Happy Women’s Equality Day! We’re all about equality – but today just feels like a good day to share these three stories about times when female athletes competed against males and beat the heck out of them.
Like, there was that time in 1975 when boxer Jackie Tonawanda, the first woman to fight in New York’s Madison Square Garden, faced off against Larry Rodania, and knocked him out in the second round.
And then in 2007, when surfer Carissa Moore earned a “wild card” spot in the men’s Triple Crown of Surfing competition in Hawaii – and beat them all.
But our favorite is from 1931 when 18-year-old Jackie Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth in an exhibition game in our very own Chattanooga, Tennessee. Though some mystery still shrouds the story, there is no question that young Mitchell, the second woman in history signed to play professional baseball, is a legend of her time. Here’s a story we wrote about her back in 2014.
And here are a few unrelated stories we wrote this week: