Thirty years after historic tryout, Meyers looks back

The reminders are daily, not just when someone at an appearance mentions the gender-breaking role or a reporter calls to stir the memories or, and talk about a fluke of the schedule, her Phoenix Mercury happen to be in Indianapolis for the anniversary.

Son Don Jr. is a daily reminder of September 1979.

Son Darren is a daily reminder of a tryout with the Pacers.

Daughter Drew is a daily reminder of the history.

Thirty years to the month of her three days in rookie free agent camp as the only woman to ever participate in an NBA competition, Ann Meyers can't find any video of the event, didn't keep any press clipping and doesn't have the No. 15 jersey displayed at the press conference, yet she has everything because of the fleeting moment with Indiana.

Though already a college great at UCLA and well known in women's basketball circles, it was the September tryout that vaulted her to national prominence and led to the invitation to the made-for-TV Superstars competition later that year. Meyers is sure of it. It was at Superstars that she met Don Drysdale, the retired Dodgers pitcher.

They fell in love. They married. They had three kids.

Beats an old jersey any day.

"Things change and life goes on," said Meyers, now the general manager of the WNBA's Mercury and a vice president of the Suns. "I'm not 24 anymore. But my life has changed tremendously because of that, for the better."

The one-year deal for a reported $50,000 was announced at a Sept. 5, 1979, press conference, with Pacers owner Sam Nassi and general manager-coach Bob (Slick) Leonard in attendance. Nassi was the one who first approached Meyers about the tryout. Leonard was the one, she remembers, who tolerated the move but was unable to hide his distaste for the decision once the two-a-days opened at famed Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler University.

Nassi and Leonard, addressing the obvious, insisted signing a member of the 1976 U.S. Olympic team was not a publicity stunt. A United Press International story quoted the president of the New York Stars of the Women's Professional Basketball League as saying, apparently with a straight face, that the move was the "initial step in a large-scale ploy by the National Basketball Association to undermine the WBL."

Meyers had no interest in whatever political motives, marketing ploys or media swirls may have existed. Especially the media swirls. She spent time travelling to New York for appearances on Good Morning America and Today as camp approached when she would rather have been working out. Sensing an "attack mode" from the sports press that wanted to mock and discredit the tryout, she didn't watch the TV coverage or read newspaper articles that chronicled the pioneering moment.

To her, the two-a-days were an actual chance, at least to be invited back for the full training camp, and then, who knows. Brother Dave, set to begin his fourth season as a Bucks forward, was "a little disturbed when he first found out about this," Ann related at the press conference, confident in her abilities after seeing one of her UCLA seasons up close but just as certain of the physics. She was 5-foo-9 and 140 pounds, and the other Pacer hopefuls were not.

"For the guys, it was, unfortunately, 'You blocked her shot. No big deal. It was a girls' shot,'" she said. "Or if I stole a ball, it was, 'You got stripped by a girl.' It was tougher on the guys.

"I was pretty focused. I really was. Being at UCLA with my brother, who was a senior when I was a freshman, we had a lot of media. When I was in high school, I had thought about trying out for the boys' team and had people talk me out of it. Even though I had people try to talk me out of going to the Pacers, Slick Leonard being one of them, I said no."

Meyers got cut after the rookie free agent camp and instead became a Pacers broadcast analyst, without any way of knowing at the time what it would mean for the rest of her life. Three months later, she went to Superstars and met Drysdale.

Thirty years passed. She married and had kids. Don, a Dodgers broadcaster, suffered a fatal heart attack in his Montreal hotel room in 1993. Ann played in the WBL, became a prominent TV analyst and a basketball executive in Phoenix, remained a beloved member of the UCLA program decades later, and stayed in touch with Nassi's widow. The WBL folded, presumably on its own, without having to be undermined by the NBA.

The tryout with the Pacers changed her life in ways impossible to imagine at the time. Fate, just like how the Mercury were coincidentally in Indianapolis on Sept. 2 and Meyers was saluted over the public-address system and on the video board to acknowledge the anniversary. Another reminder.