The 2023 Major League Baseball World Series has become the least watched on record, with the five-game series averaging 9.11 million viewers on Fox as the Texas Rangers prevailed over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The viewership demonstracted a stunning lack of public interest in the the national pasttime’s championship event.
Compare that to the viewership of the women’s NCAA college basketball final last April. The 102-85 victory by Louisiana State University over the University of Iowa drew an average of 9.9 million viewers, peaking at 12.6 million, according to cable broacaster ESPN. It was the most viewed lcollege sports event ever on ESPN.
Megan Rapinoe may not be the greatest player ever to take the field for the USWNT, though she’s not too far down the top ten list after the likes of Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, and Abby Wambach.
But Rapinoe’s legacy may be greater than any other.
She long will be celebrated as an icon for her leadership off the field in the fight for equal pay, calling out racism, and her personal work to advance LGBTQ awareness.
Rapinoe leveraged her performance in the 2019 FIFA World Cup tournament — she won the Golden Ball as the best player and the Golden Boot as the leading scorer to lead the USA to its second straight championship — into a worldwide platform on which to advocate for social change.
Led by Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, 28 USWNT players filed a civil rights lawsuit that forced US Soccer to negotiate a Collective Bargaining Agreement that covers national team players regardless of gender — pooling all prize money and other revenues for equal distribution. The effect has been worldwide, spurring demands for equal treatment and mutual respect by several other women’s national teams, especially in France and Spain.
Members of the USWNT wore Black Lives Matter shirts during warmups and took a knee during the national anthem before a November 2020 friendly with the Netherlands. US Soccer banned such acts after Rapinoe first knelt during the anthem in 2016. The team issued a joint statement saying the protest against racial injustice was an affirmation of human decency.
Rapinoe has also opened up her personal life to public scrutiny, after coming out as lesbian and celebrating her relationship with WNBA legend Sue Bird.
None of Rapinoe’s outspoken leadership was without risk. For taking up these righteous causes, she has been targeted by those who oppose the ideals of equity and inclusion. Yet she has endured with the same poise and grace and bravery she displays on the field.
Rapinoe bowed out of the World Cup this week with a miss in the penalty shootout and the top-ranked USA team fell to third-ranked Sweden. Obviously, it was not the ending she would have scripted for herself or her team.
Hopefully, she will be celebrated with a proper send-off later this year, as she closes her national team career with friendlies against South Africa. We should honor her leadership and her legacy, as much as her athletic accomplishments, and thank her for working to make the world more fair and equitable.
In the end, the great Marta was on the field embracing the promising Jamaican striker Bunny Shaw, who put her hand to her chest and poured out her admiration and thanks in a beautiful, intimate post-game exchange.
“I just told her that she’s not just an inspiration for me, but for a lot of young girls in the Caribbean and around the world,” Shaw said, according to The Associated Press.
At the time Shaw took up the sport, Marta was just stepping into greatness.
She was named FIFA Player of the Year in 2006, the first of five consecutive years in which she won the award. She won a sixth as well, in 2018. A five-time Olympian, she has also played in six World Cups and holds the all-time scoring record, women or men, with 17 goals. She won the Golden Ball and the Golden Boot in the 2007 tournament. She has scored more and played longer than any other woman, and is widely considered the greatest of all time.
Brazil failed to make it through the group stage. Marta, at age 37, did not score in this, her final World Cup run, but her legend will endure.
“When I started playing, I didn’t have an idol, a female idol. You guys didn’t show any female games. How was I supposed to see other players? How I was I supposed to understand that I could arrive at a national team and become a reference?” Marta told the assembled media after the game.
“Today we have our own references,” she said, adding she is often stopped on the streets by parents who say their daughters want to be just like Marta. “This wouldn’t have happened if we had stopped in the first obstacles that we faced. … And it didn’t start just with me, but with a lot of the women back then.”
Shaw is among the legion of players who have aspired to the greatness Marta achieved, and they are now ready to pick up that mantle.
“I’m very happy with all that has been happening in women’s football in Brazil and in the world. Keep supporting,” Marta said, her eyes filled with tears. “Because for them, it’s just the beginning. For me, it’s the end of the line now.”
Amid all the excitement about increasing parity in the women’s game at this year’s World Cup, the excitement of greater competition will be tempered for many longtime fans as three of the all-time greats in women’s soccer likely bid farewell.
Marta, Brazil
Team Brazil forward Marta (10)
Perhaps the greatest to play the women’s game, Marta has been a presence at every World Cup since 2007, when she scored seven goals to claim the Golden Ball as the top player and the Golden Boot as the top individual scorer.
She was named FIFA World Player of the Year five years running, from 2006-2010, and again in 2018. Though she has never won the World Cup, her legacy is cemented. She led Brazil in a victory over the USA U-20 Team at the Pan American Games in front of 60,000 fans in Maracana in 2006 and was compared by fans to national idol Pele, who called to congratulate her after the win.
At 37, with 174 international caps and 115 goals (10th all-time), Marta is unlikely to play in another FIFA World Cup tournament after Australia/New Zealand.
Christine Sinclair, Canada
This will be Sinclair’s sixth World Cup and probably her last.
Sinclair has not yet announced her plans, but in a recent interview with Maclean’s, she was asked about retiring. “For me, it’s all about enjoyment. Can you stay healthy? Because it’s no fun if you’re not healthy,” Sinclair said in the interview. “And are you still enjoying it? Are you still waking up every day knowing this is what you want to do?”
Sinclair, who last month celebrated her 40th birthday, led Canada to the Gold Medal in the 2021 Olympics. She has 323 international appearances and has scored 190 international goals (and 54 assists) — more goals than any other player, ahead of even Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.
She has been shortlisted for FIFA World Player of the Year seven times, right behind Marta in four of those years.
Megan Rapinoe, USA
Just before the send-off game with Wales, Rapinoe announced she would retire at the end of the current NWSL season, making this her final World Cup campaign.
“I feel incredibly grateful to have played as long as I have, to be as successful as we’ve been, and to have been a part of a generation of players who undoubtedly left the game better than they found it,” Rapinoe said in a statement. “To be able to play one last World Cup and one last NWSL season and go out on my own terms is incredibly special.”
She led the USA to the last World Cup in 2019 in France, winning the Golden Ball as the best player of the tournament and the Golden Boot as the leading scorer. The same year, Sports Illustrated named her i’s “Sportsperson of the Year.”
Rapinoe turned 38 on July 5 and has 199 international appearances. She has more assists, 78, than goals, 63, but is third all-time in assists. ranks third all-time than goals. She is the only player, male or female, to score an Olimpico (a corner kick for a goal) at the Olympic Games, and she’s done it twice.
Rapinoe is regarded as much for her off-the-field leadership on pay and equity and LGBTQ representation as she is for her stellar on-field performances.
This trio of legends has had a tremendous impact on the women’s game, and this World Cup offers a final opportunity to appreciate their contributions.
It’s always great to see the emergence of a young actor.
One of my favorite examples is a bit from Game of Thrones season six. John Snow, Sansa Stark, and Davos Seaworth — trying to muster an army to face the House Bolton — travel to Bear Island to meet with the young but feisty leader, Lady Lyanna Mormont. Ultimately she agrees to help by supplying a limited number of fighters, saying Bear Island’s legendary warriors are worth many times their own number in battle. Davos responds, “If they are half as ferocious as their Lady, the Boltons are doomed.”
Bella Ramsey
The scene offers an early glimpse of the fiercely talented actor Bella Ramsey, who this week was nominated for a best actress Emmy for playing Ellie in The Last of Us.
Ramsey is non-binary, neither male nor female. Their nomination in a gendered category is an issue that the show’s creator said he addressed with them before submitting their work for consideration. There is rightly disappointment that a non-binary actor can only be placed in a gendered acting category. And some see a silver lining in Ramsey’s nomination as a means to create awareness around trans visibility and inclusion.
But why?
Why must we rationalize these choices?
Why are we so willing to accept acting awards that are gendered, or, perhaps more precisely, segregated by sex?
It seems an anachronism; a throwback to an era where the sexes were segregated in order to preserve the idea of fairness toward women. The old separate but equal canard. The bias is implicit, leaning into the notion that when women and men are forced to compete against each other, men will prevail. So we keep them segregated in order to maintain the illusion of male superiority.
Non-binary actors disrupt that construct and ask us to reconsider sex segregation as a method to differentiate abilities and talent based on gender.
For example, three of the four co-stars of Succession have been nominated for lead actor in a drama series while the fourth, Sarah Snook, was nominated in the lead actress category. While it might be difficult to single out any of them that’s the whole point of an awards show, right? Reward the best of the best. So if Snook wins in the actress category and, say, Kieran Culkin, wins for actor, how does that reward the best performance in the series? And what is really the point of differentiating them? They are essentially the same roles in the same production. Why should they be judged separately?
Separa means to emphasize differences. For acting award categories, differences in roles, such as starring versus supporting, seem like a legit distinction based on screen time, lines, and importance to the story. So does separating awards based on categories like drama, comedy, serials, and feature-length movies.
But gender is a constructed difference. That’s why there are no separate categories for directors, writers, producers, technical awards, etc. Just for actors.
So, rather than trying to figure out how to fit non-binary actors into binary categories, let’s get rid of gender-segregated awards categories and just give awards to the best performances.
Both WNBA “super teams” played this weekend in a double-header broadcast on CBS Sports Network and — somewhat surprisingly — neither all-star-studded team dominated.
The New York Liberty threw away a 17-point lead, falling to the Chicago Sky 86-82. The Las Vegas Aces needed a furious run over the final eight minutes of the game to secure an 84-80 win over the rebuilding Indiana Fever.
What transpired was gripping, high-level competition — and an argument for expanding the size of rosters as well as the number of teams in the league and the number of games in a season.
Currently, the WNBA has 144 players on active rosters, twelve players on each of twelve teams.
That makes it the most exclusive professional sports league in the world.
By comparison, the NBA has 450 players on the rosters of thirty teams with another 300 or so on the rosters of the 28 teams in its developmental league. The number of players who start for NBA teams is greater than the total number of players in the WNBA.
The W now is so exclusive that owners, abetted by a penurious salary cap, can afford to assemble “super teams,” where the talent level is unprecedented.
The Aces start five players who share 16 first-team all star awards. Four of the starters were number one overall draft picks out of college: Aja Wilson, Candace Parker, Kelsey Plum, and Jackie Young. The fifth, Chelsea Gray, was taken 11th overall. Three of the starters have been league or final MVP. Three won rookie of the year awards.
The Liberty starting five are younger but nearly as distinguished. The starers have 14 all-star selections among them. Two players, Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu, were number one overall draft picks. Courtney Vandersloot and Jonquel Jones were third and sixth picks. Two have been league or final MVP.
Even with that high level of talent, the teams haven’t completely dominated the league, as evidenced by Sunday’s games.
The evidence of the quality of players in the league is clear in the draft numbers.
Thirty-six players were drafted in three rounds of the WNBA draft eight weeks ago. Just 15 made team rosters, and nine of those were top ten picks. (Stephanie Soares, a 6-6 center from Brazil who played at Iowa State and was drafted fourth is out for the season due to a knee injury).
Those numbers are consistent over the history of the WNBA. Since the inception of the league in 1997, 42% of drafted players never make a roster, according to a report in NOLA.com
The league began with eight teams in 1996 and peaked at sixteen in 2002. The last team added was the Atlanta Dream in 2008 and league officials have since proceeded with great caution when it comes to further expansion. Nor are league officials inclined to increase the number of players. “We think today our rosters are the right size,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Englebert said before the last draft.
The advent of “super teams” might argue otherwise.
The WNBA saw record-breaking TV ratings on its opening weekend, which featured the Phenix Mercury at the Los Angeles Sparks, a game that celebrated the return of all-star center Brittney Griner after she spent 10 months in Russia prisons on trumped-up drug charges.
The game generated 683,000 average viewers on ESPN with a peak of 1 million viewers, making it the most-viewed WNBA regular season game on cable in 24 years.
ABC’s telecast of the Las Vegas Aces and Seattle Storm game the following day averaged 589,000 viewers.
Opening weekend also drew a record 30 million video views for the league’s social media accounts.
It was the most-viewed WNBA opening weekend on all networks in 11 years.
The numbers are about on par with or exceed television viewership for National Hockey League Games and Major League Soccer games.
A glass ceiling will be shattered today in Qatar, of all places.
An all-female crew will officiate a FIFA men’s World Cup match for the first time ever when Germany takes on Costa Rica at Al-Bayt Stadium.
UPDATE: In testimony to the competence of the all-female crew, the match was played without any controversy over the on-field decision-making amid intense competition. Germany beat Costa Rica 4-2 but failed to advance on goal differential versus Spain.
The crew will be led on the pitch by head referee Stephanie Frappart of France. She will be assisted by Neuza Back of Brazil and Karen Diaz Medina of Mexico
This is no low-stakes, back-of-the-desert, inconsequential appearance. It is an important match on a big stage where an upstart Costa Rican side takes on traditional powerhouse Germany with both teams looking to win and advance out of group play.
The effect of the decision reaches beyond the field of play.
The officiating assignment could be taken as subtle imprinting by FIFA on the tournament in a nation where women are relegated to second-class citizenship — they need a male guardian’s permission to marry, work, travel, and even study.
The tournament has been roiled by controversy over social issues, starting with the treatment and deaths of of immigrant workers who constructed the stadiums to Qatar i officials surprising FIFA two days before the tournament by banning the sale of beer inside stadiums, even after it took $75 million from Budweiser as a tournament sponsor. Qatar, a Muslim nation, strictly regulates alcohol. Beer and liquor sales in the stadium were limited to VIP areas.
Qatar also cracked down on demonstrations of support for human rights, specifically refusing to allow the German team to wear “One Love” armbands and preventing ticket holders from carrying rainbow flags in a country where same-sex relationships are outlawed. A social media video showed police refusing entry to a fan wearing a T-shirt that read “Women. Life. Freedom.” in support of anti-government protests in Iran.
But the assignment also could be taken as a sign that FIFA is coming to grips with its own unequal treatment of women in a sport where, according to estimates by Statista, 37% of football fans worldwide are women, and the women’s World Cup in 2019 drew a total television audience exceeding 1.1 billion viewers.
In May, FIFA announced the officials selected for the World Cup matches, the head referee pool of 36 included three women: Frappart, Yoshimi Yamashita of Japan, and Salima Mukasanga of Brazil. The pool of 69 assistant referees also included three women: Back, Díaz, and Kathryn Nesbitt of the United States.
FIFA said at the time it wants to make the appointment of women referees in men’s competitions more commonplace, and has been deploying women in men’s senior and junior tournaments as a sort of proving ground.
“In this way, we clearly emphasize that it is quality that counts for us and not gender,” said Pierluigi Collina, chair of the FIFA Referees Committee. “I would hope that in the future, the selection of elite women’s match officials for important men’s competitions will be perceived as something normal and no longer as sensational.”
Who’s the best free throw shooter in professional basketball?
Delle Donne
Steph Curry?
Nope.
It’s Elena Delle Donne — by a lot.
The Washington Mystics forward has a career shooting percentage of 93.7%, far ahead of Golden State Warrior guard Stephen Curry, the NBA’s all-time leader at 90.6%.
In fact, three of the four best free throw shooters among active professional basketball players play in the WNBA. Kayla McBride, and Tiffany Mitchell rank above the NBA’s number two active free throw shooter, Portland shooting guard Damian Lillard.
Following are the top ten …
Automatic
1
Ellena Delle Donne
Washington
93.69%
2
Stephen Curry
Golden State
90.69%
3
Kayla McBride
Minnesota
89.82%
4
Tiffany Mitchell
Indiana
89.46%
5
Damian Lillard
Portland
89.33%
6
Allie Quigley
Chicago
89.28%
7
Jewell Lloyd
Seattle
88.41%
8
Kevin Durant
Brooklyn
88.30%
9
Kyrie Irving
Brooklyn
88.08%
10
Kristi Tolliver
Los Angeles
87.96%
Top 10 active free throw shooters. Source: NBA and WNBA record books.
