This Day in Sports History (Roller-Derby Queen Weston Dies)

May 10, 1997—Former roller-derby star Joanie Weston, whose immense athleticism was overshadowed by contests that stressed fan-pleasing fistfights and hair-pulling, died at age 62 at her Hayward, Calif., home of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare brain disorder.

In the early 1970s, as I grew weary of the increasing demands of the upper grades in my elementary school (heavier homework loads, more advanced math), I looked forward to watching our TV on Saturday mornings. I had moved beyond the still-standard cartoon fare of that time of week. 

But I had inexplicably found a show that, like school, called for more attention (mine) and a higher skill set (someone else’s) than, say, Bugs Bunny, but which, in contrast with my academic pursuits, was decidedly entertaining.

Roller derby had attained a zenith from which it would fall precipitously. It was not only reaching 120 cities through syndication but it was being mentioned in publications such as Sports Illustrated (e.g., this classic 1969 overview of the sport by the great Frank Deford), songs by Jim Croce, and even a film, Kansas City Bomber (whose reason for being perhaps had less to do with the sport’s inherent skills than with the anatomical charms of star Raquel Welch).

Leo Seltzer had conceived roller derby as a continuation of the transcontinental roller-rink “marathons” common during the Depression—then picked up on rules suggested by the great sportswriter-fiction writer Damon Runyon to bring about the modern sport. Seltzer’s son Jerry raised the sport's profile in the Fifties and Sixties by arranging widespread television coverage. 

There seemed no reason why, like football in the same decades, this rough-and-tumble pastime might not become far, far bigger very soon.

The sport to which roller derby was compared was wrestling, mostly because of its inevitable brawls.

But while I could care less about guys with rolls of muscle alternating with fat thumping each other on the mat, I was fascinated by roller derby. It was, like ice hockey, all a matter of speed and movement, and like ice hockey in those years it also had its share of fights (hello, Derek Sanderson?).

But I loved how the two teams in their helmets and shorts circled the banked tracks in whip-fast phalanxes, as so-called “jammers” probed for an opening as they tried to “lap” the opposition. Charlie O’Connell, lean, strong and disdainful (think of the New York Mets’ Dave Kingman on skates), ruled the men’s side of the sport. Joanie Weston, as “pivot” (the controller of the action) of the San Francisco Bay Bombers, was queen of the women’s side.

Only a year or two after I had started watching it, roller derby had largely disappeared from the airwaves, a victim of financial troubles. I had gone on to other things—high school and adolescence—and hadn’t noticed its passing. 

It wasn’t until I picked up Deford’s appreciation of the life of Weston in the New York Times Magazine 14 years ago that I thought again about the sport, and its great female star.

Away from arenas, Deford revealed, Weston was a sweet, nun-educated, pretty young woman who, while traveling the exhibition circuit, loved to cuddle at night in one of those lonely Holiday Inns with a mixed-breed canine named Malia. 

But once she strapped on her skates and helmets, preparing for no-holds-barred action in which she might block one minute and sprint as the jammer in another, she was something else entirely:

“[O]n the banked track, she was transformed. Hear it now: No. 38 in your program, No. 1 in your hearts. The Blond Bomber --- 5 foot 10, 165 pounds, strong and agile, as superb a female athlete as ever there was. She kept her hair strawberry blond and a scarf knotted around her neck to make her as stylishly feminine as her (wonderfully) tacky orange and black attire permitted. Never mind. Swirling, pounding, commanding, she looked the best part of a Viking queen, sallying forth.”

Weston’s prime occurred before Title IX was passed 40 years ago. Who knows how many remunerative athletic doors it might have opened for her?

One sport other than roller derby in which she was undisputedly dominant was softball. The story goes that, in one game, Weston hit eight home runs for St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles—and was ready to try for another when she was told by the nuns running her school that if she hit it, she would be excommunicated!

Nowadays, if you want to see a blond Valkyrie wage uninhibited combat against all comers, you have to catch Laura Ingraham subbing for Bill O’Reilly on Fax News. What the spectacle gains in decibels, it loses in dynamic images—a sorry tradeoff, if you ask me.

I understand that roller derby has undergone something of a revival this past decade, only this time playing down the wrestling-like antics. I think Weston would have approved.