“There is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to BE it.”

Amanda Gorman, the first youth poet laureate in the nation’s history, Wednesday at the inauguration of President Joe Biden, emphasis added.

Gorman grew up with a speech impediment. Wednesday, not only did she step up to the microphone at the inauguration and deliver her incredible poem with exceptional enunciation, but she even handled one trip over words in her speech, normally something that could completely derail someone with a speaking condition, but she kept right on going.

By doing so, the 22-year-old Gorman put forth an example for young women everywhere, especially young minority women, who saw the talk of the inauguration not the fact that a woman was inaugurated Vice President, but that a young black woman had the audacity to say that she dreams of being president.

I write about baseball often, and it’s something I’m very passionate about.

Over the years that I’ve written about baseball online, I’ve made connections with dozens of incredibly talented female baseball writers, scouts, and coaches.

That’s why the action taken this week by New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, who purchased the club this offseason, was so notable.

Baseball, as is the case with many men’s professional sports, has been an “old boys’ club” in the ownership and management end of things for so long that sexually harassing women, even women in the media who they knew had the power to call them out, was something incredibly common.

The women I’ve come to know in all facets of professional sport each have a story of a guy somewhere along the way attempting to use his power or influence to elicit sexual favors.

Players finish interviews and once the camera is off will attempt to ask a reporter to their hotel room - married players, mind you, with children. This happens far, far too often around that world.

A story broke late Monday evening that Jared Porter, the Mets’ new general manager, one of the first major hires by Cohen after assuming ownership of the team, had sent unsolicited, explicit text messages and images to a female reporter while he was a member of the Chicago Cubs front office in 2016.

He didn’t sent a message.

He didn’t sent a few messages.

Porter sent more than 60 messages without response from the reporter. Clear harassment.

Cohen didn’t wait for an investigation or say that we need to hear Porter’s side of the story, as has so often been the case in the boys’ club of pro sports.

Before the news cycle could begin Tuesday morning, Cohen announced Porter’s firing.

In his tweet that announced the firing (an official club press release confirmed such less than an hour later), Cohen stated, “In my initial press conference, I spoke about the importance of integrity, and I meant it.”

Words do have plenty of power.

When we back them up with action, they become all the more powerful.

Gorman, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday evening, emphasized the impact of words, and she shared with Anderson, who  overcame a childhood speech impediment as well, that she used writing to defeat that impediment.

She then turned that discussion of the power of words into a focus on that final phrase quoted above.

She mentioned that the choice to say that we all need to BE light in the world was very intentional in that words have power.

However, that power is nothing without action taken with them.