Who Gets To Write What?

I tuned into ESPN the other night, clicking away at my laptop as I waited for the Stanford-North Carolina women’s basketball game to begin. The end of the Louisville-Maryland contest was on. There was about a minute left, and Louisville was losing by 10 points, which pretty much guaranteed Maryland the win. But wait. A Louisville player, number 23, floated in a terrific three-point shot with 30 seconds left. Then the same player hit another three-pointer with 18 seconds left. And yet another with five seconds left. Maryland had made two foul shots during the Louisville run, and the score was now 76-73. But it was Louisville’s ball. One more three-pointer would send the game into overtime.

I’m a sucker for an athlete who performs well under pressure, so I put down my laptop and stared at the screen. The announcers were full of praise for the Louisville player, a senior named Shoni Schimmel. I have rarely seen anyone with a smoother, more poetic stroke. When Maryland took a timeout before the game's last play, I went back to my computer and Googled her.

I admit I don’t follow college basketball as much as I should. If I did, I would have known that Shoni, and her sister Jude, who also plays for the University of Louisville, are a genuine phenomenon. Their games attract thousands of people who drive from all over the U.S. and Canada to see them. The sisters are Native Americans who grew up on the Umatilla reservation in Pendleton, Oregon. Their success has galvanized Native fans and even attracted a filmmaker, who made a documentary about them titled Off the Rez.

As I read about the Schimmel sisters, I thought, “This is a great story. I should write it.” You probably know that I’ve made a career bringing the true tales of athletes and other bold and brilliant women to the mainstream. As first Shoni and then Jude graduate from college and enter the WNBA, their journeys should have the makings of a great book.

But then I wondered, “Should I write it?” In recent months, there has been a lot of discussion about the underrepresentation of people of color in children’s books. The postings on multicultural literature on the listserv of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, were coming fast and furious the entire month of February. A few weeks later, Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers wrote companion essays in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times under the title, “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?”

One of the strands on the CCBC listserv focused on who actually writes books with characters or subjects of color, and as a corollary, who should write those books. A number of posters were pretty adamant that they thought books were more authentic—and by extension more acceptable—when they were written by members of the groups they portrayed. By that logic, a book about the Schimmel sisters would be best by a Native person. But why should authors be limited by their backgrounds? I’ve written more than a dozen books, including three biographies, and I’ve never written one with a main character who shares my Jewish heritage. For me, part of the joy of writing nonfiction is getting to explore new worlds while developing the context to tell the story.

That’s what I was thinking as I read many of the CCBC posts. And now I’m finally putting it into words. People expressed a valid concern about getting a more diverse pool of authors (and editors) producing children’s books, but I don’t feel that any authors should be dissuaded from tackling any topics that ignite their passions. Every voice is valid and every perspective is worth considering as we inspire kids' curiosity about and understanding of the world around them.

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For the record, Louisville didn’t win the game, despite an inspired play that put the ball in Schimmel’s hands for one more three-point attempt. She shot, and the ball hit the rim and ricocheted away as time ran out. It was Shoni’s last college game, but hopefully the prelude to an exciting professional career. Perhaps someone will write a book about Shoni and her sister one day. Perhaps it will be me.

"The Curves of Annabelle Lee"

If you follow baseball, you probably know that pitcher R.A. Dickey of the Mets has taken the major leagues by storm this year, thanks to his mastery of the knuckleball. In honor of Dickey, the New York Times recently ran a story about famous knuckleballers from the past, including Annabelle Lee of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. As I was looking for a "classic" post to rerun on I.N.K. this month, I found the one I wrote about Annabelle in October 2008. Here it is again, for your summer reading pleasure.

One of my favorite sports articles of all time is a retelling of the classic poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe. Only this version, written by K.C. Clapp of the Grand Rapids Herald in July 1945, was not the story of a lost love, but of a lost baseball game. The Annabelle Lee in Clapp’s poem was a left-handed pitcher for the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). On July 7, 1945, she pitched nine innings of no-hit, no-run ball against Clapp’s hometown team, the Grand Rapids Chicks.


Annabelle Lee Harmon, a native of North Hollywood, California, died on July 3 at the age of 86, and as the baseball playoffs begin, it seems like the perfect time to remember her. Hardly any media outlets noted her passing, and that’s a pity, because she was a warm, elegant, delightful woman who made an indelible imprint on the national pastime. She played pro baseball for seven years and threw the AAGPBL’s first perfect game on July 29, 1944. Beyond that, she was the aunt of major league pitcher Bill Lee—and the person who the “Spaceman” credits with teaching him how to pitch.



My most vivid memory of Annabelle is from 1995, when the All-Americans met for a reunion at a resort in Indian Wells, California. Annabelle was there with her mother Hazel, who was close to 100 years old. The paperback edition of my book about the league, A Whole New Ball Game, had just come out, and I had traveled from the east coast to show it off to the women who inspired it. With me were two friends, including Felicia Halpert, a sportswriter and a storied softball player from the women’s leagues in Brooklyn, New York.



It was late—close to midnight—but Felicia had been asking Annabelle if she still had her “stuff.” Annabelle said, “Sure, I’ll show you.” She laid down a makeshift home plate on the edge of the hotel’s patio, stationed Felicia there with a glove that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and walked off her pitching distance. Then, under fluorescent lights in the warm autumn night, the 73-year-old southpaw put on a pitching clinic. She delivered fastballs, curves, and knuckleballs, and Felicia, whose position was shrouded in darkness, did her best to catch them. Pretty soon her former teammates were lined up on the patio, cheering her on.



As I watched, I couldn’t help but think of my favorite line from Clapp’s poem: “The moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the curves of Annabelle Lee.” All these years later, I still remember Annabelle on that patio, firing pitches through the night, a feisty blond with a poetic name, a wicked knuckleball, and a shared legacy as one of the original girls of summer. She will be missed.



“Annabelle Lee Again Arouses Poet’s Muse”


by K.C. Clapp

Grand Rapids Herald, July 10, 1945



It wasn’t so many hours ago


July 7, specifically,


That a maiden there pitched whom you may know


By the name of Annabelle Lee,


And she hurled so well that not a Chick hit,


Going down to her, one, two, three.



She was not wild, this talented child,


Who twirled so effectively.


And no free passes were handed out


By this stingy Annabelle Lee


But the base hits rang for the Fort Wayne gang


For a 6-0 victory.



And this is the reason as 3,000 know


Who witnessed her wizardry


That not a Chick could hit a lick


Off the slants of Annabelle Lee,


So they sharply dropped from second spot


To a humble berth in 3.


But Fort Wayne cheers its peach-clad dears


Because of Annabelle Lee.



The moon never beams without bringing me dreams


Of the curves of Annabelle Lee.


And the South Field lights will gleam many nights


Before such a sight I may see—


No hits by Ziegler or Tetzlaff or Eisen,


No hits by the bustling “B.”


No hits by Maguire or Petras or “Twi,”


Why? Because of Annabelle Lee.

Sports and Culture and Handball

There’s nothing like the Olympics to get me thinking about the promise and possibility of sports. In an Olympic year, heartwarming stories about athletes who overcame poverty and political oppression temporarily supplant reports of those who commit crimes or suffer debilitating effects from head trauma experienced on the playing field. We see how sports can transform men and women, how they can lift up entire countries and even cause warring nations to cease hostilities, at least for a fortnight. Yes, there are always some bad apples who use performance enhancing drugs or otherwise cheat to get an edge, but they can’t undermine the general feeling of good will that’s in the air.

Perhaps it’s the prospect of this summer’s Olympics that has got me thinking lately about the interrelationship of sports and culture. That, plus a conversation I had with my father last weekend. He was telling me about his recent communication with Denton Cooley, the celebrated heart surgeon who was a classmate of his at the University of Texas. My dad used to play basketball with Cooley, and a few weeks ago they exchanged e-mails about that. My father admitted that he loved basketball when he was younger, but what he loved to play even more was handball.

How did I never know that? I knew that my dad had played basketball as a kid, and softball and tennis later in life, but I don’t think he ever mentioned handball. Still, it makes perfect sense. Handball, played as singles or doubles, was popular when my dad was growing up in the Depression because the only equipment it required was a hard rubber ball. (Some players also wore gloves, and my dad still had his pair readily available—see below—some 70 years after he last used them.) Players took turns hitting the ball against a wall, trying to make shots that their opponents could not return. Much of the handball on the East Coast was played against one wall, but there were other varieties, including a four-wall version that was like racquetball without racquets. Sometimes called American handball, this is different than the Olympic sport of team handball, which involves two teams trying to throw a ball into their opponents’ goal.

American handball was extremely popular among urban Jewish kids like my father, and in fact many of the early champions were Jewish. Vic Hershkowitz, a New York City firefighter, dominated the sport in the 1940s and 1950s, winning 40 national and international titles. Bronx-born Paul Haber, son of handball champ Sam Haber, reached the top of the sport in the 1960s and 1970s, winning five four-wall national championships from 1966 through 1971. Never one to be accused of modesty, the hard-playing, hard-living Haber called himself “the Greatest Jewish Athlete in the World.” There also were noteworthy female players in the U.S. and abroad, including Germany’s Lilli Henoch, who led the Berlin Sports Club and twice won the Berlin Championship of Jewish Handball Players before being murdered in 1942 by Hitler’s death squads.

Having written about many a nontraditional athlete in my day, I’m not surprised that handball stars aren’t front-and-center in the sports history books. But I was surprised to find only a footnote about the game in Steven A. Riess’s book, Sports and the American Jew. Perhaps it's more a part of cultural history than sports history. At any rate, I plan to capture my dad’s handball memories in our next oral history interview.

What about you, oh cyber-readers? Is handball part of your family’s story?

Taking Stock

I wrote my first post for I.N.K. on February 8, 2008, just five days after the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. The subject was “Rooting—and Writing—for the Underdog,” and it explored my soft spot for underdogs, especially in sports and women’s history. Four years later, the same two teams are about to meet again in the world’s most talked about football game (American football, that is), and I still gravitate to sports as a terrific framework through which to explore history. But in light of recent news and events, my enthusiasm is somewhat tempered.

Despite being a lifelong football fan, I can no longer watch a professional or college football contest without being aware of the devastating effects that the violence of the game has on the human body, particularly the brain. After years of ignoring and then denying these effects, the National Football League has finally accepted the overwhelming medical evidence, much of it gathered through research on the brains of deceased players. The league is even planning to run a commercial addressing player safety during this year’s Super Bowl. But owning up to the problem is just the beginning. The jury is still out on whether changes to the rules and equipment can do enough to protect players from the long-term effects of repeatedly jostling their brains during tackles and collisions.

Another recent devastating development in the sports world was the January 19 death of Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke from injuries during a training run on a half-pipe in Utah. Burke, one of the premier athletes in her sport, flipped over after an uneventful run and struck her head, tearing an artery that caused a hemorrhage in her brain. The hemorrhage led to cardiac arrest, depriving her brain of oxygen and causing irreversible damage.

After Burke’s death at age 29, New York Knicks forward Amar’e Stoudemire remembered meeting her at an ESPN event and asking why she chose freestyle skiing, with its gravity-defying spins, twists, and flips. “Because it’s fun,” she told him. In the wake of the tragedy, however, some critics wondered if extreme sports such as freestyle skiing have gotten too extreme. They pointed out that the height of the walls of the half-pipe, the icy trench used in some snowboarding and freestyle skiing events, has increased from 16 to 22 feet, adding excitement, but also risk. Peter Judge, CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, told ABC News that in light of Burke’s death, officials “might” examine ways to make the sport safer. I’d change that word to “should.”

I’ve always admired the confidence and self-esteem I see in the female athletes I meet. There’s nothing like excelling at a physical endeavor and working with teammates toward a shared goal to make you feel good about yourself. And I’m still convinced that the positive impact of playing sports far outweighs the negative. Just the other day, Jessica Mendoza, a U.S. Olympic gold medalist in softball and past president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, wrote an article for espnW.com examining the “Top Five Reasons To Play Sports.” Her reasons: To stand out; to be confident; to look good; to be leaders; and because we love it.

I continue to believe that the way people engage in sports is an important reflection of the times in which they live. Sometimes it’s even a factor for change (e.g., women finding liberation through the bicycle in the 1890s). In today’s perilous economic times, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that some sports promise the biggest prizes to those who go for broke with big hits or big air. But the governing bodies of organized sports must act responsibly and work with athletes to safeguard their wellbeing. TV sportscasters must stop glorifying violent tackles and praising players who return to the field too quickly after getting “their bell rung.” Fans must stop expecting the athletes they root for to be superhuman. They’re not, although the best of them sometimes achieve superhuman feats, often with very human consequences.

And with that, I offer a heartfelt but restrained, “Go Giants!”

Commemorating Lives Lost, Fifty Years Later

Years ago, when I was looking for visuals for my second book, Winning Ways: A Photohistory of American Women in Sports, I came across a Library of Congress photograph of a woman joyfully sculling on the Charles River in the 1920s. I didn’t use the photo in my book, but the confident strength of the sculler stayed with me because she seemed to transcend time. She looked like a contemporary female athlete, not like someone living decades before Title IX opened up opportunities for women in sports. I filed away her name for future reference: Maribel Vinson.

Close to 10 years later, when I was working on Freeze Frame, my book about the Winter Olympics, I came across Maribel again in connection with one of the most tragic events in sports history. On February 15, 1961, a Sabena Airlines flight carrying the entire U.S. figure skating team to the World Championships in Prague crashed, killing all 72 people aboard and one on the ground. Among those who perished were the reigning U.S. women’s singles champion, Laurence Owen, her sister, the reigning pairs skater Maribel Owen, and their mother and coach, Maribel Vinson Owen.

I was stunned. I didn’t necessarily expect the sculler from the 1920s to still be alive some 80 years later, but it seemed wrong that her story had come to such a heartbreaking end. I did some research and learned that Maribel had built a distinguished career in sports since being photographed on the Charles River. She won nine U.S. ladies figure skating titles in the 1920s and ‘30s, setting a record that has yet to be broken, though Michelle Kwan tied it in 2005. Maribel also won six U.S. pairs skating titles. She competed at three Winter Olympics, taking the bronze medal in ladies singles in 1932. (Norway’s Sonja Henie had a lock on the gold from 1928 through 1936.) While she was still skating, Maribel, a Radcliffe graduate, became the first female sportswriter at The New York Times. She returned to skating in the 1950s, coaching American Tenley Albright to the gold at the 1956 Olympic Games and shepherding her daughters’ emerging careers.

American figure skaters had won gold medals in both men’s and women’s singles at the 1960 Winter Games and in the aftermath, champions Carol Heiss and David Jenkins both had retired. So the athletes on the Sabena flight that February were up-and-comers, eager to prove themselves on a world stage. Their loss set U.S. figure skating back a generation, but it accelerated the career of 12-year-old Peggy Fleming, whose coach, Bill Kipp, also died on the flight. Fleming suddenly was America’s best hope. She would come close to medaling at the 1964 Winter Games—she placed sixth—and in 1968, she would win the first U.S. gold medal in figure skating since 1960.

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the Sabena crash. On Thursday, February 17, the skating community will commemorate the tragedy with a one-night-only special event. The event will include a program with a who’s who of skating royalty to be broadcast from New York City to more than 500 movie theaters nationwide, along with the world premiere of the film RISE, about the Sabena crash and its legacy. Proceeds from the evening will be used to further the mission of U.S. Figure Skating’s Memorial Fund, which was established soon after the crash as a living legacy of those who lost their lives. The fund has supported thousands of skaters at every level, including some who have gone on to compete at the Olympics. For more about RISE and to find a theater near you that is taking part in the event, click here.

Time for Teamwork

Wouldn’t it be great if the Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C., could work together as well as the various athletes on the San Francisco Giants? When the Giants won the World Series earlier this week, it was a classic example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Every player contributed to the team’s overall performance and the result was a victory that few sports pundits predicted at the beginning of the baseball season. Teamwork won out over the glorification of individual players and prima donnas.

I love it when a sports concept pops up in everyday life, and teamwork and collaboration have been doing just that lately. In his post-election press conference on Wednesday, President Obama spoke extensively about the need for elected officials to join efforts across the aisle. And at the 2010 Long Island Technology Summit that I attended last week, Dr. Tony Wagner, the keynote speaker, listed collaboration as one of the seven survival skills students need for careers, college, and citizenship. Wagner, founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is the author of The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—and What We Can Do About It. He believes that the consumer-driven economy of the 20^th century has given way to an innovation-based economy, and our education system has to change to produce people who can compete in this new world. Besides collaboration, the skills he sees as being essential are critical thinking and problem solving; agility and adaptability; initiative and entrepreneurialism; effective oral and written communication; accessing and analyzing information; and curiosity and imagination.

In other words, it’s not facts and information that should be at the heart of learning in the new millennium. While it’s useful to have total recall of factual information, those who don’t can access facts easily at any time on any computer or smart phone. It’s knowing how to formulate a search and knowing what to do with information that is crucial. And the ability to work together, to share skills and ideas and conclusions, is the key to success. Anyone who’s ever written a book or worked on a magazine has experienced that. No matter how brilliant a writer is, she needs an equally brilliant editor and graphic designer, as well as numerous other folks, to bring a work to publication. When I write a book, I also do the photo research, but no matter how hard I try to picture the interplay of my words and the images I provide, my book’s designer always surprises me with a different—and better—way of presenting the material. Much as I hate to admit it, I just don’t have the “designer gene.” But I definitely can appreciate good design when I see it.

Teamwork is as crucial in the publishing world as it is in sports. Besides encouraging collaboration with people who have complementary skills sets, it allows us to share both the pressure and the payoff. Just like the San Francisco Giants. And the New Orleans Saints. And the Seattle Storm, 2010 champions of the WNBA.

How does teamwork enable you to succeed at your job?

My Bicycle Summer

This summer has been all about the bicycle. When it started I was steeped in the 1890s, putting the finishing touches on my upcoming book, Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way), due out in January. As the heat finally began to fade and the first cool breezes of approaching autumn arrived, I was speeding down the hilly roadways of rural Maine on a 50-mile weekend cycling trip. The feelings elicited while riding were not unlike those I encountered while writing: a single-minded concentration, mixed with terror, exhilaration, and faith that everything would turn out all right.

It’s not too hard to explain those emotions as they relate to the cycling trip. At times I felt I was out of my league, especially when the family of tourists from Sweden who were part of our group of 16 sprinted past me up a particularly challenging hill, not to be seen again until we reached the campsite for our evening meal. Add that to the surprising number of cars I heard zooming toward me from behind and the fact that the gears on the bicycle that was supplied to me kept slipping and you can understand that I soldiered on with a certain amount of unease. But that was the first day. On Sunday our route took us over softly rolling hills, past farms and out-of-the-way homes that were more consistent with the picture of this adventure weekend that I’d painted in my mind. With my gears fixed and my confidence restored, I even passed some of the Swedes, earning a “good job” from one of the twenty-something young women. Though she passed me about a mile down the road, I kept her in my sights for the rest of the trip.

As for the book, the first acknowledgment of terror came in late January, as I sat in a conference room at my publisher’s office and said yes, I would have the manuscript by April 15. It was an impossible deadline. I hadn’t written a word yet, although I had done a great deal of research. My last book, Bylines: A Photobiography of Nellie Bly, had been written over a seven-year span, interrupted twice so I could write books on the Summer and Winter Olympics. I was determined to work on Wheels of Change without interruption, giving it all of my attention for the duration.

And I did. I tried my best to map out a 10-week period devoid of distractions, postponing dentist appointments, social engagements, and a car tune-up so I could concentrate on the task at hand. I was thrown for a loop in mid-March, when a violent Nor'easter left my neighborhood without power for three and a half days. I lost all the food in my refrigerator, but I hardly lost a minute of work time thanks to my laptop and borrowed Internet access at my parents’ home and my public library. I actually think the chapter I composed as a vagabond writer was one of my best.

While I never really believed I could finish a 96-page research-based nonfiction book in 10 weeks—and I didn’t—I became increasingly excited with each page I wrote, and my editor was encouraged enough with my progress to allow me to push the deadline to the limit. I submitted the manuscript chapter by chapter, along with the visuals I collected as I simultaneously did photo research. (More on that in a future post.) As I finished the main text, the design team developed the perfect visual format for the book. I brought my laptop with me on a working vacation in late June to finish up the captions and back matter and make a few cuts to chapters that had run long. Finally, after fact checking, copyediting, proofreading, and design adjustments, the book went to the printer on August 9.

Writing Wheels of Change was a whirlwind experience, complete with uphill climbs, intense but steady forward progress, and a few breezy coasts downhill when I got the thrill of seeing everything come together in the layout. It was a heck of a ride.

My Favorite Fan

In 1993, when my book, A Whole New Ball Game: The Story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, came out, I sent a copy to Lou Arnold. I had met Lou, a former pitcher in the league, several years before, and she had become a friend. One day, I got home from work and found the absolutely best message ever on my answering machine. It was Lou, and she said, “Sue, I read your book and I wanted to call and tell you what a great job you did. You did us proud, Susie. Good job.”

It’s been 17 years, but I still have that message, copied from the answering machine to a digital recorder for posterity. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Last week, on May 27, Lou died at age 87, after a long struggle with a whole host of health issues that would have killed a lesser person years earlier. Her passing hasn’t garnered the same media blitz that followed the death of another AAGPBL player, Dorothy Kamenshek, 10 days before. Kammie was a star—in Lou’s New England accent, that would have come out “stahh”—and she certainly deserved every bit of attention she received. But Lou, who truly was the heart of the league and who did so much to communicate its history and spirit to younger generations, also deserves a public tribute. So I’ve decided to co-opt my monthly post to tell you a little about her.

Louise “Lou” Arnold was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the 13^th child of George and Mary Ann (McCormick) Arnold. The number 13 meant a lot to her. She would wear it on the back of her South Bend (Indiana) Blue Sox uniform during her four years in the All-American. And number 13 did Pawtucket proud. In 1951, she helped South Bend win the league championship with a .833 winning percentage, throwing 32 consecutive scoreless innings and pitching nine complete games out of 11 starts. (Today’s major leaguers win praise if they pitch even one complete game.) She also threw a one-hitter.

South Bend was so welcoming to Lou that she decided to stay there. She worked for the Bendix Corporation for 30 years and then retired into a world that was just starting to rediscover the AAGPBL through books and Penny Marshall’s hit film, A League of Their Own. Lou quickly became a favorite of the younger generations who were inspired by the pioneer ballplayers because she opened her heart to them and seemed as impressed with their achievements as they were with hers. Even several of the actresses from Marshall’s movie became her good friends.

I got to see Lou at least once a year at the annual AAGPBL Players Association reunions, and if they were in the Midwest, we’d be sure to get out to Steak ‘n Shake, home of fantastic milkshakes and “steakburgers.” (Why, oh why, are there no Steak ‘n Shake franchises in the New York area?) Each time, Lou would have the wait staff eating out of her hand, asking for autographs and listening to her every word about her time in the league. She was a veritable pied piper of women’s baseball, the league’s unofficial ambassador of good will. People loved her and she loved them right back.

Lou had an amazing way of making you feel special. If she believed in you, you felt you could do anything. What a great fan to have as an author just starting out. What a great friend to have all these years since.

Happy Birthday, Frankie Nelson!

Next Thursday, May 13, is Frankie Nelson’s birthday. I discovered Frankie recently, while doing research for my book on how the bicycle changed women’s lives in the 1890s, and I liked her immediately. She was one of the original female bicycle racers, a crack, or scorcher, in the vernacular of the times. First on a high-wheeler and then on the more familiar safety—similar to our bikes today—she raced men and women on indoor tracks for minutes or hours or days on end. She even went up against two men on roller skates, beating them handily.

Frankie was born in 1869. I’m not sure when she died because articles about her seem to have stopped with the end of her racing career. In fact, biographical material on her is pretty sketchy all the way around. One newspaper piece identified her as having been born in Cincinnati, but others have her coming from Brooklyn, which seems to fit her working class style and tenacity—no offense to that great city in Ohio. She very well could have moved to Brooklyn as her cycling career took off because it was one of the centers of cycling in general and women’s cycling in particular.

I have yet to find a photograph of Frankie, either, although I did come across this sketch from the May 3, 1891, issue of the St. Paul Daily Globe. It was part of the Globe’s excellent coverage of a six-day women’s race in Minneapolis, in which Frankie and five other athletes rode three hours a night on six consecutive days to determine the women’s 18-hour champion. Frankie led the race wire-to-wire, traveling a total of 264 miles and 2 laps, a new women’s record. Along the way, she received a basket of roses from the Normanna Skating society in honor of her Nordic heritage. I haven't yet found references to any other prizes or cash rewards that came with her victory.

Organized women’s sports was in its infancy in the 1890s, and participants often were looked at with a mixture of suspicion and disdain. Indeed, the League of American Wheelmen, the powerful body that fought for the rights of cyclists at the time, refused to sanction any racing event featuring a contest that was open to females. But Frankie and other women whose competitive spirits were awakened by the roar of the crowd and the thrill of the chase rode on, setting records and breaking barriers for the female athletes who came after them.

Not surprising, Frankie Nelson’s name doesn’t appear on lists of famous people who share May 13 as a birthday, which includes Stephen Colbert, Stevie Wonder, George Lucas, Bea Arthur, and boxing champ Joe Louis. But it should. As another one of those born on May 13, I welcome her to the club.

My Favorite Students

We’ve been focusing on how our books are used in the classroom on I.N.K. this month, so I thought I’d pay tribute to some of the more memorable students I’ve met in my role as an author over the years. I’ve given them nicknames to ensure their anonymity, but I can picture each of them to this day. Remembering their innocence, their curiosity, their disarming comments keeps me humble and reminds me why I love writing for young audiences.

The Straight Shooter: When talking about Bull’s-Eye, my biography of Annie Oakley, to third graders at a suburban New Jersey public school, I met a girl who confidently stood up and asked, “Since rifles have a greater range than shotguns, why did Annie Oakley use shotguns in her performances?” Mind you, I hadn’t told the class that rifles shoot farther—she just knew that. In third grade! I asked how she had come upon that particular fact and she answered that she’d learned it from her brother. Hmmm. By the way, the reason Annie used shotguns when she performed in outdoor arenas with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show is that she didn’t want any shots that missed her targets to travel beyond the arena and hurt people or damage property. Plus the collection of pellets from one shot of her shotgun had a greater chance of hitting the target than the single bullet emitted at the pull of a rifle's trigger.

The Doubter: During an author Q&A at a middle school in Iowa, I explained that I had written my book, Winning Ways: A Photohistory of Women in Sports because I love sports. A boy in the class looked me up and down, incredulous, and finally asked, “But aren’t you too old to like sports?” I was 43 at the time.

The Dedicated Swimmers: As part of the events surrounding my presentations on women’s sports history at a private girls’ school in New Jersey, the elementary students were invited to dress in the equipment of their favorite sport. Kids had a great time wearing soccer uniforms, softball cleats, and basketball jerseys, but the ones who I remember best were those swimmers who walked around in impossibly tight bathing caps all day long. Ouch!

The Intrepid Historian: Finally, there is the sixth grader from Los Angeles who chose the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League as the topic for her National History Day presentation. It’s a popular History Day choice; the experiences of the women who played baseball during and after World War II seem to resonate with kids, especially girls. But this enthusiastic teenager and I shared a six-month correspondence as she worked on her project. After an initial telephone interview, during which she asked me some basic questions about the league, she updated me on her progress via e-mail and occasional phone calls just about every week. Not surprisingly, she won $50 and a bronze medal for “having the most phone and email interviews out of 750 students!” In her last e-mail, on March 16, 2009, she wrote, “Thank you very much Sue Macy. You have no clue how much you have helped us win.” I kind of miss her.

An Invitation

Over the past year and a half, many of my fellow bloggers and I have written about the importance of photo research to our work. As I thought about what to focus on in this post, I decided to take the topic of photo research one step further and invite you, our readers, to be part of the process. It’s an unorthodox invitation, to be sure, but since I’ve been trolling eBay for people’s archival family photographs recently, it seems to make sense to “widen the net” and ask anyone who’s interested to search their own photos for possible use in my next book.

So here’s my pitch: I’m looking for photographs of your grandmother, great grandmother, great aunt, any female friend or relative with a bicycle in the 1880s, 1890s, or early 1900s. She can be riding or racing or posing with her bike, and there can be men or boys in the picture, too. But my book is about women and bicycles at the turn of the century—more specifically, about how the bicycle changed women’s lives at that time. So the main protagonist(s) in the photo should be female.

Note that the photo should be an original photographic print if at all possible—not a picture in a book, newspaper, or magazine--because reprinting a previously scanned image diminishes the quality to an unacceptable level. I’ll need to borrow the original or have you send me a high-resolution (300 dpi or greater) scan. My book will be published by National Geographic and if I use your photo, I’ll pay you an amount to be determined by the size that the picture appears in the book. But this is no get-rich-quick opportunity. No money will exchange hands until the book is on the way to the printer a year or so from now.

If you have any family stories to accompany your picture, I’d be thrilled to hear them, too. Come to think of it, if you have a great story about a female ancestor’s adventures with a bicycle during that time period, but no photograph to go with it, I’d love to hear it anyway. As I get further into my research, I’m finding that the rich history of the bicycle extends beyond the public record to family lore. So if your great aunt foiled a bank robbery by chasing down the robber on her high wheeler, please do tell.

You can comment on this post in the traditional way, but please e-mail me directly at mail@suemacy.com if you have a photograph or an elaborate story. And thanks for bearing with me in this unusual request.

Actually, I Like Sports

A few weeks ago, I was enjoying my Monday morning ritual of reading the New York Times while peddling hard on an exercise bike at my local gym, when the fortysomething man on the bicycle next to me looked over. I was holding Sports Monday, staring admiringly at the clever layout presenting the men’s NCAA Final Four brackets on four big basketballs. But apparently I had offended his view of the social order. “Are you actually going to read the sports section?” he asked, incredulous. “Yes,” I answered. “I write books about sports.”

It was the “actually” that got to me. Like my reading the sports section was so unbelievable that he had to emphasize his shock. It’s been a while since I’ve encountered anyone who was unaware that sports is no longer an all-male domain. But this time it was pretty ironic, considering that at least half of the people panting and sweating on the cardio machines around him were female.

I’ve been an athlete and a sports fan since I was little. I grew up going to Mets and Yankees contests. Watching the football games of my dad’s alma mater, the University of Texas, was practically a religious experience in our house. One of the proudest moments of my childhood took place during a neighborhood softball game, when I hit the rubber softball so hard that it broke a pane of glass in the lamppost across the street from our house. One of my favorite dates in high school involved making my computer nerd boyfriend watch me hit line drives at our local batting range.

Over the years, I’ve seen women athletes go from being anonymous competitors to household names. I’ve witnessed younger generations of females embrace playing sports as a right, rather than a privilege. I’ve met women who have built careers in sports journalism, sports marketing, and sports management.

I’m pretty sure most of those women have had to deal with their share of incredulous jerks who couldn’t believe they had any interest in sports. Fortunately, their passion drove them forward, past doubters and naysayers. I’ve been inspired by them, as well as by the many pioneer athletes I’ve interviewed who stopped at nothing to play the games they loved. With the power of their stories propelling me, a chauvinist on a stationery bicycle doesn’t have a chance.

Comfort Zones

In 1887, Nellie Bly made an indelible mark on the New York newspaper world by feigning insanity and getting herself committed to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. She suffered 10 days of neglect and abuse (e.g., the women got one bath a week, with one after the other using the same tub of dirty water and the same solitary towel). Then she exposed the inhumane practices of that institution in two articles for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. It was landmark reporting that helped give birth to the tradition of investigative journalism that still continues today. It also was a perfect example of how a writer sometimes needs to leave her comfort zone to compose work that is meaningful and memorable.

I’m trying to do that now. I’ve been fascinated by the world’s first women’s intercollegiate basketball game ever since I wrote an article about it for The New York Times, and I’ve always thought it was a great topic for a picture book. I wrote a proposal and almost sold it to one publisher, but after much anticipation, that fell through. Last year my clever agent finally found me a publisher and I composed a first draft, using my fine-tuned research skills to document all the facts of the game but missing the boat by a mile. It turns out that being a successful nonfiction author doesn’t automatically make one a picture book writer. My non-fiction instincts don’t mean all that much in a 32-page art-heavy format.

So I had a talk with my new editor about arcs and conflicts and protagonists and then I went to the experts. At Thanksgiving dinner, I asked my cousin’s twin five-year-old daughters to name their favorite book. “The Queen of Style,” they replied, and like a good researcher, I bought a copy and did my best to understand the appeal. It wasn’t hard. Author-illustrators Caralyn and Mark Buehner created a charming, funny story about a bored queen who transforms her life, and her kingdom, when she takes a beauty school correspondence course and practices her skills on her subjects--and their sheep. It’s plain to see why two sophisticated Manhattan kindergartners love this high-fashion fairy tale.

Caralyn and Mark Buehner have nine children according to the book’s flap, so of course they should know how to engage a young audience. I have only a rambunctious cat who prefers chewing books to reading them. Short of getting myself committed to an elementary school, it seems the best way for me to proceed is to break free of the very rules and standards that make for writing quality non-fiction and admit that a picture book is a different animal. Telling the story of the basketball game in picture book form means communicating its essence, rather than reporting on the play-by-play action. If Nellie Bly could bathe in filthy water and eat wretched food to write her exposé, the least I can do is leave my own comfort zone to give writing a picture book a try.

Wish me luck!

“The Curves of Annabelle Lee”

One of my favorite sports articles of all time is a retelling of the classic poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe. Only this version, written by K.C. Clapp of the Grand Rapids Herald in July 1945, was not the story of a lost love, but of a lost baseball game. The Annabelle Lee in Clapp’s poem was a left-handed pitcher for the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). On July 7, 1945, she pitched nine innings of no-hit, no-run ball against Clapp’s hometown team, the Grand Rapids Chicks.



Annabelle Lee Harmon, a native of North Hollywood, California, died on July 3 at the age of 86, and as the baseball playoffs begin, it seems like the perfect time to remember her. Hardly any media outlets noted her passing, and that’s a pity, because she was a warm, elegant, delightful woman who made an indelible imprint on the national pastime. She played pro baseball for seven years and threw the AAGPBL’s first perfect game on July 29, 1944. Beyond that, she was the aunt of major league pitcher Bill Lee—and the person who the “Spaceman” credits with teaching him how to pitch.

My most vivid memory of Annabelle is from 1995, when the All-Americans met for a reunion at a resort in Indian Wells, California. Annabelle was there with her mother Hazel, who was close to 100 years old. The paperback edition of my book about the league, A Whole New Ball Game, had just come out, and I had traveled from the east coast to show it off to the women who inspired it. With me were two friends, including Felicia Halpert, a sportswriter and a storied softball player from the women’s leagues in Brooklyn, New York.

It was late—close to midnight—but Felicia had been asking Annabelle if she still had her “stuff.” Annabelle said, “Sure, I’ll show you.” She laid down a makeshift home plate on the edge of the hotel’s patio, stationed Felicia there with a glove that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and walked off her pitching distance. Then, under fluorescent lights in the warm autumn night, the 73-year-old southpaw put on a pitching clinic. She delivered fastballs, curves, and knuckleballs, and Felicia, whose position was shrouded in darkness, did her best to catch them. Pretty soon her former teammates were lined up on the patio, cheering her on.

As I watched, I couldn’t help but think of my favorite line from Clapp’s poem: “The moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the curves of Annabelle Lee.” All these years later, I still remember Annabelle on that patio, firing pitches through the night, a feisty blond with a poetic name, a wicked knuckleball, and a shared legacy as one of the original girls of summer. She will be missed.

“Annabelle Lee Again Arouses Poet’s Muse”
by K.C. Clapp
Grand Rapids Herald, July 10, 1945

It wasn’t so many hours ago
July 7, specifically,
That a maiden there pitched whom you may know
By the name of Annabelle Lee,
And she hurled so well that not a Chick hit,
Going down to her, one, two, three.

She was not wild, this talented child,
Who twirled so effectively.
And no free passes were handed out
By this stingy Annabelle Lee
But the base hits rang for the Fort Wayne gang
For a 6-0 victory.

And this is the reason as 3,000 know
Who witnessed her wizardry
That not a Chick could hit a lick
Off the slants of Annabelle Lee,
So they sharply dropped from second spot
To a humble berth in 3.
But Fort Wayne cheers its peach-clad dears
Because of Annabelle Lee.

The moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the curves of Annabelle Lee.
And the South Field lights will gleam many nights
Before such a sight I may see—
No hits by Ziegler or Tetzlaff or Eisen,
No hits by the bustling “B.”
No hits by Maguire or Petras or “Twi,”
Why? Because of Annabelle Lee.

Let the Games Begin

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the Summer Olympics to get underway next Friday. Of course, I may have more invested in them than the average fan. I’ve written two books on the Olympic Games (Swifter, Higher, Stronger, about the Summer Games, and Freeze Frame, about the Winter Games), and most of my books focus on sports. But it’s not just the athletic competitions that fascinate me. It’s also the personal stories of the athletes, the stories that exemplify the interaction of sports and society and the impact of the Olympics beyond scores and finishing times.

One such story that already has surfaced involves Dana Hussein Abdul-Razzaq, an Iraqi sprinter who seemed to lose her opportunity to race when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended Iraq’s National Olympic Committee due to interference by the Iraqi government. A Shiite athlete with a Sunni coach, Hussein is a symbol of unity in a divided land. As the only woman on the Iraqi team, she is also an example of the triumph of drive and dedication over a society’s oppressive rules and unsettled political climate. Fortunately, negotiations last Tuesday between Iraq and the IOC cleared the way for Hussein and one teammate to compete in Beijing. The truce came too late for five other Iraqi athletes in sports whose registration deadlines already had passed.

You can bet I’ll be watching the women’s sprints to see how Hussein does. I’ll also be watching swimmer Michael Phelps, who most certainly will break the record for the highest cumulative total of gold medals won at the Summer Games, which is nine. He already has six from 2004. Phelps also has a shot at beating Mark Spitz’s record for the most gold medals at a single Games, which is seven. His teammate, Dara Torres, has a golden opportunity to make a splash by winning a gold medal at the ripe old age of 41. She wouldn’t be the oldest female gold medalist—that was 53-year-old Sybil “Queenie” Newall of Great Britain, who took the gold in archery in 1908. But Torres already has nine Olympic medals (four gold, one silver, and four bronze). Adding anything to that total would be icing on the cake for her and an inspiration to all of us over-40 (and over-50) gym rats.

Each of these athletes would be a terrific subject for a kids' biography that explores the factors which drove them to excel. A different kind of book could be written about one of my favorite Olympians, the perennial silver medalist Shirley Babashoff. A swimmer at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, Babashoff netted a total of two gold medals and six silvers. In 1976 alone, she came in second four times to East German women. To Babashoff, the extraordinary improvement in the Germans’ times, added to their surprisingly masculine appearance, suggested that they were enhancing their performances with steroids. And she said so to anyone who would listen. Her complaints earned Babashoff a nickname—“Surly Shirley”—and no end of criticism in the press. Years later, when the Berlin Wall fell and the records of East Germany’s widespread doping became public, Babashoff was vindicated. But the IOC never stripped the East Germans of their medals and Babashoff never received upgrades in the races she should have won. Her story would be a great jumping-off point for a book on doping in sports.

I'm looking forward to seeing what other interesting developments will materialize in Beijing this month.