On Sept. 25, 1978, a New York judge ruled in favor of Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke, who brought a civil suit claiming commissioner Bowie Kuhn and Major League Baseball were violating the 14th amendment when they said she couldn't go into the New York Yankees locker room after a game because she was a woman.
Forty years later, Ludtke is working on her memoir about the case. But in August, she reflected on Judge Constance Baker Motley's decision and detailed what she faced as she pursued a career in sportswriting.
"They challenged my morality by intimating that I wanted to be inside locker rooms to leer at naked ballplayers," she wrote for GlobalSport Matters.