People are understandably impressed by the new suites and media facilities at Kansas University’s Memorial Stadium. The arena has been spruced up wonderfully in so many ways.
But for all the new stuff, there are numerous fond memories among those who infested the Jayhawk “press box” of bygone years. Primitive is a kind word for what once prevailed.
Some of us media-types thought we’d died and gone to heaven when they put in real windows to counter cold winds and added, wonder of wonders, heating. There was a derivative of indoor plumbing, but it was faint praise to label it adequate.
You note the food-and-drink offerings today; pre-game meals once were only a cut or two above World War II “C” or “K” rations.
Broadcaster Max Falkenstien recalls early games he called when his modest high-rise cubicle amounted to little more than plywood walls with no barrier whatever to stepping backward to death or mutilation.
Kansas and TCU played in America’s first nationally televised football game here in 1952. Conditions all over the country were such that even the high-powered TV network people didn’t complain much.
But bad as the old press box was at KU, it was almost luxurious to the cramped facilities at Missouri around 1950. That evaluation is badly tainted because of Thanksgiving Day 1950 when we scribes darn near froze during a KU-MU game. The kickoff temperature was 17 degrees, the final reading was 5, the wind chill was listed at 10 below zero. You don’t harbor warm, fuzzy memories about such torture. And numbed KU lost, dammit.
The flooring in the KU press box in the 1950s was wooden planks that in many cases had not been pushed together. A lot of trash dropped through the cracks.
You could smoke in the press box, horror of horrors, and one Saturday afternoon Skipper Patrick, the colorful Associated Press sports editor from Kansas City, flipped a smoldering butt onto the deck. Nobody noticed it slither through an opening. Before long there was big smoke and even a few flames down below. We all routinely continued covering the game while the Lawrence Fire Department rushed in to extinguish Skipper’s torch.
Modern decorum was not enforced and you often could hear scribes cheering for their teams, some for Kansas, others for the visiting club they were covering. KU’s Wade Stinson once broke loose for a home run and the Jayhawk faithful darn near conducted a pep rally.
Then there was the day in the early 1960s when the Kansas press box, much to the chagrin of media chief Don Pierce, went unisex. Don was not liberal about such things and he continued to fight such integration. He lost, as he was bound to, and learned to live with it before he died, much too early, in January of 1965.
The integrator was Barbara Caywood of the Hutchinson News. She simply came in, took her seat and refused to leave despite Pierce’s entreaties. He tried to convince her it was a man’s world in which she was not welcome; she politely went about covering the game and writing her story. KU administrators had to certify her.
Barbara now lives in Florida. Her son, Kurt, worked for the Journal-World about 10 years and about three years ago went to the Topeka Capital. If they aren’t the nation’s only mother-son sportswriting team they’re among a precious few.
Barbara was an SMU graduate, tutored footballer Dandy Don Meredith in English and was with the Hutch News 24 years. She’s still a sports writer, now in Florida. Barb was good to begin with, got better with experience and never was pushy or pretentious, just able and professional. Her weapon against sexism was excellence. No need to beg or explain if you’re good.
I doubt if even Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem has any documentation on such things, but it’s my guess the KU-Caywood link was one of the first press box integrations in America. Barb never crusaded as any pioneer, but she was.
Things have changed a lot. Just as there have been and are lousy male media denizens so have there been are bad female print and electronic reporters-analysts. Not enough Mary Carillos or Chris Everts. One of the earlier concerns was how females could cover male locker-rooms. Some venues were open, others not; still others brought out clothed guys to “press conferences” to avoid embarrassment.
Naturally, there have been male cretins who have gone out of their way to humiliate women trying to do their jobs in postgame interviews. There have been lawsuits, both ways, and people have been hired and fired on the basis of sexual harassment and related jazz. There have been some mighty gutty women standing up to would-be intimidators with marvelous impact.
Like the time in the East when a woman was interviewing a pro gridder suitably covered with a towel and a teammate intent on attention stalked up stark naked and flashed his wares in full view of the woman reporter.
“You know what this is?” the jackass bellered.
She responded with one of the greatest put-downs in athletic history: “Well-l-l, it looks like a penis — only smaller.”
You’ve come a long, long way, babies!
