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Lisa Saxon with other reporters before a media game at Anaheim Stadium. Cropped from photo by V.J. Lovero at Vice.
Lisa Saxon now teaches and advises the student magazine at Palisades Charter High School in LA's Pacific Palisades. But in 1979, she began covering sports for the Daily News in the Valley. From 1983 to 1987, she was one of only three women covering major league baseball full-time and she took a ton of abuse — the worst, it sounds like, from Reggie Jackson of the Angels. But she had to put up with a lot of other jerks to do her job. Vice runs a nice piece by Jack Ross saying that "what truly sets Lisa Saxon apart was her fight—a lightly chronicled struggle that was usually waged behind closed doors in stadiums around the country; a battle fought by a handful of female sports writers in a closed off and closed-minded world that did not want them there. A fight for professional dreams, sure, but also for access, equality, and at times, for basic human rights and dignity."
"People say 'You were a pioneer,'" said Saxon. "Really, I was just a naive, enthusiastic young woman, doing what she loved to do. I never understood the pioneer part. But I gained perspective, as I won battles of opening locker rooms and changing perspectives. It really wasn't until I left journalism that I had a clear view of what I accomplished.
"I didn't complain a lot. But I cried a lot. I wondered why people hated me. Eventually, I came to realize they don't hate me, they're just afraid of what I represented. Change is hard for people, and I was changing the face of things…."In the locker rooms Saxon entered, players did everything imaginable and worse: yelling, spitting, and throwing jock-straps at her daily; exposing themselves and even masturbating in front of her. Memories of physical harassment and groping blur together. The instances were as common an occurrence as the days she wore black pants: "And I wore black pants a lot of days."
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Meanwhile, off the field and on the road, not much was off limits. Saxon remembers unplugging countless hotel room phones to avoid incessant sexual advances from players—even after she was married in 1986. Merely being seen with another player in public was often cause for rumors and innuendo that Saxon was sleeping with someone to get a scoop. During one road trip in St. Louis, a Marriott security guard attempted to kick her out of the hotel after convincing himself that Saxon was a sex worker.
"'Whatever they do to us, I'm going to put up with it,'" Saxon confided to [Claire] Smith at the time. "I fought the battles as best I could. But if they close the door, it wasn't going to be because of me. Sure, there were hardships, but I knew I wouldn't overcome them by complaining."
There's a great section in the story about the abuse she took from Reggie, an uprising against Jackson by Angels veterans such as George Hendrick, and Saxon's final revenge. Plus some advice she got from Vin Scully and ex-Angels manager John McNamara, two among the many decent people she got along fine with.
By the way, some may remember her byline as Lisa Nehus. She married AP photographer Reed Saxon in 1986.
