If you take a look at the list of the 29 classes of inductees into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame, you will find one category of honorees has gone missing, in comparison to Cooperstown and elsewhere: There are no owners, team presidents, or general managers.

The answer to this quandary is relatively easy: Very few women have owned sports teams. Joan Payson was a minority owner of the New York Giants baseball team; in 1957, she voted against moving the franchise to San Francisco. In 1961, after the Giants eventually moved, she became the co-founder and majority owner of the expansion Mets, becoming the first woman to buy a major league sports franchise.

Payson was the first — but very few have followed in her footsteps. Most of the women who have ended up owning a franchise, such as Violet Bidwill (Chicago Cardinals), Joan Kroc (San Diego Padres), Georgia Frontiere (Los Angeles Rams), Grace Comiskey (Chicago White Sox), and Jackie Autry (California Angels) took over businesses following the deaths of husbands or fathers.

In 1981, Marge Schott bought a minority share in the Cincinnati Reds, and in 1984 became the franchise’s majority owner. Schott, in effect, was just the second woman to be approved by a body of men to run a franchise. Today, Denise DeBartolo York, with her husband, John, owns the San Francisco 49ers franchise after suing her brother, Edward DeBartolo, in 2000. Kathy Goodman and Carla Christofferson own the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, and a group of Seattle women, led by a former deputy mayor of Seattle, Anne Levinson, purchased the WNBA’s Seattle Storm. Sheila Johnson holds the WNBA’s Washington Mystics.

There are even fewer women who have held building positions. Susan O’Malley was the second women ever to be a team president after the owner of the Washington Wizards, Abe Pollin, hired her in 1991. Marguerite Norris became the president of the Detroit Red Wings in 1952, taking over the position after her father, Red Wings owner James Norris, died. Al Davis, the owner of the Oakland Raiders, believed so much in Amy Trask that he made her the Raiders’ chief executive officer in 1997. Trask is the highest-ranking woman official in men’s sports.

So will there be more women owners in MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and the NHL? Johnson said yes — but with a big qualifier.

“It takes a lot of money,” Johnson said of women who are pursuing a team purchase. “Not only does it take a lot of money, but you have to be a very, very good businessperson with a good business strategy. You are not only going to grow a franchise, but you also have to grow it in a sense that economically, it is going to work, so that you can keep it alive and it is a risk.

“We [the three WNBA women ownership groups] are trying to make it work,” she added.

Johnson admits that the rough-and-tumble world of major league sports ownership is a very trying business that requires deep pockets and hard work, and says that it is extremely tough for a woman to ingrain herself.

“It is a business in which we are in a transition, where men are going to have to start looking at women as equals as far as owning teams,” she said. “When women are tough, they are called something else. But when men are tough, they are put on a pedestal. We are still trying to work that little piece of the puzzle out, and let men know that we are to be respected as well.”

The commissioner of the NBA, David Stern, pushed for the formation of the WNBA, and has been miles ahead of the other leagues in bringing women to the business table. There were strategic business reasons for Stern to embrace women — other leagues generally want women to become customers and spend their money on products. Major League Soccer is following in the NBA’s footsteps, lending its marketing arm to a proposed women’s soccer league.

Johnson got her start in sports when Pollin asked if she was interested in buying the Mystics. Johnson was interested — but she wanted more than just the WNBA team. She approached Ted Leonsis about buying into the NHL’s Washington Capitals. Pollin, Leonsis, and Johnson now have the NBA’s Wizards as well as the Capitals.

Johnson said for women to succeed in major league sports, men such as Stern and Pollin have to step up and make women feel welcome in what is the good ol’ boys’ club.

“[O’Malley] was the only team president. It was pioneers like Abe Pollin that gave her a chance,” Johnson said (O’Malley resigned last June).

“I really think there are opportunities out there for all women,” Johnson continued. “They just got to find it, they got to make sure when the door opens, they are willing to take the risk, put on tunnel vision, and make it work.”

Johnson is also dabbling in men’s golf: She is the only woman to own a PGA Tour stop, the Transitions Championship, at her Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club in the Tampa area. The event will be held in March 2009.

But Johnson concedes that much work needs to be done to fully incorporate women into big-time sports. Even though she has made significant strides, women still have to battle to get through the door.

“[We] sort of have to take the can opener approach,” Johnson said. “We have to start opening the very tight door out there, and it is those of us that do it that make it easier for those coming behind us.”

evanjweiner@yahoo.com