There’s a scene in the movie 42 where a baseball reporter proclaimed that within a few years, there’d be no more white ball players. He based his assumption on an unproven theory that a longer shin bone gave black athletes an unfair advantage over white ball players. After Jackie Robinson hits a home run, another reporter, annoyed at his colleague’s racist remarks, asked “Was that because of his long shin bone.” He then operates his teletype machine while everyone gets a good laugh at the ignorant reporter.
Fast forward to 2025. Arguments alike are being made about transgender athletes. Men transitioning into women have an unfair advantage they say. They toss out an unproven theory to back their point. Talent doesn’t matter to them. They see a man pretending to be a woman in order to get an unfair advantage. They say allowing transgender harms “real women”.
Riley Gaines has been the leading voice against transgender athletes. Gaines is a second-generation athlete who managed to make the swim team at University of Kentucky. After a promising Freshman season, Gaines, like many before her, soon discovered she was no longer a big fish swimming in a little sea. Faster, stronger, and more talented swimmers from across the country were proving themselves better than her. She parlayed her Freshman season into a spot on the second team in the SEC all swimming team. Makes a great sound bite, and looks good on paper. Essentially what is means is that Gaines wasn’t the best of the best. She was just good enough to be their back-up. Second string.
Enter Lia Thomas. Thomas faced off against Gaines, and in the end, they both tied for fifth place. Instead of accepting defeat, Gaines pouted, whined about transgender athletes being allowed to compete, and thus began her campaign to have a secret agreement in place. Not unlike the so-called “Gentleman’s Agreement” created by Cap Anson in the later 1880’s to bar African-Americans from playing major league baseball. Anson, a card-carrying member of the KKK, used his role as the top star in baseball to browbeat owners into agreeing to his demands. His protest started because of a game in Toledo. Toledo had a catcher named Moses Fleetwood Walker, who in 1884, became the first African-American to play in the majors. Anson was incensed and refused to allow his Chicago ball club to take the field unless Walker was “Removed from the field and deleted from the Toledo roster.” Charlie Morton, Toledo’s manager, was ready for Anson. He said he’d agree to Anson’s demands, upon one condition. Anson would forfeit his part of the gate. Visitor’s gate was how many teams made money on the road. Anson could get his way, but then he’d have to tell his players they weren’t getting paid. Anson dropped his demands and played the game under protest. However, this planted the seeds for what would become a dark blight on baseball.
Flash forward to now. Riley Gaines, a decent, but somewhat average athlete, has used social media and the current climate to get her way. To succeed where Cap Anson failed. Lia Thomas has since had every one of her records stricken from the books. And Gaines has used unproven theories and outright lies to spread fear and to essentially ban transgender athletes from all sports.
Now, comes the irony of Gaines’s hellbent drive. In 1973, Bobby Riggs, who had been one of the greatest tennis players of all-time, proclaimed women’s tennis inferior. It was a gimmick, he said. He challenged Margaret Court, who was the number ranked player in the world, to a battle of the sexes. Riggs easily won the match. He then faced Billie Jean King. King studied every aspect of the match with Court, and bested Riggs in their match,
However, women’s sports still faced a decades long challenge for respect. College programs were barely funded, and pro sports leagues failed as quickly as they started. While as head coach of Auburn football in the 1990’s, Tommy Tuberville (who Gaines gushingly sings the praises of) lamented that he couldn’t get more funding for the football team’s weight room because of the money the school had to “throw away” on the women’s programs.
Gaines continues to make her claim that the transgender athletes could injure or severely hurt the women they compete against. Well, that can happen when women compete against women as well. What’s next, banning a woman because she has a more muscular body that the women she competes against? Being more muscular doesn’t make you a better athlete. Being transgender doesn’t make you a better athlete, nor does a “longer shin bone”. You either have talent or you don’t. Sports tend to be a human crash course. You’re going to get hurt.
However, you don’t get to use fear, bigotry, or hurt feelings to bar others from competing. Agreements based on those concepts, are best left relegated to the past.
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