Breaking barriers
Harry Caray with Mary Shane in 1977 at Chicago’s Comiskey Park
Women in a baseball broadcast booth, while still rare, no longer is a totally foreign concept.
Suzy Waldman has been a commentary with the New York Yankees since 2005 with Jessica Mendoza following 10 years later in her debut as a commentator with ESPN’s major league coverage.
Pregame, postgame and in-game dugout reporters who are women may be found today throughout the majors.
There is a time, though, when women simply are not seen or heard behind a microphone at a ballgame.
That changes 47 years ago today when the Chicago White Sox introduce Mary Shane as baseball’s first woman TV play-by-play announcer.
Mary Shane
The 31-year-old Milwaukee native is a fledgling local sportscaster in 1976 when White Sox announcer Harry Caray sees her in the press box during a White Sox-Brewers game and asks if she would like to join him in the booth for an inning or two of that day’s game.
An impressed Caray then asks her back for another game.
Apparently, Shane does well enough that Chicago’s WMAQ-TV – the White Sox’s home station – soon calls to ask if she would like to become part of the team’s broadcast team for 20 games in 1977.
The offer comes right as Shane accepts a fulltime job covering sports for the Milwaukee Journal.
Ah, what to do? Take the full-time job, the one with benefits, or the 20-game gig with benefits that include free soft drinks and snacks?
Easy choice, Shane says.
“I thought for about one split second,” she tells the Chicago Tribune in 1977, “and said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Shane, though, lasts only one season at WMAQ, which does not renew her contract for 1978.
Jimmy Piersall
She later becomes one of the first female beat writers in the NBA, covering the Boston Celtics in the early 1980s for the Worcester Telegram.
Alas, Shane passes away of a heart failure in 1987 at the age of 42.
With the White Sox, Shane has an ally in Jimmy Piersall, the former All-Star outfielder who is part of Shane’s White Sox broadcast team in 1977.
“She never had a chance,” Piersall tells the Chicago Daily Herald after Shane’s death in 1987.
“Even a bad baseball player gets at least one full season to see if he’ll come around,” Piersall says, “but because of all the in-bred prejudice against a woman covering a baseball team, Mary didn’t even get that. It was a real shame, because I think she had what it takes to make it, and someday the idea of a woman bringing a woman’s perspective to baseball broadcasting will be a tremendous innovation somewhere.”