Relying on a near half-century of deep research and reflection, Melissa Ludtke recounts her landmark federal case in “Locker Room Talk.”

In 1977 and ’78, as a Sports Illustrated reporter, Ludtke was the winning plaintiff in Ludtke v. Kuhn, a U.S. federal case that Time Inc. and lawyer Fritz Schwarz Jr. brought against Major League Baseball. In the courtroom, Justice Constance Baker Motley — a civil rights icon  — found that MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn had violated Kuhn’s constitutional rights by denying her the same access the male reporters had at Yankee Stadium during the ’77 World Series. Neither the legal win nor the affray in the court of public opinion came easily. But within a decade, Ludtke notes, the ranks of female sports journalists had increased enough to start AWSM (Association of Women in Sports Media). 

Ludtke, a former TIME magazine correspondent, has also worked at Nieman Labs. She lives in Massachusetts and writes the Let’s Row Together newsletter on Substack.

SportsLit S8, E14: Melissa Ludtke (Groundbreaking Journalist) - Locker Room Talk

Mike Keenan is a madman.

Mike Keenan has a method.

All things considered, both descriptions are part and parcel of a coaching career in which he angered many, and accomplished a great deal.

30 years ago he won the Stanley Cup and then abruptly parted with the New York Rangers, the team he led to the title.

Iron Mike addresses career defining events such as this and covers much more in his life’s journey through hockey.

The 1985 Jack Adams Award winner (NHL Coach of the Year) joined SportsLit to discuss his exploits behind the bench, the front office, and off the ice.

If he was do it all again, would he do it any differently?  Find out.

SportsLit S8, E15: Mike Keenan (Stanley Cup winning NHL Coach) - Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench

In his début novel, sports journalist Jason Kirk gives readers a rigorous and referentially tight portrait of growing up in an evangelical world.

“Hell Is a World Without You” plunges readers into the world of early-2000s teen Isaac Siena Jr., his youth group friends, widowed mother Katherine, and intense big brother Eli. Its themes delve through faith, the lingering effects of being raised with “constant fear of hell, and shame, and damnation,” and being in a world where “youth pastors dress like Stifler.” 

Kirk, who calls himself a “lazy Christian pantheist,” is a senior editor at The Athletic and part of the long-running Shutdown Fullcast (“the internet’s only college football podcast.”). An Atlanta native, he and his wife Emily Kirk have also had a pod called Vacation Bible School.

SportsLit S8, E16: Jason Kirk (Sr. Editor - The Athletic) - Hell Is a World Without You

Atiba Hutchinson finally has space to contemplate the inner strength it takes to chase goals that were often, and understandably, hard to define.

In “The Beautiful Dream,” the retired captain of the Canadian men’s national soccer team (CMNT) lets fans and readers in on a footballer’s journey. Now retired as a player, Hutchinson delves into his early life as a first-generation Canadian growing up in Brampton, Ont. in the 1980s, and ’90s and how he navigated the uncertain path to professional success in Europe during the days when a true domestic league hardly existed.

That perseverance led to a 20-season pro career that included championships, adulation, and celebrity outside Canada. And, after several frustrating World Cup cycles, Hutchinson was the 39-year-old captain when Canada broke through to qualify for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

Hutchinson joined us from his home in Turkey to discuss his life story. He joins Dwayne De Rosario as the second CMNT alumnus to appear on SportsLit.


SportsLit S8, E16: Atiba Hutchinson (Captain - Canadian Men's National Team - FIFA 2022 World Cup) - The Beautiful Dream

Every hockey fan knows how it always ends for the Vancouver Canucks — no Stanley Cup — but Ed Willes digs in the corners to poke at the why, with a wry perspective.

The veteran journalist (Regina Leader-Post, The Province) presents a case study, with novelistic detail, about the West Coast NHL franchise. Weaving a thread — one of instability at the top — through the history (and prehistory) of the team, Willes explains why the Canucks have fallen short of winning the Stanley Cup, but have never been boring across five-plus decades of torment.

Relying on firsthand research and contemporary accounts from fellow Vancouver sports journalists, Willes provides painstaking details about the life-arcs of stars such as Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, Pavel Bure, Markus Näslund, and Todd Bertuzzi. The author also playfully teases out the franchise’s many what-ifs.

Willes is also author of “The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association” (2005) and “End Zones and Border Wars: The Era of American Expansion in the CFL” (2013).

Willes is also author of “The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association” (2005) and “End Zones and Border Wars: The Era of American Expansion in the CFL” (2013).

SportsLit S8, E18: Ed Willes (Regina Leader-Post, The Province)  - Never Boring: The Up and Down History of the Vancouver Canucks

Hakeem Olajuwon left Lagos, Nigeria in 1980 and barely a year after taking up basketball, he blossomed into the game’s first international star in Houston, first collegiately with the Cougars and then with the NBA’s Rockets. 

In an 18-season career he was a nine-time NBA all-star and two-time league champion.  He played his last season with the Toronto Raptors.  Olajuwon was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 and is a member of the NBA's 75th anniversary team.

In “Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon,” biographer Mirin Fader draws on some 250 interviews to present a silent sports star who experienced a religious metamorphosis.  A fiery competitor who led by example in all aspects of his life, paying it forward with teammates and current NBA stars through the type of mentorship he benefited from early in his career.  She also utilizes her extensive research to debunk myths surrounding Hakeem’s life and career.

Fader is a senior writer with The Ringer. Her début book, “Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP,” reached The New York Times best-seller list.  

SportsLit S8, E19: Mirin Fader (Sr. Writer - The Ringer) - Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon

The story, and history of Maple Leaf Gardens is well documented. 
It has been described as having religious significance, there is reverence and well earned-lore. A loathsome thread exists too.  

Without question it is one of the most significant buildings ever constructed in Canada and a big part of its legend is that it was completed during the early years of the Great Depression.

But what was Toronto Maple Leafs’ owner Conn Smythe’s intent?  Why did he build it where he did? What crowd did he want to attract and how do those spectators compare to what our notions of them would be? How did this venerated structure meet the times it evolved from?

These are questions that Russell Field (Associate Professor, Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management, the University of Manitoba) examines in A Night at the Gardens: Class, Gender, and Respectability in 1930s Toronto.

Explore the origin and early days of Maple Leaf Gardens through an academic lense.  


SportsLit S9, E1: Russell Field (Associate Prof. - U. of Manitoba) - A Night at the Gardens: Class, Gender and Respectability in 1930s Toronto

The business of women’s sports has never had this much momentum. So what is it building on?

Jane McManus provides a real-time snapshot of where we currently are and how we got here in Fast Track: The Surging Business of Women’s Sports.

McManus has spent a career covering sports for major outlets such as the New York Daily News and was a founding columnist for espnW. Now an Adjunct Professor at NYU at the Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport, she has published a book that examines the business of women's sport, focusing on the peaks that have occured during her lifetime, from 1970s till present day.

Tracing a line through the origins of the WTA to the leagues emerging today, there is lots to learn in this rapidly developing movement that rides an undulating past into its next sustainable breakthrough.

SportsLit S9, E2: Jane McManus (Founding Columnist - espnW) - The Fast Track

There is an unending well of culture to draw from when it comes to hockey in Canada.

Ronnie Shuker's bucket is full after driving across the country, 30,000 miles (or roughly 50,000 kilometres for you hosers!) in all.

After traversing the "true north", Shuker (Editor-at-Large, The Hockey News) emptied his experiences over 244 pages giving further contemporary context to a game that exists in the bones of this nation. 

SportsLit S9, E3: Ronnie Shuker (Journalist) - The Country and the Game

Don Cherry’s Coach's Corner segment on Hockey Night in Canada ended abruptly in 2019. Was it ever going to happen any other way?

Controversial and entertaining, Cherry spoke his mind to the country for 37 years in the aforementioned first intermission segment.

On Nov. 9, 2019, going over the top met with the times at hand and the contemporary media landscape.  Cherry was fired by Sportsnet in what is known as “Poppygate”.

Is there more to this story? Is there more to Grapes than most care to know?

His late daughter decided she wanted to confront this matter and also the descriptions she so often heard and read about her dad.

The result is The Don Cherry Story, by his Daughter, Cindy Cherry. It’s a book that exists in two parts, the first deals with the front facing persona of her father, and the second which focuses on his life, on and off the ice.

This episode is a conversation with Cindy’s brother and Don’s son, Tim Cherry, about the book and about his family.

*Cindy Cherry passed away in July 2024.

**This was recorded one week prior to Cherry’s sign off from "The Don Cherry's Grapevine Podcast" on Sunday, June 22.

SportsLit S9, E4: Tim Cherry (Producer) - The Don Cherry Story, by his Daugher, Cindy Cherry

Saturday night's all right for fighting, or perhaps - fighting for.

A new book written by David Shoalts (Globe and Mail) examines how Hockey Night in Canada, the crown jewel of Canadian sports broadcasting properties, changed hands from CBC to Rogers Communications in shocking fashion prior to the 2014-15 NHL season.

Shoalts joins Neil Acharya & Neate Sager to discuss Hockey Fight in Canada (Released Sept. 29), exploring the inner workings of the $5.2-billion deal that ended the 62-year reign of a CBC institution.

Don't know much about Keith Pelley, or John Collins? Why is NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to be underestimated only at one's peril?

Find out the answers to these questions and more on the latest episode of SportsLit.

SportsLit S2 E5 - David Shoalts (Globe & Mail) - Hockey Fight in Canada

On Nov. 3, 1995, the Toronto Raptors tipped off against the New Jersey Nets and changed the sports landscape of the city.

The Raptors are now a team to be reckoned with but it wasn’t long ago that people would have laughed at the notion they would ever win an NBA title, let alone by the time their 25th anniversary rolled around.

Why did they become champions? What were the turning points? How comedic, chaotic, tumultuous, and triumphant has the last quarter-century been?

Raptors beat writer Doug Smith (Toronto Star) has pretty much seen it all covering the team from Day 1, and oftentimes he would say, “Man, that’s one for the book.”

Now you have it.

SportsLit S4 E7 - Doug Smith (Toronto Star) - We The North - 25 Years of the Toronto Raptors

Manon Rheaume was always in a league of her own. 

Mention her name to hockey fans and most will remember the media frenzy that accompanied her appearance in net with the Tampa Bay Lightning during NHL exhibition play in 1992. 

While GM Phil Esposito got the attention he sought for his expansion team, Rheaume’s professionalism under the spotlight illuminated the way forward for women’s hockey. 

Inspired to tell the story on film, actor/producer Angie Bullaro decided that a children’s book could also light a spark for future generations and so Breaking the Ice was born.

Hit play and hear what they both had to say!

SportsLit S4 E8 - Angie Bullaro / Manon Rheaume - Breaking the Ice

A podcast on sports books where journalists Neil Acharya and Neate Sager discuss the latest titles with authors and athletes.

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