95-year-old former baseball player on coming out: 'I was scared every day of my life'
The 2022 MAKERS Conference is all about celebrating strong women. And you can’t do that without talking about the powerful females in sports. From the seasoned icon to the inspiring new generation, Tuesday’s MAKERS stage represented the full spectrum. First up, Cynt Marshall, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks and the first Black woman ever to lead an NBA team, fired up the audience with an energetic call to action: “You’ve been chosen ladies! Let’s make the future!” Referencing both the MAKERS Conference theme and her new book, You’ve Been Chosen, Marshall spoke about how she navigated the most difficult times in her life, including a stage III cancer diagnosis. “All of these things — like the pandemic — they show up in our lives. We are ready for them. We are equipped for them. And we are equipped because God and great people, like the great people in this room, show up for each other.”
Marshall then welcomed Maybelle Blair to the stage, a former player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League whose story inspired the award-winning film A League of Their Own. The 95-year-old came out swinging her baseball bat cane and smiling beneath her big white bouffant and sport goggles. She told the audience, “I'm still on this side of the dirt, so I'm very happy!” Blair then spoke about the evolution of women that she has witnessed during her lifetime. “In the old days, they didn't want us to do anything but put on our aprons and have babies and stay in the kitchen. Well, I can't cook a lick,” Blair said. “But now the door is wide open. And we’ve got to take advantage of that door being open.”
Another door opened this summer for Blair when she decided to come out publicly for the first time. “I was scared every day of my life that somebody would find out that I was gay, and I would be dismissed immediately,” the former Northrop manager told Marshall. “But I said, ‘Mabel, this closet's getting rustier by the minute. So I sort of pushed my foot out just a little bit, I saw a crack and thought, ‘Now's the hour because I'm not getting any younger.’” Blair said if her coming out helps alleviate the worry for just one kid, it will be worth it.
Speaking of kids, 11-year-old Pepper Persley also appeared on the MAKERS stage. The host of the Dish with Pepper podcast and broadcast reporter for ESPN showed off her T-shirt that read: “Put women’s sports on TV.” Persley then interviewed soccer player Carson Pickett, who made history in June as the first athlete with a limb difference to compete for the U.S. Women's National Team. Pickett shared the story of when a photo of her giving an arm tap to a 3-year-old boy with the same limb difference went viral on social media. She said, ultimately, it changed her mindset about her disability. “I made the mistake of looking at comments on there. And they were pretty mean,” Pickett said as she choked up. “All of a sudden, something just came to me. I’m, like, how am I going to be someone who tells people, ‘Well, don't worry that you look different than everyone else. Like, show it.’ But I'm not going to show it on social media?” After years of hiding her arm outside the soccer field, Pickett posted a picture in April on Instagram to deliver a message. “I want to show the world that it really doesn't matter what you look like. That's a battle sometimes you have to fight on your own,” said Pickett. “But the second battle is not worrying about what other people think about you or say about you. And so that was really important for me.”
Persley rounded out the conversation with some advice for the audience: “The message I'm going to leave you all with is just not to forget about the next generation,” she said. “We are making change and paving the way in our own right. And it just reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: ‘Empowered women empower girls.’”
For more engaging discussions with some of the most powerful names in business, entertainment, tech and more, be sure to join the MAKERS Conference livestream. The conference runs through October 26.
