Women Aren't Fans

WOMEN now sit beside men in the jury box, in the barbershop, and in the stands of the prize-fight arena. Equality is theirs to make the most of. But they’ll never have to build bigger stadiums to accommodate a rush of feminine fans to baseball games and prize fights.

The stuff that fans are made of — frenzied, hysterical, pleading, shouting, swearing fans — is not of the same piece as the pattern from which women are cut.

‘Never the twain shall meet’ is no more true of East and West than it is of the utterly alien points of view of men and women at a big fight.

For two years the New York World gave me costly tickets to the season’s major sporting events so that I might observe and report whether or not women were there, and what seemed to be their reactions and interest. I saw the Yankees and the Giants clash for the pennant, and I watched Firpo knock Dempsey into the press box and Dempsey knock Firpo into oblivion (at least I had a $27.50 ringside seat from which I was supposed to see this), not to mention other less thrilling affairs, at all of which my sisters under the skin were conspicuous by their absence or their uncomprehending blankness in the face of the mob frenzy which gripped the male fans.

Why?

Men can lose their self-consciousness. Women can’t.

I am a pretty good baseball fan as women go, I flatter myself. I am a long way beyond an acquaintance who blandly inquired of her escort, a wellknown sports-writer authority on baseball, ‘And what are the men in civilian clothes doing down there?’

I am barely a second behind the gentleman who takes me to ball games in appreciatively applauding a clever double play. When the Babe smacks a long one out to right field which may, by the grace of a good outfield, be a fly instead of a home run, I surge up with the rest of the stands, strain forward, even lift my voice in the general roar.

But it is absolutely inconceivable to me how this same gentleman can rise to his feet when the rest of the section is seated and comparatively quiet, and, cupping his hands, bellow for all the world to hear, ‘Pitch to him, you big bum!’ and then sit down with the unembarrassed calm of the man who has materially aided in the world’s work.

I saw the two opening games of the 1926 World Series in company with a cousin who had come all the way up from the South for just those two games. He was n’t stopping to analyze why he thought an apology was necessary, but in the first breathing space after the umpire called, ‘Play ball!’ he turned deprecatingly to me: ‘I hope it won’t bother you if I kind of yell some. I’m apt to get pretty excited, you know.’

At the Dempsey-Firpo fight, I was the only woman in the particular ringside section where my seat was located. Several men looked at first surprised and amused, then a bit concerned to see a woman so alone and unprotected. There was one young policeman across the aisle who obviously intended to keep his eye on me and see that I came to no harm.

Then, as the stadium lights went out, leaving the ring a white magnetic glare in which two perfect men-brutes charged at each other to a roar like the threat of a dam breaking, men climbed on the seats, on the backs of seats; the wooden ring-side benches went down in waves, and black knots struggled cursing and shouting toward the ring they could not see.

I crawled out into the aisle, as a huge breaker of fighting fans swept toward the ring. I was badly frightened. I looked desperately for the young policeman. He was standing on his bench, one arm tightly around the neck of a smaller man beside him, who was completely unaware that he was being slowly strangled. ‘Oh, God,’ prayed the young policeman, his eyes lifted to the ring in the tremendous exaltation of a religious frenzy, ‘oh, God — God — GOD — a knockout, a knockout, a KNOCKOUT!’

Nobody paid the slightest attention to me or anybody else. Nobody was conscious of anybody else. For a few crashing, tremendous, unforgettable moments there was nothing in the world but the fight, and every man of those thundering thousands was the fight.

I was a stranger in a strange land, a woman in a man’s world. I had as much right to be there as anyone else. There were no conventions defied, no jealous men’s rules to be broken. But I did n’t belong. No woman really did.

The child is father to the fan. And the trouble is that girls grow up, definitely and finally, while boys never do, quite. And when you’re grown up you can’t lose your self-consciousness in a game.

There never was a feminine Peter Pan, and there never will be. There was Wendy, of course, and Wendy was the most joyous of playmates for a while. But the time came when inevitably she left the Never Never Land. Barrie says not to feel sorry for her, because she did n’t mind growing up — she wanted to. All girls do.

Nor is it an accident that the world’s greatest fairy tales and fantasies, ancient and modern, are written by men, not women.

A child is a fireman, an Indian, a motorman, a Big League player, though equipment be of the most rudimentary or completely lacking. So professional sport draws its thousands —of men. Tied to the routine of desk or of machine, the thrill of actual physical combat or competition, the glory of being a hero to cheering thousands, though it last but a moment, is not for them. But, because no man ever wholly grows up, it is not necessary that he be down there on the diamond. While he strains forward from the seat for which he has stood in line since dawn, while he curses or acclaims every play, for those moments he is in the game. And when he yells, ‘Pitch to him, you big bum!’ he is the Babe himself daring Sherdel not to pass him.

Somebody will now ask, ‘What about football — and the hundreds of young women who attend college games yearly and who manage to show a good deal of excitement when Harvard is on Yale’s ten-yard line and vice versa?’

In the first place, the personal element enters in there, and then, as a woman feels it, there’s some point to yelling. She wants to see her man and his team win, and it need n’t make any difference what the game is, nor how much or little she understands it. For co-eds who go in bunches and who can appreciate the different plays, college spirit is the personal interest that makes such enthusiasm possible.

In the second place, girls go to football games as they go to ‘proms,’ or any other social functions where invitations are indicative of one’s popularity.

But you don’t see the same crowds of women at a professional football game, do you? There are some, of course, just as there are some at any sport affair, and some because they’ve heard of ‘Red’ Grange. But it’s nothing like the college crowd, for the obvious reason that women are n’t interested in football for the sake of the game, but for the sake of the man or the social occasion.

But there are a good many women, as everyone knows, who do go to ball games and prize fights. They go because it’s the thing, these days, to be interested in all sport. Society wears evening gowns at fights and hobnobs with professional fighters and ball players and gets a thrill out of it, just as out of any new fad. In these days also, women, in the effort to share in their husbands’ interests, go with them to ball games. And as a result some women have come honestly to enjoy the game for itself, and would rather watch good baseball than go to the movies. But few, if any, would go regularly by themselves if their husbands were n’t connected with the sport or in any way interested.

Fashion also takes women to the championship tennis and golf matches. But there’s another difference here. One enjoys good tennis or golf with one’s intelligence, not with one’s emotions — that goes for both men and women. Women, who play so well themselves, are naturally no less keenly appreciative here than men. But the gallery does not play with the players; it applauds, it is intelligently critical, pleasantly partisan. There is none of that fighting frenzy which demands victory in a professional and alien struggle, which women do not and cannot understand or share, but which is the breath of life to your true sport fan.

So golf and tennis draw their thousands, but baseball and prize fights draw their tens of thousands and big stadiums are built for them.

There were, it is true, a good many women at the last World’s Series who set the alarm clock for an early start and joined the long lines waiting for the unreserved seats to go on sale. That meant nearly the whole day in the stands and considerable devotion either to the game or to the men who took them to see it.

But when the crowd in the bleachers got excited and began throwing paper, — showers of it, pretty to watch; wads of it, not so comfortable to feel, — East spoke to West again, and the women irritably demanded of their escorts why they did n’t ask the police to make those rough men quit — their hats were getting knocked askew.

And, come to think of it, did you ever see a woman at a game throw her hat into the air — toss it to the winds in the ultimate gesture of tremendous satisfaction? I never have. Plenty of men would sacrifice brand-new headgear to the greatness of the moment, but can you imagine a ball game meaning more to a woman than a hat? Even if it was an old hat, and she never had liked it, and she was just terribly glad St. Louis had won, her grown-up self, her real woman self, would be gently whispering, ‘Even if you don’t want the hat, dearie, you can’t go home through the streets without it, you know. Why, what would people think?’