Claire Smith: Writer is first woman to win Spink Award.
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Claire Smith, a mentor to and inspiration for a generation of women and minority sports journalists, was as gracious Saturday in accepting the J.G. Taylor Spink Award as she was in dealing with the flak that came with being the first woman to cover baseball as a fulltime beat.
“I stand here on this stage on behalf of every person in my profession who has been stung by insidious gender discrimination or racism and continued,” Smith said Saturday at Doubleday Field. “You are unbreakable. I am proud.”
As a child, Smith recalled, her older brother got to attend a doubleheader she’d wanted to go to. “Wait for it, ladies — because he was a boy,” she said, pausing before adding, “Do you see Bart up here?”
Smith, who covered the Mets and Yankees for the Hartford Courant, then later worked for the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and now ESPN, is the first woman and the fourth African American to win the Spink Award, the top honor bestowed by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
She said the first several years she worked at the Mets’ home, Shea Stadium, there were still signs in the press box announcing “No women and children.”
She felt particularly honored to be included in a group with pioneering African American baseball reporters Wendell Smith and Sam Lacy.
“I’ll tell you, I had one bad day in 35 years, but what they endured and ignored to the point they had Hall of Fame careers, how can I wrap my arms around the fact I’ll be on the wall with them?” Smith said during a news conference. “It’s overwhelming.”
Smith’s one bad day came during the 1984 National League Championship Series, when she was denied access to the Padres’ clubhouse despite the fact that she was credentialed. While male colleagues walked past her and into the clubhouse to conduct interviews, she was forced to stand in the hallway in the hopes players might come out and speak to her.
“I try very hard to concentrate on the people who came to my defense to help me write my story, like Steve Garvey, who walked out to make sure I had some quotes,” said Smith, who asked Garvey to stand up in the crowd Saturday. “When he thought I was going to cry, Steve said, ‘I’ll stay here as long as you need, but remember: You have a job to do,’ and I snapped out of it, got the quotes I needed and went and finished my story. I’ll always carry that in my heart.”
Smith paid tribute Saturday to some of the women who came before her and challenged the ban on women baseball writers, such as Sports Illustrated’s Melissa Ludtke, whose 1977 lawsuit opened the doors for women to cover the sport.
“I pray that one day there will be so many women and reporters of color from around the world that you’ll be asking questions about the meritocracy (rather) than the qualifiers ‘first African American,’ ‘first woman,’ ” Smith said. “Then it will be about the writing, and that will be when we know this country will be the way we dream it should be.”