Woman sports writer unique in her field
By MARILYN McMULLEN Kansan Staff Writer
Womens Liberation leaders would love Linda Morstadt Filmore. She has dared to enter a profession which, since the conception of modern newswriting, has been sacrosanct to men. Linda is a full-time sports writer for Chicago Today.
At a recent conference of Sigma Delta Chi, a professional journalism fraternity which admitted women to its ranks for the first time this year, Linda discussed some of her adventures and the problems she has encountered in pursuing her highly unlikely career.
And pursue she has. She has traveled extensively covering the Chicago White Sox, whom she dearly loves. And when the New York Jets went to Chicago for the All-Star game, Linda was the only sports writer to obtain a pre-game interview with Joe Namath.
"It's one of the funnier experiences I've had," she said. "Joe had announced that he wouldn't grant any interviews before the game. But my boss had told me I was going to get an interview, no matter what."
"My boss wanted me to dress like a maid and talk to him while I was cleaning his hotel room, but I wouldn't go along with the idea," she said.
Linda said she finally decided to try the direct approach. She went to Namath's hotel room and told him she was a sports writer and wanted to interview him.
"He said broads had tried a lot of ways to get into his bedroom, but nobody had ever tried that. But I showed him my press card and he thought it was so funny he said I could come on in."
Linda said she was in Namath's room for an hour and a half getting an interview because girls kept calling Namath for dates. She said he set up a time and place for each different girl, but of course had no intention of keeping the dates.
"I think that's the biggest scoop of my career," she added.
"The first thing people ask me is how I got my job," she said. "I'd always wanted to be a sports writer, and everyone told me I wouldn't be one. But I wound up fooling them."
Linda said that while she was working for the Waukegan Sun in high school, she used to con the sports editor into letting her write features. When the White Sox came to town on a press tour, she said, she talked the sports editor into letting her cover it.
"There were a hundred men and I at the ball park," she said. "The sports editor of the Rockford paper started teasing me. I was only 15 years old. When I told him I wanted to be a sports writer he thought it was the funniest thing he had heard in his life."
But he invited her to come back when she grew up, she said, and he said would give her a job.
"He never thought I'd come back for that job. But after I got out of college, I found that Chicago Today had a new sports editor—Rick Talley from the Rockford paper.
"I asked him if I could have that job he had promised me, and he said 'what job?' But I had a copy of a column he had written about me after our first meeting, and I showed it to him."
In the column, she explained. Talley had said he would hire her after she finished college. Linda was interviewed by several Today editors, and given a test story to write.
"I guess they liked the story," she said, "because the next day I got a letter saying they wanted me to come to work for them."
Linda said the first thing Talley told her was to be a sports writer first and a girl second. She said she found that meant she could
14 KANSAN May 8 1970
be called at any hour, and that she was subject to desk work and other uninteresting duties.
All Linda's assignments haven't panned out as well as the Namath interview. Once in Atlanta she was refused admittance to the press box. She said it was the first time she was barred from a press box anywhere in the country.
"A guy told me that Atlanta was the South and not the North, and that the Cubs could handle
Linda said her boss had been waiting for just such an incident so he could run it as a feature on the front page of Today. He told her to write a story and to keep trying to get in.
their press box their way, but to leave Atlanta alone," she said.
Linda said she had made friends with most of the other sports writers following the Cubs, except for one writer who didn't like her at all. She said he led the fight to keep her out.
Female liberation in sports
The female liberation movement has hit the field of sports as is evidenced by Linda Filmore, woman sports writer for Chicago Today.
"All the other sports writers from Chicago wanted me to come in, and when Ernie Banks found out what was going on, he sent a note up requesting that I be admitted. But it didn't do any good."
She said the Atlanta writers finally decided they should let her in, but they had to vote on it. The vote was 19 to 1 for Linda, but it would have had to have been unanimous in her favor before she could have been admitted.
"Finally the president of the Atlanta writers, called Dick Young, who was then president of the Baseball Writers Association. He said to let me in. They finally let me in, but it took seven and a half hours of arguing before I was admitted."
Young later told Linda to apply for membership in the Baseball Writers Association, so she could never be refused admittance to a press box again.
"They'd never had a woman in the BBWA before. It was unheard of," she said. "The vote was 33 to 1 in favor of my being admitted. My boss even chewed out the guy who voted against me."
Linda said she felt great about being the first woman admitted to the association, but the new president is now saying there are bylaws which forbid women to become members. She said her boss wanted to turn the matter over to the Women's Liberation Front.
"The most fun I've had on my job was covering Big Ten football last fall. Michigan State was the first locker room I ever got into, but there have been others since."
Linda said other stories she had found interesting were covering a nudist colony field day, and traveling with a group of Sox supporters called the Bleacher Bums.
"As far as prejudice goes, I've
only had trouble with the one writer in Atlanta." Linda said. "Athletes have always been very good to me. Even Leo Durocher is nice to me!"
There is one sports editor, she said, who gives her a bad time. He once said she would have better luck breaking into the Green Bay line than into his sports pages.
Linda, who has been married for a little more than a month, said her husband gets upset with the hours she has to work, and the fact that bylines on her stories bear her maiden name.
Her advice to other women who want to be sports writers is, "Don't get married. It takes all the fun out of it."
Guardsmen try to avoid fire, damage
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (UPI)
—Commanding officers at National Guard armories in Missouri have been directed to take extra security measures to prevent any fire bombings or vandalism at the armories that might stem from student unrest, the state adjutant general's office said Thursday.
Meanwhile, state troopers are maintaining closer than normal patrol routes near college towns where violence might erupt.
A spokesman for the Missouri National Guard said it had been left up to individual armory commanders as to the type of precautions to take to insure that their facilities were not damaged. He stressed, however, that no troops are under any alert.