Chapter 1: The Grand Slam

The sun was hot that day in Illinois, the kind of summer heat that pressed down on your shoulders and made the dirt infield smell like baked clay. I was twelve years old, standing in the batter’s box, hands wrapped around a bat that felt too heavy for me until the moment it connected with the ball.

Crack.

It wasn’t just a hit — it was a grand slam. The kind of hit you don’t forget because it carries more than runs across the plate. It carried the weight of my dream, the one I’d whispered to myself on backyard fields and playground diamonds: I want to play third base for the Chicago Cubs.

I can still hear the echo of that ball sailing, the cheers rising, my own feet flying around the bases. For a little girl in the 1970s, who loved sports so deeply, it wasn’t just a moment. It was proof. Proof that I belonged on that field.

But here’s the truth: I also knew, even then, that belonging and being allowed to belong were not the same thing.

Growing Up in Title IX’s Shadow

I was born into a sports world that was shifting under our feet. Title IX had just cracked open doors for girls and women, but in many ways, we were still sneaking through the side entrance. My heroes weren’t on Wheaties boxes or national TV. They were in little newspaper clippings, whispered about like legends: Billie Jean King taking on Bobby Riggs, Kathrine Switzer running the Boston Marathon against the odds, Toni Stone fielding grounders in the Negro Leagues.

I wanted to be like them. Unstoppable.

And yet, by the time I was a teenager, the dream of third base for the Cubs started to fade. Not because I lost love for the game — but because the world around me still wasn’t quite ready for a girl with a mitt at Wrigley.

So, I found another field. A microphone.

Broadcasting as a Different Kind of Sport.

For nearly four decades, I worked my way through radio stations and media outlets, learning how to hold an audience the way an athlete holds a crowd. The rules were different, but the game was familiar: show up, put in the reps, trust your instincts, and never, ever quit.

Sports never left me — they were the lens through which I saw everything. The perseverance of an underdog athlete, the grit of a coach in the huddle, the joy of a crowd — it all reminded me why I fell in love with the game as a kid. I feel this way about my martial arts practice. 

Why Unstoppable?

When I dreamed up the Unstoppable Podcast, it wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about carrying that girl with the bat and the grand slam forward. She didn’t get to play for the Cubs, but she did get to tell the stories of women who changed the game for all of us.

Every time I sit down with an athlete or coach — whether it’s LaTanya Sheffield guiding Team USA on the Olympic stage, or kids in adaptive MMA proving toughness knows no limits — I feel like I’m stepping into the batter’s box again. I get to swing for the fences, not with a bat, but with a microphone, with storytelling, with a mission.

The Lesson That Stuck

That grand slam taught me something I didn’t fully understand at the time: sometimes the world won’t give you the exact field you dreamed of, but it will give you another one. And if you carry the same grit, the same joy, the same belief — you can still be unstoppable.

This book is about those stories. My story, yes — but more importantly, the stories of women (and girls, and coaches, and pioneers) who dared to step onto fields they weren’t always invited to play on.

Like that twelve-year-old girl rounding the bases, they kept running anyway.