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White Sox's sexist shrine a problem for baseball

Barbara Barker

4:28 PM EDT, May 6, 2008

Major League Baseball has a problem.

Apparently, they think it is OK to demean 50 percent of the population. Apparently, they think it is OK that seven days before Mother's Day, one of their teams featured a vulgar and sexist shrine -- complete with blow-up dolls and baseball bats -- in its clubhouse. Apparently, they don't care that the prevalent attitude in their sport when it comes to denigrating women is that "boys will be boys.''

Major League Baseball has a problem because it took two days for anyone to voice a concern about what happened in Toronto on Sunday. That's when an unnamed White Sox player, trying to think of a novel way to break his team out of its slump, set up two blow-up dolls on the clubhouse couch accompanied by "strategically placed'' baseball bats, sex toys and a sign that read "You've Got To Push,'' according to a report in The Canadian Press. According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, one doll had a bat inserted in its "backside'' to prop it up.

On Tuesday, when contacted by Newsday, Major League Baseball vice president of public relations Patrick Courtney said, "We are looking into it."

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At least that's better than what White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen had to say. His sentiments aren't exactly ones that are going to have me run out and buy a pink White Sox cap for my daughter.

"I'm not going to make the players apologize," Guillen said in the Sun-Times. "I don't think that was a big deal. It's our house. I don't think we did anything wrong and I don't think we did anything to make people upset. We did something to have fun and stay loose.'' Guillen did have one problem with the display: "Those dolls don't work. Hopefully, we can come up with something better. We don't need dolls. We need hits."

Something better? What's the next step? How about a noose and a sign urging players to go out and lynch their opponents? How about a picture of two opponents kissing and a sign that says let's beat those gays? Because for many women and hopefully for many of the men who love them, the symbol of a blow-up doll is offensive and threatening.

I would suggest that Guillen just doesn't need hits. He needs to be hit with a fine and some sensitivity training. And hopefully he can be sent to a sensitivity trainer a little more accomplished than the one he was ordered to see two years ago when he used a derogatory term for a gay man to describe Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti.

Now, there are some out there who will point out that what the White Sox did is OK because it is something that happened inside the clubhouse, not out in a dugout or on the field. While I agree that in our society the locker room has long been revered as a sacred retreat of protracted adolescence, there is one thing you have to understand about a Major League clubhouse: It is not a private place.

A Major League Baseball clubhouse is not like the locker room at your health club. It is not like the locker room at your high school. For at least three hours a day, it is a place of business: For players, for team personnel, for sports writers, for cameramen, for anchorpeople, it is the place they go to do their job.

There are private areas in a clubhouse. Many have players-only areas, and all have a trainer's room where no non-club personnel are allowed. But the White Sox blow-up display was smack in the middle of the clubhouse, where everyone who had to go in and do their work was forced to contend with it. And not one White Sox employee, not even apparently the public relations person, was bothered enough by the shrine to take it down before reporters came in that day.

My understanding is that there were no women reporters working the game in Toronto. My understanding also is that if there had been, the White Sox might be contending with a lawsuit.

But this issue is not just about how the White Sox treat reporters. It's about attitudes in Major League Baseball. It's not enough just to use pink bats to support breast cancer on Mother's Day every few years. It's not just enough to make pastel-colored hats.

Fifty percent of baseball's potential fans are women. They attend games, they drive aspiring players to Little League games and they buy thousands of dollars worth of merchandise.

And they deserve better.