Necessary Roughness
by Aaron Isaac Feldstein
On a weekend that saw the Stanley Cup Champions ousted from the playoffs, the NBA playoffs begin with a bang thanks to a double-overtime game between San Antonio and Phoenix and a 500-plus home run hitter released from a team tying to contend for a championship, it was easy to miss history being made.
Late Saturday night as many slept, IndyCar racer Danica Patrick was driving her heart out in Japan and became the first female driver to win an IndyCar race.
It looked as if Patrick was heading down the path of famous female sports flop Anna Kournikova. Despite racing under the Andretti Green flag, the only woman to lead a lap at the Indy 500 was becoming better known for her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition pictorial and her GoDaddy.com commercials.
Finally, in her 50th career race, Patrick silenced the critics and put her name in the history books.
Prior to this weekend’s win, Patrick’s best finish was second at the Belle Isle in Detroit last September. This former IndyCar Rookie of the Year has been lugging IndyCar’s popularity on her shoulders, as the sport is better known as the “redheaded stepchild” to CART and NASCAR.
That’s what makes her accomplishment a little less exciting than it should be. Although Patrick’s feat was amazing, in the annals of women’s sports she has tons of work to do to break into my top five list of sport’s revolutionary women.
After all, Patrick wasn’t even the first woman to qualify for the Indy 500. That title belongs to Janet Guthrie in 1977.
1. Bille Jean King
The obvious choice for revolutionary women in sports belongs to this tennis icon. King won 12 tennis grand slams, including six Wimbledon crowns. She finished No. 1 in the world six times and was called one of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th Century by Life Magazine three years after being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
One of, if not the, main reason she was considered one of the most important Americans was her match against Bobby Riggs -- better known as the Battle of the Sexes in 1973.
Riggs had been in retirement for a few years, but he was once one of the top players in tennis. Playing the part of the chauvinistic pig, Riggs defeated the top female in the world Margaret Smith Court a few months before the legendary match against King at the Astrodome.
King watched Riggs’ match against Court and came up with a game plan to defeat the former No. 1 tennis player in the world. On that September night, King shocked the world, not only beating Riggs, but making him look silly. She won the match 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.
The victory was a huge step forward not only for women’s place in tennis, but in sports all together. But King said best what the win meant for women’s sports.
“I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win that match,” said King. “It would ruin the women’s [tennis] tour and affect all women’s self-esteem.”
This legendary match is the reason King is No. 1 on the most important women in sports history list.
2. Pat Summitt
The laundry list of accolades and championships say it all for this 34-year coaching veteran.
Summitt has 983 wins, the most all-time by any NCAA basketball coach both men and women. She has eight NCAA Championships including back-to-back titles in ’07 and ’08. The Tennessee women’s basketball coach is a seven-time NCAA Coach of the Year and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000. In fact, the only blemish on her record may be that she was inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year as Isiah Thomas.
Summitt is one of the most respected coaches in basketball history and it is argued she could easily coach men’s basketball and still be a champion. That point was illustrated when the University of Tennessee made her the first women’s basketball coach to crack the $1 million barrier when she signed a year extension in 2006 for $1.125 million.
Summitt has more wins than men’s basketball coaching icons Bobby Knight and John Wooden. That is what makes her second on the list.
3. Babe Zaharias
Before Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie, there was Babe Zaharias.
Zaharias was a softball and track star long before becoming a legend on the Ladies Pro Golf Tour. The golfer born Mildred Ella Didrikson earned gold medals in the 80-meter hurdles and the javelin throw in the 1932 Olympics.
In 1938, Zaharias became the first woman to compete in a men’s pro golf tour event when she stepped on the links for the Los Angeles Open. Back-to-back rounds of 81 and 84 caused “Babe” to miss the cut, but the Texas native made her mark in the sports world.
After that, Zaharias went on to win 17 straight amateur tournament. When she made the LPGA tour, she had 41 tournament wins, including three U.S. Opens and a total of 10 major wins.
Golfers like Patty Berg and Sorenstam may have more tour wins than Zaharias, but she was one of the first women to attempt to compete with the men, which puts her No. 3 on my list.
4. All-American Girls Baseball League
There wasn’t one player from this league that I was able to pick to make the list; therefore I chose the entire league. After all, it does have an entire wing devoted to it in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
When Major League ball players started heading into the military to fight in World War II, Philip K. Wrigley created a new form of entertainment to fill stadiums that were looking like they might go under. In 1943, the chewing gum mogul and a board of trustees created the all-women’s baseball league.
In the inaugural season, four teams played 108 games. As seen in the film A League of Their Own, the Racine Belles won the first AAGBL Championship.
By using great marketing tools like trading players mid-season and the girls lining up before the games in a “V” for victory in honor of the soldiers, the league was able to stay open for nine years. By 1948, the 10 teams were able to attract 910,000 fans to come out and watch them play.
The league that gave 600 women the opportunity to play baseball helped entertain a country during a trying time in the U.S. history.
5. Shirley Muldowney
Before Danica Patrick became the darling of the motorsports world, the National Hot Rod Association had Muldowney.
Muldowney joined the drag racing world in 1965 when she earned her license to drive top gas dragster. A few years later, after a short stint driving funny cars, the “First Lady of Drag Racing” entered the world of Top Fuel Dragster in 1973. Much like Patrick, it would take a couple of years before she posted her first win at the Springs Nationals in June of 1976 running at a top speed of 243.90 miles per hour and a quarter mile time of 5.90 seconds.
Then, in 1977, Muldowney made history once again. The New York native won three events on her way to becoming the first female to win the Winston World Championships points title. She was even given an “Outstanding Achievement Award” by the United States House of Representatives.
Muldowney went on to win the points title two more times, in 1980 and 1982. She was the first driver to claim the title twice and three times respectively. In 1990, She was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame and is No. 5 on the NHRA Top-50 Drivers of All-Time list.
In my eyes, this is what Patrick is looking up at.
Female sports are becoming more popular as time goes on. The WNBA is lasting longer than anyone had predicted, the popularity of NCAA Women’s Basketball continues to rise and women tennis players are getting the same amount of money as the men.
Patrick’s accomplishment on Saturday was impressive -- but she’s got some others ahead of her in the history books.
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