This week’s guest on Behind the Lines is Diane. K Shah, trailblazing American journalist.
In school she was told to get real when she said she wanted to be a sportswriter...and then became the first female sports columnist in an American daily newspaper. To get there she battled absurd sexism, and in the early days she was excluded from games and press events, to the point that a staff member at the Boston Red Sox told her she would be responsible for the “death of the American family.”
She talks here of some of those encounters - including how she was sleazily propositioned by her childhood hero Mickey Mantle - and how she dealt them. Would she have dealt with them differently today?
There are also a few tales of her amazing career, including a falling-out with Paul Newman and an interview with Larry Bird that ended with him warning, “If I see that girl again I’ll spit in her face.”
Get in touch - email behindthelines@the42.ie, tweet @gcooney93 or join the WhatsApp group. To get involved in the group, add our number 0833930229 on WhatsApp and send us a message to let us know that you'd like to join the group. Please include your email address so that we can confirm your membership.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
