles. For the entire month.
• In each of July and December there were just nine.
• In the first three months, the average for local female copy was 32; in the final nine months, it plummeted to 10.6 articles/briefs.
• More than half the sports sections the Freep put out had zero (0!) local female content.
• The male/female breakdown was 3,892 M, 696 F (192 local F).
• Curlers are by far the most covered female athletes, with 58 articles/briefs (51 in the first four months) on Pebble People. Hockey is second with 35.
• Of all articles/briefs, 4.1 per cent were exclusive to local females.

And yet Bell believes it isn’t “particularly fair” for one of his readers to point out that his paper is failing miserably on the female file?

Of course it’s fair.

Why, just last year he welcomed readers to “keep those calls, letters and emails coming—and don’t hold back with your opinions of how we’re doing in the Free Press ‘toy department’. Bring it with both barrels blazing.”

What’s truly troubling is that Bell is unable to measure the vastness of the male/female disparity on his own sports pages.

“Have I done the math on the percentage of our coverage of female sports?” he asks. “No, I haven’t.”

Hmmm. It’s kind of difficult for any among us to make a convincing argument in favor of what we’re doing when we fail, or refuse, to recognize what we aren’t doing.

“Since taking the job as sports editor, my No. 1 priority has been to increase the number of stories on female athletes and female teams, and that message has been received loud and clear—and been acted upon—by my staff,” Bell bragged.

That’s hollow jibber-jabber when he presents zero evidence in support of the notion that the Drab Slab’s record on the female file has improved substantially since April 11, 2022, when Bell became official puppeteer of the toy department. More to the point, he confessed to not knowing what share of the pie he’s giving females.

“We’re striving daily to increase female representation in our pages,” he insisted. “That has been and will be part of our mandate.”

It’s interesting to note that Bell’s predecessor in the SE’s bunker at 1355 Mountain Ave., Steve Lyons, spewed similar jibber-jabber in November 2020: “I think (local male/female coverage) all evens out in the big picture. It’s one of my mandates to try to be sure that it does.”

Again, “there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

Female athletes/teams in Good Ol’ Hometown deserve better from the broadsheet. They deserve more.

Victoria HarbourCats keeping the Claire Eccles girl-vs-boys story on the down low; gets first start on Sunday

At first blush, I’ll admit that I was skeptical and cynical about the signing of Claire Eccles. It reeked of gimmickry. Sexist gimmickry.

I mean, the girl-vs-boys angle is the simplest sideshow to sell in sports. It’s also one of the media’s favorite chew toys. For evidence, look no further than Billie Jean King, Manon Rheaume, Annika Sorenstam, Michelle Wie, Mo’ne Davis, Hayley Wickenheiser and Danica Patrick.

Yes, sir, put a Jill in with the jocks and it’s news copy gold. And, hey, it’s a bonus for the marketing wizards if she’s what the lads call a “looker.” (Do you really think Patrick has been showered with all that publicity because she’s made a habit of getting her race car to the finish line ahead of the good, ol’ boys on the top NASCAR circuit? She leads the league in long hair and lipstick, not top-10 finishes.)

Claire Eccles

So what better way for the Victoria HarbourCats to put rumps in the pews of their quaint ballpark than to trot a girl-next-door type out to the pitcher’s mound and have her strike out all those hot-shot college boys from Trumpsylvania? Curiosity seekers are guaranteed to flock to Royal Athletic Park on the edge of downtown Victoria and cheer lustily each time Eccles is beckoned to make the hike to the hill, with the hip-hop beat of Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl accompanying her every step. Ka-ching!

Except that isn’t how the Claire Eccles baseball-with-the-boys tale is unfolding.

Oh, sure, there was an avalanche of attention from the Fourth Estate—hither and yon—upon the Surrey southpaw’s arrival in the B.C. capital. ESPN, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Sportsnet and MSN.com, among many others, eagerly glombed onto the Eccles story at the outset. But a week into the 19-year-old’s West Coast League experience, she has been summoned by head coach Brian McRae exactly once. For a two-inning gig.

If that’s a publicity stunt based on gender, the HarbourCats are failing miserably at Marketing 101.

That’s the point, though. Other than the announcement of Eccles coming on board, the HarbourCats have resisted any urge to play the gender card in an effort to inflate ticket sales. Bravo for them. She’s a baseball player, not a promotional circus act.

Mind you, that might be about to change, because McRae did the chin-wag thing with MSN.com 120 Sports on Tuesday morning and he declared Eccles his starter when the Kitsap BlueJackets come calling for a non-league game this weekend at RAP.

“We’re gonna give her a shot, just like we give all the other guys that are here, to compete for innings,” McRae said. “She’s gonna start for us next Sunday and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

That sound you hear is the publicity machine cranking up.

I can’t imagine the pre-game noise being any louder than in July 2010, though. That’s when the Chico Outlaws and their so-called Knuckle Princess paid a visit to Royal Athletic Park. As it turns out, Eri Yoshida’s knuckler didn’t knuckle so well. The Japanese hurler allowed just one hit, but it was a grand slam, and she also walked seven batsmen and hit three others in her 2 1/3 innings of work. The thing is, advance hype attracted 4,753 to the ballpark that night, the largest gathering in Victoria Seals history.

Brian McRae

By contrast, when Eccles emerged from the bullpen last week to become the first female to pitch in the WCL, the head count was approximately 800. (She mopped up in a 9-0 loss to the Wenatchee RedSox and produced this pitching line: 2 IP, 1 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 1 HBP, 0 K, 9.00 ERA.)

It’s a safe bet that the HarbourCats Hollaback Girl will be hucking the rawhide in front of an audience three to five times that size on the afternoon of June 18 at the local ballyard.

“I think having people like Claire come in and show everybody out there that it’s not a publicity stunt, that she’s getting an opportunity because she has a chance to be successful and help us, I think, in turn, that empowers other girls. I think you may see more and more women trying to play baseball,” said McRae, who clearly sees both the short- and long-term pictures. “Pitching is about the only thing I think, if a woman were to be able to play pro ball, where they could compete with the males, would be on the mound.”

And if Eccles, a University of British Columbia student who also pitches for Canada’s national women’s team, has designs on playing pro baseball?

“She’s gotta get a little bit stronger, add some miles-an-hour to her fastball,” said McRae, who played 10 years in Major League Baseball. “We think she could throw 80 miles-an-hour if we cleaned up her mechanics and got her to use her lower body a little bit better. Her fastball tops out about 71, 72 miles-an-hour right now, and her knuckleball is in the mid-60s or so, but we think there’s more there that can get her to throw a little bit harder and be a little bit more effective.”

In the meantime, “It’s been kind of cool having her around.”

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling mostly about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, but she now lives one block from Royal Athletic Park in Victoria and might cross the street to watch Claire Eccles throw a baseball.