“It’s a glorious day,” Melissa Ludtke says when she picks up the phone. “Isn’t it?”
It’s been more than 40 years since a judge ruled in her favor in Ludtke v. Kuhn, the lawsuit she filed against MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn, fighting for the right to enter major-league clubhouses in order to do her job as a baseball reporter for Sports Illustrated. The 1978 decision was a watershed moment for women in sports, but at its core, the idea here was simple—the idea that women deserved to be allowed in the room.
Since Ludtke’s court case, the number of women in that room has grown steadily.