Sports

and male sports media people call in to the "Fabulous Sports Babe" show and Nanci would corner them into making mistakes and she would correct them. I used to love hearing her talk hockey and the Hartford Whalers. Her book "The Babe in Boyland" that she did in the mid '90's is really good and she lays truth out there about a lot of what goes on in sports, teams and sports media. She treated her callers with respect, she talked about things the fans cared about and she wasn't going to grovel to ESPN or anybody else.

The type of show she had using the call in/fan based format that is informative is rare now. Like I said we now predominantly have the multi-person, think they are comedians, think they know everything, condescending, screaming over each other etc. Meanwhile as listeners we come away having spent time but learned nothing. They all want to be the next "big thing" and so they say outrageous things about the athletes etc. in order to get the clicks/views so they can pat themselves on the back.

A good example is the current media treatment of Caitlin Clark. I'm a huge fan of women's basketball for many years. But not one of these supposed "sports experts" or "basketball experts" that interview her ever ask a question like "were there things you did while playing in high school and college to get better and better using either hand?, were there adjustments you made to your shooting motion along the way?, did you always shoot/practice from distance or did it come in stages? etc." They have this great player in front of them and instead of asking her basketball questions about how she worked on her game, her skills and how it has all developed they ask her repetitive questions like "what did you do to get things going in the 4th quarter, get your shot, play defense etc." game after game. So as fans we come away not knowing much and she is not the kind of person who is going to put this out there herself. She is about playing ball and winning.

How Caitlin got to this level is interesting to me. I remember Jackie Stiles in college talking about how she used to practice beyond team practice for 4 hours every day. Most of these current media people who claim to be fans of women's basketball can't even describe the way the women's game used to be restricted to a half court/limited dribble game versus playing full court. I began following women's basketball back in the '50's when it was AAU teams sponsored by various companies. My pet peeve about this media now is they want to put up Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes etc. are the "founders" of women's professional basketball. Pure BS. There were a couple of different leagues before them that lasted for as much as 3 years that were before the current W.

An interesting pioneer in women's professional basketball is Molly Bolin. She was also from Iowa and a great player. Molly's number 22 is a coincidence to Caitlin but it is pretty neat anyway. Molly wore other numbers as well. Molly and women like her used to pack into cars, buses etc. to get to games and do it all for next to no money. Molly's rookie contract in the late '70's was $6,000. This lady was extraordinary for the things she did on and off the court. But you won't hear the media mention her name. Here's a link to info about her and also a picture of Molly Bolin. Yes that is Larry Bird and Molly promoting one of the women's leagues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Bolin

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