Pioneer Chicago Sportscaster Jeannie Morris: She Was The Original

CHICAGO — Jeannie Morris never backed down from anyone —or anything — even when she was told she couldn’t do her job or that she didn't belong in the environments in which she worked. Simply because she was a woman.

Morris, who began blazing trails as a sports broadcaster in the 1960s and in Chicago for WBBM-TV and WMAQ-TV for years in Chicago, died Monday at the age of 85. She had recently returned to Chicago to be treated for appendiceal cancer after living in Seattle and in Utah for more than 20 years. Morris celebrated her birthday earlier this month and died at her residence in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood surrounded by her four children and her ex-husband, former Chicago Bears flanker Johnny Morris.

Her reputation as a hard-nosed journalist and her unwillingness to waver in her beliefs made her a stalwart both with whom she dealt and with those she later inspired to follow their dreams in a business long dominated my men. Morris, who became the first woman to report live from a Super Bowl, did so in 1975 before she hosted "The Mike Ditka Show" with the former Bears coach and with her then-husband, whom she married in 1960 after the two met in college at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

In an interview with The Athletic, Ditka – who led the 1985 Bears to a Super Bowl championship – remembered Jeannie Morris as someone who was never afraid to ask the tough questions when others in her profession cowered in dealing with Ditka.

For Morris, who stood only 5 feet tall and weighed only about 100 pounds, not allowing her petite stature to get in her way or not being intimidated by the athletes she encountered simply just went along with the territory. While she was always taught to treat others with respect by her parents growing up in California, she was never one to allow herself to be bullied by those who may have believed she was out of place.

“What happens is that there is a perception – at least there was there then of ‘what the hell is she doing here?’” Morris said in an interview with the Chicago Bears Network in 2015. “When you surprise somebody, you defy their preconceptions and you’ve pretty much got them and there’s a pretty good response.”

Ditka, in remembering Morris for an obituary that appeared Monday in The Athletic, agreed.

"She was fair. But she would ask the tough questions. If you were afraid to answer the tough ones, you better not be talking to her," Ditka said. "When she was doing what she was doing, there were no women doing it. So she was at the forefront of it. I don’t think anybody understood what a true pioneer she was."

Morris once defied former Boston Red Sox slugger and former Texas Rangers manager Ted Williams, who once tried to kick her out of the dugout, saying there were no women allowed in "his dugout". At the time, the idea of a woman being in the dugout for pregame interviews was unheard of and in some no cases not permitted. So when Williams referred to the Senators’ dugout as “his”, Morris fought back.

“This isn’t your dugout,” Morris told Williams, whom she jokingly referred to as “slugger”. “This dugout belongs to the Chicago White Sox and they said I can be here, OK?”

“OK,” Williams begrudgingly replied.

There was a panache way in which Morris went about her job, her colleagues said. Her approach and refusal to not back down laid the groundwork for those who followed her in the business in Chicago, according to award-winning NBC Chicago sports reporter Peggy Kusinski, who credits Morris for making it possible for women to find a career in sportscasting and writing in the years since Morris began working in the business in Chicago.

“She was a pit bull, she was a bulldog and she really was not afraid to go after the guys, but she also used her personality, her charm and her instinct to get people to open up to her in ways that they were never used to opening up,” Kusinski told Patch on Tuesday. “I think that’s what made her so good.

“Her legacy is that she is the first woman that kicked down the door but she didn’t have to do the kicking. She just opened it, unlocked it and walked through …I think it’s important to remember that she was the original in Chicago. She was the first.”

Morris won the recipient of 11 Emmy Awards during her television career and, in 2014, became the first woman to receive the Ring Lardner Award, which is given annually to someone who exemplifies excellence in sports journalism.

Asked once what advice she would provide to those who chose to follow her path, Morris kept it simple: Do your homework.

"If you want to do a good job, you’ve got to know your stuff. I think a woman who really loves sports, grew up with sports, and more and more played sports, which is really great, that they should give it their all and go for it," Morris said, according to a story written by Chicago media reporter Robert Feder on Monday. "Because it’s a combination of reporting and a lot of fun ... My advice would be to really learn the sports you’re going to cover so that you have the respect of the players and the coaches, and know your stuff.”

Morris often had to remain persistent in her efforts to do her job, once broadcasting a Bears game from the roof of the Soldier Field Box press box during a snowstorm. Why? Printed on the back of her press pass were instructions that women and children were not to be permitted in the press box where other reporters and broadcasters went about their job. Morris filed her report, undeterred, from atop the press box where she was stationed next to a bank of television cameras.

Morris authored a column for the Chicago Tribune entitled “Football Is A Woman’s Game”, which she said in interviews ran on the “women’s pages” of the newspaper under the byline “Mrs. Johnny Morris”. The column later went on to appear in the pages of the Chicago Daily News beginning in 1969.

Morris later began her 24-year career in sportscasting beginning in 1967, working alongside her husband before the couple divorced in 1983. She worked for both WMAQ and WBBM until 1990, when she began television work on television specials and documentaries in addition to writing books, including one on former Bears running back Brian Piccolo, and being known as an adventurer who loved to travel.

But for Kusinski, Morris’ legacy in Chicago will be that of a trailblazer.

“I think it’s always really important that we point out and always give credit to the ones who opened that door for us,” Kusinski said. “And Jeannie Morris was that person in the 60s, which blows my mind and I think that it should have had a bigger impact. But I think it’s always important that we give credit where credit is due and Jeannie was that person.

“She didn’t do it purposely trying to shatter a glass ceiling. She did it because she was just being herself and she was just following her instincts and she was just following her passion and doing what she was good at.”