Todays episode features Jean Ardell, a lifelong Yankees fan and author. We spoke about how she became a Yankees fan, what drew her to becoming a writer and the inherent sexism she's dealt with over the years as a woman in baseball. The bulk of our conversation was centered around Jean's newish book Making My Pitch: A Woman's Baseball Odyssey, which tells the story of Ila Borders, an athlete Jean stumbled upon in 1994. We chatted about the process of writing it, Jean's friendship with Ila and why baseball books written by women rarely get the publicity they deserve, especially in comparison to their male counterparts. 

 

Jean Ardell is a writer, speaker and researcher. She's presented in Cooperstown, at SABR's conference, and the NINE Spring Training conferences amongst others. She's written two books on the game- Making My Pitch and Breaking Into Baseball: Women and the National Pasttime. She became a Yankees fan as a kid and hasn't looked back since.

Check out her website: http://www.jeanardell.com/index.html

Buy her books: https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=jean+ardell

 

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Stargaze sound: Magic Wand Glitter http://freesound.org/people/qubodup/sounds/211624 by Iwan ‘qubodup’ Gabovitch http://freesound.org/people/qubodup under CC-BY 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode