Crazy Salad by Nora Ephron

pages were full of pictures of Mrs. Gera, thumbs up, victorious. But on July 31, the president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues invalidated the contract by refusing to sign it. Mrs. Gera was heartbroken, but she confined her reaction to a string of sports metaphors: “I guess I just can’t get to first base.… It’s a strikeout but I will come up again. The game is not over.”
    The lawsuit continued. There was a hearing at the New York State Human Rights Commission, where George Leisure, attorney for the baseball interests, said that Mrs. Gera was publicity madand that furthermore she did not meet any of the physical requirements for being an umpire. Umpires, he said, should be five feet ten inches tall, and weigh 170 pounds. “Being of the male sex is a bona-fide qualification for being a professional umpire,” said Leisure. In November, 1970, the Human Rights Commission held that the National League discriminated not only against women but against men belonging to short ethnic groups and would have to “establish new physical standards which shall have a reasonable relation to the requirements of the duties of an umpire.” The League promptly appealed the decision, and the legal process dragged on.
    Maury Allen of the New York
Post
went into the locker room of the New York Mets at one point during Mrs. Gera’s years in chancery and asked some of the ballplayers how they felt about her. He recorded, in response, a number of attempted witticisms about her chest protector, along with a predictable but nonetheless interesting series of antediluvian remarks. “I read the stories about her and she said that she expected people would call her a ‘dumb broad,’ ” said Jerry Koosman. “Hell, that’s the nicest thing people would call her. What do you think she’d hear when a batter hit a line drive off a pitcher’s cup?” Said Ron Swoboda: “She’d have fifty guys yelling at her in language she wouldn’t believe. If she heard those dirty words and didn’t react, then they would have to give her a hormone test.”
    Bernice Gera waited almost two years for the State Court of Appeals to uphold the Human Rights Commission ruling; finally, in the spring of 1972, she once again signed a contract with the New York–Pennsylvania League. In late June, having allowed to reporters that she was “grateful to God and grateful to baseball,” she drove to Geneva, New York, for her début. There was a banquet Thursday night and she was cheered over roast chicken. Shewas ecstatic. “I was in baseball,” Mrs. Gera recalled. “I can’t tell you. I was on top of the world. And then, the bubble burst.”
    On Friday, there was a meeting of the League umpires. “That meeting,” Mrs. Gera said. “It was like, if you had a group of people in a room and they just ignored you. How can I express it? They made it obvious they didn’t want me. How would you feel? You’re supposed to work your signals out with your partner. You’re a team. You have to know what he’s going to do. But my partner wouldn’t talk to me. I sat there for six hours. A lot of other things went on that I don’t want to discuss because I’m going to write about it someday. I should have realized if they fought me in court they weren’t going to welcome me, but I never thought they would do that to me. That was the only way they could get to me, through the other umpires. If they won’t work with you, you can’t make it.”
    Saturday night, when Bernice Gera walked out onto the field in her $29 suit, she had come to a decision. She would leave baseball if her fellow umpire would not tell her his signals. Her partner, a lanky young man named Doug Hartmayer, who was also making his professional début, refused even to acknowledge her presence. But the crowd loved her, applauded her emphatic calls, and was amused by her practically perpetual motion. Then, in the fourth inning, a member of the Auburn Phillies came into