Johnette Howard

It’s terrific that Danica Patrick raced well enough in her stock car racing debut last weekend to step up to the more prestigious Nationwide series Saturday, a leap that’s been compared to jumping from Single A to Triple A baseball after one at-bat.

But when it comes to women athletes competing against men, something Patrick has done the previous five years on the IndyCar circuit, I have to be blunt: I want trailblazing women athletes like her to kick some butt already. I want them to win. Big.

I'm tired of seeing women athletes get pats on the head for merely coming close, as if to say, "You're not so bad. For a girl."

Patrick has exactly one win in her IndyCar career before adding a part-time gig as a stock car driver to her schedule this year. But her solitary victory hasn’t and shouldn’t protect her from the rap that until she wins more a nagging question will persist: Is Patrick the real deal, or just an Anna Kournikova knockoff that knows how to do an oil change?

Patrick succeeded Kournikova as the most hyped female athlete in sports, a distinction each of them earned for their exploiting their sultry good looks, not dominating their sports.

It has been 37 years since Billie Jean King swatted aside Bobby Riggs in their Battle of the Sexes match and — no disrespect — I’m tired of the Manon Rheaume-Ann Meyer-Hayley Wickenheisers of the world who have made cameo appearances against men since then. I hope I never hear the words “Silver Bullets women’s baseball team” uttered again. I want no more novelty act tryouts or female extra-point kickers just happy to be in the game. I’m old enough to have seen firsthand how far women athletes have come. Yet part of me thinks, “Why not demand more?”

We already know that some women athletes can beat a lot of male athletes some of the time in certain sports. The late January news that Kelly Kulick became the first woman bowler to ever win an event on the PBA Tour was nice. But I want more athletes such as Kulick or 1993 Belmont Stakes winner Julie Krone, the first woman jockey to win a Triple Crown race. I want all those college and WNBA basketball players who dunk in the layup lines but not in games to lose their timidity and start throwing down like Baylor freshman Brittney Griner does. No more simpering that it would be too embarrassing to miss. Stop making excuses. Start rattling rims.

I want Patrick to go out Saturday and trade paint with the other NASCAR drivers around her for even thinking that she’s just a sexy little marketing bonanza for the sport. Patrick is such a grievously bad loser that some of her foot-stomping tantrums have been laugh-out loud funny. Yet part of me loves that about her, too. I wish more LPGA golfers would do whatever it takes to channel some of the commitment and imagination that drove Annika Sorenstam to dominate the game before she retired and the women’s tour started to shrink and drift.

I loved how Sorenstam relentlessly spoke of chasing a “perfect” round of 54 — a birdie on all 18 holes — but I also wanted her to quit being so aw-shucks nice and drop her apologetic stance about her one-and-done appearance against the men at the PGA’s Colonial tournament in 2005.

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Sorenstam, who missed the cut by a few strokes, tempered a lot of criticism for taking an exemption spot from some men’s tour regular that week by stressing her appearance was just a one-time thing, just a way to learn more about her game. But if learning was the point, why stop at one tournament or at the occasional co-ed Skins game? Why apologize for your presence when you golf better than 99 percent of the human beings in the world? Teenage golfer Michelle Wie had it half-right: She had the audacity and stubbornness to think she could compete against PGA players, but those traits would be better coupled with a Sorenstam-caliber game.