Word: geras
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Last week the New York State Court of Appeals batted 1.000 for Women's Lib by affirming the right of Mrs. Bernice Gera, a Queens housewife, to employment as a professional baseball umpire. Two years ago Mrs. Gera won a contract to serve as an umpire in the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. But before she could harness up to call her first game, her contract was declared "disapproved and invalid" by Phillip Piton, president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues...
Sheer fantasy? Not if Mrs. Bernice Gera has anything to say about it. A Queens, N.Y., housewife and a graduate of the Florida Baseball School for umpires, Mrs. Gera, 38, recently won a contract to serve as an umpire in the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. She was scheduled to call her first game two weeks ago in Auburn, N.Y. Before she could don face mask and protector, though, she received a terse telegram from Phillip Piton, president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, informing her that her contract "has been disapproved and is invalid." Sighed...
...some influential fans rooting for her. Her attorney, Bronx Congressman Mario Biaggi, plans to press legal action. Her case has also caught the attention of New York Congressman Samuel Stratton, who said that Piton's abrogation of Mrs. Gera's contract "strikes me as a clear-cut violation of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex." The New York State Human Rights Division will hold a hearing on the dispute next month...
Rough Innings. Mrs. Gera's fascination with baseball goes back three decades. At the age of eight, in her tiny home town of Indiana, Pa., she discovered that she could outhit the boys on the block. "Since that time baseball has been my main interest," she says. When she was twelve she moved to Queens and later became a secretary. But she devoted long evening hours to teaching neighborhood kids the fundamentals of baseball and was soon putting on hitting exhibitions for charity with such big-league stars as Roger Maris and Sid Gordon...
...Queens, she met her future husband, Photographer Steven Gera. Their courtship had some rough innings. "While we were dating, he wanted to go dancing or to a movie, the normal things," says the 5-ft. 2-in. brunette. "I wouldn't go out unless we went to Rockaway Park where I could throw and hit baseballs at the concession stands." The couple finally made it to the altar, but marriage did not diminish Bernice's enthusiasm for baseball. "One night in 1967," she says, "I awoke at 2:30 a.m. with an idea. Why not umpire...