Jane Leavy reflects on fraught encounters with Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin in The New Yorker:
Last month, forty years after the Southern District court of New York ordered the Yankees to open their clubhouse to female reporters, the baseball writer Jane Leavy climbed into a black S.U.V. and headed toward Yankee Stadium to throw out the first pitch. Leavy, who is sixty-six, with a blond bob, wore red lipstick, gray sneakers, and a Yankees jacket. “We’re going to pretend for just a few minutes that I’m not a Yankee fan, and I haven’t been dreaming of this my whole life,” she said. “When I was a little girl—this is no shit—I would practice walking in from the bullpen with my jacket dangled over my shoulder just so.”
To prepare, she’d called up Sandy Koufax, the subject of her 2002 book, subtitled “A Lefty’s Legacy,” and asked for pitching advice. He was succinct: stand close. “Ralph Lauren threw out the first pitch last night,” Leavy said, as the car inched up the West Side Highway. “There was a story in the Post on how David Cone was coaching him. I’m, like, Big fuckin’ deal. I got Koufax.”
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