It wasn’t so long ago that sports historians spent little if any time researching the young women who played baseball in previous generations. The best-known histories of the game barely gave them a mention.1 This is not surprising, since the common wisdom about female ballplayers was that most of them weren’t very good at it, and those who tried were only motivated by the desire for some publicity. These women were usually thought of as entertainers rather than athletes.

One other reason so little research was done about women baseball players was the belief that baseball was a man’s game, and the women who tried to play it were seen as interlopers. Worse than that, they were seen as unfeminine. In the late 1800s, as baseball (then spelled “base ball”) grew in popularity, the men who reported for the newspapers and magazines regularly expressed the attitude that a baseball club was no place for a lady, nor did the “weaker sex” (as women were often called back then) possess the natural ability needed to play the game. As one reporter put it in 1875, “There are some things a woman can’t do! [T]here are a great many essential elements that go to make up a base ball player, and to the best of our knowledge, women check out short on all of them.”2 A similar viewpoint was articulated by Albert G. Spalding in his 1911 book, America’s National Game, in which he asserted that women were best suited for sitting in the stands and cheering for the home team. “[N]either our wives, our sisters, our daughters nor our sweethearts, may play Base Ball on the field… Base Ball is too strenuous for womankind,” he wrote.3 For Spalding and other men of his time, baseball was the epitome of a manly pursuit. It represented “American male vim, vigor, and virility.”4

Of course, in the late 1800s, teaching girls to play baseball (or any “masculine” sport) was considered a radical idea. But it was not the only radical idea being considered at that time: there was a contentious debate taking place about how much education girls needed. Many people believed that, since girls were destined to be wives and mothers, they did not require much more than a basic education, focused on homemaking skills; and there was certainly no need for them to go to college. But at a growing number of women’s colleges, instructors disagreed: they defended higher education by insisting their curriculum would turn young women into better wives and mothers, and that college would make them more effective when teaching their children. (And for unmarried women, teaching was one of the few permitted occupations, so why not provide them with the training needed to earn a living?) Meanwhile, some women’s colleges began offering students a chance to participate in athletics, as part of an effort to promote good health through exercise. But that too was contentious, since many people of that era, including numerous physicians, believed women’s bodies were designed mainly for childbearing and that too much exercise would harm the uterus, rendering the woman unable to conceive. Thus, playing sports was often discouraged.5

But at Vassar College, the administration was undeterred by these cultural debates. Young women were given the opportunity to play baseball beginning in 1866, and that first year, at least twenty-three collegians participated.6 (There were probably others who were curious, but who hesitated to try out, fearing the disapproval of their parents, or friends, or the society at large.) As time passed, there was always a small group of young women who wanted to play, but subsequent years proved more challenging when it came to keeping the club going. It had to disband several times, but it always came back, and from 1866 to 1876, it was usually able to find enough players.7

Eventually, the Vassar club disbanded for good, but other colleges, including Smith, had begun to field baseball teams. And during the 1870s, there was another phenomenon taking place: a few semi-pro female clubs were being formed. They traveled to various cities and played against local teams. Occasionally, the women played against men, but more often, they competed against other women—games featuring the “blondes versus the brunettes” were written about in the newspapers. The talent on these clubs varied, which was also true of the male semi-pro teams. But unlike the male teams, the female clubs were formed in a culture where girls were not taught baseball’s fundamentals from an early age, nor given the chance to practice and improve through organized team play. Thus, despite these limitations, the fact that some women managed to learn the game and travel to different cities to play it was noteworthy.

However, the media of that day often did not see these female clubs as noteworthy. Nor did they see the efforts of women who wanted to play baseball as commendable. Reflecting the cultural beliefs of their era, most sportswriters were either dismissive or scornful. Modern fans are accustomed to today’s young women successfully playing a wide range of sports (including Little League baseball), and they might find past attitudes disappointing; but for writers who covered sports in the era from the 1870s to the early 1910s, marginalizing women athletes made perfect sense. Back then, nearly all baseball writers were male, and like Albert Spalding, they tended to see baseball as something that only men did. Thus, as a media historian, I expected that reporters from the nineteenth century would either disapprove of women ballplayers or not take their efforts seriously. However, I wondered if any sportswriters wrote positively about women athletes, and I wanted to know if there were any common threads in the way the writers of that time reported about the women “baseballists.”

As I often do when performing historical research, I utilized a theoretical framework called content analysis; it provides a useful way to evaluate what reporters wrote. Content analysis “has a history of more than 50 years of use in communication, journalism, sociology, psychology, and business… [It is] the systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of message characteristics.”8 In other words, by categorizing and analyzing the articles that appeared in the newspapers of a given era, it becomes possible to determine which topics were most frequently covered by reporters, as well as which assertions about various trends in society were most often expressed. For this article, I explored a wide range of digitized sources, from more than fifty cities and towns, using three databases: Newspapers.com, Newspaperarchive.com, and Genealogybank.com. In addition, I explored a few books and magazines from the late 1800s and early 1900s. My research was also informed by some scholarly articles about nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century sex roles that I accessed on the JSTOR database. The goal was to get a thorough overview of what was written about women athletes in publications across the United States, since what appeared in print often reflected, and sometimes influenced, public perceptions.

My findings fell into four basic categories: writers who treated women ballplayers as a joke; writers who treated women ballplayers as an offense to traditional morality; writers who were dismissive of the efforts of women to play baseball; and writers who reported on women ballplayers positively (or at least tried to be fair to them). I also noted a fifth category—“star” athletes, specific women who received glowing coverage that other female players did not.

SPORTSWRITERS AS JOKESTERS

For most male reporters of the late 1800s, the thought of women trying to play men’s sports was laughable. After all, a female player couldn’t throw like a man, or hit like a man, or run the bases like a man, and yet, she thought she was a baseball player? How absurd! That may explain the number of jokes, quips, and snide remarks about women ballplayers that were printed (and reprinted) in newspapers across the United States. Most newspapers of the late 1800s did not have a sports section, and that meant articles about sports could appear on almost any page; and so could the quips and jokes. It was also very common for a story to be printed in one paper and then picked up by another newspaper’s Exchange Editor, whose job was to read newspapers from many cities and then select interesting stories that local readers might find worthwhile. That is how, in that era before radio, TV, and Internet, a story (or a joke) could start in one city and end up being read halfway across the country.

In the case of women baseball players, many of the attempts at humor revolved around common stereotypes: all a woman really wanted was a husband; women were vain and self-centered; women mainly cared about shopping for beautiful dresses; women were only happy in the kitchen. For example, you can find some kitchen humor in this joke in a piece about the Piqua (Ohio) female baseball club: “[The players] appear on the ball ground, each armed with a cook book, and think they know that to make a good batter, a little milk, a few eggs, a thingful of sugar, some salt, and so on, are all that are necessary. They have got their batter mixed, don’t you see.”9 A similar theme can be seen in this one, where the writer uses humor to remind readers of women’s “proper” place: “Detroit has a female base ball club. The [New York] World says, if we might suggest our preference, we should say that batter-pudding and milk-pitchers were more in women’s field.”10

Similarly, we find puns about a woman’s ability to “catch” a husband: “Some of the ladies of this place have organized a female Base Ball Club. The married members are said to be good ‘catchers’ and are instructing the unmarried…”11 (This attempt at humor is interesting, because it is one of the earlier mentions, even jokingly, that women are playing baseball—from 1867.) Another kind of joke involved the cultural belief that women did not get along with other women. This one, which also contains the implication that female players don’t take the game seriously, tells the possibly apocryphal story of two players from “the female base ball club in Cincinnati,” where two players got into a fight over a paper fan: “The left fielder went to her position with a fan in her hand. Her captain ordered her to put the fan down, but she persistently used it. The captain seized it, tore it into shreds, and was at once grappled by the angry left fielder. The encounter was short but vigorous.”12 (I believe that this, and some of the other jokes, may be apocryphal because the players who allegedly did the particular thing are never named, nor can I find any newspapers that give additional details about these incidents.)

One other interesting category of jokes focused on parental disapproval of young women playing ball. A frequently reprinted story tells of a female player who had a “home run” of sorts. “New Lisbon, Ohio has a female base ball club. One of the girls recently made a ‘home run.’ She saw her father coming with a switch.”13 In some versions of the story, it was the young woman’s brother or mother, but in all versions, it was understood that the family members had every right to force her to stop playing—whether she wanted to or not.

This story takes place in New Orleans (like New Lisbon, the Crescent City actually did have a female club), and while the game was going on, “…a young man darted out of the crowd, and seized one of the young women by the back of the neck” and “started to rush her off the field. ‘Police!’ shouted the manager, ‘Arrest that man!’” But the young man was undeterred. He calmly replied that the girl was his sister, and that he was going to take her home. The story concludes, “And he did.”14

But one snide comment that appeared in an 1886 newspaper best sums up the general attitude of many editors: “Chicago has a gang of riotous Anarchists, and New Orleans has a female base ball club. We pity New Orleans.”15

SPORTSWRITERS AS GUARDIANS OF MORALITY

Contemporary baseball scholars, including Leslie Heaphy, Debra Shattuck, and Jennifer Ring, have written about how women faced cultural and family disapproval for wanting to play baseball. But some of the reporters of the late 1800s and early 1900s objected to female baseball clubs because, in their view, these clubs violated public morality. To them, women who participated in “masculine” sports were a menace; by acting in such a vulgar and un-ladylike way, they set a bad example for other young women, who might imitate these indecent behaviors. As one outraged reporter wrote about the female club in Springfield, Illinois, “However people may differ on the influence of base ball on the rising generation, there is no room for doubt as to the impropriety of women engaging in it. By doing so, they forfeit the respect which is due to [their] sex, and which is all that gives its members a greater moral influence…”16

The day before, the same newspaper, and perhaps the same writer, had referred to the female baseball club from Springfield as a fraud, or in the parlance of that era, a “humbug,” and said that people should refuse to attend their games, so that the club would have to disband. In fairness, the writer said they were frauds because they “[did] not know how to catch, pitch, throw a ball, or run”17—which seems like somewhat of an exaggeration. And given the previous day’s editorial accusing the players of immorality, one wonders how objective the newspaper was in assessing their skills.

Numerous reporters of that period shared the belief that women who played sports were deserving of the public’s scorn. But few were more outraged than this writer (it is unfortunate that the custom back then was for most newspaper reporters to be anonymous; few received a byline, making it difficult for historians to know who wrote what), who referred to the female baseball club that played recently as, not just a fraud, but a “sickening and repulsive fraud,” and, just for emphasis, a “pernicious and putrid” fraud. And the writer also put a question-mark next to the word “lady” when describing the “young lady (?) baseballists.”18

Equally outraged, and equally certain that no decent woman would ever play baseball, a reporter for the Knoxville Sentinel demanded that the police forbid a traveling female club from playing in that city. These women were surely of “notorious character,” and “the worst of their class,” since women who played baseball were not fit to call themselves “ladies.” And the reason they were such vulgar human beings was obvious to the writer: “These ‘ladies’ are from New York, and New York is noted for its curious people and curious customs.”19

Said another reporter, female baseball clubs were a danger because they attracted “the filthiest elements of the city.” And when some in the crowd began to fight at one of the games, this reinforced the reporter’s belief that the women themselves were low-class. “…the exhibition of common women in the exercise of functions that are not womanly—no matter whether in the name of art or athletics—is both repugnant and dangerous to public decency.”20 It is worth noting that fights broke out at men’s games too, but somehow, anything that went wrong at a game where women were playing meant the women were to blame for it.

The recurring insistence by so many writers that women who played baseball were not “ladies,” may seem like a strange thing to say in 2022, but it was frequently expressed a century ago, when gendered roles were still much more rigid, and women who violated cultural norms were immediately accused of a lack of morals. This again reminds us that the young women who wanted to play had to be both determined and courageous, since they were constantly facing ridicule from the press, and regularly stereotyped as somewhat less than respectable.21

SPORTSWRITERS AS DISMISSIVE

It goes without saying that most female ballplayers of the late 1800s were still learning the game. Few had been allowed to play it as children, and by the time they started, their inexperience certainly showed. But all too often, reporters seemed unwilling to look beyond that inexperience and see potential. This should not have been difficult to do: lots of new players are nervous or awkward when first starting out, as anyone who has covered single-A minor league games can attest. And yet, many reporters seemed focused on pointing out all the flaws of the women players, rather than noting anything good they did. They also described in great detail how the players looked: “The pitcher was a lovely brunette, with eyes full of dead earnestness; the catcher and the batter were blondes, with faces aflame with expectation.”22 And the writers placed considerable attention on every detail of the players’ uniforms, while observing that most of the fans were there to enjoy looking at the young women, not because they expected an actual baseball game.

Few reporters expected an actual baseball game either. One summed up an early July 1879 game between the New York Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Blue Stockings by concluding, “The women worked very hard to gain fame as athletes, but failed miserably. They muffed terribly, and batted in a very weak manner, so much so as to satisfy the crowd that women will never become base ball players.”23 A reporter for a rival paper came away with the same conclusion about that game: “The match was a farce. Not the least base ball talent have the women. Every fly was muffed, and it was only by chance that a player was put out.” The writer also noted that the majority of the attendees were there due to the “novelty” of women playing baseball.24

Even the reporters who tried to be charitable towards the early female clubs found it puzzling that women would want to play baseball. One reporter wondered why young women would demean themselves and sacrifice their “womanly delicacy” by displaying their lack of talent in front of total strangers. The thought that their talent might improve over time was never considered; based on the numerous critical articles I read, few of the writers believed this was even a possibility. The writer of one article observed that, since other jobs for women paid so poorly, perhaps these female players saw no other option for making a better salary than joining a traveling baseball club. They possibly felt “forced” to put on a gaudy uniform and attempt to play a game they knew so little about. But while claiming to understand their plight, the writer concluded, “We only wish that the same ingenuity which devised this plan could have pointed out to them some other way,” so that years from now, they would not be embarrassed by what they were currently doing to make a living.25

THE WRITERS WHO TRIED TO BE FAIR

As I studied hundreds of articles about the early female baseball clubs of the 1860s-1890s, I found one article that was very different from the usual mockery and dismissiveness. It was from a Sacramento, California newspaper, but written in Boston on October 9, 1883. The column remarked upon the level of the women’s skills, but it also exhibited empathy towards the women themselves, as they tried to learn and improve, often under difficult circumstances. The author was not a sportswriter; she was a correspondent, on her way to Boston in a horse-drawn trolley; and that was where she met the traveling Philadelphia club. She noted that most of them looked “weary,” and she learned that these players were not living a glamorous life. They had been on the road for about a month, playing in city after city; many carried their belongings in shabby suitcases or even cardboard boxes, and they were booked into “third-rate hotels.” Most had formerly worked in the mills or the factories; a few had slight training in baseball before joining the club, but most did not. The next day, the writer noted a large attendance at their game—mostly men and boys, but more than twenty women; and even when the players made mistakes, the crowd seemed enthusiastic and supportive. She wondered, given the sizable crowd, who was making money from this “experiment,” and whether the players were benefiting in any way from their efforts. And she noted that although their game at this point was “poor and unscientific,” they were working very hard at it.26

The only byline said the piece was written by the Sacramento Bee’s “Lady Correspondent,” but after reading her assessment of the “Young Ladies Baseball Club,” I wanted to know more about her. Thanks to some online digging, I discovered the “Lady Correspondent” often went by the pen name of “Ridinghood,” and she was in fact a reporter, who traveled the country seeking stories that would interest the female readers of the paper. Eventually, I discovered her real name: Mary Viola Tingley Lawrence, and while this seems to have been her only story about female baseball players, her work for the Bee and other papers provided an interesting window into the lives of women of the late 1800s.

But while Lawrence was very respectful of the women players, she was not the only one to report on them accurately and fairly. I found numerous articles that were very approving of what female players were doing. In some cases, the positive news reports seemed to result from a well-known local man with a female relative who wanted to play. A good example is the female club that was formed in Peterboro, New York, in 1868. The captain of the club was referred to as the “granddaughter of Gerrit Smith.” (In some newspapers, they spelled his first name Gerritt.) Smith was an abolitionist and a philanthropist, as well as an advocate for women’s suffrage. Newspapers reported that the local young men came out to watch the young women play ball and “enjoy[ed] greatly acting as spectators.”27 As for the un-named granddaughter’s skills as the captain, we were told that she “handles the club with a grace and strength worthy of notice.” And one person who noticed was famed suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who visited Smith and observed the young women playing ball, while the young men “were quiet spectators of the scene.”28

As it turns out, Smith’s baseball-playing granddaughter was named in a different publication: she was Nannie Miller, whose full name was Anne Fitzhugh Miller, later a widely known advocate for women’s rights.29 A few years later, in 1873, another women’s rights advocate, Victoria Woodhull, seems to have weighed in on women’s baseball, according to this brief mention in an Iowa newspaper: “A female base ball club has been organized in Iowa City. Mrs. Wood-hull has written a letter to say the girls ought to be free to handle the bat and ball if they want to.”30 It would certainly be interesting to find out if other women’s rights leaders of that era had any views on women’s athletics, especially women and baseball.

I was able to find a small number of positive assessments of women’s baseball in 1880s newspapers, although more often than not, comments about how pretty (or not) the players were intruded upon the coverage of who played well, or who won the game. For example, one report on a rare competition between the Philadelphia female club and a male team from Neenah, Wisconsin, in 1885 frequently digressed into remarks about the looks of the female players—who were referred to as “beauties at the bat.” And individual players were described as “exquisite,” wearing uniforms that were “captivating.” Some of the women seemed well aware by this time that promotion (and self-promotion) could be useful: one star player was evidently ill that day and couldn’t play, but she still “consented to appear in uniform… and distribute tastefully printed score cards” at five cents each to the crowd.31

There was also an article that started out mildly negative and was changed into something much more positive by an unknown exchange editor in York, Pennsylvania. The original 1883 article in the Boston Globe reported on the arrival of the female club from Philadelphia. At times, the writer seemed sarcastic— for example, he praised the uniforms, which he said were “very pretty” and he then added, “and so were the wearers, at least some of them.” He also noted, with some amazement, that one of the players actually caught a fly ball, and he said the fielding was generally “ragged.” But at other times, he seemed more favorable—he even pointed out several players who did a solid and professional job. “The two catchers, Miss Evans and Miss Moors, displayed considerable science, and handled the bat in good shape.” The attendees had a lot of fun, cheering enthusiastically when good plays were made. “Miss Evans… made two home runs, and was evidently the favorite of the crowd.” And despite his observations about the varying skill levels of the clubs, the reporter wrote, “And why shouldn’t young women play baseball? There doesn’t seem to be any reason that they can’t.”32 But, interestingly, when the article was reprinted in the York Daily, nearly all of the negative and sarcastic comments were stripped out, leaving a far more positive report than the original version.33 Perhaps the exchange editor knew some of the members of the Philadelphia club or had a daughter who played baseball.

THE WRITERS WHO COVERED THE STARS

As with any sport, some of the stories about the teams focused on problems they were having. In the case of women’s baseball clubs, this sometimes meant being victimized by unscrupulous managers who abandoned them and cheated them out of their earnings, as William Gilmore of Philadelphia did: after his players had finished a game in Worcester, Massachusetts, in early August 1879, he stole the gate receipts and their salaries, and left town.34 Or it meant fending off drunken fans who tried to force their way onto the field to talk with them, or make a pass. And while some locales showed the female clubs hospitality, some did not. According to the Associated Press, one traveling female club that came back from Cuba in 1893 was horrified by how they had been treated: “a mob…attacked the women and tore their clothes,” as well as destroying the American flag the club was carrying.”35 But at least by this time, there were fewer stories that blamed the women for their plight or insisted that they had no business playing baseball.

In fact, by the early 1890s, some of the male reporters who covered the games gradually seemed to grow more accepting of the existence of the female clubs. I noticed that some articles were less derisive and more focused on the game itself. One article about an upcoming appearance by a female traveling club from New York even defended their morality: “…if any one expects to see any thing objectionable or immoral in either dress or action, they will be disappointed.” And the writer issued an invitation for women to come and see the club play, saying they should “lay aside all prejudice or false modesty and see these young ladies play ball, and be convinced that there can be no wrong… for a girl or woman to earn an honest and respectable living in the health-giving game and pastime, the great American National Game.”36

There are several possible explanations for the gradual change in tone: women had been playing baseball for about two decades by this time, and the existence of female clubs was no longer the novelty it used to be. Further, some of the women had become more skilled, and their competent play had earned the (sometimes grudging) respect of the sportswriters who saw them. And several players emerged as stars in the eyes of the press, which helped to give women’s baseball increased credibility.

One of the best-known female stars of the 1890s was Lizzie Arlington (real name: Elizabeth Stride, born in 1877 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania; some assertions that her birth name was Stroud are incorrect, according to documents available on Ancestry.com and elsewhere). In early September 1891, Arlington and her team from Cincinnati played at the Jefferson County (New York) Fairgrounds. Similar to how other reporters had discussed the female clubs, the local reporter noted that “the girls… played ball as well as they knew how, which was not very well,” and he stated that few in the crowd expected much from the female players, so nobody was disappointed. On the other hand, the writer had to acknowledge that several members of the club actually knew how to play. He praised the catcher, he praised several of the baserunners, and he stated, “the girl pitcher was really a good ballplayer.”37

This favorable assessment would be one of many accolades Arlington would receive during her career, even from men who had previously been skeptical about the ability of woman athletes. For example, in a July 1892 game, the reporter was almost totally focused on Lizzie’s team and how well it played. There was no mention of the uniforms or who was cute and who was not. The game summary could have been written about any men’s team. It featured statements like “Miss Lizzie Arlington, the young lady who has gained considerable notoriety for her phenominal [sic] playing, covered second base… and never did a ball pass that point if it was thrown or batted within her reach. She played with science, and thoroughly understood every rule of base ball playing.” And there were some good plays from other members of the club, which caused loud cheers from the crowd that attended. Of course, given the times, it was not surprising for the writer to conclude by mentioning that the female players “were well-behaved and won the admiration of all with their lady like manner.”38

In subsequent articles about any team Arlington was on, she became the focus. Praise of her skills often included the expected “for a woman,” but at least the reporters acknowledged that she was a good player. For example, “She has a wonderful arm for a woman, and the opposing batsmen could not connect with her wide curves and speedy outshoots.”39 In fact, Lizzie was frequently said to be the only female pitcher who could throw a curve ball, and by the mid-to-late 1890s, she was often referred to as the “great female baseball player” or the “phenomenal lady pitcher.” Interestingly, this terminology seemed to be used as a branding device in newspaper ads: she had become a drawing card, and in some cities, there were ads letting the public know that “Lizzie Arlington, the phenomenal lady pitcher” was coming to town.40 As further proof of her success, exchange editors in other cities began reprinting articles about her exploits—something they had rarely done about other women ballplayers. Except for stories about things that went wrong, the members of female ball clubs seldom got much traction with the editors, who evidently believed their readers wouldn’t be interested…but Arlington was considered interesting and unique, and readers from all over the eastern United States were able to learn what she was up to.

The same was true for the other widely respected female baseball star of that era, Maud Nelson (real name, Clementina Brida),41 pictured in newspaper ads as “the famous pitcher of the Bloomer Girls Base Ball Company.” While the Bloomer Girls attracted some disapproval from traditionalists who objected to women wearing pants, the reporters who covered their games focused mainly on what Nelson did, since she was perceived as the one female player who excelled at baseball. As with Arlington, Nelson was treated with a combination of amazement and admiration by the press. The male reporters were pleasantly surprised that she could pitch so well—“better… than it would ever be supposed any woman could ever become,” said one.42 It did not seem to alter their generally negative impression of female players, however. Said one writer, remarking on the fact that the Bloomer club played against male opponents, “The Bloomer girls sometimes win by their opponents not trying to play, [by] flirting on the bases, etc.”43 But Nelson was the exception: most writers still had little that was positive to say about the female clubs, but they had a lot that was positive to say about her. One writer, after noting that she pitched a full nine-inning game, something many male pitchers could not do, remarked that “She threw the ball like a man, and the local team found it a hard thing to hit. She could field well, run bases and bat, and if the Boston Bloomers had nine players like her, they would have made it interesting.”44 And another reporter referred to her with adjectives like “expert” and “clever,” as he told how she struck out male batters with her “puzzling” curveball. The writer also called Nelson’s team “thoroughly professional.” But as in most other articles about the female clubs, there was the reminder that the players had good manners, and they were “lady-like in all their behavior.”45

NEW CENTURY, OLD STEREOTYPES

If we examine the newspapers of 1900-15, we continue to find similar patterns. The new century brought new names: it seems each city had at least one “lady baseballist” who stood out. But the coverage remained relatively unchanged—it was not as negative as in the 1870s and 1880s, but it still treated the women who played baseball as generally not very talented. Reporters focused on the one or two players who were considered the exceptions—the ones who came closest to the male standards for playing the game. And in this era, there was a young woman who proved to be a strong advocate for women’s baseball: her name was Caroline (spelled Carolyn in some sources) “Carrie” Kilbourne, a “girl pitcher” from New Brunswick, New Jersey, who first attracted press attention in 1910-11 while she was still in high school. The local reporters were very impressed: they often spoke of her “unusual ability to play baseball.” And former major league outfielder Willie Keeler, who had also watched her pitch, stated that she was “the most wonderful girl athlete he ever saw.”46

As with the attention paid to Gerrit Smith’s granddaughter Anne, the fact that Carrie’s businessman father Isaac W. Kilbourne was well known locally may have contributed to the positive press attention she received, although certainly her skill as a ballplayer helped. (By some accounts, she wanted to pursue a career with a female baseball club; but her father was opposed to the idea, so she focused on pitching in local exhibition and charity games, as well as doing some umpiring.)

Ultimately, in 1913, Carrie got her chance to pitch for a touring team, which played some exhibition games in Puerto Rico. When she returned, she told reporters she was more convinced than ever that women should play baseball. “Baseball…should be one of the pastimes for the ladies, whether they are young or old,” she said, explaining that it was a healthful way to get exercise. She hoped that from a young age, girls would be able to form their own teams, whether as amateurs or as semi-pro players like the Bloomer Girls. She suggested that aspiring young women could “practice each evening, and in this way, many benefit games could be played for charitable organizations.” And she said she still enjoyed playing. “I would rather play baseball than eat.”47

FINAL THOUGHTS

As baseball moved into the 1920s and 1930s, there were new female “stars” who emerged, including Jackie Mitchell and Lizzie Murphy, and they too received considerable attention from the sportswriters. However, the larger question of whether women had a place in baseball remained unanswered. The women who were discussed positively still seemed to be regarded as exceptions or curiosities. The attitude that baseball was a man’s game persisted, with most baseball writers following the customs of those from fifty years earlier and writing about even the best of the women players in a somewhat patronizing manner. The binary of women ballplayers as either marvels (impressive, with unique talent “for a woman”) or menaces (interlopers, trying to “act like a man”) could still be seen on any sports page. More acceptance might come for women ballplayers one day, but it was wishful thinking to believe it would happen any time soon, wrote one reporter (a woman), who predicted that maybe in another fifty years, there might be some women who could play as well as men. But for now, those women did not exist.48

In recent years, I have been encouraged to see more research being done on the Bloomer Girls and other women’s baseball teams; but exploring what the press had to say about female ball clubs and female players, from baseball’s formative years to the present day, is still an under-researched aspect of baseball history. I know that this article has only scratched the surface: it was written about an era when reporters had no bylines, making it difficult to compare the views of certain sportswriters, or see if those views changed over the years. Thus, I am eager to continue analyzing the sportswriters of the 1930s, 1940s, and beyond, to see if any of them came to believe that women players had genuine talent, or if they maintained the belief that a baseball diamond was no place for a woman. And now that an increasing number of newspapers and magazines are being digitized, they are providing baseball historians with a potential goldmine of new information, helping us to learn more about when (and why) attitudes towards female ballplayers changed… as well as showing us the role the media played in how those changes occurred.

To date, there has only been one woman who played baseball with a team of major leaguers in a big-league ballpark. Her name was Mary Elizabeth Murphy and she played for a team of “all-stars” against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Lizzie Murphy’s team beat the Red Sox, 3-2.1

The year was 1922, and the date August 14. The occasion was Tom McCarthy Day—an exhibition game played at Fenway Park. The game was scheduled to benefit ailing but very popular former ballplayer Tommy McCarthy. The Boston Globe called him “one of the greatest outfielders in the game, and who for many years has been close to the hearts of the Boston fans.”2 As it happens, McCarthy died just a couple of weeks before the benefit. Babe Ruth, who had committed to play for the All-Star team, had an operation to remove an abscess from his left leg just a couple of days beforehand; his leg had become infected after a rough slide on the basepaths. Otherwise, Ruth would have played on the same team as Lizzie Murphy. The benefit proceeded nonetheless, repurposed to create a fund to help McCarthy’s daughters. Widely admired among his fellow players, McCarthy was an early Hall of Fame inductee, enshrined in 1946.

Murphy was herself pretty well known in New England at the time. This was an era where women were making great strides in a number of areas. It was in August just two years earlier, in 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, granting women the right to vote. Women were active in sports, and newspapers of the day often featured sports page headlines regarding women’s tennis, swimming, and other sports. Murphy was a novelty, for sure, and a gate attraction. She was also a very good baseball player. A Rhode Island native, she’d played with a number of teams for some years, including the Providence Independents. In 1918, she signed with semipro team owner Ed Carr of Boston, who announced on her signing, “No ball is too hard for her to scoop out of the dirt, and when it comes to batting, she packs a mean wagon tongue.”3 With Carr’s All-Stars, she played a hundred games a summer, reports Barbara Gregorich in her book Women At Play.4 Murphy played in games throughout all New England and the eastern provinces of Canada. She had a 17-year career and became known as the “Queen of Baseball.”

At Fenway Park, though, it was to be Queen for a day.

Before taking a look at this game, let us learn a bit more about Murphy’s background.

Mary Elizabeth Murphy was born on April 13, 1894, in Warren, Rhode Island, a town on a peninsula on the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay that had a population of 6,585 in 1910. She was the fourth of seven children born to John E. Murphy and Mary Murphy.5 John was a native of Massachusetts, born to two parents both listed as natives of England. Mary had come to the United States, a native of Quebec, born to two French-Canadian parents. We believe her to be the Marie Garand who lived in Warren at the time of the 1880 Census and worked in a cotton mill; her surname was presented as “Garant” in the obituary for her famous daughter.6 Lizzie was bilingual.7

Mary Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Murphy first appears in the 1900 United States Census, living with the family in Attleboro, Massachusetts, where her father was employed as an overseer in a cotton mill. Her older sister Sarah, 16, worked as a mill spinner. The household also had a boarder from French Canada, Malvina Ledoux, a mill spooler. John Murphy was said to have also been “known as a long distance runner.”8

By 1910, John and the family were back in Warren, and he was listed as a store keeper, running a confectionery. All six children in the family were born in Rhode Island. The eldest son, Henry, 20, worked as a baker. Eva, a year older than Henry, was a mill spinner. It is unclear whether Lizzie was also working as a spinner in the mill at age 16. That was written next to her name on the Census form, but then crossed out and written in again next to her 12-year-old sister Lena. A 1913 article in the Providence Journal said that Lizzie was “employed in the Parker Mill in East Warren as a ring spinner.”9 In researching Murphy’s background, Debra Shattuck found a 1913-14 edition of The Bristol, Warren and Barrington Rhode Island Directory, which listed Murphy’s occupation as “ball player.”10

Lizzie had completed the fifth grade; that was the extent of her formal education.

Her father was an athlete himself. It was Henry who got her hooked on playing baseball when she was around 10 years old. “My brother…used to teach me to throw and catch, and it seemed to come natural to me. I could always throw better than most girls. When I was at the age where kids throw stones at cats and hens I guess I hit the mark as often as any of the boys. When I got a little older I would join the boys playing one o’ cat, and a few years ago I had a chance to play in one of the scrub games near home and did well enough so they began to choose me for their teams regularly.” At a certain point, she said her father decided baseball wasn’t for a girl to play and thought she would quit. “But I went to look on at one of the games and got so excited I couldn’t stay out. As a fan I can’t keep still.”11

She enjoyed playing baseball, but was an accomplished athlete in other areas. The 1913 Journal article called her “an expert skater, probably the equal of any man of her age along the east shore and ice hockey is one of her favorite diversions. She has won prizes in various other contests, and there are few forms of athletics she is not able to join.”12 Some 25 years later, she told another writer, “It may sound strange, but do you know that mother never saw me play. She was always afraid I would break a bone or something, but I have never had a bad accident.”13

It was in baseball that she was able to play professionally, and for many years earned a living doing so.

In 1914, she played for the Warren Shoe team of the Manufacturers League and turns up in Providence’s Evening Bulletin article as the team’s first baseman.14 Warren Shoe won, 7-6, and “Miss Lizzie Murphy” was singled out in the brief news story, which said she had 12 putouts in the game, including a double play, and that in the fourth inning, with runners on first and second, she “lay [sic] down a fine sacrifice bunt.”15 The team scored three runs that inning. In a game Warren Shoe planned against the Railroad team of the Narragansett Amateur League on August 23, one of the opponents was Miss Margaret Sullivan, also a first baseman.16 One finds a number of games announced during Murphy’s career, but no trace of whether these games actually occurred.

Murphy consistently played first base, but she had been playing for scrub teams in the area for three years. Just the year before she had said that shortstop was her preferred position. And the Journal said she “has gained reputation as a pitcher also.”17

She played for several different semipro teams. On August 29, 1914, she was due to play for the East Providence Moose team. The New York, New Haven and Hartford team also featured a female first baseman, Marguerite Fontaine of Providence.18

A May 1915 edition of the same newspaper ran a photograph of her, glove on her left hand, saying she would be playing first base for Providence’s Independent A.C.19 She was right-handed, stood 5-feet-6, and said “my best playing weight” was 122 pounds. Her “braided hair was tucked under a baseball cap.”20

A game account in Fall River’s Evening Herald said, “She knocked down hard-hit grounders, gobbled up poor throws that would get away from many players, and at every time showed she knew the game.”21 She did get thrown out on an attempted steal of second, the throw from the Fall River Independents catcher beating her hook slide.

Providence Journal reporter Carolyn Thornton reports that in 1918, Murphy joined the Boston All-Stars, “a semipro team of former major league players,” and that “for the next 17 years she traveled the United States and Canada, playing over 100 games a season.”22 By 1920, she had acquired the nickname “Spike.”23

Scattered articles on Murphy turn up on web searches of newspaper databases. On August 8, 1920, she played first base for Manville Co, in their 2-0 win over J & P Coats of Pawtucket.24 On August 17, she was due to play for the Universal Winding Company team; she was described as the “noted woman ball player of Warren.” And she rated a headline on a small preview a couple of weeks later, when she was playing first base for Warwick A.C. against the Providence Gas Company team.25 On October 17, Murphy’s Providence Stars team lost to the Beverage Hill team, but it was said she “received much applause, especially in the eighth, when she hit over second base for a clean bingle.”26

She was often the only player named as being planned for these games, an indication that her inclusion in the game was seen as noteworthy and marketable. That said, she may have been taken advantage of once, earlier. Thornton explained:

Her only known confrontation occurred with a team manager when she played for a Warren team at the age of 15. In those days, spectators were not charged admission to semipro baseball games. Instead, a hat was passed through the stands and players would share what was collected.

In Murphy’s first game with the team, however, she received nothing. The following Saturday afternoon, as the team began boarding the bus for a game in Newport, Murphy refused to get on until the manager agreed to pay her $5 for every game, plus an equal share of the collection.

To supplement her small salary, Murphy would work the crowds between innings, selling postcards of herself in uniform for a dime.27

The following year, Murphy played with Eddie McGinley’s Providence Independents. That August, the Independents were scheduled to play against the Cleveland Colored Giants in a game at Rocky Point.28 Murphy was to play first base “and attempt to catch a ball dropped from an aeroplane.”29 The game was played on August 21, and the Independents won, 6-5, but the brief four sentences about the game have no mention of Murphy.30 Whether she actually played in the game remains unknown.

Other articles say she played—perhaps at a different time—for the Cleveland Colored Giants. We were unable to find any trace of a game involving any “colored” ballplayers, with Murphy on one side or the other. Several articles mention such a game, but without specifics. Sportswriter Dick Reynolds, more cautiously, said, “she is believed to have been the first woman ever to play on a black baseball club.”31 One source which provides some confidence that she did play for the Giants is a 1938 article from the Providence Evening Bulletin. Author Elizabeth L. Williams spoke with Murphy and reported, “She recalled playing at Rocky Point with the Cleveland Colored Giants, with the Athol Manufacturing Club against the East Jaffrey, N.H. team, and with the Lymansville team under Manager Neil Flynn, also with Jack Cooney, of Cranston, with the Boston Braves of the National League, and with many other outfits.”32

In a similar vein, we have been unable to find support for Jane Lancaster’s statement that in a later game in New York State, “she was very proud to have gotten a base hit off the legendary Satchel Paige.”33

McGinley acted as her manager; those wishing to book her were urged to write to him. He was a player on the Independents as well. For a game on September 11 to be played at Moosup, Connecticut, he was listed as the catcher for Roy Rock’s All-Stars and Murphy was listed at first base. The Norwich newspaper said of Murphy, “This young lady has a wonderful record on the diamond. The way Miss Murphy performs on first is remarkable and is worth going miles to see.”34 After the regular season was over, McGinley signed Boston Braves pitcher Johnny Cooney to join him and Murphy on the Independents.

She was clearly seen as a marketing benefit, and her number of appearances increased in 1922. Her uniform was one-of-a-kind, with “LIZZIE MURPHY” Emblazoned across the front instead of a team name.

She had other talents as well. “She keeps in condition by chopping wood and swimming. She also plays the violin.”35 The Boston Globe said she was active as both a mile and five-mile runner and swimmer.36 One newspaper said, “When she first began as a regular player, she felt people used to come see her because of the novelty. But as she improved and became a star, the spectators came to see an expert ballplayer at work.”37 Reynolds said, “Teammates did not seem to resent the public attention showered on Lizzie. Bigger crowds meant bigger collections and more money for everybody. Furthermore, Lizzie never flaunted her celebrity status.”38

A novelty she was, but the Springfield Republican advised readers, “Miss Murphy is not in the lineup just because she is a woman…She is there because she can play ball. She is hitting .300, no mean record with a fast semi-pro company as she travels with. Her fielding leaves nothing to be desired.”39

She played games in Malden, to the largest crowd ever for a twilight game in South Boston, and before a “huge mob” at Fore River Field, getting the first hit in a game the Independents lost, 1-0.40 A reported 10,000 who turned out at South Boston’s Christopher J. Lee Playground saw her execute a squeeze play to help beat Kelly’s All Stars, 6-3.41 She had proven herself to be “one of the best [semipro] first basemen in New England.”42

A number of days later, the Independents beat the New York, New Haven, and Hartford All-Stars, 8-1, at Boston’s Walpole Street Grounds with Murphy collecting two base hits and said to have “played a strong game.”43 It was her double in the top of the ninth that kicked off an eight-run rally.44

Her deportment was that of the other ballplayers. A note in the Post described her at first base awaiting the pitch with her hands on her knees and ready to spring into action. “Occasionally she spat into her mitt after the manner of other players and kept up a steady stream of talk to the pitcher, her chatter being clearly heard with its light tones.”45

THE FIRST WOMAN WHO PLAYED AT FENWAY PARK

Tommy McCarthy had most recently served as a Red Sox scout and the team helped organize the day in his honor working with a local committee headed by Jack Morse, Eddie McHugh, and John S. Dooley.46 Quite a party was prepared, including a presentation of vaudeville and dancing girls from the Love and Kisses Company prior to the game. Other entertainment came from the Bowdoin Square Theater and the Old Howard. Jimmy Coughlin’s 101st Regiment Band played and when the band struck up “Sweet Adeline” the demand for former mayor “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald to sing was so fervent and so persistent that he yielded to the call of the 4,000 or more in attendance, a crowd which included Mayor James Michael Curley and others. Congressman Gallivan was there and so were former ballplayers such as John Irwin and Jerry Hurley.

The program lasted for two hours prior to the 3:30 pm game on August 14.

Ballplayer, coach, and entertaining personality Nick Altrock worked the crowd, not only joining in the theatrical numbers but selling scorecards in the stands and shaking hands with several hundred children. Some of the dancing girls joined him in selling scorecards, but Altrock was the star of the show, and the game.

Murphy’s appearance had been trumpeted in advance but, given the uniqueness of the situation, not extravagantly so. Paul Shannon, writing in the Boston Post, gave her two sentences: “Lizzie Murphy, the famous lady first baseman, will be seen in the game for a while. She won’t launch any home runs but lady fans will get a peek at a sister who can cover that initial sack as many a big leaguer.”47 Another paper called her “the brilliant woman first baseman.”48

She was a novelty, of course, but a popular one. The Herald observed, “She had her picture taken so often that Nick asked her if she was running for Congress.”49

As noted, Babe Ruth couldn’t make the game, but the All-Star team Murphy joined was otherwise composed of American League ballplayers, with at least one representative from each AL club: Nick Altrock, Donie Bush, and “Sheriff” Earl Smith from the Washington Nationals; Tillie Walker, Ralph Young, Frank Bruggy, Bob Hasty, and Doc Johnston of the Philadelphia A’s; Chick Shorten of the St. Louis Browns; Ira Flagstead of the Detroit Tigers; Les Nunamaker and Jim Bagby of the Cleveland Indians; Hervey McClellan of the Chicago White Sox; and Fred Hofmann of the New York Yankees. Murphy started the game at first base, batting third in the order.

She was tested early on. The visitors, of course, were up first. Allen Russell was pitching for the Red Sox and he set down second baseman Young and the shortstop Bush. Murphy stepped into the box. Two outs, no one on base. She hit a grounder to Boston’s Johnny Mitchell at short and was retired. Mitchell, though, chose to showboat a bit throwing the ball to the second baseman Del Pratt who then fired to “Tioga George” Burns at first. Boston Globe writer James O’Leary took him to task in his game story the next day: “It was rather ungallant of Mitchell to play it this way.”50

With Boston batting against Bagby in the bottom of the first, her own teammate McClellan chose to challenge her as well. On a sharp grounder hit to him at third base, he fielded it cleanly, but then deliberately held the ball until the last moment and then fired a rocket to Murphy. She caught it for the putout. Gregorich reports that McClellan walked over toward Bush, nodded in the direction of first base, and said, “She’ll do.”51

Murphy played just the one inning. The All-Stars scored in the top of the second. The Sox scored twice in the fifth, only to see the All-Stars come back to tie it in the sixth. Altrock cut the clowning, came in to pitch, and held the Red Sox scoreless for the final four innings, the visiting All-Stars winning the game, 3-2 in 10 innings. Doc Johnston, who had taken Lizzie’s place at first base, tripled in the winning run. This was not a strong Red Sox team. In fact, they finished the 1922 season in last place, 33 games out of first, with a 61-93 record. No wonder, then, that the Globe’s sports cartoon the next day depicted Lizzie Murphy making the play and one spectator shouting, “ATTABOY LIZZIE BETTER THAN THE RED SOX.”52

The game featured a couple of noteworthy fielding plays and a situation in the seventh when the Red Sox hit two triples but couldn’t score. Mike Menosky had tripled down the right-field line, but was soon picked off third by Altrock. Boston catcher Ed Chaplin then followed with another triple, but was left stranded on third.

Altrock got the win. “It seemed difficult, before the game, to visualize a tight, well-played contest,” wrote Burt Whitman of the Boston Herald. “But it was a good game and each team tried to win.”53 The Post’s Shannon gave Altrock credit for making the day a memorable success, a subhead on his column reading “Nick the Whole Noise.”54 The Post was, however, patronizing. Shannon wrote that Murphy got a big hand when she came to bat in the first inning, but said, contradicting what almost every other account over the years declared, she “hasn’t much of an arm but she is the cutest lady player that the fans have ever seen and her frenzied efforts to hit in response to Nick Altrock’s plea of ‘Come on, Murphy,’ made a hit with the fans.”55

Murphy hit third in the order. The Washington Post said she played two innings, was errorless in the field, and that “In her only time at bat, she grounded out at shortstop.”56 The Boston Globe boxscore presented all the male players by last name, but in Murphy’s case presented her name as “Miss Murphy 1b.” The exhibition raised between $5,000 and $6,000. Among those who could not attend but made a donation was Ty Cobb, who mailed in a check for $25.57

Two days later, Murphy played first base at Kinsley Park in Providence for Eddie McGinley’s All Stars.

AFTER THE GAME

As a celebrity, opportunities beyond baseball often presented themselves. She and McGinley paired up for a vaudeville sketch entitled “Headin’ Home” at the Bangor Opera House in August.58

Her fame spread. She played for Ed Carr’s All-Stars in 1923. A photograph of her ran in Canton, Ohio’s Repository the following year and the San Francisco Chronicle ran the same photograph, saying she was earning $300 a week.59 She had aspirations to become a major-league ballplayer “in another season or two,” according to the Milwaukee Journal. The article said she insisted her teammates not call her “Miss” on the diamond, and that she also enjoyed cooking, sewing, films, and reading.60

This was hardball and the appeal was that Murphy was playing with, and against, the top semipro and amateur ballplayers around New England. In a July game at Newport, Rhode Island, she suffered a serious hand injury that required several stitches.61 Back without losing too much time, her team beat Dorchester, 9-3, but she was then injured again against the Somerville Civic Club at a game in Medford, Massachusetts. Her hand was spiked in the fourth inning and she had to leave the game.62 One wonders if this may have contributed to the “Spike” nickname. Just a week later, she doubled in a game against the G. F. Redmond Co.63

In 1924 and 1925, Carr’s team was sometimes billed as Lizzie Murphy’s All-Stars, in recognition of her importance as a draw. News accounts did at times offer praise for her play: for instance a Boston Globe article that said she “once again proved that she is not a novelty but a clever woman player.”64 A subheading from the Patriot Ledger called her the “Female Sisler” and said, “Only the fact that women are barred from the big show keeps her from wearing major league spangles.”65 One of her teammates in 1926 was Buck O’Brien, formerly with the Red Sox.66 The two were booked to play in Fitchburg against the Philadelphia Colored Giants on July 5.67

Fielding was apparently her forte rather than batting. Boxscores typically showed her batting ninth and many showed her having been held hitless. There were more productive games, of course, such as her 2-for-4 game against Salem, Massachusetts, on April 23, 1927, in which she also successfully executed a sacrifice.68 One of those who played in the 17-inning game at Newport said, “Lizzie played the entire game and handled some 30 odd chances. As a fielder she was as good as the average man. At bat, she was only fair, though she did not flinch from the fastest pitch.”69

As one might expect, not all praised her talents. Jim Russell of the Philadelphia Inquirer offered a retrospective comment in 1956, while praising athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias. He wrote, “In the 20’s, fancy words flew around the circuit about a first basewoman named Lizzie Murphy, who reached the zenith when she played with a group of major leaguers at Boston’s Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. Not long after that achievement, Liz came to town to play against the local pros, and thousands turned out for a look. They saw a rather awkward girl play one inning at first, take a couple of soft throws from the infielders, and bat once against some delicately slow pitching, while thousands stifled their jeers.”70

How good was Murphy? Perhaps a more balanced appraisal came from sportswriter Dick Reynolds. “Many who watched Lizzie have contended that she could play first base with the best. That,” he wrote, “must remain uncertain. It is certain, however, that her performances produced few, in any, complaints… Even the American League All-Stars, skeptical at first, applauded her ability to cover ground, scoop up grounders with long, powerful fingers, and throw with an unerring arm. She was not a slugger. But her career hitting average was just below .300 and Carr considered her among his most dependable stickers.”71

Murphy was said to have played in a 1929 exhibition game involving the Boston Braves and some National League All-Stars (Dick Reynolds says American League All-Stars). As with the stories of her playing against Satchel Paige—whose own appearances were highly promoted—no such games have been found, despite diligent research and appeals to some of SABR’s best researchers. Perhaps it is the case, as one researcher suggested, that these are myths.72

One could posit a number of reasons that she does not turn up as much in newspaper database searches in the later 1920s, but there were at least occasional appearances noted such as in Marlboro, Massachusetts, when Lizzie Murphy’s All-Stars were to play the Marlboro Merchants in late August 1933.73

There was a standout game on July 4, 1932, in Newport, Rhode Island, between the Sunset League All-Stars and the Providence Independents that ran 17 innings. Hank Soar—later an American League umpire from 1950 through 78—was the catcher for Providence. The game was lost when, with runners on second and third, Soar dropped a two-out third strike and then threw to first but “threw the ball over Lizzie Murphy’s head.”74

Among those who had played with her All-Stars were said to be Pete Wood, brother of Smoky Joe Wood, and Bill Stewart, who was a scout for the Boston Red Sox in 1925 and 1926 and later a National League umpire from 1933 through 1954.75

Gai Ingham Berlage wrote, “Lizzie goes down in history as the first woman ever to have played against a major league team. In 1934 Babe Didrikson would add another first by actually playing for major league teams in major league exhibitions. Babe pitched a few innings for the Philadelphia Athletics against the Brooklyn Dodges and for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Boston Braves.”76 The distinction was that Didrikson’s play was during spring training exhibition games, not in a major-league ballpark.

After 18 years as a professional, Lizzie Murphy retired from playing baseball when she turned 40 and returned to Warren to work in the mills, and later worked on oyster boats out of Warren. She had other interests as well, and reporter Elizabeth Williams noted “several carved wooden toys, which she said she had made during the Depression.”77 On October 30, 1937, Lizzie married Walter Larivee of Warren, said to have been a supervisor in one of the mills. He had been raised there in a mill family, the 1900 Census showing his widowed mother Exilda, and her four oldest children all working as weavers in a cotton mill. Perhaps the Depression had an effect; Walter was listed in the 1940 Census at a laborer doing road construction. He was 11 years older than his wife. The marriage ended when he died six years later.

It was said that Murphy soured on baseball a bit, telling one visitor, “It’s hard to explain why I liked baseball so much. And the more I think about it the less I understand the reason.”78 She declined an invitation to dedicate a Little League field, and when some friends began planning a testimonial dinner for her, she said she would not attend.79 That said, retired Warren High School baseball coach Charlie Burdge said, “If you met her coming up from the river with a bucket of clams, she’d stop for a few minutes and talk baseball. She never put down the game. But, for some reason, she didn’t want any public appearances.”80

Nonetheless, Jane Lancaster quoted her as saying, after her retirement, “Eddie [Carr] used to tell me that I was the first girl to break into baseball with a man’s team as a regular player. You know that makes me feel mighty good.”81

At the age of 70, Elizabeth Larivee died in Warren on July 27, 1964, and is buried locally at Saint John the Baptist Cemetery. She was survived by brother Henry and sisters Lena Bouffard and Mary Ella Lynch.82 A brief note from the Associated Press said she had “gained renown in New England and Eastern Canada 40 years ago as Lizzie Murphy, a woman baseball player in an era when it was unusual to see a woman driving a car.”83

On the 100th anniversary of her birth, Warren declared “Lizzie Murphy Day” with Boston Red Sox VP Lou Gorman presenting a proclamation. The following month, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. 

 

The fiftieth anniversary of the passage of Title IX of the Higher Education Amendments of 1972 gives us an opportunity to reflect on its impact on women’s sports as a whole and on specific sports such as baseball. Women’s participation has been overlooked and marginalized in most publications and general discussions about the sport. Title IX improved opportunities and paved the way for the progress we are seeing in 2022. However, before and after the passage of legislation, the contributions of Black women in baseball has been largely overlooked and ignored. Few books or articles exist and those that do focus on the names of only a few owners and players such as Effa Manley, Olivia Taylor, Toni Stone, and Mamie Johnson. Their stories are important but are just the tip of the iceberg.

What is presented here is an introduction to the incredible contributions made by so many Black women as players, owners, coaches, and other baseball personnel. The primary focus centers on those most readers are not familiar with as a result of the attitudes of the times that showed a disdain for women of any color playing baseball. News coverage of women playing baseball was limited and often not complimentary in tone. For Black women the press coverage was worse because they were up against issues due to sex and race.

The recent recognition by Major League Baseball of the Negro Leagues as having major league status raises people’s interest in the women who owned and worked for Negro League teams as well as those who played in the Negro Leagues or against Negro League teams. Who are some of these women and on whose shoulders do they stand? Who came before Effa Manley or Toni Stone? The story of Black women in baseball generally begins with the story of the Dolly Vardens and travels all the way to the present with the recent hiring of Bianca Smith by the Boston Red Sox as a coach in their minor league system.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, there were two Dolly Varden teams that played around the Philadelphia area. Little is known about either of these teams since news stories from the nineteenth century have always been limited in number and coverage. Often the writers talk about the uniforms more than they did the players or the score. Often only first names were given or players were simply called “Miss.” This makes it difficult for researchers to track down the players. We know the Dolly Vardens appeared in the papers in 1883 and there is mention of them reorganizing for 1884, though no games have been found to date. When The New York Times covered the team in 1883, we are informed that Miss Ella Harris was the team captain. The opposing team missed the train and never showed up. The remainder of the article focuses mainly on the Vardens’ red jockey caps and the different-colored calico dresses the players wore. We learn the names of some of the other players: Sallie Johnstone and Molly Johnstone playing first and second base, Lizzie Waters listed as the third baseman, and Ella Waters behind the plate. The three outfielders were Agnes Hollingsworth, Ella Johnson, and Rhoda Scholl. Cora Patten handled the pitching duties. Unfortunately, that is about all we know. These young ladies got a chance to play baseball, but given the way reporters covered women’s sports and attitudes towards Blacks at the time, the only other thing learned from the articles is the racism of the day, as shown by the dialect the white writers attributed to the women ballplayers.1

One of the opponents for the two Dolly Varden clubs also played in Philadelphia and were called the Captain Jinks Base Ball Club. Even less is known about this club, though the three teams seem to have been created by a white man named John Lang. Lang thought the novelty would bring out fans and the clubs would make him some money. The lack of news coverage has made it difficult to recover their games.2

Papers continue their sporadic mention of Black women’s ball clubs with a few references appearing in 1902 in Missouri, North Carolina, and Kansas. Beyond mentioning games were planned for the Biddleville (NC) Colored Women’s Baseball Club, the details are sparse.3

St. Louis hosted the Black Bronchos in 1910 and 1911 under the leadership of Conrad Kuebbler. His brother Henry played baseball while Conrad appears to have been an organizer. The Bronchos found themselves playing in Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma, showing their ability to secure games across the country. Few scores have been found for their games, but they did beat the Nashville Giants 2-1 in one 13-inning contest while losing to the Columbia Cubs 5-3. They also lost two games to the Madisonville, Kentucky club, 10-9 and 6-3. The Plain Dealer (KS) in 1911 carried an ad touting the team as the “only Female Negro Team on the road.” The same ad also called the girls “…a novelty attraction but also a strong team of well-behaved girls.” The article captured the general attitudes of the day toward women playing any sport, which was usually not complimentary, hence the need to point out these “girls” behaved well and were playing for the entertainment of the crowd, not because they should be viewed as serious ball players.4

The Colored Havana Stars had a new attraction in 1917 with Pearl Barnett playing first base for the club. An article announcing the team’s season opening on May 27 listed Barnett as the only Black female first baseman playing for a colored team in the country. Their owner, Dr. Joseph Plummer, had hoped to put together a solid team to barnstorm the country. No full accounts of her contributions have been found to date.5

The most well-documented team in the 1920s was the Baltimore Black Sox Bloomer Girls playing in 1921 and 1922. A featured opponent for the Black Sox were the famous New York Bloomer girls (a White team). In one 1922 game, the visiting New York squad pummeled the Black Sox, defeating them, 48-2. The Black Sox only had two hits, by their pitcher and catcher. The Black Sox lost another contest, 51-2 which suggested they did not get much chance to practice. One of their closest games came in August 1921, when they lost to the Excelsior Sparrows, 17-14, which led to a second contest later in the month. That game ended in a 29-29 tie, highlighted by four home runs, two by each team. The Black Sox finally pulled out a win in early September, coming out on the good side of a 32-31 score. The hitting was led by the right fielder Miss Clark. The two teams played a fourth contest that the Black Sox won, 34-11. The Black Sox relied on four home runs and the pitching of B. Taylor, who struck out six.6

Isabelle Baxter joined the Cleveland Giants of the Negro National League in 1932 and parts of 1933. She played second base and was expected to be there for the two seasons, though it appears she only played for part of 1932, after the Giants left the league to play independently. In the Giants’ first game, which they won over the Canton Clowns, Baxter handled five chances at second base with only one bad throw to first. At the plate Baxter had one hit but also two long balls into the deep outfield.7

Women’s baseball had their first and strongest league during World War II with what is now known as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).8 No Black women played in this league, but seven young ladies from Cuba were invited to play starting in 1948. Mamie Johnson and a friend went to one of the tryouts but were sent away. For Johnson, that led to her being signed to pitch in the Negro Leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1955. She joined the team with outfielder Connie Morgan from Philadelphia. Morgan and Johnson became the second and third women to play professionally in the Negro Leagues. The first was Marcenia (Toni) Stone, who played for the Clowns in 1953 and then for the Monarchs in 1954. When she was traded to the Monarchs, she was replaced by Johnson and Morgan. Desiria “Boo Boo” Robinson and Doris Jackson also appeared on the Clowns’ roster for a short time. The AAGPBL received more coverage than any other women’s baseball in history, mainly because of the timing. Philip Wrigley came up with the idea to keep people entertained during the war because so many male players served in the military. After the war was over, the league was expected to end. When it did not, the coverage and attendance slowly began to decline leading to the league’s demise after the 1954 season.

Stone played baseball all her life. She loved the game and wanted to learn as much as she could. Growing up she got a chance to go to a local camp to better her skills. Her mother was not happy with her playing, as she did not think girls should play baseball with the boys, but Stone continued to play. By 1938 Stone, was playing for a Connorsville team and then she moved to play with teams in California and eventually the New Orleans Creoles. From the Creoles she got noticed and was able to join the Kansas City Monarchs and Indianapolis Clowns. While playing in the NNL in 1953 and 1954, Stone proved she was not just a fan curiosity but could play the game. She was actually voted to play in the East-West Classic as an All Star after hitting .254. A news reporter described her play in 1953: “a sparkling fielder and holds her own at the plate.”9 Owner Syd Pollock, who signed her for a reported $12,000 in 1953, made it clear she was his starting second baseman and not just a novelty. In recognition of her accomplishments, a field was later dedicated in her honor in her hometown of Minneapolis and a play was written to celebrate her life.10

Morgan played baseball in the Philadelphia area as a teenager, but was better known as a basketball player for the Philadelphia Rockettes. She played for the Northern Philadelphia Honeydrippers team from 1949 through 1953, where the papers claimed she hit over .300. Morgan played second base under manager Oscar Charleston for 49 games. She proved she was more than just a gate attraction in her first game, making a stellar fielding play and walking twice. Where Morgan seemed to be most recognized was in her ability to lay down a solid bunt.11

Johnson, better known as “Peanut” due to her short stature, pitched on local sandlot teams before being signed with the Clowns. Before joining the Clowns, Johnson had played on many local semi-pro clubs in New Jersey and Washington, DC, where she lived. She compiled a 3-1 record in her one season. Johnson turned the loss of a chance to play in the AAGPBL into an opportunity to be one of the first professional female pitchers in a men’s league. After her playing days ended, Johnson worked as a nurse and later ran a Negro Leagues memorabilia shop in Washington. Johnson got recognized by MLB when they had each team draft a Negro League player. She was taken by the Nationals since she lived in Washington.12

In the late 1940s, two other young ladies played for the New Orleans Creoles when they were under the ownership of Allan Page, a Negro Southern League executive. Page signed two university students in Fabiola Margaret Wilson and Gloria Dymond, who played for the Creoles in 1948. Dymond attended Southern University while Wilson went to Xavier. Dymond was a senior physical education major when she joined the Creoles to patrol the outfield alongside Wilson. Both ladies received praise from their manager Tiny Brown as being as good as any man on the team. Hank Rigney, longtime baseball promoter and owner of the Toledo Crawfords, told reporters the ladies were on the team because of their abilities and not simply as a gate attraction. He said they had great arms and judged fly balls well. Rigney was responding to a common question found in much news coverage of women ballplayers, could they really play or were they signed as a novelty or curiosity?13

After the decline of the Negro Leagues and the demise of the AAGPBL, women’s baseball did not appear in any significant news coverage until after the passage of Title IX in 1972. When the Colorado Silver Bullets (a women’s professional team sponsored by Coors) began play in the 1990s, two African American women made the roster, Charlotte Wiley and Tamara Holmes.

Wiley pitched briefly for the 1994 Bullets. A graduate of Richmond High School in 1987, Wiley attended Cal State-Hayward. Holmes was one of two African American players on the Silver Bullets and also one of two African Americans on the USA National team.

Holmes began playing baseball in Little League and also played in high school. Those experiences helped lead Holmes to play for the Bullets in 1996 and 1997 until they lost their support from Coors after the 1997 season. She resumed her baseball play with the USA National team and became their mainstay at the plate and in the outfield since the mid-2000s. Holmes did not join the first team founded in 2004, preferring to play on men’s teams where she thought the overall quality of play would be better. In 2006 she tried out and made the women’s team, playing again in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. In her last World Cup, Holmes batted .722 in seven games to lead the team. In 2012 Holmes was named the USA Baseball Sportswoman of the Year. In addition to her playing, Holmes is also a firefighter and owner of a CrossFit gym.

Another African American woman on the USA National team was Malaika Underwood, who joined in 2006 and played in every World Cup since then. Between them Holmes and Underwood own most of the batting records for Team USA. Underwood was twice named to the World Cup All-Tournament team. In 2019, Underwood played in all seven games for the Pan American championship, batting .483 and driving in 14 runs. For the World Cup team in 2016, Underwood batted .579 in seven games. Underwood also played volleyball for the University of North Carolina.

Just as numbers of male African American ball players have declined, there have also been few Black female players as other sports compete with baseball today.14

An exception to the lack of coverage most Black female baseball players have received is Mo’ne Davis. Davis made national news pitching and winning in the Little League World Series in 2014. She pitched an 8-0 shutout for the Taney Dragons over Newark, Delaware. After gaining national fame, Davis played basketball at Chestnut Hill Academy and now is attending Hampton University to play second base for the softball team. Davis also had the opportunity to meet and talk with Mamie Johnson on a 4000-mile trip around the country with the Anderson Monarchs in 2015. Johnson came out to see Davis pitch when the team traveled through Virginia. The meeting of the two ballplayers helped popularize Johnson’s career fifty years after she had played. Davis received better and more extensive coverage because the emphasis on women’s sports in the last two decades has grown in general. As women have continued to make inroads into sports since Title IX the effort to cover their play has also increased in quantity though the quality is sometimes more focused on them as women than as ballplayers.15

Black women have played baseball since the nineteenth century, though their story is not often part of the baseball record provided by the press. The introduction to their stories as presented here is just that, a chance to understand just how much is missing from baseball history by leaving out the play of Black women as individual players and those playing on all-Black female teams. The story of the Dolly Vardens and the St. Louis Black Bronchos to the recent play of Mo’ne Davis all paint a picture of participation worthy of learning and appreciating. 

 

For most of Babe Didrikson’s life, Major League Baseball was closed off to all but white men, but it was possible for African Americans and women to play professional baseball in other venues. Didrikson, technically the first woman to pitch for a major league team, even though she was unable to be signed, was able to partake in professional baseball at various stages in her career, less because of her athletic prowess (which was considerable, as evidenced in other sports) and more because her individual fame as one of the most significant sports figures of her era transcended barriers.

When “the little wild flower of the Lone Star State,”1 as writer Damon Runyon wrote, was in her prime, people ran out of superlatives to describe her. After watching her beat him on the golf course, legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice—himself a scratch golfer— said she was “without any question the athletic phenomenon of all time, man or woman.”2 He would be a friend and booster of hers for the rest of his life. “I once shook hands with Miss Didrikson,” recalled Ty Cobb in 1945. “A minute or so later I looked at my hand to see if it was still hanging on. It was, but I don’t think it has ever been the same.”3

Didrikson’s athletic career spanned her brief adult life, from the Olympics in 1932 to her premature death at age 45 from cancer in 1956. In that time, she was rarely out of the public eye. Even rarer, she was able to make a living as an athlete in a series of sports, including golf, basketball, pool, tennis and even baseball. She was an instant sensation when she arrived on the national scene, winning medals in all three events she competed in at the Los Angeles Olympics—impressive, considering there were only six women’s events at the games, and no woman could compete in more than three events! She would eventually be most noted— and compensated—for her golf career. She helped found the Ladies Professional Golf Association in 1949 and was initially the dominant player in wins and money. But baseball was the dominant sport of the era: it was nearly mandatory that the country’s top sportswoman try her hand on the diamond as well.

Mildred Didriksen (she changed the spelling of her name as an adult) was born on June 26, 1911, in Port Arthur, Texas, the sixth of seven children (five sons and two daughters) of Ole and Hannah Didriksen. Mildred, who never let the facts get in the way of a good story, said in her autobiography that her baseball prowess as a girl—including a game where she hit five home runs—led to her acquiring the nickname Babe, for Babe Ruth.4 But Don Van Natta’s biography Wonder Girl notes that her mother called her “Bebe” (“baby” in several European languages) as an infant, at the time when George Herman Ruth himself was acquiring the nickname as one of Jack Dunn’s babes with the minor league Baltimore Orioles.5

The Didriksens moved from Port Arthur inland to Beaumont when Mildred was a girl. Even as a child, Didrikson distinguished herself as an athlete, and demonstrated no interest in what were regarded as the feminine pursuits of the day. At Beaumont High School, she played basketball, volleyball, tennis, baseball, and golf and was on the swim team. She read stories of the 1928 Olympics and was determined to compete in the next one.6

Her athletic prowess attracted the attention of Melvorne McCombs. The Colonel, as he was known, was hired by Employers Casualty to manage the insurance company’s athletic department, overseeing a slate of teams in the days when many semi-pro teams had their basis in local businesses. Didrikson would play on the Employers’ women’s basketball team, known as the Dallas Golden Cyclones, and get $75 a month for a clerical job with the company. She also lobbied McCombs to revive the company’s track team, and then proceeded to set—and repeatedly break—records in the javelin throw, high jump, baseball throw, and hurdles. In the 1932 AAU championships, she competed in an unprecedented eight events, winning five and qualifying for the Olympics in three: high jump, javelin, and the 80-meter hurdles. She had won the meet for Employers Casualty as the sole member of the team.7

In the Olympics, Didrikson set a record in the javelin throw, set a record in and won the 80-meter hurdles by an eyelash, and got the silver medal in the high jump.8 Rice, who was covering the Olympics, invited her to play golf with him and three other sports-writers, Paul Gallico,9 Westbrook Pegler and Braven Dyer. On her first shot off a tee (Rice said he set up the tee for her; she was apparently prepared to hit off the turf, though she played golf in high school), she drove the ball an estimated 240 yards—a glimpse of her skill to come, and her oft-repeated motto on the links: “You’ve got to loosen your girdle and let it rip.”10

Didrikson returned home to Texas to a hero’s welcome, first in Dallas, the home of Employers Casualty, and then in her hometown of Beaumont. She was driving a new Dodge—evidence that she had received some recompense for her athletic prowess, the Amateur Athletic Union ruled, stripping her of her amateur status.

Undaunted, Didrikson rode the wave of popularity her Olympic medals gave her. She performed on the vaudeville circuit, playing harmonica, and played semi-pro basketball in the winter of 1933-34. Her basketball team, called Babe Didrikson’s All-Americans, included Jackie Mitchell, who’d gained a small measure of fame for striking out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game with the Chattanooga Lookouts.11

Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis reportedly took a dim view of the stunt, voiding Mitchell’s contract because he viewed baseball as too strenuous a sport to be undertaken by women.12

Following the basketball season, Didrikson went south for Major League Baseball spring training. (One wonders if her time with Mitchell was an influence.) She stopped first in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to sharpen her pitching skills under the tutelage of future Hall of Famer Burleigh Grimes at the Ray Doan Baseball School.13

From there, she headed south, to Florida. Doan touted her as the first woman to play for a major league team when she pitched for the Athletics in a spring training game against the Dodgers on March 20.14 The Dodgers, best known at the time for their ineptitude, hit into a triple play with Babe pitching, “which was at least a variation of their celebrated eccentricities,” wrote the next day’s Cleveland Plain Dealer. “There were no enemy fly balls thudding into Dodger skulls or members of the cast attempting to steal third with the bases populated.”15

But the next day against the Red Sox on March 22, it appeared she got found out. Pitching for the Cardinals against Boston, she gave up three runs in an inning’s work, after Max Bishop, who led off for the Red Sox, told his teammates, “Count ten before you swing. This girl does not throw as fast as she runs.” Cardinals manager Frank Frisch was content to play along at first, but then yanked her, saying after the game (which the Cardinals won), “A woman’s place is in or around the home. I was glad to give this dame a lift, but there’s such a thing as carrying a thing too far.”16

On March 25, she pitched for the Indians against their Double-A farm team, the New Orleans Pelicans, in New Orleans. “Babe Didrickson [sic], Texas’ renowned girl athlete, pitched two scoreless innings against the New Orleans Pelicans, smacked out two line drives, one fair and one foul, and looked as if she had been playing baseball in fast company all her life,” wrote Gordon Cobbledick in the next day’s Plain Dealer.

Following her time at spring training, Didrikson signed with the House of David barnstorming baseball team. The House of David was a religious order that had been formed early in the twentieth century in Benton Harbor, Michigan. It encouraged physical fitness—as well as celibacy—and many of the men who were part of the commune played baseball, leading to a traveling team, which also featured major league players in an effort to grab publicity, including at various points Chief Bender and Grover Cleveland Alexander. (Its promoter was Doan, he of the baseball school.) The order was also known for men wearing long hair and flowing beards, and in a game, a woman in the stands asked Didrikson where her whiskers were. The Babe’s riposte? “I’m sittin’ on ’em, sister, just like you are.”18

Didrikson spent a summer playing with the House of David—and was handsomely paid, making $1,500 a month. It was estimated that she’d made $25,000 in the two years following her Olympic performance.19 Employers Casualty would always take her back, but she wanted to make a living playing sports—and she couldn’t do it playing baseball. (Although at that point, many professional ballplayers had offseason jobs as well.20)

Didrikson turned to one of the few sports where women could regularly compete: golf. But at that point, amateurism was still embraced, to the point where the men’s golf’s Grand Slam was the US and British Opens and the US and British Amateurs.

Didrikson practiced incessantly, learning the game and its rules, and won the Texas Amateur. However, the United States Golf Association determined that Didrikson had played professional sports—even if not golf—and her amateur status was revoked. Of course, there were always the thoughts among the country club set that Didrikson was a woman, but she was not a lady. As a child, she had tomboy tendencies. As an adult, she seemed indifferent to marriage and motherhood, the two primary options for young women of the era.21

That changed when she met George Zaharias at a PGA Tour event. Didrikson had started touring, playing golf exhibitions with Gene Sarazen (whom she called Squire in front of adoring and amused crowds). And she and Zaharias, a professional wrestler known as the Crying Greek from Cripple Creek, hit it off. Didrikson had been feminizing her rough-hewn image to begin with, and she and Zaharias had become a couple.22 They married on December 23, 1938, at the St. Louis home of wrestling promoter Tom Packs. Several members of the Cardinals attended the ceremony, including Joe Medwick and Leo Durocher, who served as Zaharias’ best man. (Durocher’s wife at the time, the former Grace Dozier, was the matron of honor for Didrikson. A fashion designer, she also made Didrikson’s wedding outfit, a powder blue dress and blue hat.)23

Through her husband, she met Fred Corcoran, a sports impresario who helped put professional men’s and women’s golf on the map. Corcoran was hired in 1936 as the tournament manager for the PGA, at the time an organization that promoted a series of winter tournaments in warm-weather locales to keep club pros sharp in the offseason.

But he’d also served as an adviser to individual athletes—including the new Mrs. Zaharias. Then as now, baseball players liked spending their off time on the golf course, and Corcoran developed contacts there as well. He’d set up a series of exhibitions between Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, both well into retirement from baseball,24 and was an unofficial agent for Ted Williams, having met the Splendid Splinter through his brother, who sold Williams a car.

Corcoran’s contacts in the world of baseball kept Babe Zaharias in and around ballparks and ballplayers. She’d tour ballparks regularly for exhibitions, taking a few cuts at the plate pregame and possibly pitching as well—maybe even hitting golf balls off home plate to try to clear the outfield fence.

In her autobiography, she recalled an exhibition at Yankee Stadium before a game. She showed off her golf prowess, then played third base during infield practice—and talked Joe DiMaggio into facing her at the plate.

I went over to the Yankee dugout to get him. “Come on, Joe,” I said. “I’m going to pitch to you.” He didn’t want to come, but I took him by the arm, and I grabbed a bat and handed it to him. I walked Joe out to home plate and bowed low.

All I was afraid of was that I might hit him with a pitch, or that he might hit me with a batted ball. ‘Whatever you do, please don’t line one back at me!’ I said to him just before I went to the mound. I did hit him right in the ribs with one pitch, although I don’t think it hurt him. But I guess he was being careful about his batting. He skied a few, and then finally he took a big swing and missed and sat down.25

Corcoran even got Didrikson to visit Williams in Florida, where they put on a hitting exhibition—golf balls, not baseballs. Williams outdrove her, but not by much, and once, when he hit a worm-burner off the tee, Didrikson joked, “Better run those grounders out, Ted! There may be an overthrow.”26

Ultimately, Didrikson continued to perform at exhibitions, but was able to regain her amateur golf status in 1943. (It was possible to do so with the USGA by not playing professionally for three years.) She then won 14 straight tournaments, but had her sights on bigger things.

In 1949, Didrikson, Corcoran and several other women golfers gathered to form the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association. Patty Berg was the inaugural president, and she was succeeded by Didrikson. For the tour’s first four years, Didrikson was also the leading money winner. Between golf and endorsements, Didrikson was making $100,000 a year.

She was the most famous woman athlete in the world, and in 1950 was named the Best Woman Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century by the Associated Press, which would eventually name her female athlete of the year six times—five for golf and one after her Olympic performance in 1932.27

In May 1952, her hometown doctor, W.E. Tatum, performed surgery on Didrikson, repairing a strangulated femoral hernia. That fall, Didrikson started to tire in golf matches. She seemed sicker, her husband recalled, and was passing blood. But she deferred seeing a doctor, telling George, “Just let me get a good hot bath and a rubdown, and I’ll be ready to bust loose again in the morning.”

The following year, after winning her namesake tournament in her hometown of Beaumont, she eventually made it back to Dr. Tatum, who diagnosed her with colon cancer—and noted that her delay in visiting the doctor was a fateful one. “Well, that’s the rub of the greens,” she said laconically.28

Didrikson underwent surgery, including a colostomy. George Zaharias said she made sure her clubs were in her recovery room, saying, “I want to be able to see them every day because I’m going to use them again.”29

And she did. She was on the course competitively in 10 months, and won the 1954 Women’s US Open. Not only that, in an era where cancer was feared as a death sentence (and some patients weren’t even told they had cancer30), Didrikson became not just a visible high-profile patient, but one who was open about her diagnosis, urging others to get regular checkups. She made PSAs for cancer organizations and started her own foundation. And she visited children in cancer wards. “She gave people hope,” Patty Berg said.31

The following year, she underwent surgery for a ruptured disc, and doctors discovered the cancer had spread to her spine. There was no coming back this time, and early on September 27, 1956, Didrikson died.

Her career earnings on the LPGA Tour were $66,237, with wins in 72 tournaments.32 But that was an era when professional golfers—both male and female—used tournament wins as a selling point for endorsements, where the real money was. Beyond her pro golf career—her second act—she was hailed as one of the greatest female athletes ever, with skills in basketball, track and field and yes, baseball. At her funeral, the Rev. C. A. Woytek read “The Answer,” a poem written by Grantland Rice, who’d died two years earlier, writing up until the very end:

The loafer has no comeback and the

quitter no reply

When the Anvil Chorus echoes, as it will,

against the sky;

But there’s one quick answer ready

that will wrap them in a hood:

Make good 

 

On June 24, 1972, Bernice Gera became the first woman to umpire a professional baseball game. Immediately after the game ended, she quit. She fought baseball for five years for the chance to umpire a professional game. Why fight so long for an umpiring career, just to give it up after one game?

We think of pioneers as being stoic, strong, and preternaturally gifted at the thing they are pursuing. Although she was the first woman umpire, Gera’s story isn’t really about her determination to become an umpire. She was just a woman standing in front of organized baseball, asking it to accept her.

BELONGING AND BASEBALL

Bernice Gera was born Bernice Marie Shiner on June 15, 1931, in Ernest, Pennsylvania. Her parents divorced when she was two years old and abandoned their five children. Bernice and her siblings moved frequently growing up, being passed from relative to relative. Baseball became an anchor for her throughout her childhood tumult.

“Wanting to belong is one of the most powerful things in the world,” she said. “That’s why sports are so popular. Just rooting for a team makes you feel part of it.”1 The first team she wanted to join was her older brothers’ team. She got a chance when she was eight years old. One of the players didn’t show up for a game and the boys reluctantly allowed her to fill in for him in the outfield. One of her brothers, Henry Shiner, said years later, “Eventually after we saw her hit, we let her on the team. She became quite a hitter. Then everybody wanted her.”2

There weren’t any opportunities for her to play baseball as she got older, so she began playing softball. After graduating from high school in Erath, Louisiana, in 1949, she married Louis Thomas Jr. and moved to New York. She worked as a secretary, but baseball was never far from her mind. She said of balancing her work and baseball life, “No matter where I worked as a typist, I would always be more interested in what was happening to the Dodgers. Quite a few times I was almost fired because of it. Instead of cranking out a letter, I’d have the drawer of my desk open, listening to the Dodgers on the radio.”3

Her childhood gave her a lifelong love for baseball and imbued in her a desire to help children. After her day job, she taught kids to play baseball in parks and community centers. She participated in events to benefit children’s’ charities. During these events, she would get a chance to flex her own baseball muscle, putting on hitting demonstrations with male baseball players, including major leaguers Roger Maris, Cal Abrams, and Sid Gordon.4

A newspaper in Louisiana printed a picture of her with Roger Maris, following a demonstration they participated in at Coney Island in 1961.5 Several newspapers crowed that she could hit a baseball 350 feet.6 One anointed her “The world’s foremost female baseball player.”7 She hit the newspapers again in 1966 and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not in 1967, after she was banned from the concessions at Rockaway and Coney Island for cleaning out the prizes in the throwing booths. Her prowess won more than 300 stuffed animals, which she donated to children’s hospitals and charities. “Everything I do in baseball is aimed at helping children,” she explained.8

At some point she divorced Thomas. In 1964, she married Steve Gera, a photographer, and settled in Jackson Heights, Queens. Before their marriage, he didn’t know much about baseball, but Bernice changed that. “We watch it and talk about it night and day,” she said of his conversion into a baseball fan.9

Gera fostered an intense desire to be part of baseball. She sent inquiries to every major league team, asking for a job. Every team declined. “At first I just tried to get a job with any club, doing anything,” she said. “I would have sold peanuts if they wanted me to. But the answer was negative all the way around. I waited three months for one team to answer. And would you believe that I stayed up nights praying for it to come through? When they said no, I decided to become an umpire.”10

BECOMING AN UMPIRE

At 2 o’clock one morning in 1966, Bernice Gera sat up in bed. She had been feeling dejected about not finding a job in baseball, when it suddenly hit her. She would become an umpire. Steve, she said, “choked on his coffee when I told him the next morning.”11

The list of women umpires before Gera was short. The first professional female umpire was Amanda Clement, who worked semi-pro games in the early 1900s. In 1943, the National Baseball Congress, a semi-pro league, hired a woman named Lorraine Heinisch to umpire one game of their national tournament.12 Otherwise, baseball officiating remained a male bastion.

Her first obstacle was to get into an umpire school. She applied to, and was accepted at, the Al Somers School for Umpires in 1967. Somers had interpreted her first name as “Bernie.” When she called to ask a question, he realized his mistake. Gera said, “He blew his cool. He told me there never had been a woman in his umpire school, and there never would be.”13

Gera was finally accepted at the National Sports Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida. She was initially dismissed because the school didn’t have any accommodations for women. She called them, agreed to live away from the school, and begged them to accept her. Eventually, she was accepted to the academy.14

Her acceptance into umpire school launched a thousand sexist newspaper columns from sportswriters objecting to a woman breaking into baseball’s masculine stronghold. Many writers tried their hand at fiction and imagined what baseball would look like with a woman umpiring. One example from Will Grimsley with the Associated Press imagines Gera arriving late because she had been at the hairdresser. Then, she admonishes Carl Yastrzemski for cursing after a strike call, reminding him he is in mixed company. She blows kisses to the crowd, pauses the game to re-apply lipstick, and gets all the ball and strike calls wrong.15

Red Smith wondered about, and guessed at, her measurements.16 Lance Evans, sports editor of The Express, fretted about how ball players could possibly keep their eyes on the ball when the batter “is going to have to start looking at the curves that are attractively arranged behind him.”17 One of the more bizarre entries came from Dick West who, in a UPI wire story that ran in papers across the country, addressed the emergence of a woman umpire by imagining a pre-game interview with William Shakespeare. In a question-and-answer format the Bard commented on Gera’s foray into umpiring and offered a little advice to managers dealing with a woman umpire: “That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”18

In June 1967, Gera began umpire school. After her first week in the six-week program, the Miami News sent a reporter to write a feature on her. The story paints a picture of Bernice as being somewhat naive, but quickly learning the umpiring trade. Her instructor, Jim Finley, had nothing but praise for her abilities and said, “I’ll certainly recommend her for a professional job.”19

The story didn’t offer a perspective on the difficulties Gera was facing. Umpiring school for her wasn’t just about mastering the rules of baseball or learning how to position herself for plays. She was the only umpire training at the baseball school, which made her doubly alone, as both a woman and an umpire. After two weeks of driving 50 miles round trip each day, she was given permission to live in a dormitory on campus with about 40 male baseball players and coaches. At night, the men would throw beer cans and bottles at her door. She tried to tough it out but spent the last week of her session living off campus to escape the torment.20

While living away from the school, she had to put her umpiring gear on in the parking lot, trying to shield herself in the car. “Once a bunch of men stood on the hoods of their cars to take pictures.”21 They also made learning difficult for her on the field. She said, “When I first started in umpire school, I used to just say ‘strike’, but the men went prancing around saying, ‘Oh my goodness, a strike!’ So I learned to bawl it out: STEE-RIKE!”22 The players and umpires hired to assist in games would catcall her and badger her. “Other umpires and players ask me to go out after the games,” she told a reporter in 1969. “Some are just trying to shake me up. But if an umpire asks me before the game and I refuse, I worry about them not working with me on the field.”23

“The first day at umpire’s school was the roughest I ever had,” she recalls. “They put me out there in a game before I knew what to do. The kids put six or seven balls in play and they would try to hit me with the warmup balls when my back was turned.”24 Players would tease her after calls. She recalls runners winking at her after she called them safe and saying, “Bad call. I was out.”25

“I got all the curse words in the book,” Gera said. “And a lot not in the book. Four letter words. They didn’t want me on the field. It all hinged on whether I could take it. I took it. But after, I’d go home and cry like a baby.”26 She got through school by repeating her umpiring mantra to herself: “Keep cool all the time.” “Things changed when I learned what I was doing, but there still was an awful lot of resentment.”27

The men in umpire school weren’t the only hostilities she encountered. The chest protector also became a point of contention. Due to her small stature, she needed to wear a chest protector that was strapped to her, rather than holding one in front. But the chest protectors were all made with men in mind. Finding one that would fit passably was a battle, and one that male sportswriters spent a lot of time and column inches discussing.

She graduated from umpire school in July 1967. All the minor leagues were underway, so while she looked for umpiring work for the 1968 season, she began a series of umpiring jobs to get experience outside of school.

Her first appearance was at the National Baseball Congress Tournament—the same tournament that hired Lorraine Heinisch in 1943—that August. The tournament organizers saw the publicity benefit of having her umpire a game, so they brought her in for the opening game and promoted her appearance. She was assigned to work third base on a full four-umpire crew and only had to make a few calls before her duties were done. Later that summer she would umpire for the American Legion, Little League, and the semi-pro Bridgeton Invitational Tournament.

Between her graduation and first umpiring gig, she appeared on The Tonight Show, The Johnny Carson Show, and as a guest of Joe Garagiola, the former major league catcher turned TV host, on The Today Show. It was clear the public was fascinated by the woman barging into baseball.

THE LEGAL FIGHT BEGINS

With an umpire school diploma in hand and umpiring game experience under her belt, Bernice Gera applied for jobs in professional baseball. She wrote to Ed Doherty, the head of umpire development.28 When she did not receive a response, she wrote again. She never heard back, so she contacted the Commissioner of Baseball, William D. Eckert. She wrote to him, then followed up by phone. Eckert simply washed his hands of the situation, telling her Doherty oversaw umpires.29

Having been rejected by baseball before, Gera was determined to succeed this time. She knew they were ignoring her because she was a woman. She decided to take her case to the courts. In April of 1968 she retained the services of Mario Biaggi, who would be elected to represent the Bronx in the US House of Representatives later that year. He filed the case with the New York State Division of Human Rights on April 30, 1968. The complaint charged that Commissioner Eckert “stated in words or substance and by his acts and his comportment that he objects to a female umpire in organized baseball.”30

The Commissioner’s office responded with a statement that the Commissioner did not handle the hiring of umpires and that she must contact the president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minor leagues) or the American and National League presidents to seek employment as an umpire. In June 1968, the Human Rights Division found Commissioner Eckert not guilty of discriminatory hiring practices because he was not directly in charge of umpire employment.31

The legal action touched off another round of sports columns. Bill Bondurant, sports editor of the Fort Lauderdale News, begs in a column titled “Baseball Threatened by Female,” “Please, Bernice, don’t sue. What have men left to themselves? You women are in our saloons and on our golf courses. You wear trousers just like ours and some crazy guy on television keeps offering you cigars. Let us keep baseball. It isn’t much, we know, but it’s almost all we have left.”32

An unattributed item in many papers opined, “If women started umpiring, players might feel constrained to start acting like gentlemen…Baseball can do without that. It needs more rhubarbs and catcalls, more discontent and threats of mayhem; it needs that old Gas House Gang spirit. But with a lady umpire…?”33

Bill Clark wrote in a column that ran in the Montana Standard, “Suppose you had to put the run on Durocher. You could, huh? Baby, you don’t know what rhubarb is til you’ve sampled his recipe. And you couldn’t exercise the time-honored feminine prerogative and change your mind every two minutes.”34

Bob Quincy suggested in The Charlotte News, “If Bernice wants to associate with baseball players, the least she can do is shower with them. This, in itself, would bring about a speed-up of the game. The real fun would develop in the locker room.”35

Bill Hodge, sports editor of The Wichita Eagle argued, “Sometimes a little discrimination is a good thing…They need a woman umpire in the major leagues right now like our barber shop needs a male manicurist.”36

In the Chicago Tribune David Condon whined that “Mrs. Gera is entitled to invade the domains of umpires only after the courts rule that Gale Sayers, Ron Santo, Tony Skoronski, and Ziggy Czarobski are fairly entitled to employment as Playboy Bunnies.”37

The Star Tribune’s Charles M. Guthrie went to a dark place: “If women ever become umpires it will mark the doom of baseball…the game will get pallid and fans will stay home.” An unattributed item in the El Paso Herald-Post agrees, “Should ladies take up position behind home plate, the game perhaps would survive. But it would no longer be recognizable as baseball.”39

It was simply unfair to men for a woman to become an umpire, argued John P. “Moon” Clark in The Daily Republican, “Calling strikes and fouls and balls has always been a man’s job because he never gets a chance to do anything like that in his own home. Umpiring baseball games has always been left to a man. It gives him the one big chance to take over and boss the field, so to speak.”40

While the columnists typed their sexism, Gera contacted every minor league to seek employment. After receiving either a rejection or no response from each, she zeroed in on the New York-Pennsylvania League, a Class A league close to home. The NY-P League president Vincent M. McNamara had rejected her request by writing that she would not be considered for a job because the ballparks did not have appropriate dressing rooms for her to use. Furthermore, in baseball “tempers sometimes reach the boiling point” that results in language that “beyond the hearing of the spectators, is of a nature that one would not relish having one’s mother or sister or any lady exposed to.”41

Doherty, the aforementioned head of umpire development, offered the defense that she was ineligible for hire because the umpire development program required “applicants be 21 to 35 years old, a minimum of 5-10 tall, and weigh at least 170 pounds, with perfect vision of course.”42 At the time, Gera was 37 years old, 5’2″, and weighed about 125 pounds. These were an odd pair of reasonings to avoid hiring a woman. McNamara’s seemed to be a clear-cut case of gender discrimination and Doherty’s would require a robust justification. It would have been an easier path to simply dismiss her qualifications or give her a tryout and say she didn’t measure up.

The tide in the broader sports world was beginning to change at the same time. In February 1969, Diane Crump became the first woman jockey to ride in a pari-mutuel (gambling) race. It required track officials to threaten suspensions to any male jockeys who boycotted the race, and a police escort from the jockey’s quarters to the paddock at Hialeah Park in Florida.43 Later that month, Barbara Jo Rubin became the first woman jockey to win a race. The walls were coming down, but baseball was determined to brace them.

THE FIRST CONTRACT

With McNamara’s rejection, Biaggi went back to the Human Rights Division with a new complaint on March 19, 1969. A hearing in the case had been postponed several times when McNamara contacted Gera in June 1969 to offer her the opportunity to formally apply for a job. He warned her that all the umpires had been hired for the season, so she wouldn’t be considered until 1970. Then, McNamara changed his mind and sent her a contract and offered her employment for the last month of the short season.

Gera found out she was being offered the job as she watched Apollo 11 land on the moon on July 20, 1969.44 The league usually used two-man umpire crews, but she would be added as a third umpire. She began to make plans to head upstate with her husband and a few friends for her professional debut.

If it seems like that happened too easily to be true, it’s because it was. Later court documents indicated that McNamara only sent her a contract to take some of the pressure off himself. He said “he felt that he had to execute the contract despite her lack of qualifications knowing that [Phil] Piton (the President of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues) would have to make the final decision.”45

On August 1, 1969, Gera was supposed to make her umpiring debut. The sports pages ran stories about Smokey Drolet considering legal action after being denied an opportunity to drive in the Indy 50046 and Elinor Kaine fighting to be allowed in the press box to cover a football game as a reporter.47 But instead of carrying the story of Gera’s debut, they broke the news that she would not be making history after all. Her contract had not been accepted by the National Association.

“I disapproved her contract with the NY-P League,” Phil Piton told reporters. “I don’t wish to comment further at this time.”48 McNamara didn’t express any remorse for the change of events. “I’m not the final word. Mr. Piton only exercised the duties of his office and acted within his right. It’s his job to uphold professional baseball and the national agreement…This is professional sports, and in professional sports you have your ups and downs and you have to take a few lumps along the way.”49

Gera was dejected. “I just can’t get to first base… It’s a strike out, but I will come up again. The game’s not over.”50

THE LEGAL BATTLE CONTINUES

The latest twist in Gera’s quest caught the ear of Representative Samuel Stratton of New York. Incensed at what he saw as clear discrimination, he told reporters he would request that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the US Department of Justice look into the disapproval of her contract.51 He warned on the House floor that baseball’s refusal to end sex discrimination “could have devastating economic effects on baseball itself.”52

Gera’s lawyer, Mario Biaggi, also a member of Congress, threatened further investigations into the sport’s business: “Due to the conduct of baseball in this matter, which tends to be illegal, there might be other areas that also are illegal.”53

Still another member of Congress got in on the action. Rep. Martha W. Griffiths, who championed antidiscrimination laws based on sex (and would introduce the Equal Rights Amendment to the House), joined the chorus of powerful voices in support of Gera. At a press conference, Gera was asked if she could handle a Casey Stengel or a Leo Durocher, famously grumpy major league managers. Griffiths answered the question for her, snapping, “The real question is whether Casey or Leo could hold their own against her. Baseball is protecting them, and losing a chance to increase attendance and make some money.”54

Attendance had become a big concern in baseball, as the NFL in particular, began to grow in popularity.55 Baseball resisted changing with the times and burrowed into tradition rather than evolve. Gera was a threat to tradition, so rather than admit baseball needed to change, critics claimed she was out to destroy baseball. In response, Gera could only reiterate, “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt baseball. All I want is a chance.”56

Even newspaper columnists had to reluctantly admit that the law was not on the side of baseball remaining exclusively male. But the economic argument, they felt, was on their side. Particularly in the minor leagues, with small budgets and the line between success and financial failure always thin, how could teams take on the added expense of providing appropriate accommodations for a woman?

Bob Whittemore, a columnist for the Oneonta Star, pointed out that “special arrangements were made for her to travel, for her to have a private room instead of sharing one, for special showers and locker facilities in each park. And for a three-person umpiring team with which she was to work…It stands to reason, therefore, that the additional expense involved with Mrs. Gera’s becoming an umpire in the NY-P league could mean the difference between each club’s writing with red or black ink in their ledgers.”57

Stratton wrote to the paper after reading Whitte-more’s column. In addressing the problems of economics, he said those same issues were used to discriminate against women from World War II all the way up to the women jockeys. “It may cost a bit more to end discrimination, either by color or sex. But in the long run it is worth it, and it also happens to be the law of the land.”58

For Gera, something that had begun as a way for her to be involved in baseball had become much bigger. Women’s organizations began to take notice. They sent her support, and asked for hers in return. Gera, however, wasn’t interested in officially joining. “I want to win this without marches. I do not believe in it. I love baseball too much to give it a bad name,” she said.59 “I don’t agree with them on a lot of things. I don’t believe in putting men down.”60

Gera’s hearing before the Human Rights Appeal Board was postponed several times and it wasn’t until April 1970 that the case began to move forward again. The National Association argued that she was not eligible for employment as an umpire because she did not meet the required 5’10” and 170 pound size. The Appeal Board ruled that the physical size requirements were arbitrary and directed the National Association to revise the standards within three months. Then, they were to reconsider Gera based on the revision.

But the National Association continued to fight the case. It appealed the case up the legal ladder to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York. There, the National Association argued in February 1971 that she “wouldn’t be hired even if she were a man.”61 They also said the umpire school she attended wasn’t accredited at the time she was a student.

A month after those arguments, Gera announced that she was filing a $25 million lawsuit against organized baseball, separate from the complaint to the Human Rights Division. Biaggi told a press conference that baseball had “virtually destroyed her career as a baseball umpire.”62 The suit named Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn, the New York-Pennsylvania Baseball League and Vincent M. McNamara, its president; and the National Association of Professional Baseball leagues and its president, Phillip Piton.

Then 39 years old, Gera told reporters, “I’ll keep trying until I’m 80.”63

In April 1971, the Appellate Division issued an opinion in the case of New York State Division of Human Rights v. New York-Pennsylvania Professional Baseball League. The appeals court confirmed the previous order of the Human Rights Appeal Board that organized baseball had indeed discriminated against Gera because of her sex.

Once again, the NY-P League and the National Association appealed the ruling. On November 22, 1971, both sides submitted written arguments. Baseball continued to argue that Gera was not discriminated against because of her sex, although they still argued baseball was no place for a woman. It was mainly her physical size and because she had demonstrated a “proclivity for publicity” which made her “temperamentally unfit for professional umpiring.”64

She certainly was a fixture in the press. Reporters called constantly, and she patiently sat through interview after interview, explaining her qualifications and her deep desire to work in baseball. She was also hired for many speaking appearances. She said she always donated her speaking fees to help kids in need. But baseball wasn’t concerned about her financial compensation for speaking, nor did it matter to them that a woman fighting the patriarchal baseball machine was media fodder, whether she wanted the publicity or not. Her very presence in the media showcased baseball’s indefensible stance that they were purposely keeping women out of the game, so they had to turn it around on her.

On January 13, 1971, the appeals court affirmed the order of the lower court that baseball was engaging in sex discrimination and needed to revise its physical standards for umpires.65 Baseball had twice appealed the ruling of the Human Rights Division, and twice been denied. They still had the option of continuing to appeal, but decided it wasn’t worth it.

In April 1972, the NY-P League sent her a one-year contract. This time, the contract was approved by the new National Association President Henry J. Peters. She would make her umpiring debut when the New York-Pennsylvania League season opened in June, a week after she turned 41, and nearly five years after she graduated from umpire school.

ONE FIGHT ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS

“All through this case my heart was broken. I’ve always wondered if this was worth it,” Gera said, reflecting on the legal fight.66 “You’ve come a long way, baby, I tell that to myself. But it hasn’t been easy.”67

Although she was happy to have won the opportunity to finally become an umpire, she was exhausted. “It’s cost me about $30,000 in income I never made,” she told reporters. “I had been doing secretarial work until I started umpiring, so that’s five years at a minimum of $5,000 a year, plus my phone bills and other expenses. My legal fees I don’t know yet. Mario Biaggi, the Bronx congressman, took the case because nobody else would…right now I’m broke financially and I won’t get rich as an umpire.”68

Gera said her hair had turned gray, and she had lost patches of hair from the stress of fighting baseball. She tried to be fair to baseball when talking to the press, saying, “They were strong in their beliefs that baseball was and is always going to be a man’s game. I believed just as strongly that baseball is our national pastime, and that means for women as well.”69

She didn’t have much time to dwell on that as the game approached. In addition to constant interview requests, Gera received stacks of letters every day. Many people were writing to send her support, others were young girls who wanted to work in baseball someday too. And then, there were the telephone calls. She would answer the phone and hear, “Don’t you dare take the field.”70

She worried about whether the other umpires would accept her. “Umpiring is a team job. I keep asking myself, ‘Are the guys going to work with me as a team?’ They can hang you if they want to.”71 She was confident, however, in her ability to handle managers and players. “I’ve asked for the job and feel I’m capable of handling myself. I’m not afraid to thumb a manager or player if they get abusive.”72

She was assigned to umpire the opening game between the Geneva Rangers and the Auburn Phillies on June 23, 1972, at Shuron Park in Geneva, New York. Geneva sold 3,000 tickets, a sellout, for the opening game after her assignment was announced. She was set to umpire games in Williamsport and Oneonta after her stint in Geneva, and those parks saw increased ticket sales as well.73

On June 21, Gera was invited to attend the seasonopening welcoming dinner for Geneva. She gave a short speech, saying to the crowd, “I’m grateful to God, grateful to baseball and Friday night is going to be the happiest moment of my life.”74 One of her sisters and her husband, Steve, had accompanied her to Geneva, planning to spend a week of vacation watching her umpire games. “I’m happy for Bernice. It’s been a long struggle for her. She loves baseball so much and wanted so much to be a part of it that she went for umpiring. It isn’t going to be a bed of roses but I feel she’ll make the grade,” Steve proudly predicted.75

The attention was starting to feel a little overwhelming. “I’m trying not to get overly excited,” she said, “but NBC is here now, and CBS and ABC are coming, plus all those reporters. One of them told me I’ll be getting more coverage than President Nixon.”76 (And much like Bernice, even more media scrutiny was on its way for Nixon; burglars had just been caught breaking into the Watergate complex.)

On June 23, the morning of the game, Gera attended an umpires’ meeting. Although she had fought for five years to get there, the meeting brought the enormity of the remaining journey crashing down on her. She said later, “I could sense their resentment. They acted like they didn’t want me around baseball. It was that old male chauvinism once more.”77

After five years, she was tired of fighting baseball, tired of trying to convince baseball that she belonged. After the six hours with the other umpires, she decided she was done fighting. She felt overwhelmed with frustration and the barriers that still firmly stood, even though she had legally knocked them down. “I could beat them in the courts, but how do you change peoples’ attitudes?” she wondered.78

Unfortunately, her historical moment would have to wait a day. Remnants of Hurricane Agnes (then the costliest hurricane in US history) had been ravaging the eastern US. The Geneva area was heavily affected by rain and flooding. The opener was delayed and would be made up the next day in a doubleheader.

Friday night in her motel room, she heard men outside drinking and causing a commotion, talking about the woman umpire. If she had any doubts about her decision to stop umpiring after the first game, this drove it home. “I wasn’t scared off,” she explained. “I was just disgusted. I was fed up with it.”79

THE GAME

The next morning, Gera packed her bags and considered not working the game at all, “but friends and relatives talked me into it because I’d come that far.”80 Her umpiring partner, 24-year-old Doug Hartmayer, picked her up at the motel so they could drive to the game together. Gera said she tried to discuss signals and the game with him, but he refused to speak with her.81

At the ballpark, she declined pre-game interviews with the menagerie of press in attendance. Several reporters noted that she was visibly nervous before taking the field. Assigned to work the bases, Gera ran out to her place on the field as the sellout crowd cheered. A group of girls in the bleachers held up a banner made from a bedsheet with “Right on, Bernice” printed on it.82 Television cameras and photographers were squeezed in down the foul lines.

Because of the doubleheader, the games were each scheduled to go only seven innings. Although she was nervous, the first three innings of the game went fairly smoothly. She made a handful of calls at first and second base. Each call was cheered by the crowd. So far, it was a benign beginning.

With one out in the top of the fourth inning, the fears of Bernice and the warnings about allowing women into baseball converged. With a runner on second base, the batter hit a line drive to the second baseman. The second baseman threw to the shortstop covering the base and caught the baserunner off the base. Forgetting the force play, Gera signaled safe. Then, realizing her mistake reversed her call and indicated the runner was out.

Auburn Phillies manager Nolan Campbell came storming onto the field for an explanation. Gera told him she had made a mistake and forgotten about the force in effect for the runner going back to second base. “He came yelling,” Gera said later, “but he didn’t curse me. I let him go on because he was right, no question about it. I made a mistake and I admitted it.”83

“That’s two mistakes you’ve made!” Campbell yelled. According to Campbell, he followed up with, “The first one was putting on your uniform.” Gera remembers it differently. In an interview a few days after the game, she said he yelled, “The first mistake was you should have stayed in the kitchen peeling potatoes.”84

Gera immediately ejected him from the game, explaining, “Then he was judging me as a woman, instead of as an official.”85 Campbell exploded, “Why throw me out because you made a mistake?” he shouted. He refused to leave the field and stalked behind her as she went back to her post on the first base line. “You’re not only a woman, but you’ve got a quick temper. You can’t run somebody out of a game just giving you a little guff.”86 He eventually stomped off to the dugout, refusing to go into the clubhouse as he was supposed to. “I was going to make her come and throw me out,” he explained later.87

Throughout the dispute, Gera’s partner Hartmayer stayed behind home plate and did not intervene. “That was her problem,” he shrugged later.88 After Campbell refused to go into the clubhouse, Hartmayer finally intervened. His only involvement in the dispute was to put an arm around Campbell and assist him in leaving the game.

After the excitement of the ejection, the game went on. After Gera called out a Geneva baserunner for oversliding the base, she drew complaints from Geneva manager Bill Haywood. Then, after calling a runner safe at first base, the Auburn pitching coach, who had taken over for Campbell, gave her an earful. She was ridiculed for not understanding the procedures for assisting with pitching changes.89

If she had ever doubted her decision to only umpire one game, Campbell’s comment about peeling potatoes and her umpiring partner’s refusal to work with her must have reinforced the decision. When the game ended with a 4-1 Geneva win, she was ready to leave baseball.

She walked straight off the field and found Geneva general manager Joseph McDonough. She told him she was done. “I’ve just resigned from baseball. I’m sorry, Joe.”90 She hurried out of the ballpark, into a waiting car, and away she went, her umpiring career over.

As she drove back to Queens, the ballpark in Geneva was thrown into chaos. McDonough went to her motel to intercept her, only to discover she had already checked out. An announcement was made to the shocked crowd before the second game of the doubleheader. An umpire happened to be in the stands and agreed to work the bases so the game could go on.91 In the middle of the first inning, the game was postponed when it began to rain. It was just as well because all the press cared about was figuring out what had happened to Gera.

Auburn manager Campbell was eager to talk about her game. “I hardly did anything. I used ‘hell’ once or twice and I was out of the game. I told her ‘you’re not only a woman, but you have a quick trigger, too’. They should never have let her in the league,” he pontificated. “Women don’t have the strength to withstand the pressure. This is a man’s game and it always will be.”92

Campbell, who had been ejected nine times the previous season, commented to Frank Dolson of the Philadelphia Inquirer (who referred to him as “Noley” in his column), “I hope nobody blames me for her quitting. I think she made up her mind, the first person who came out, she was going to run him. It had to be me, that’s all. I sure as hell don’t want to be made the scapegoat.”93

Gera’s partner, Hartmayer, couldn’t wait to chat with reporters about her performance. “It didn’t surprise me that she quit. I don’t even know why I want to be an umpire,” he joked, “let alone why a woman would. She was just scared to death.”94

“It wasn’t a hard game to umpire, really. You could see she just didn’t have it. I’ve been chewed out more than that in Little League,” Hartmayer said, referring to Campbell’s tirade.95 “Saying you’ve made a mistake is very unethical in our profession. That’s one thing you never do. You never reverse yourself,” he chided, then charitably added, “Otherwise I don’t want to say too much about her game. I don’t want to come down too hard on her.”96

In response to her quitting, the newspaper columns shifted away from hand wringing over a woman daring to break into baseball into hand wringing over the ways she had harmed the women’s movement. The Journal News wrote, “The battle for acceptance was not finished, but just beginning, and she let down a lot of people—not only women—by not persisting through the main event.”97

The Charlotte Observer was disappointed, writing:

…she carried the hopes of many who feel that women deserve the right to work in any job where the qualifications are, or ought to be, based on ability, not sex. She was a pathfinder, a barrier-breaker…

To the skeptics, all she proved was her own instability. She showed the world a quitter and gave those who question the emotional capabilities of women who try to work in a “man’s world” more ammunition to use in their resistance to equal rights for women.

Many people take their baseball games too seriously to pardon Mrs. Gera’s erratic behavior. We only hope they do not equate her umpiring antics with the more serious and significant advances being made by women in business and politics.98

Other papers trotted out the examples of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby to exploit and distort their struggles in order to illustrate Gera’s failures and place the blame for failing to single-handedly change society on her own weakness. The Star Tribune wrote, “We wish Mrs. Gera hadn’t given up so quickly. After all, if Jackie Robinson had quit under pressure in his rookie season, think of what a serious blow this would have been to the efforts of black players to break the Jim Crow tradition in baseball.”99

There was no introspection, no contemplation over how baseball could be more welcoming to people who weren’t allowed inside. Vinny DiTrani of The Record was typical of those who brought up Robinson. “There are a lot of deep-rooted prejudices in baseball, just as in any institution. They have to be eliminated, of course, but it takes time.”100

Time, it only takes time. And, apparently, a pioneer willing to endure abuse while time ticks by.

The week after her game, Gera finally spoke to the press. She gave her side of what happened in Geneva, from the umpires meeting to the confrontation with Campbell, and admitted she had planned to quit after the first game that day.

She tried to explain the exhaustion she felt and the way her fight against baseball had utterly worn her down. At one point she said, “If they don’t want women in baseball, women should not go to the games.”101 After having disparaged the women’s movement for so long, she had decided to become involved with the National Organization for Women (NOW). Her comment raised the question: was she calling for women to boycott baseball games? “Every woman should think for herself,” was all she said in reply.102

“Baseball has fought me for years,” she said. “In my heart I feel they have truly gone out of their way to hurt me because I am a woman.”103

“People have been calling me a quitter, but if I was a quitter I never would have fought it so long,” she declared. “I’m just frustrated and disappointed in baseball. My whole life has been baseball… I would have shined the ball players’ shoes if they had let me.”104

“In a way, they succeeded in getting rid of me,” she said. “But in a way, I’ve succeeded too. I’ve broken the barrier. It can be done. I don’t care what people say now. People haven’t gone through what I’ve gone through. You have to experience it to understand it.”105

WHAT CAME NEXT

Baseball may have been smug at running her out of the game, but even in the wake of Gera’s resignation from baseball there was simmering hope. The day before she became the first woman umpire in professional baseball history, Richard Nixon signed the Higher Education Amendments of 1972, which included the Title IX legislation that prohibited sex discrimination at publicly funded institutions, opening the door for more opportunities for girls and women to participate in sports.

That same weekend, the San Diego Padres had a woman manager in the dugout. Marcia Malkus was the high bidder in a charity auction, winning the chance to manage for one inning. The team scored two runs against the San Francisco Giants before she handed the team back to regular manager Don Zimmer. Zimmer confirmed that Malkus actually made all the decisions during the first inning, saying, “Women usually do.”106

Bernice Gera would likely disagree with that statement.

Two years later, in 1974, Lanny Moss was hired as the general manager of the Portland Mavericks, becoming the first woman general manager in professional baseball. Several other women were hired for the same position in her wake. Also, in 1974, lawsuits on behalf of Maria Pepe and Kim Green opened Little League Baseball to girls. In 1975, Christine Wren became the next woman to umpire in professional baseball, making her debut about three years after Gera’s game.

Wren was initially derisive of Gera, saying, “I have heard about this Bernice—I don’t know her last name and I don’t care to know. She dragged baseball through every court she could find and when she got a job she umpired one game and then quit. I feel I have a lot to overcome because of what she did.”107

However, Wren eventually hit the same wall as Gera. “In a roundabout way, it was made clear to me there was no path (to the majors),” she told the Seattle Times in 2020. “They were afraid of it. Baseball was afraid of it. They were afraid it wouldn’t look good.”108

For the men in baseball who were afraid an avalanche of women umpires would follow and feminize the sport, that hasn’t happened. After Wren, Pam Postema took a run at it. Postema spent 13 years umpiring in the minor leagues. She became the first woman to umpire a major league spring training game in 1982. In 1989, her career ended due to the time limits on umpires working without being called up to the major leagues. A handful of other women umpires followed, but only one, Ria Cortesio, made it as far as the AA level or as far as working a major league spring training game. Beating discrimination in baseball—and else-where–isn’t as easy as simply winning a court ruling.

LIFE AFTER UMPIRING

Gera always insisted that everything she did in baseball, she did to help children. Her last umpiring gig was not the painful game in Geneva. It was a charity softball game in Monticello, New York, that featured former Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio. It may have felt like a fitting end; she would never umpire in the major leagues, but she got to call balls and strikes for one of the all-time greats.

Her lifelong desire to work in baseball was finally fulfilled in March of 1975. The team right in her own backyard, the New York Mets, hired her for their promotion and sales department. She did community outreach work to draw people to the games.

After all those years of fighting to get into baseball, what was there to say about finally being part of a major league team? She said, simply, “It’s a dream come true.”109

She worked for the Mets for several years before her position was eliminated. She and Steve moved to Pembroke Pines, Florida. She died there in 1992 from kidney cancer at the age of 61.110

The mixed legacy she left—having broken the legal barrier on one hand but being unable to go further on the other—means her contributions are viewed with caveats. It was easy for newspaper columnists to condemn her for quitting when they were part of the system that kept her from success.

Several months after her game, Nora Ephron interviewed her for a feature in Esquire Magazine that ran in January 1973. Ephron explored the unique burdens of being the first, of being a pioneer, writing:

I cannot understand any woman’s wanting to be the first woman to do anything. … I think of the ridicule and abuse that woman will undergo, of the loneliness she will suffer if she gets the job, of the role she will assume as a freak … of the derision and smug satisfaction that will follow if she makes a mistake, or breaks down under pressure, or quits.111

Of all the perspectives and admonishments offered in the sports pages, it was Ephron who found the essential element that had been ignored in the first woman umpire in professional baseball. Breaking through the grandeur and worship we place upon our firsts, Ephron saw Gera beneath the legal battles, the symbolism, and the ugliness associated with quitting. Buried in the middle of her feature is a sentence that sums it all up: “Bernice Gera turned out to be only human, after all, which is not a luxury pioneers are allowed.”112

And as a human, all Gera wanted was to belong in baseball. 

AMANDA LANE CUMMING is a long-suffering Seattle Mariners fan. To cope, she wrote for Lookout Landing for five years, where she wrote historically-focused pieces on the Mariners and local Northwest baseball. She is interested in the intersection of baseball and the broader world, particularly women in baseball and semipro and amateur teams in the early 20th century, and can often be found reading old newspapers for fun. Contact her at amandalanecumming@gmail.com or Twitter @Amanda_LaneC.

 

Notes

1. Debbie Blaylock, “The lady was an ump,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, August 19, 1985. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/236542667.

2. Randy Wells, “Bernice Gera, Ernest native, pro umpire, dies at 61,” Indiana Gazette, September 24, 1992. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/524426021.

3. George James, “1st woman umpire now calls all a ball,” Daily News, April 13, 1977. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/482161533.

4. Charles Clark, “Suffolk Slant,” Newsday, June 2, 1964. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/717682217.

5. “With Slugger,” Abbeville Meridional, September 19, 1961. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/445804448.

6. Sidney Fields, “Batty Over Baseball,” Daily News, August 28, 1967. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/463672946.

7. “Countrywide,” Newsday, June 9, 1964. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/712865869.

8. John Sinclair, “Woman Umpire Seeking Job,” Indiana Gazette, August 13, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/542564173.

9. Fields, “Batty Over Baseball.”

10. Ray Recchi, “Bernice Gera ‘Would Have Sold Peanuts,’” Fort Lauderdale News, April 14, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/230042389.

11. Blaylock, “The lady was an ump.”

12. “Female Ump to Officiate In National Tournament,” Wichita Eagle, July 30, 1967. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/695764585.

13. “Lady ump came-and went-a long way, baby,” Star Tribune, June 25, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/185158318.

14. Fields, “Batty Over Baseball.”

15. Will Grimsley, “Woman Enrolls In Umpire Class,” Camden News, May 19, 1967. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/31494721.

16. Red Smith, “Woman Ump Has Problem,” Democrat and Chronicle, June 15, 1967. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136573022.

17. Lance Evans, “Sports of Sorts,” The Express, June 14, 1967. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/5782706.

18. Dick West, “The Lighter Side,” The Dessert Sun, June 21, 1967. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/747505031.

19. Tommy Fitzgerald, “The Lady’s Problem As an Umpire: She Has To Keep Her Mouth Shut,” Miami News, June 10, 1967. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/301046126.

20. Fields, “Batty Over Baseball.”

21. Phil Musick, “She’s Tough,” Pittsburgh Press, June 18, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/147928111.

22. Kitty Hanson, “For Marilyn, life is a gas at Con Ed,” Daily News, July 5, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/464173292.

23. Musick, “She’s Tough.”

24. Musick, “She’s Tough.”

25. Fields, “Batty Over Baseball.”

26. Fields, “Batty Over Baseball.”

27. Musick, “She’s Tough.”

28. The umpire development program was put in place after the 1964 Winter Meetings as a way to implement a system for developing umpires in the minor leagues. Each league (majors and minors) made their own decision about which umpires to hire, but the program gave training and financial assistance to make umpiring more desirable to umpire candidates.

29. Andelman, David, “She May Change Cry to ‘Kiss the Umpire,’” Newsday, April 19, 1968. Accessed March 30, 2022: https://www.newspapers.com/image/716127519.

30. “Don’t Kill the Ump…It May Be Your Wife,” The News, May 1, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/533268636.

31. “Lady Ump’s Bias Claim Tossed Out,” Newsday, June 22, 1968. Accessed March 30, 2022: https://www.newspapers.com/image/714019777.

32. Bill Bondurant, “Baseball Threatened By Female,” Fort Lauderdale News, April 18, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/272684733.

33. “Woman Umpire!,” The Daily Reporter, April 23, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/11280962.

34. Bill Clark, “It wouldn’t work,” Montana Standard, April 25, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/354815434.

35. Bob Quincy, “Will The Lady Strike Out?,” Charlotte News, April 29, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/621252168.

36. Bill Hodge, “In This Corner,” Wichita Eagle, May 2, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/694539463.

37. David Condon, “In the Wake of the News,” Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/376643673.

38. Charles M. Guthrie, “Thumbs Down on Lady Umpires,” Star Tribune, May 5, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/185097986.

39. “Lady Umpires?,” El Paso Herald-Post, May 6, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/68505670.

40. John P. “Moon” Clark, “Moon Beams,” The Daily Republican, May 14, 1968. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/58442727.

41. “Lady Ump Charges Discrimination,” Democrat and Chronicle, March 22, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136579051.

42. Victor O. Jones, “Pats Rank 6th in TV Football Market,” Boston Globe, March 30, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/434650341.

43. Eliza McGraw, “The Kentucky Derby’s first female jockey ignored insults and boycott threats. She just wanted to ride,” Washington Post, May 4, 2019. Accessed March 30, 2022: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/04/kentucky-derbys-first-female-jockey-ignored-insults-boycott-threats-she-just-wanted-ride/.

44. “Today’s Sports Parade,” York Dispatch, July 28, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/615060833.

45. Division of Human Rights v. New-Pennsytvania Professional Baseball League, 36A.D.2d 364 (N.Y. App. Div. 1971). Accessed October 15, 2021: https://casetext.com/case/div-of-human-rgts-v-nypenn-baseball.

46. Jim Huber, “Miss Smokey will go to court to get chance in Indy 500,” Miami News, August 1, 1969. Accessed March 30, 2022: https://www.newspapers.com/image/301713562.

47. Red Smith, “Yale Reprised War of Sexes,” Democrat and Chronicle, August 1, 1969. Accessed March 30, 2022: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136644553.

48. “League president’s pitch strikes out lady umpire,” Miami News, August 1, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/301713562.

49. “Lady Ump Is Out—of a Job,” Detroit Free Press, August 1, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/98880968.

50. “League president’s pitch strikes out lady umpire,” Miami News, August 1, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/301713562.

51. “Asks Probe Of Nix on Gal Umpire,” The Post-Standard, August 2, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/10398058.

52. “Stratton Backs Gal Ump,” Democrat and Chronicle, August 5, 1069. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136645146.

53. “Congress Called In Lady Ump Case,” San Francisco Examiner, August 7, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/460208846.

54. William Vance, “Congress Goes to Bat,” Miami Herald, August 8, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/621720957.

55. Ed Levitt, “The Battle For No. 1,” Oakland Tribune, May 2, 1968. Accessed March 31, 2022: https://www.newspapers.com/image/477710726.

56. Vance, “Congress Goes to Bat.”

57. Bob Whittemore, “Did Stratton speak in haste?,” Oneonta Star, August 7, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/47364224.

58. “Congressman takes exception to column on female umpire,” Oneonta Star, August 14, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/47367050.

59. “Lady Ump Find Rough Going,” HartfordCourant, August 23, 1969. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/370538179.

60. “Pro Baseball Is Target Of Woman Umpire’s Suit,” York Daily Record, March 16, 1971. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/553356961.

61. “Mrs. Gera’s Statistics Wrong for an Umpire,” Daily News, February 12, 1971. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/463799303.

62. “Rejected Bernice Files $25 Million Suit Against Organized Baseball,” Wichita Beacon, March 15, 1971. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/694289035.

63. “Pro Baseball Is Target Of Woman Umpire’s Suit,” York Daily Record, March 16, 1971. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/553356961.

64. “Gera’s curves beating baseball,” Oneonta Star, November 23, 1971. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/47485278.

65. New York State Division of Human Rights v. New York-Pennsylvania Professional Baseball League, 29 N Y.2d 921 (1972). Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.leagle.com/decision/197295029ny2d9211555.

66. “Lady ump came—and went—a long way, baby,” Star Tribune, June 25, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/185158353.

67. “Lady ump came—and went—a long way, baby,” Star Tribune.

68. “Lady ump came—and went—a long way, baby,” Star Tribune.

69. Dave Rosenbloom, “Geneva’s Lady is an Ump at Last,” Democrat and Chronicle, June 23, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136808101.

70. Ray Recchi, “Bernice Gera ‘Would Have Sold Peanuts,’” Fort Lauderdale News, April 14, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/230042400.

71. “Now Other Umps Worrying Bernice,” Press and Sun-Bulletin, April 23, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/255587077.

72. Bill Boyle, “Bernice Gera, ‘A Little Nervous But Not Scared,’” The Daily Messenger, June 22, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/22014601.

73. “Pitching biggest problem facing biggest Oneonta Yanks,” Oneonta Star, June 21, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/51693341.

74. Boyle, “Bernice Gera, ‘A Little Nervous But Not Scared.’”

75. Boyle, “Bernice Gera, ‘A Little Nervous But Not Scared.’”

76. “Lady Umpire Preps For Debut Tonight,” The News Journal, June 23, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/163557258.

77. Dave Rosenbloom, “Bernice Says Umps ‘Where Not Cordial,’” Democrat and Chronicle, June 27, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136809359.

78. George James, “1st woman umpire now calls all a ball,” Daily News, April 13, 1977. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/482161533.

79. “Bernice: ‘I Never Got a Fair Deal,’” Press and Sun-Bulletin, June 26, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/255479134.

80. Mike McKenzie, “First Woman Umpire Wasn’t a Libber, Just a Baseball Lover,” Kansas City Times, August 2, 1979. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/677648852.

81. “I Called a Damn Good Game,” Press and Sun-Bulletin, June 29, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/255482640.

82. Dave Anderson, “’Not Worth It’ Says Lady Ump,” Intelligencer Journal, June 26, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/558038892.

83. Craig Davis, “CALLED OUT: Major League Baseball kept her out, but Bernice Gera knew her calling,” South Florida Sun Sentinel, September 15, 1989. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/237875502.

84. Davis, “CALLED OUT.”

85. Davis, “CALLED OUT.”

86. “Woman Umpire Debuts…Quits,” Pittsburgh Press, June 25, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/149367501.

87. Frank Dolson, “Noley Found He Couldn’t Win Argument With Woman Ump,” Philadelphia inquirer, June 26, 1072. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/180369547.

88. Dave Anderson, “’Not Worth it’ Says Lady Ump,” intelligencer Journal, June 26, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/558038892.

89. Dolson, “Noley Found He Couldn’t Win Argument With Woman Ump.”

90. “Lady Ump’s Career Short,” Democrat and Chronicle, June 25, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136808714.

91. Bill Boyle, “Lady Umpire Walks Off, Resigns After One Game,” The Daily Messenger, June 26, 1972. Accessed March 30, 2022: https://www.newspapers.com/image/22015135.

92. Guy Curtright, “Gal Ump Calls Herself Out,” Democrat and Chronicle, June 25, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136808687.

93. Dolson, “Noley Found He Couldn’t Win Argument With Woman Ump.”

94. Guy Curtright, “Gal Ump Calls Herself Out,” Democrat and Chronicle, June 25, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/136808687.

95. Curtright, “Gal Ump Calls Herself Out.”

96. Leigh Montville, “…Mrs. Gera quits in tears after debut,” Boston Globe, June 25, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/435472327.

97. “Strike one, she’s out,” The Journal News, June 28, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/162642012.

98. “The Lady Ump Lost Her Point,” Charlotte Observer, June 28, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/621958033.

99. “The umpire is out,” Star Tribune, June 28, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/185160947.

100. Vinny DiTrani, “New member of Women’s Lib,” The Record, June 29, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/493905423.

101. “I Called a Damn Good Game,” Press and Sun-Bulletin.

102. “I Called a Damn Good Game,” Press and Sun-Bulletin.

103. “Bernice Gera Joins NOW To Help Eliminate Sexism,” The News and Observer, June 29, 1072. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/652810953.

104. Vinny DiTrani, “New member of Women’s Lib,” The Record, June 29, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/493905423.

105. Dave Anderson, “’Resentment, threats’ force lady umpire to quit,” Miami News, June 26, 1072. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/301610775.

106. “Woman Manager Adds Pizzazz to Padres, but They Lose it Fast,” Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1972. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/380092191.

107. Ron Rapoport, “Behind the Plate: Christine Wren,” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1975. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/386267885.

108. Adam Jude, “it’s not a whole new ballgame—yet—but Spokane’s Christine Wren went to bat for future generations as a professional umpire in the 1970s,” The Seattle Times, July 12, 2020. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/its-not-a-whole-new-ball-gameyet-but-spokanes-christine-wren-went-to-bat-for-future-generations-as-a-professional-umpire-inthe-1970s.

109. Karol Stronger, “First Woman Ump Quit To Be A Met,” Sacramento Bee, April 10, 1975. Accessed October 15, 2021: https://www.newspapers.com/image/620636605.

110. “Bernice Gera, Umpire, 61,” The New York Times, September 25, 1992. Accessed March 30, 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/25/obituaries/bernice-gera-umpire-61.html.

111. Nora Ephron, Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women & Scribble Scribble: Notes On The Media (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 73.

112. Ephron, Crazy Salad.

 

The 2014 Little League World Series left baseball fans everywhere awestruck. With her 70-mph fastball, a 13-year-old girl by the name of Mo’ne Davis pitched a complete-game shutout to lead her team, the Taney Dragons, to a 4-0 victory. In doing so, she was the first girl ever to pitch a winning game in the Little League World Series, and soon afterward, she also became the first Little League athlete to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated. One might wonder, though, why the world of baseball was so shocked by Mo’ne Davis’s shutout. The main reason is likely that Mo’ne’s story was the first account of a female playing baseball that received so much recognition since A League of Their Own was released in 1992.

The popular film, starring Tom Hanks and Geena Davis, tells the story of a female professional baseball league that existed in the World War II and post-World War II eras. While the plot of the film was largely fictionalized, the league certainly was not. The league, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), existed from 1943 through 1954 and was the first, and to date, only time that American women have ever had the chance to take part in a formal professional baseball league.1 The AAGPBL provided the women who played in the league with several new rewards and opportunities both during their time in the league and afterwards. However, the success of the league, and therefore its ability to provide the players with such benefits, was predicated upon maintaining a feminine image consistent with the preferences of the dominant American culture at the time.

The AAGPBL was founded in 1943 by the owner of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company and the National League’s Chicago Cubs, Philip K. Wrigley.2 The league was started when major league baseball rosters started rapidly losing players as they were drafted and sent to fight for the Allied forces in World War II. Wrigley, along with several other baseball executives, was determined to keep the sport alive, partly to keep fans content, but also to maintain revenue. He sent scouts around the United States and Canada to search for talented female softball players, and, in May 1943, the AAGPBL officially began play. Games were played among four teams: the Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles, Rockford Peaches, and South Bend Blue Sox. The league grew tremendously in popularity—even after the former male baseball players returned to the game when the war ended in 1945—and continued to expand, then under the ownership of Wrigley’s advertising executive, Arthur Meyerhoff. By the time the AAGPBL came to an end in 1954 due to economic difficulties, it had given over 600 women the novel opportunity to play professional baseball, it had welcomed nearly one million fans, and, at its peak, it had included teams in ten different Midwestern cities.

For the women of the AAGPBL, playing professional baseball provided various opportunities that were rarely available to women in the World War II and post-World War II eras. The players earned stable salaries that were significantly higher than those with working-class backgrounds had access to. With the financial stability their baseball earnings gave them, after the league ended, AAGBPL players were able to take advantage of new opportunities, including college or graduate education that gave them entry to more lucrative professions. Finally, playing in the AAGPBL gave these women a sense of empowerment and personal autonomy throughout both their years of playing and their lives afterward. In short, the AAGPBL created lasting changes in the courses of its players’ lives.

Firstly, women who played in the AAGPBL were compensated at high rates. Throughout its existence, the AAGPBL needed to offer quite competitive salaries by the standards of the time in order to entice talented women to join and remain in the league, rather than return home or switch to a professional softball league such as Chicago’s Metropolitan Girls Major Softball League. In her book, The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Merrie Fidler presents records from various league board meeting minutes, detailing the player salary ranges and league salary policies each year. These records indicate that players were compensated anywhere from $40/week to $85/week, and in some cases $100/week.3 Fidler further discusses how, while teams were bound by the league to salary limits, at least in the league’s later years, “some evidence suggest[s] that certain players received under-the-table payments for their play” in addition to their contract salary, which, in one particular case, reached an additional $30/week.4 Admittedly, these contracts were worth far less than those of male major league baseball players, who, according to economist Michael Haupert, were paid annual salaries of anywhere from the minimum of $5,000 to $65,000, and by the late 1940s, in Joe DiMaggio’s case, $100,000.5 However, the AAGPBL players still made far more than most non-athletic, skilled female workers and many skilled male workers, who, in 1944, made average weekly wages of $31.21 and $54.65, respectively.6 In fact, in a 2008 interview with historian Kat Williams, Maybelle Blair, who played in 1948, recalled, “…I made more money than my father, and that money changed my life and the lives of my family.”7 Blair’s appreciation of the impact her wages had on her life reflects how many AAGPBL players felt.

In addition to earning such relatively high salaries, the AAGPBL players retained their occupations much longer after the men returned from World War II than their non-athletic counterparts. During the war, with the disappearance of many skilled workers from the workforce, working-and middle-class women throughout the United States, including the AAGPBL players, took over various vacant, previously male-dominated occupations. For most women, though, the end of the war in 1945 and the influx of returning male veterans meant the end of these professional advances and a return to the low-paying, “pink-collar” jobs they had held prior to the war. According to historian Sharna Berger Gluck, women’s pay dropped about 40 cents in the years following the war, from 85-90 cents per hour to 45-50 cents (nearly 50%) per hour.8 However, in The All-American Girls After the AAGPBL, Kat Williams argues that scholars of the postwar years have failed to realize how the AAGPBL players were largely exempt from this loss of work. In fact, she claims that the years following the war were when “the league saw its greatest growth,” and her argument seems to be quite sound.9 In the postwar years, the league developed junior leagues for young girls throughout its host cities, and in 1946, the league acquired franchises for teams in Peoria, Illinois, and Muskegon, Michigan. According to the AAGPBL records, teams sometimes attracted two to three thousand fans per game in the three years after the war, and, in 1948, the league peaked in attendance, as ten teams attracted 910,000 paid fans.10 The relative longevity of the AAGPBL, along with their comfortable salaries, provided the players an increased financial stability that would later allow them to pursue various other opportunities after their time in the league.

One of the most significant of these opportunities for the AAGPBL players was access to higher education. Because the women in the league could rely on good pay for a relatively long period of time, many of them could now afford further education, specifically a college and, in some cases, graduate education. In her article “Baseball, Conduct, and True Womanhood,” Carol Pierman reports that, after their playing years, 35 percent of the AAGPBL players acquired a college degree and 14 percent went on to achieve a master’s degree.11 Granted, by today’s standards, 35 percent may seem like quite a small number. However, according to Pierman, an average of only 8.2 percent of women in the AAGPBL players’ generation were receiving college degrees, meaning that the percentage of players who completed a college education was more than four times that of their peers.12 Moreover, as it often can today, access to higher education had lasting impacts on the women of the AAGPBL. As Williams writes, education allowed many of the players to “[move] from being uneducated and working class to educated and middle class.”13

One can further see just how important education was for a woman at the time through the words of the players themselves. Delores Brumfield White, who played for seven years and later went on to receive a doctorate, shared in an interview, “[education] was so important to a lot of the girls who played in the league,” and, “if it had not been for that opportunity [to play baseball], there would not have been a college education for many of us.”14 Without baseball, the doors to higher education, and then various professional achievements, would never have opened.

Many of the AAGPBL players were able to use their educations to later earn professional positions that allowed their financial stability to continue beyond their baseball careers. As today, most lucrative jobs in the workforce required workers to have at least a bachelor’s, and in some cases, a graduate degree in their particular field. Because so few women at the time were receiving college degrees, many of these positions were reserved for men. However, many of the AAGPBL players were able to make their way into various male-dominated industries after they had finished playing that likely would not have been available to them otherwise. These former players became lawyers, managers, college professors, doctors, and so much more. According to Pierman, some of the league members made it into top positions in the medical field, with five of them becoming doctors and two, dentists.15 As one might expect, professions in law, medicine, business, et cetera, provided the women who held them with a sense of economic empowerment, similar to that they had felt as professional athletes. At another point in her interview with Williams, Blair articulates this feeling of autonomy and its significance to the former players: “I was the first woman in charge of a division at Northrup Aircraft and that not only made be proud but gave me independence. Nothing was more important than that.”16 In addition to earning good wages in their professions after baseball, the women of the AAGPBL were proud trailblazers in many of their industries and positions. Their occupations, largely made possible by their baseball careers, allowed them to remain uniquely financially independent beyond their time in the league.

Another important benefit was a sense of personal independence. As Williams writes, “[n]othing challenges the presumptive dominance of masculinity more than female baseball players.”17 The simple notion of being the first women to play professional baseball provided the members of the league with a lasting sense of empowerment. One particularly interesting study, conducted by historians Brenda Wilson and James Skipper in 1990, discusses this idea of autonomy that resulted from participation in the AAGPBL through the frequency of nicknames in the league. In this study, Wilson and Skipper report that 35.6 percent of the AAGPBL players had nicknames during their career, and they indicate that, at the time, male and female baseball players had a similar nickname prevalence. They suggest that nicknames are given by people in power, and, as a result, conclude that the AAGPBL players were empowered by their time as professional baseball players.18 The opportunity to break the sex barrier in professional baseball provided the women of the AAGPBL with a special sense of self-confidence and autonomy to which they held on long after their baseball careers were over.

One of the most common ways in which the league members expressed their independence beyond their playing careers was through a sense of marital autonomy. At the time in which the AAGPBL existed, marriage, or more specifically heterosexual marriage, was a heavily emphasized institution. According to the National Center for Family & Marriage Research, from 1880 to 2011, the rate of marriage among women was highest in 1950 at approximately 65 percent.19 However, only about 45 percent of former AAGPBL players who responded to a National Baseball Hall of Fame Library survey reported to have married.20 Furthermore, in interviews with Williams, when asked about their desire to get married, former players’ responses included, “Hell no,” “No way,” and, “Well, if I had to have a husband, I’d just as soon he was in another state.”21 These strong aversions to marriage display the personal autonomy that most AAGPBL players felt. While several players did marry, there appears to not have been the feeling of necessity, or even pressure, among the AAGPBL players to marry that was so common among women at the time.

However, while the AAGPBL was indeed quite successful and, as a result, was able to provide its players with many new rewards, the league’s success was dependent upon maintaining an acceptable public image of femininity. When the league was created, Wrigley insisted on marketing the AAGPBL players’ femininity on an equal, if not greater, plane with their athletic ability. He did so largely to avoid the negative image associated with female softball players at the time. Despite the decent popularity of women’s softball before the AAGPBL was founded, in the popular press, softball players were often portrayed as, in the words of historian Gai Ingham Berlage, “masculine, physical freaks or lesbians.”22 Aware of how important public acceptance would be to the league’s success, Wrigley and his fellow executives strived to establish an image as far from the perception of softball as possible and, in doing so, make the AAGPBL far more popular than professional softball. According to an associate of Wrigley’s, he expected the AAGPBL players to exhibit, “the highest ideals of womanhood.”23 In order to accomplish these goals, Wrigley and the other members of the league’s leadership followed several specific principles in their governance of the league, such as excluding players based on race and perceived masculine appearance, using traditionally-feminine uniforms and team names, requiring players to attend charm school, and implementing a strict player code of conduct. The league marketed their players as feminine above all else and therefore to assure its success in the social climate of the 1940s and 1950s.

One of the clear ways in which Wrigley and his fellow executives worked to promote the acceptable image of femininity at the time was by preventing women of color, particularly black women, from playing. From its outset to its eventual demise, the AAGPBL excluded African American women from joining the league, even though many already had playing experience, either in professional softball leagues or, in a few cases, alongside men in the Negro Leagues. In 1948, as writer Jean Hastings Ardell describes in Breaking into Baseball, a woman named Toni Stone requested a tryout with the AAGPBL’s Chicago Colleens. After not hearing back for a while, she went on to play in the Negro American League for several years, and despite her doing quite well playing among men, the AAGPBL never reached out.24 Even after the National League began racial integration with the Dodgers’ signing of Jackie Robinson in 1945, the AAGPBL continued to exclude black women from playing. The closest the league ever came to the inclusion of black players was in 1951, when, as Carol Pierman discusses, they allowed two black women to practice with the South Bend Blue Sox, but neither player was ever actually given a contract.25 Throughout the league’s existence, the only women of color who were ever allowed to join the AAGPBL were “a few light-skinned Cuban ballplayers,” while, continually, “darker-skinned, homegrown talents…were ignored.”26 The exclusion of African-American women and most other women of color from the AAGPBL indicates that whiteness was part of the acceptable image of femininity used by the AAGPBL executives.

The AAGPBL also excluded women from the league whose physical appearances were deemed too masculine. To avoid the reputation of professional softball, league officials would often cut current players or disregard talented prospective players simply for a supposedly masculine physical attribute. One instance of this was when, according to Susan K. Cahn’s book Coming on Strong, Josephine D’Angelo was cut from the Blue Sox roster in the middle of her second season because she got too short of a haircut.27 Another striking example occurred when, as Pierman discusses, sisters Frieda and Olympia Savona, softball players for the Jax Brewing Company team in New Orleans, were overlooked by the AAGPBL for several years because of their large, masculine build.28 With Olympia having been described in a 1942 Saturday Evening Post article by Robert M. Yoder as “built like a football halfback,” but still “frail compared to Miss Frieda,” the Savona sisters were prime examples of softball players who were negatively perceived as overly masculine.29 The AAGPBL never offered the sisters a place in the league, despite their being so talented that, in the same 1942 article, Yoder also claimed that “had the flighty little genes produced a Luigi and Giovanni instead of an Olympia and Frieda, the name ‘Savona’ might be as well-known as ‘DiMaggio.’”30 Their story, along with those of several other women, demonstrates clearly how, feminine image took precedence over athletic ability when it came to scouting for the AAGBPL.

The AAGPBL continued to control the appearance of their players after they had been signed to the league by designing traditionally feminine uniforms for them to wear in games. To distinguish themselves from the softball teams that wore shorts or pants, the AAGPBL designed uniforms that consisted of a one-piece dress with a short, flared skirt and satin shorts below the dress. The uniforms were modeled off the uniforms of other sports that included women, like figure skating, tennis, and field hockey.31 As one might expect, these uniforms were quite impractical for baseball. When the players would slide, their skirts would fail to protect them, and they would frequently get abrasions they referred to as “strawberries.” Additionally, as former player Dottie Schroeder recounted in an interview, oftentimes, “pitchers would do the windmill wind-ups and the skirts would get in the way.”32 Wrigley and his fellow executives wanted traditional women first, athletes second.

The AAGPBL also used the team names to project a traditional female stereotype. As scholarly studies have discussed, femininity in athletics can often be reinforced through team names with feminine markings.33 Throughout the league’s existence, the executives chose team names that were, as professor Laura Kenow writes, “‘dignified’, but also perpetuated the image of femininity.”34 In fact, eight of the twelve team names used at some time by the AAGPBL, namely the Peaches, Belles, Chicks, Millerettes, Daisies, Lassies, Colleens, and Sallies, appear to be quite deliberately feminine. While this tactic may seem simple at first, when one considers how frequently the team names would have been used, particularly in articles and the score sections of newspapers, on the scoreboards, in conversations about the games, and in various other situations it proves to be quite effective. Feminine team names ensured that baseball fans everywhere instinctively associated the league with the perception of proper womanhood.

The AAGPBL also worked to promote the femininity of their players off the field by requiring players to attend charm school and beauty training. In 1943, Wrigley contracted Helena Rubinstein’s Gold Coast Salon to operate a charm school for the players, and in 1944 he switched to the Ruth Tiffany School. The charm schools taught the players about, as a Time magazine article put it, “makeup, posture, and other whatnots usually neglected by lady athletes.”35 They would teach the players the ladylike way to get in and out of a car, how to enunciate properly, and even how to charm a date.36 For the first few years of the league, players were required to attend charm school both during spring training and in the regular season after practices and games. Although official charm school was discontinued after two seasons, the league still enforced the principles. According to another essay by Pierman, the league issued players an eleven-page guide entitled “A Guide for All American Girls: How to Look Better, Feel Better, Be More Popular,” along with an extensive beauty kit.37 This guide included specific beauty instructions, including “After the Game” and “Morning and Night” beauty routines, and rules and suggestions about what clothing to wear in public, proper etiquette and manners, tone of voice, and more.38 As Pierman also points out, some players believed charm school to be beneficial because it taught them how to “survive in a new social class,” the teachings of charm school gave these women little to no freedom of expression, as they were forced to look and act like the traditional, “all-American” woman.39

The final method through which the AAGPBL controlled the appearance of its players off the field was a strictly enforced code of conduct. These rules of conduct lasted and remained largely unmodified throughout the league’s entire existence. There were fifteen rules in the code of conduct. The players were always to wear feminine attire when not playing baseball, “boyish bobs” were not permissible haircuts, and drinking and smoking were not allowed in public.40 The AAGPBL took extensive measures to enforce these rules. At the end of the code of conduct, in capital letters, was the penalty for breaking a rule, namely that “fines of five dollars for first offense, ten dollars for second offense, and suspension for third, will automatically be imposed.”41 These punishments were quite harsh, especially considering that $5 and $10 fines could be up to a tenth or more of the players’ weekly salaries, and, were a player to be suspended from the league, they would lose access to any salary at all. Furthermore, every AAGPBL team had a chaperone, who, in addition to handling several administrative team duties, was meant to supervise the players. Chaperones would make sure players adhered to rules like curfew and the dress code, and they would even approve players’ dates. As former chaperone Helen Hannah Campbell wrote, her job was largely to make sure the “girls presented the right public image at all times.”42

Although the AAGPBL’s efforts to promote their players as traditionally feminine were seen as key parts of the league’s success by Wrigley and other league executives, those efforts did not prevent the league’s eventual 1954 demise. Right around the end of the 1940s, a wide increase in postwar conservative attitudes among the dominant American population began to occur. At about the same time, in 1950, the league’s individual franchise owners bought out Arthur Meyerhoff and instituted several structural changes that, while meant to increase revenues, actually led to large drops in fan attendance. (It is worth noting that men’s professional baseball also saw attendance drop at this time.) Some AAGBPL team owners began organizing exhibitions against men’s teams, which, as Williams writes, “put the league in direct competition with men, thereby altering the image of the women’s league.”43 It no longer mattered how feminine the league tried to make their players appear. The idea that the AAGPBL players could play on the same field as men bothered fans and led them to stop attending games. Additionally, as Cahn describes, “virulent homophobia” around women in previously-masculine activities, like baseball, “accompanied the conservative shift in gender roles” of the late 1940s and early 1950s.44 As a result, the league’s efforts to “combine sport and femininity…were at odds with the cultural current.”45 Negative views of women in baseball spread quickly, and many fans stopped coming to games. Moreover, the switch to individual team ownership meant that publicity, promotion, and player recruitment were no longer centralized for the league, and less effective ownership led to a further loss in fans. As attendance and revenues began to fall in the early 1950s, the league became less alluring to players, and some even returned to playing softball. Teams rapidly began to close down operations each year until, at the end of the 1954 season, only five teams remained, and the AAGPBL officially shut down.

Unfortunately, although the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was far more successful than Philip Wrigley would have ever imagined in terms of popularity during its 12-year run, there has yet to be another attempt as successful at providing American women with professional baseball opportunities. Following the end of the AAGPBL in 1954, women largely disappeared from professional and even much of amateur and youth baseball. While there were several attempts to revive women’s baseball in the United States, many of them were prevented by baseball officials. In 1984, former Atlanta Braves executive Bob Hope (not the famous comedian) created a female minor league team called the Florida Sun Sox and tried to enter the Class A Florida State League, but the league did not allow him to do so. Later, in 1988, Darlene Mehrer founded the American Women’s Baseball Association in Chicago, and while she fielded a couple teams in Chicago, the league was never much more than a “park” league. Dozens of other regional women’s park leagues have existed in the US and Canada. Impresarios such as Nick Lopardo and John Stabile, the owners of independent Can-Am League teams, attempted to field a semi-professional women’s league known as the North American Women’s Baseball League (NAWBL) from 2003-08, but the league ultimately folded. Today, women in the United States still lack opportunities to play baseball and, in most cases, talented young girls interested in playing baseball end up having to play softball. Mo’ne Davis, despite being such an incredible Little League pitcher, was no exception. While she stuck to baseball (along with soccer and basketball) for a while after her success in Little League, today, she plays second base on Hampton University’s softball team (having changed positions because of how different the pitching motion in baseball is from that in softball).

One might wonder why it has been so difficult for women to find opportunities in baseball, especially considering how successful the AAGPBL was during and after World War II. It seems odd that, since the AAGPBL, there has not been another successful professional women’s league in the United States. Cahn presents a compelling argument as to why that is, in fact, directly connected to the AAGPBL. She claims that Wrigley and the AAGPBL executives’ efforts to market femininity “blunted the challenge that women’s baseball posed to the gender arrangements of American society.”46 In other words, the AAGPBL’s principles of promoting their players’ femininity entrenched a belief that only white women who appeared and acted “all-American” could play baseball and therefore lessened the effect the league might have had on integrating women into baseball. Consequently, while far fewer Americans today hold the conservative views about gender roles of the 1950s that led to the end of the AAGPBL, it seems that the effect of these views has lasted into today. The reason why the AAGPBL came to an end may just be the same reason why women today have so few opportunities to play baseball.

However, while there are still few ways in which women can play baseball, there has been some significant progress in expanding women’s baseball. When A League of Their Own was released, many Americans gained new interest in women’s baseball. In 1994, Hope tried again to give women a chance at professional baseball and, with financial support from Coors Brewing Company, created a team called the Colorado Silver Bullets. This team was far more successful than the Sun Sox and played for four years against men’s amateur teams across the country. In 2004, the USA Baseball Women’s National Team was established and is still active today as an opportunity for women with a desire to play baseball to try to do so at a high level. In 2010, Justine Siegal, the first woman to coach a men’s professional baseball team, founded Baseball For All, a non-profit dedicated to providing girls with opportunities to coach and play. In 2016, when she was unable to find an all-girls baseball league in Toronto for her daughter, Dana Bookman started Toronto Girls Baseball, the only all-girls league in Canada. She initially recruited 42 girls to play for four teams, but the league soon grew to 350 girls with four teams and four ballparks throughout Toronto. She has since founded leagues in Manitoba and Nova Scotia and created the Canadian Women’s Baseball Association, which is still active today. In 2019, alumnae of the AAGPBL itself created American Girls Baseball, a non-profit that organizes camps, clinics, and other events to give women the chance to play baseball from a young age. Finally, in 2020, A Secret Love, a Netflix documentary about the lasting lesbian relationship, which was kept secret until recently, between Pat Henschel and former AAGPBL player Terry Donahue, was released. Hopefully, in addition to continuing the work of A League of Their Own in widely portraying women in baseball to the public, this documentary will inspire young female ballplayers and show them that baseball should be available to everyone.

And in 2021, Amazon Studios began filming a new television series “reboot” of A League of Their Own, expected to begin streaming in late 2022. As the women of the AAGPBL have demonstrated, professional baseball has the ability to provide women with so many educational, financial, personal, and other benefits. While there still is no formal professional baseball league for women in the United States, there has been much inspiring progress, including a professional league in Japan. One can only hope that this progress is headed in the direction of a professional women’s league so that, like various other popular sports, professional baseball, and all the rewards that can result from it, can once again be available to women around the country, and the world, who are passionate about baseball. 

JAMESON COHEN is a current First-Year at Harvard College and recently graduated from Trinity School in New York City. He has been fascinated with baseball and its history from a young age and recently undertook a project for his American History class on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. He has been a SABR member since 2020 and is excited to share his work with the baseball research community. He can be reached by email at jamesoncohen@college.harvard.edu by any SABR members who might wish to contact him about his research.

This article was honored as a 2023 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.

 

The names of Jenny Fulle, Amy Dickinson, Elizabeth Osder, and Janine Cinseruli are rarely, if ever, mentioned in the existing literature regarding the integration of female ballplayers into Little League Baseball. These four girls were pioneers on the ground in the first wave of judicially authorized females to play in the renowned youth baseball organization that, at the time, was only open to 8-to-12-year-old boys.1

Fulle, Dickinson, Osder, and Cinseruli were among the dozens of aspiring preteen female baseball players in Spring 1974 who experienced firsthand the tribulations of cracking the all-boy barrier that had been national policy in Little League Baseball since 1951. These four girls provide real-world context to the principle-based legal ruling in New Jersey that opened the door to sex integration on March 29, 1974. That ruling ignited raging ideological battles in local leagues across the country until the national office of Little League Baseball consented on June 12, 1974, to allow girls and boys to compete together.

These early foot-soldiers were a trial group for Little League sex integration. They put into live action the dry legal arguments to demonstrate that female inclusion could occur without negative consequences to athletic competition or societal mores. These efforts in Spring 1974 helped to accelerate the eradication of sex discrimination, resulting in a timeline of ten weeks rather than the months or years that an absolute focus on legal arguments could have taken to obliterate this barrier in youth baseball.

What distinguishes Fulle, Dickinson, Osder, and Cinseruli from the other 1974 foot-soldiers is the deeper historical record of their experience, which extends beyond a short snippet in 1974 newspaper articles that most of their compatriots typically received. The stories of these four girls have been pieced together in this article not only from material contained in contemporaneous newspaper accounts (by both national wire services and local writers), but also from archival images, periodical articles during the ensuing two decades, and recently published retrospective thoughts as an adult.

BACKGROUND ON EARLY FEMALE PIONEERS

History has largely focused on Kathryn Johnston and Maria Pepe as the pioneers of Little League sex integration. Their actions provided a foundation for the landmark 1974 legal decision, thirty-five years following the establishment of Little League Baseball in 1939.

Johnston was the first girl to appear in an official Little League baseball game. Playing in 1950 for the King’s Dairy team in Corning, New York, she disguised herself as a boy and went by the nickname “Tubby.” In 1951 the national office of Little League Baseball promulgated its all-boy, sex-exclusionary rule stipulating that “girls are not eligible under any conditions,” precipitated by its discovery of Johnston’s participation.2

The bedrock principle underlying the barring of female players, as captured in the existing literature, was the preservation of Little League’s perceived role “in the power of sport to shape society and groom males for leadership roles in political, business, and social realms.” This was a continuation of the male-focused patriarchal vision of America, with its preconceived notions of a subservient feminine role and masculine role in sports, especially the one termed the national pastime. “It was not surprising that the organization battled the admission of girls,” Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano observed in Playing with the Boys: Why Separate Is Not Equal in Sports. “But it was surprising how little the actual fight had to do with athletic ability and how much it had to do with preserving male power and tradition.”3

In 1964, Little League Baseball, originally incorporated in the state of New York, was granted a federal charter as a non-profit corporation through a federal law passed by Congress. The charter included the following corporate objective beyond imparting baseball skills: “assist boys in developing qualities of citizenship, sportsmanship, and manhood.” This clause re-enforced the 1951 rule prohibiting girls and firmly established the organization as an all-male bastion. As Marilyn Cohen noted in No Girls in the Clubhouse: The Exclusion of Women from Baseball, before 1974, under the guise of this federal charter, “it was the standard practice of Little League Headquarters to threaten the revocation of the charter of any local league allowing girls to play.” In 1973, the organization successfully used this tactic in court to revoke the charter of a league in Ypsilanti, Michigan, that had allowed Carolyn King to be a player.4

Maria Pepe inspired the New Jersey litigation that ultimately led to the dismantling of the Little League sex barrier. In 1972 she participated in the Little League tryouts in Hoboken, New Jersey, acknowledging she was female, and was selected to play for the Young Democrats team. After playing in three games, Pepe was dismissed from the team after the national office of Little League Baseball employed its tried-and-true threat of charter revocation to influence local officials to drop Pepe from the league.5

In May 1973, the National Organization of Women (NOW) pursued Maria’s legal case by filing a complaint with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. NOW argued that Little League Baseball was a public accommodation and thus could not discriminate on the basis of sex. Little League Baseball defended its position by focusing on a two-pronged argument: (1) the physical difference between boys and girls, which would result in injury to girls, and (2) its federal charter that required a single-sex program for the betterment of boys.6

On November 7, 1973, an examination officer in the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights dismissed Little League Baseball’s arguments and ruled that local leagues in New Jersey had to accept girls. Little League Baseball exercised its right to appeal to the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court, which on March 29, 1974, upheld the ruling of the Division on Civil Rights. These legal decisions enabled girls in New Jersey to officially participate in baseball tryouts in Little League during Spring 1974, and set the stage for court cases in other jurisdictions across the country.7

News coverage of girls at baseball tryouts initially focused on Hoboken, the hometown of Maria Pepe, now 14 years old and ineligible for Little League, where fifty girls reportedly tried out in late March. A photographer captured the image of five girls with baseball gloves sitting underneath a Hoboken Little League sign as they awaited tryouts. That picture is now in the Library of Congress photo archive.8

During the ten-week period following the March 29 decision, pending further legal appeal by Little League Baseball, several local leagues nationwide accepted girls under court order. The following sections detail the stories of Fulle, Dickinson, Osder, and Cinseruli, amplified by long-forgotten newspaper reports of their youth and more recent life-lesson reflections as an adult. Their baseball experiences also illustrate the endemic issues noted above that precluded rapid expansion of female inclusion during the next several decades.

JENNY FULLE IN CALIFORNIA

On April 10, 1974, reporters from San Francisco-area newspapers and national wire services gathered to watch 11-year-old Jenny Fulle at her first baseball practice in the Mill Valley Little League, after a judge signed a court order preventing the league from keeping her out of the league. Mill Valley is located in suburban Marin County across the bay from San Francisco.

As reported in her local newspaper, the Daily Independent Journal, Fulle “finally took her place on a league team yesterday and began batting balls over her teammates’ heads.” Most of her teammates on the Bears team seemed satisfied with her progress as a ballplayer. “I thought we’d have a crappy girl, but she’s good,” one boy commented. Because she was joining the league late, she couldn’t try out for the major-league division. “But I’m happy being on a minor-league team,” Fulle said. “And I’m glad to get to play at least one season with the Little League.” She would turn 12 years old that summer and not be eligible to play the following year.9

Both Associated Press and United Press International released a photo of Fulle, dressed in bell-bottom jeans and swinging a bat, which newspapers nationwide printed. She perhaps would have received greater acclaim for her effort in baseball history had her name not been misspelled as Jenny Sulle in the caption to the wire-service photograph. Unfortunately, it was not the first time that the wire services bungled the spelling of her surname.10

The press had been interested in her story since 1973 when Jenny received a reply to her letter to President Nixon that had complained about sex discrimination, after she had been turned away from Little League tryouts in 1972. Fulle had played in pickup baseball games for several years with the boys in her neighborhood and naturally just assumed she could sign up to play in the local organized league.

“Jenny Fulles [sic], a 10-year-old fifth grader from Mill Valley, California, got so peeved she wrote a letter to the White House,” the Associated Press wrote about Fulle’s situation, misspelling her last name. The Department of Justice replied to Jenny, saying it was “preparing guidelines to handle this type of discrimination.” As Fulle told the AP reporter, “It made me so mad. There are lots of girls who want to play and lots of boys who want us to play.” Fulle punctuated her thoughts by adding, “I agree with almost everything I know about women’s lib.”11

The local chapter of NOW pushed Fulle’s case with the Mill Valley City Council, arguing that the Little League should be stopped from using a public baseball facility for its games unless girls were allowed to play and thus end its sex discrimination. While the City Council initially concurred, later in 1973 it reversed its decision after Little League Baseball threatened to revoke the league’s charter, which councilmen argued would deprive 350 boys of playing baseball in 1974. “They shouldn’t have backed down on the decision. I didn’t like it,” Fulle told a reporter from the local Daily Independent Journal. “Last spring I watched a lot of games. Maybe I’ll do the same thing this spring. And after I turn 12 they might let me be umpire.”12

Years later, Fulle gave an extensive oral history interview in June 2017 to add some color to the facts of her effort to introduce female inclusion into Little League in Mill Valley. As she recounted, the City Council meetings had their ugly moments, with hecklers shouting nasty statements about Fulle, and she was teased by some of her classmates. But the ACLU then took her case to federal court, where she received a favorable ruling in April 1974. After her one year of Little League, Fulle played in the local Babe Ruth League in 1975 before moving on to girls-only softball, after inspiring a number of girls in Mill Valley to pursue baseball in Little League.13

In interviews she gave as an adult, Fulle was sanguine about her baseball adventure. “I definitely loved playing, and at a young age, having that victory set me up to break through roadblocks for the rest of my life and to believe that anything is possible.” Since her adult occupation was film executive, Fulle expressed her thoughts about a certain youth-baseball movie. “The Bad News Bears came out a few years later, and I always thought, OK, that’s not fair, I played for the [Mill Valley] Bears,” she jokingly recalled. “I thought the Tatum O’Neal character should have been me.”14

Fulle may be the only sex-integration foot-soldier from 1974 with a monument erected to commemorate her feat. In 2017 a plaque was embedded in a boulder at the public park in Mill Valley where she had played baseball. The first sentence of the plaque reads: “On this field on April 20, 1974, Jenny Fulle became the first girl across America to officially play in Little League.”15

AMY DICKINSON IN NEW JERSEY

In the earliest days of the 1974 Little League season in Tenafly, New Jersey, two New York City newspapers published photographs of nine-year-old Amy Dickinson. She was shown swinging a baseball bat in the New York Daily News and standing beside her much shorter teammates in The New York Times.16

At the Tenafly tryout session, 27 girls and 349 boys displayed their batting and fielding skills indoors to team coaches. “There was a smothered chuckle from the gym stage when Amy Dickinson, a 9-year-old greeneyed redhead, punched her fist into a mitt and easily caught the high and low ones sent her way,” the Daily News reported. “It was nothin’ really,” Dickinson said afterward. “I just wanted to play and I play with boys all the time, anyway.”17

Dickinson stood out among the 150 kids assigned to a minor-league team, as the first draft choice by team coaches. “She was superior to all the boys,” one coach told the New York Times reporter. Later in the season, Dickinson said that most of the boys on her team “don’t really care” about whether girls play, adding that “most of them don’t pay any attention.”18

She was a good baseball player, an all-star for three years at the minor-league level. In 1976 she had a 4-2 record as a starting pitcher and compiled a .382 batting average as a hitter. However, Dickinson had concerns about moving up to the major-league level as a 12-year-old in her final year of eligibility.19

The concerns were not just with baseball skills, though, that led Dickinson to her second thoughts about baseball. “She doesn’t want to be a tomboy anymore and may well hang up her sneakers,” Jane Leavy wrote about Dickinson in a 1977 article in womenSports magazine, excerpts of which were printed nationwide in wire-service newspaper articles. “She wants boys to think of her as a pretty little girl, rather than a no-hit pitcher. She is worried that if she is too good a ball player, those same boys won’t think of her as a girl.”20

Dickinson had bittersweet memories of her Little League experience, as she said in an interview in 1989 upon the fifteenth anniversary of female inclusion in Little League. “I liked the game very much. But in retrospect, I don’t think I had such a good time,” she said. “The first time I saw myself on the TV news, I started to cry. I didn’t want all the attention.”21

In 2004, Dickinson continued to be remembered for her selection as a top draft choice in 1974, at the death of her Little League coach, Donald Miller. “Mr. Miller broke an unwritten rule by choosing Amy Dickinson, but not because he was an activist,” Miller’s son noted in an obituary. “He did it because she could hit. He realized it was a big deal, but he was focused on her hitting. It worked out great. He didn’t lose many games.” Dickinson added: “I know he got a lot of guff for picking me. But he was very proud of that. I think he kept the picture of us in the newspaper hanging in his bakery. He was very modern-minded.”22

ELIZABETH OSDER IN NEW JERSEY

On April 21, 1974, the New York Daily News published on its front page a photograph of nine-year-old Elizabeth “Bitsy” Osder standing in the batter’s box at the season-opening Little League game in Englewood, New Jersey. Osder’s image shared the front page of the tabloid newspaper with the banner headline “A New Hearst Kidnap Mystery,” referring to millionaire heiress Patty Hearst and her unclear role in a recent bank robbery, either as coerced hostage or knowing participant with her kidnappers.23

An article about Osder’s play during that game appeared on page 3 of the Daily News. Bitsy, “who, to her chagrin, also is known as Elizabeth,” showed her spunk on the ball field, not intimidated by being the only girl on the field in the otherwise all-male cast of Little League. After striking out in her first at-bat, she slammed down her bat in disgust, but she then drew a walk in her next at-bat and scored a run. In the dugout, “Bitsy was all mouth, first complaining of a cramped arm, then challenging the umpire’s calls, and finally giving instructions to fielders.” Despite her exuberance, the Daily News reporter observed that the coaches and players openly accepted Osder as a teammate.24

Daily News photographer Bill Stahl Jr. snapped several pictures of Osder as second baseman in the field, as well as other photos of her in the batter’s box. Two more of Stahl’s photographs of Bitsy from that game accompanied the Daily News article, which were reproduced in newspapers nationwide a few days later, providing a small degree of national acclaim for young Bitsy.25

What makes these photos from April 21, 1974, most remarkable, though, is their current existence online (along with several other photos from that day) in the extensive Getty Images archive. These photos are the sharpest images publicly accessible for one of the first wave of girls to play baseball in Little League during 1974.26

In 1975, 10-year-old Osder moved up from the minors to play on a team in the major-league division. “I’m glad I’m in the majors, but I’ll probably be benched a lot more,” she told a Daily News reporter. “I like second base, but I don’t know where I’ll play this year,” she added. The reporter termed Osder’s demeanor in the interview as “total professionalism.”27

The front-page photograph in 1974 ironically inspired Osder’s career choice as a website designer. “Osder became fascinated with the process of how that image could be transmitted and published in such a short period of time,” Christopher Harper wrote in the 1998 book And That’s the Way It Will Be: News and Information in a Digital World. Osder went on to study photography in college and deploy her creative juices in designing web sites in the then-revolutionary world of the Internet.28

As for her four years of Little League, “It was the first big thing in my life I had really wanted to do, and no one said ‘no, you can’t’,” Osder explained in an interview in 2000 as an adult. “I loved baseball, and had the answer been ‘no,’ I think it would have changed my take on life. Now, I never approach anything with the assumption that the answer will be no.”29

“It gave me a love for team sports and the camaraderie of teammates,” she recalled in a 2021 interview. “There were no conflicts with my playing and my team celebrated our little bit of celebrity status together and has stayed close over the years. Teamwork has always been the heart of my work and sense of community, and it was cemented in my experience in Little League.”30

JANINE CINSERULI IN MASSACHUSETTS

On May 19, 1974, 10-year-old Janine Cinseruli was finally granted a tryout for the Little League in Peabody, Massachusetts, a suburban town thirteen miles north of Boston. Although Cinseruli “missed the first five pitches thrown to her,” the Boston Globe reported that she “hit the next ten pitches, and impressed one coach, who called her ‘the best performer on the field.’”31

Cinseruli’s tryout was the culmination of a monthlong legal wrangle, following the rejection of her application by the Peabody Little League based on her sex. “I didn’t think I was doing any trailblazing at 10 years old,” she recalled in an interview in 2014 as an adult. “But the thing that threw me the most was when I went to sign up and a guy said, ‘You can’t play,’ and I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because you’re a girl.’ I was not that smart or worldly, but I knew right then it was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. I remember I said, ‘But I can play, I’m really good.’”32

The ACLU worked with her parents to take her case to court and obtained a temporary restraining order. Amid extensive coverage by the Boston Globe and other newspapers in New England, the Peabody Little League resisted for weeks. In mid-May the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination ruled that the Peabody Little League was a place of public accommodation and therefore could not legally exercise sex discrimination. Cinseruli testified at the MCAD hearing that she “sincerely desired to play baseball on Little League teams” because baseball was her sport and she flatly rejected the idea of a “separate but equal girls league.”33

In addition to the newspaper coverage, Cinseruli also appeared in a television interview, which aired on Boston station WCVB, channel 5. A video of that three-minute TV interview has survived to today and is publicly available at the PBS Learning Media website.34

The May 1974 video opens with a shot of Cinseruli hitting a ball out of her hand over the heads of several boys, before she is asked if she is concerned about boys being stronger than girls. “Not really,” she replied. “A lot of kids are kind of weak but they can play okay.” She added that “most boys didn’t care” about girls playing with them in Little League “as long as they can play.” One boy interviewed vouched for Cinseruli’s baseball skills. “She’s good. She can hit good,” he said, then sheepishly admitted, “She’s almost better than me.”35

In the TV interview, Cinseruli’s mother acknowledged that the family received a lot of hate mail. “Most of the letters I couldn’t even repeat [on TV] because they were obscene, that’s just what they were,” she said. “But I feel they come from small-minded people and I just burn them, throw them away.” There were also nasty telephone calls and Cinseruli remembered that “people drove by the house and yelled things at my mother, insulting things like ‘What kind of mother are you? Put a dress on her. Teach her to type.’”36

On May 21, 1974, the board of directors of the Peabody Little League voted to accept girls, although the board reserved its right to appeal and remove the girls if they won the appeal. “Their decision will allow Janine Cinseruli, 10, and 35 other girls to join a team in one of the city’s three leagues,” the Boston Globe reported. “Cheryl Andrews, daughter of former Red Sox star Mike Andrews, is among the applicants.”37

After she won the right to play baseball in Little League, though, the newspaper reporters and cameramen continued to swarm to Peabody. “I just wanted to play baseball. The same with my parents. They knew I was a natural athlete, they just wanted me to play,” Cinseruli said, reflecting back on the experience in 2014. Because many people in Peabody hoped that she would fail, “I was always the center of attention, which I didn’t want. The town kids were supportive because they knew I was good, but I knew I had to bring it every day. There was a lot of pressure.”38

Cinseruli was not only a prolific hitter in her first year of Little League, but she was also a proficient pitcher. When she struck out 16 batters in one game, a United Press International photo appeared in newspapers throughout the Northeast region, showing Janine in her pitching form.39

“It wasn’t the greatest thing in the world at the time,” Cinseruli recalled four decades later in 2014, when the Peabody Little League enthusiastically welcomed her back to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its sex integration. “I was almost embarrassed by it for a lot of years. I shied away from it until I hit my 30s. Then I started looking at it like, ‘Hey, you know what? It’s a good thing that happened. It changed lives and it changed the way people look at girls playing sports.’”40

She also applied those baseball life lessons to her adult pursuits as a chef and restaurant owner. “I loved being on a team. I run my restaurant like a team. When things go haywire, I call a meeting and say, ‘Let’s get back to fundamentals.’ I give them pep talks all the time. I got a lot out of sports.”41

OFFICIAL END OF SEX DISCRIMINATION

On June 12, 1974, Little League Baseball capitulated on the sex issue and officially modified its position concerning female inclusion in baseball, announcing that it would “defer to the changing social climate” and adopt a policy that the “acceptance and screening of young girls, following registration procedures, should be adjudged by the local leagues and not by the international body.” There was no guaranteed acceptance of girls, though, who had to prove to local managers and coaches that they were “of equal competency in baseball skills, physical skills and other attributions scaled as a basis for team selection.”42

To mark this end of sex discrimination, The New York Times and the Associated Press immediately produced newspaper articles containing vignettes about a few of the on-the-ground foot-soldiers during the initial ten weeks of court-ordered sex integration in Spring 1974. Later that summer, similar articles appeared in two magazines targeted to a largely female readership, Ms., in its third year of publication by noted feminist Gloria Steinem, and womenSports, a startup launched that year by tennis star Billie Jean King.43

No one, though, attempted to tabulate the number of girls who played baseball on a Little League team during the 1974 season. “How many of the two million youngsters involved nationally are girls is difficult even to guess,” one New Jersey official told the New York Times in April 1975, “since sex is not listed on application blanks.” Based on anecdotal information, the number was certainly in the dozens, perhaps several hundred nationwide. This was but a tiny percentage of the two million boys that then played baseball in Little League.44

In October 1974, Congress accelerated its effort to amend the federal charter of Little League Baseball, after the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the March court decision. The amended federal charter, which changed “boys” to be “young people” and deleted reference to the “manhood” objective, was signed into law in December 1974.45

The end of active discouragement of girls from playing baseball, though, did not equate to the beginning of encouragement. While it had lost this particular legal battle, Little League Baseball planned to win the overall war by emphasizing its recently launched Little League Softball program for girls, which the organization had authorized in 1973 following the Ypsilanti, Michigan, court ruling. Under this separate-but-equal strategy, softball was not just a feminized version of the sport of baseball, but also functioned as a siphon to sway girls away from playing baseball in Little League. As McDonagh and Pappano observed in Playing with the Boys, “Creating female-only sports was viewed as a way of keeping girls out of boys’ sports” and thus maximized the male nature of the baseball program. Consistent with this patriarchal mindset, Jennifer Ring noted in Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball that there was also no attempt to organize a separate baseball program only for girls.46

During Little League’s inaugural softball season in 1974, 50,000 girls reportedly participated, a figure later revised downward to 30,000. Either number dwarfed the estimated volume of girls in the baseball program. Softball would always be a substantial deterrent to girls participating in the baseball program. As Cohen wrote in No Girls in the Clubhouse, there was an unspoken policy “at almost every Little League sign-up, if you are female you are sent to the softball line and never told you have a choice [to play baseball]. The choice is made for you.”47

INCREASE IN FEMALE PLAYERS, 1975-2004

While the pluck and persistence of Fulle, Dickinson, Osder, and Cinseruli advanced the timing of Little League Baseball’s official acceptance of sex integration, societal change within the organization only slowly evolved to supplant its historical patriarchal attitude with a more modern sex-equality ideology. Measuring the impact of the pioneering 1974 foot-soldiers through the number of girls who played baseball in Little League during the thirty years from 1975 to 2004 is frustratingly difficult to assess.

Not only did no one count the number of female baseball players in 1974, a quarter-century later in 1999, still no one was counting. “Little League Baseball has never asked its local leagues for figures on the number of girls who have played in the baseball programs over the years,” one close observer noted in 2001. “So there is no way to determine the exact figure.” Little League Baseball could only offer vague guesstimates at the number of girls in the baseball program.48

“In 1989, it appears that resistance to having girls play on Little League teams, at least for younger age groups, has faded. But the number of girls playing hardball remains small,” Felicia Halpert reported in The New York Times. “The organization did not know how many of the 2.5 million youngsters who play baseball-youngsters from 33 countries—were girls. The group estimates, however, that there is one girl per league in the 6-to-12-year-old range” among the 7,000 leagues worldwide. The 7,000 number included girls in T-ball, structured for six-to-eight-year-old kids, which usually had the highest percentage of girls. “The numbers drop in the 9-to-12-year-old programs,” Halpert observed, “and girls are scarce in the 13-15 and 16-18 age brackets.” The estimated 7,000 girls in the baseball program paled in comparison to the 200,000 girls participating in the softball program of Little League.49

By 2004, after 30 years of sex-integrated baseball, Little League Baseball was more accepting of girls in the program, arranging for Pepe to throw the ceremonial first pitch at that year’s Little League World Series. Still, the organization tended to obfuscate its data about the female participation rate by combining softball and baseball numbers together to give the appearance of a larger number of girls in the baseball program.

In an August 2004 press release, Little League Baseball stated: “In 1974, nearly 30,000 girls signed up for the softball program. One in 57 Little Leaguers that year was a girl. Today, about one in seven Little Leaguers is a girl. Nearly 360,000 girls play in the various divisions of Little League Softball…[and] Little League estimates the number of girls currently participating in Little League Baseball programs to be about 100,000. Approximately 5 million girls have played Little League Baseball and Softball in the past 30 years.”50

The “about 100,000” statistic specified above was actually the high end of the “somewhere between 200,000 and 100,000” range of the in-house guesstimate. The median of that range—60,000 girls—might be a better representation, which would be nearly nine times the estimated 7,000 participation rate in 1989 for girls in the baseball program. The low end of the range—20,000 girls—would equate to almost tripling the 1989 approximation.51

The most reliable female-inclusion statistics released by Little League Baseball have been the number of girls playing on teams qualifying for the Little League World Series. Two girls participated in the 1980s, five girls in the 1990s, and eight girls in the 2000s. These statistics show that in this elite category of ballplayers, the ratio of girls to boys more than doubled from the 1980s to the 1990s, and then remained roughly constant in the 2000s (the World Series expanded from eight to 16 teams in 2001).52

CONCLUSION

The contribution to female inclusion in the Little League baseball program made by Jenny Fulle, Amy Dickinson, Elizabeth Osder, and Janine Cinseruli was significant. Along with dozens of other unremembered 1974 pioneers, they fought head-on an all-male organization that actively resisted the inclusion of girls under court-ordered sex integration during two and a half months in Spring 1974. Their efforts not only helped to advance the timeline for Little League Baseball to officially end sex discrimination, but also inspired young girls to leverage their pre-teen foundational skills to progress into early-teen and high-school baseball and for some to advance into the ranks of college and professional baseball during the subsequent decades. 

CHARLIE BEVIS is a retired adjunct professor of English at Rivier University in Nashua, New Hampshire, and a member of SABR since 1984. He is the author of eight books on baseball history, most recently Baseball Under the Lights: The Rise of the Night Game. His research interests focus on the history of game scheduling in the pre-expansion era (notably Sunday baseball, doubleheaders, night games, and promotions) with its related impact to audience composition at the ballpark. He writes baseball from his home in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

 

Mother’s Day, 1972. Willie Mays had just smacked his 647th home run. For the 35,505 fans braving the rain at Shea Stadium on Mother’s Day in 1972, it signaled that, for a brief moment, the aging Mays could still delight fans. The 5-4 victory for the home team over the San Francisco Giants was Mays’s first game in a New York Mets uniform.

Mets owner Joan Payson and her counterpart in the City by the Bay, Horace Stoneham, concocted the deal to let Mays fill out the rest of his playing days in the city that gave him his major-league start and maintained its adoration; Stoneham got Mets pitcher Charlie Williams and a reported $100,000 bounty in exchange for the icon.1

But returning to New York had already been a goal for the Say Hey Kid, now 41 years old and a member of the Giants squad since 1951.

Former manager Herman Franks revealed, “It was two years ago that Willie and I talked about his playing out the string in New York. So, we have done some thinking about it together. The Mets’ deal is a good one for him, because, knowing the kind of man Willie is and how he thinks, is to know how unhappy he’d be away from baseball.”2

Though Mays was at the end of his playing career, donning a uniform for a New York team again brought excitement, anticipation, and nostalgia to the city’s National League fans. Those of certain ages—from their mid-20s upward—remembered the glory days of the Alabama native who graced outfields, pounded pitching, and emerged as a team leader in the NL. When the Mets began in 1962, they had inherited fans of the Dodgers and Giants, who had left for California after the 1957 season.

Mays coming to the Mets created nostalgia that pacified the team’s fan base, who had not only endured national tragedies in recent years—assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—but also epic challenges that had tested the resolve of New Yorkers throughout the five boroughs. Strikes by transit workers, garbage workers, and teachers threatened the daily business of America’s largest city. New York’s financial status declined towards bankruptcy. Plus, the dissolution of exemplary newspapers reduced options for daily learning of the city’s goings-on.

On top of these pressures, Mets fans were in mourning in 1972. Mays’s link to 1950s baseball in New York—often referred to as the “Golden Age of Baseball”— provided an emotional balm of sorts, arriving a little more than a month after the passing of skipper Gil Hodges, who had led the Mets to their first World Series victory in 1969. A mixture of disappointment, grief, and anger had pervaded Mets Nation when Hodges died from a heart attack two days shy of his 48th birthday in early April; Yogi Berra, a Mets coach since 1965, took over as manager.

Hodges was a fixture on the gloried Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the late 1940s and 1950s. Same with Berra and the New York Yankees. From 1947 to 1957, the city was represented 10 of 11 times in the World Series.3

San Franciscans’ memories were steeped in the team’s formidability during Mays’s tenure: when MLB initiated the ’72 schedule, San Francisco hadn’t endured a losing season since the team arrived in 1958. Mays et al. began 1972 with the status of being NL West champions.

After the Giants edged out the Dodgers by one game to win the NL West in 1971, Pittsburgh took the NL flag and beat Baltimore in seven games in the World Series. Mays had ended the season indicating his stamina, skills, and instincts were still potent—if not overpowering as in days of yore—to NL pitchers: the two-time Most Valuable Player played in 136 games in ’71, leading the senior circuit in walks (112) and on-base average (.425).

But optimism for San Francisco’s ’72 prospects waned quicker than the winds shifted at Candlestick Park—the team was 8-16 at the time of the Mays trade. Mays, too, had a downslide, with a batting average of .184 over 19 games when he left for New York.

It mattered not to Payson, who had a fondness for the center fielder dating back to her tenure as a former minority owner of the Giants before the team abandoned subway trains for cable cars. Fueled by sentiment rather than necessity—the Mets were 13-6 at the time of the trade—signing her favorite player recalled the newest entry in America’s movie lexicon from the recently released epic The Godfather: “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Though Mays might have been a sentimental choice for Payson, there was a similar tether as strong as Samson between him and Stoneham: Mets chairman Donald Grant acknowledged this but also noted the opportunity for the Giants owner to show generosity towards his iconic player. “The club isn’t drawing and its [sic ] down in the standings. He can say ‘I’ve done the greatest favor I can do for Willie. I’m sending him home where he wants to be. I’m sending him to the Mets.’”4

Mays confirmed Grant’s description. “When you come back to New York, it’s like coming back to paradise,” said the four-time major-league leader in slugging percentage at the press conference announcing the trade.5

Despite his ’72 stats to date, Mays had confidence in his value. Or so he claimed. “It’s a wonderful feeling and I’m very thankful I can come back to New York,” said the slugger. “I don’t think I’m just on display here. There’s no doubt in my mind that I can help the Mets if I’m used in the right way.”6

And so, he did.

The Mets vaulted to a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the first when Rusty Staub hit a no-out grand slam after Sam McDowell walked Mays, Bud Harrelson, and Tommie Agee. The San Francisco lefty settled and struck out Cleon Jones, Jim Fregosi, and Ted Martinez.

McDowell’s cohorts tied the game in the top of the fifth. Ray Sadecki walked Fran Healy; Giants skipper Charlie Fox sent Bernie Williams to pinch hit for McDowell. Fox’s decision proved wise when Williams tripled and scored Healy. Chris Speier doubled home Williams; Tito Fuentes homered—one of his seven dingers for the year.

Mays led off the bottom of the fifth with a homer off reliever Don Carrithers. His solo bash gave the Mets a slim but sufficient one-run lead that sustained the victory. Although the veteran must have been feeling sentimental with New Yorkers cheering his round tripper, there was a palpable wistfulness: “It’s a strange feeling to be batting against the club I played with for 20 years. You look up and see ‘Giants’ written on their shirts, and feel you should be out there.”7

Mays’s performance was a joyous occasion, but Mets fans knew that it was an anomaly. The slugger’s skills were fading. Ken Samuelson recalled positive energy contrasting sad facts in Peter Golenbock’s oral history Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team: “Even though we were getting Willie Mays, we realized we really weren’t getting the Willie Mays. The season before Willie had begun to slow down, and so the idea [of him] was probably more than the reality. But I was real excited. It was just the idea of him coming back and having such a magical player in our lineup.”8

Greg Prince—author of several Mets books and co-founder of the Faith and Fear in Flushing web site— was a nine-year-old in Long Beach, New York, when he learned about the Giants legend coming to Queens. “I found out from reading an article in the New York Post, which my father read,” says Prince. “It was shocking because Willie Mays was the best living ballplayer at the time. The Mets were in first place. After the Mother’s Day game, it seemed like everything was working out.”9

The victory on May 14 was the third victory in an 11-game winning streak; the Mets went 21-7 in May and finished the 1972 season in third place with an 83-73 record. The Pirates were dominant, though, winning the NL East with a 96 wins and 59 losses.

Mays played in 69 games for the Mets in 1972, batting .267 with eight home runs. His average dropped to .211 in 1973. Mays smacked six homers and played in 66 games. After nearly winning the World Series in 1973—New York lost to Oakland in seven games—the 42-year-old Mays retired.10

But the nostalgia at seeing #24 back in a New York uniform was not felt universally in the Mets clubhouse. In his 1975 book The Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff, Thomas Kiernan cited the frustration of an unnamed Mays teammate at the end of the ’72 season: “If he walks, say, then gets sacrificed to second—if the next hitter doesn’t get a hit and give Willie a chance to score, he gets booed. It’s all Willie Mays, and that’s not the way it should be. I wish to hell he’d hang ’em up. He had his day in the sun here, now he should go out gracefully and let us be a baseball team again.”11 Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again. But some of the new residents might not be as welcoming as the old ones. 

DAVID KRELL is the chair of the Northern New Jersey Chapter of SABR. He joined SABR in 2012. David is the author of 1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK and Our Bums: The Brooklyn Dodgers in History, Memory and Popular Culture. He also edited the anthologies The New York Mets in Popular Culture and The New York Yankees in Popular Culture.

 

Notes

1. Joseph Durso, “Mays Back in Town and Mets Have Him,” The New York Times, May 12, 1972, 33.

2. “With Friend Like Franks, Mays Needn’t Worry,” Daily News (New York), May 14, 1972, 123.

3. The Yankees won seven titles. The Dodgers and Giants each won once.

4. United Press International, “Mets Await Visit Today from Stoneham,” Daily News (New York), May 9, 1972, 16.

5. Steve Cady, “‘Like Coming Back to Paradise,’ Says Mays—And Fans Agree,” The New York Times, May 12, 1972, 35.

6. Durso, “Mays Back in Town and Mets Have Him”.

7. Joseph Durso, “Mets Win on Mays’s Homer, 5-4,” The New York Times, May 15, 1972, 47.

8. Peter Golenbock, Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 289. Emphasis in the original.

9. Greg Prince, telephone interview with writer, January 26, 2020.

10. Babe Ruth began his major league career with the Red Sox and returned to Boston for his final season, playing in 28 games for the Braves in 1935. Hank Aaron delighted Wisconsinites by closing out his career in Milwaukee. He started with the Milwaukee Braves in 1954 and stayed with the organization through 1974. But the Braves had moved to Atlanta in 1966, leaving Milwaukee without a major league team until the Seattle Pilots moved after their inaugural season and became the Brewers in 1970. Aaron had a two-year tenure: 1975-76. His sentiments matched Mays’s: “I am thrilled to come back to the city where I started my baseball career and I am happy that the Atlanta Braves saw fit to work so closely with me to meet my request.” “Brewers Bring Hank Back to Milwaukee,” Wisconsin State Journal, November 3, 1974, 25.

11. Thomas Kiernan, The Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1975), 161-62.

 

This story is about the first nationally telecast spring training game in major-league baseball history. It describes events that enabled this groundbreaking expansion in televising baseball games to occur. It then examines why the broadcast is best remembered for being suddenly and inexplicably stopped while the game was in progress, leaving TV screens dark and viewers bewildered—an outcome the major leagues and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) never anticipated and certainly never wanted.

“GAME OF THE WEEK” PROGRAM BEGINS ON TELEVISION

In 1953, ABC executive Edgar J. Scherick proposed broadcasting a Saturday “Game of the Week” (GOTW) program as TV sport’s first network series aired during MLB’s regular season. Scherick’s bosses were initially skeptical, wondering exactly how many TVs across America the program would reach and how many viewers they would draw. To make matters worse, MLB barred the program from airing within 75 miles of any cities where its ballparks were located to protect local broadcast coverage.1

Believing “most of America was still up for grabs,” as Scherick put it, ABC executives gave GOTW a green light.2 The network was only able to get the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Indians, and Chicago White Sox to permit their games to be aired on the program. With that as a starting point, ABC began selling broadcasting rights to affiliate stations in non-restricted areas across the nation. GOTW became the nation’s fourteenth-highest rated program—an impressive feat for a non-prime-time weekend series on a weak network that was shown only in non-MLB markets.3

Other baseball clubs noticed the program’s ratings success. In 1954, four teams—the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Giants, Washington Nationals, and Brooklyn Dodgers—joined in selling ABC the right to broadcast their games nationally.4 (It should be noted for clarity that although GOTW was televised nationwide, these broadcast contracts were not “national” since clubs negotiated individually to televise games from their respective ballparks.)

TELEVISING THE FIRST BASEBALL EXHIBITION GAME NATIONALLY

In addition to signing up more clubs for 1954, ABC took the unprecedented step of adding to GOTW’s broadcast schedule exhibition games played during spring training. Only games played on Saturdays would be carried on the program. The game selected to inaugurate this coverage was scheduled on March 13, 1954, at Clearwater, Florida, featuring the Phillies against the visiting White Sox.5 The clubs were paid $2000 for the rights to air the game.6

The importance of this groundbreaking expansion in television’s relationship with MLB was acknowledged in an article that appeared in the sports section of the March 13 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which announced:

Phils, Chisox Vie on Video Today

Clearwater, Fla., March 12 (UP) – Big league baseball—Florida style—hits the Nation’s television screens tomorrow in the first network TV transmission of a spring training game in history. The game is between the Phillies and Chicago White Sox. There could be an audience of close to World Series proportions as the telecast will go to 137 stations from coast to coast, including all but two major league cities. (The game is not scheduled by any Philadelphia station.)

The telecast over the American Broadcasting Co. network will be the first of a season-long series of “Game of the Week” productions on Saturday afternoons, but the audience will be larger in games that are handled in spring training because major league cities have not yet begun to handle their own TV games.7

Expanding TV coverage to include spring training games was pioneering enough, but the fact the game would be aired in all but two MLB cities was even more novel. GOTW airings of regular season games in 1953 were forbidden within 75 miles of any MLB city; yet, the Inquirer article stated only two major league cities would not receive the March 13 broadcast, signifying the prohibition would not be enforced fully for exhibition games.

The article suggests the more relaxed broadcast regimen may have been attributable to the fact major league clubs had not yet contracted with networks to have games televised in 1954. The comment also implies restricted zones would be reinstated in contracts to air regular season games. Philadelphia is identified as one of the cities where the game would not be shown, presumably because the Phillies wanted to safeguard broadcasts by local radio stations from any encroachments by a national telecast.8

Despite the promotional hype contained in the Inquirer article about the expected viewing audience, it was far from certain an exhibition game would draw national interest on a level similar to regular-season games. Ratings data showed the number of TVs tuned to GOTW grew as the regular season progressed and league pennant races came down to the wire. Airing a preseason game could very well be a dubious venture in terms of viewership. ABC was counting on the large number of households normally off-limits to GOTW to give the program a ratings boost. What the network could not anticipate, nor could MLB, was this outcome: “In 1954, it was a spring training game from Clearwater, Florida, that received more attention than any regular season contest.”9

PREPARATIONS TO AIR THE GAME

Television broadcasts of Phillies’ regular season home games began on a limited basis in 1947.10 No Phillies exhibition games had been televised by 1954, however. Those games were carried on radio, which would later figure prominently in the controversy surrounding the March 13 game.11 Since Clearwater Athletic Field— where the club conducted spring training—had never hosted a televised game, ABC, in cooperation with the Phillies, had to undertake extensive preparations to make the telecast possible. The photo accompanying this article shows an example of those preparations.

Steps taken to televise the game included:

• Building a wooden platform under the grandstand to hold the television camera, which as the photo shows, was big, bulky, and heavy.
• Cutting a hole in the wire screening behind home plate to provide the camera an unimpeded view of the ballfield.
• Attiring the cameraman with a catcher’s mask and vest should a foul ball strike him through the opening in the screen. (It is unclear what ABC would have done had the camera been struck by a foul ball and rendered inoperable, or the cameraman had been injured by an errant ball and unable to continue his duties.)
• Creating a sign—leaning against the camera’s tripod base—to hold in front of the camera as advertising for the station during breaks in the game. The entire sign is not visible, but it promotes a “Band Booster Program” on which local bands would perform. According to the sign, “Proceeds” from appearing on the show “Go to Members and Your Band.”

The station identified on the camera—WITV Channel 17—was an ABC affiliate located in Ft. Lauderdale.12 Because the network had no affiliate station in Clearwater, all of the equipment and personnel needed to make the broadcast possible had to be transported 270 miles between the cities—a time-consuming and costly journey seven decades ago.13

The camera in the photo was the only one used to televise the game. A single camera behind home plate limited visual coverage, although the attached elongated lens allowed clearer views of plays in the outfield. Despite these drawbacks, the broadcast would have satisfied mid-1950s standards—a somewhat grainy and fuzzy black and white picture sufficient to let viewers follow the action.14

A SUDDEN HALT TO THE TELECAST

Preparations were successful, and ABC began broadcasting the first major league exhibition game nationally. The program proceeded smoothly, but stopped abruptly after three innings of the game had been shown. GOTW did not resume, and stations airing it offered no explanation for its sudden cessation.15

DENYING FAULT AND POINTING FINGERS

In the immediate aftermath of the truncated telecast, the National League (NL) was compelled to deny rumors its club owners demanded the plug be pulled. Because the broadcast emanated from an NL ballpark, NL owners had the authority to prevent the telecast from proceeding. The owners had gathered on March 12 in a scheduled meeting to discuss various issues, and reports surfaced that owners voted at the meeting to nix telecasts of exhibition games. League president Warren Giles issued a statement later in the day on March 13 denying those rumors, while a Phillies official offered an alternative explanation for the situation. An article reporting these comments appeared in the March 14 edition of the Inquirer, and it reads in part:

Exhibition Game Telecasts Not Banned, Giles Says

St. Petersburgh, Fla., March 13 (AP) – The major leagues have not banned telecasts of exhibition games to major league cities, Warren Giles, National League president, said today, adding that a report that owners decided to prohibit such telecasts was the result of a misunderstanding.

Absolutely no such thing was voted on or discussed at the meeting, said Giles. This is exactly what the Federal Communications Commission would prohibit. It would be collusion. It wasn’t even discussed formally at the meeting.

Giles’ denial followed a mix-up in which stations were forced to stop today’s Phillies-White Sox game telecast while it was underway.

A Phils’ spokesman said the Chisox asked permission to telecast from the Phils’ camp and that it was granted under the impression that only a Chicago station was involved—then withdrawn when it was discovered an ABC Game of the Week hookup was involved.16

Other than the denial, Giles provided no insights regarding why the broadcast had been allowed to proceed initially before being stopped abruptly, or who was responsible. It was left up to Frank Lane—general manager of the Chicago White Sox—to play baseball’s point man in explaining the mixup, and he did it by blaming ABC: “Under our contract with ABC, the Game of the Week must not be piped into any major league city. Nor must it reach areas within 75 miles of any major league city. These restrictions were definite and explicit. However, ABC went ahead with the sale of the program in prohibited areas. Well, when I discovered that the March 13 telecast was going into major areas, I stopped it from entering those areas. That’s all there was to it.”17

George Fletcher—Phillies club secretary who handled radio and television contracts—echoed Lane’s version of events noting: “An overly enthusiastic ABC network which took things for granted and accepted the permission of the White Sox as including major league cities caused the misunderstanding.”18

 

 

As Major League Baseball cuts out the lower rungs of the minor-league ladder, author David Lamb’s observations on the nature of the minors become ever more poignant: “Although on the surface, the minors may seem like a quaint relic of America’s mom-and-pop era, the truth is that in the past decade, they’ve moved into the big time.”1 As minor league baseball is driven farther from its smalltown roots by economics and MLB fiat, it becomes even more important to remember the small communities from which baseball’s grassroots grew—places like Swepsonville, North Carolina.

INDUSTRIAL LEAGUE BASEBALL

More than sixty cities and towns in North Carolina have fielded professional minor league teams at some point in their history. There are also towns like Asheboro, Roxboro, and Swepsonville that have never hosted professional ball, but nonetheless boast a long and proud baseball history.2 The cities listed above, and many others, hosted textile league or mill teams. While this was not technically considered “professional” minor league baseball, there were definitely players being paid to play for these teams and large numbers of people paid admission to see games. In fact, the competition may have been more fierce, due to the fact that these teams existed only to win games, and not for the purpose of developing players to be sold to higher level leagues.3,4 During the Great Depression, for example, players in the Northwest Georgia Textile League might make $12 to $17 per week for working in the mill, but would be paid an additional $4 to $7 to play baseball.5 Likewise, it was also well-known that for some mill team players in North Carolina’s Piedmont region, “their real job was playing baseball.”6

It’s also worth noting that minor league baseball in North Carolina was rigidly segregated from its beginnings. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers’ top minor league team in Montreal in 1946, but the first black player didn’t appear in a professional game in North Carolina until 1951, when Percy Miller Jr. was signed by the Danville (VA) Leafs, and played games in North Carolina.7 The textile leagues of the 1940s and 1950s, like virtually all aspects of life in the South during this time period, were likewise segregated by race, and the opportunity to play for the mill team was available only to white male employees.8,9

Piedmont area mills also recruited players from outside the area, and engaged in hiring practices that prioritized baseball success over talent at working the mills. The better local ballplayers could also often negotiate a better position with another mill, creating a level of agency and power that was not available to most textile workers.10 The level of play in many of these textile leagues rivalled that in many minor leagues.11 Consider the “outlaw” Carolina League of 1936-38. Textile league baseball was so competitive in the area around Kannapolis and Concord that the team operators declared themselves a professional league, but one without the sanctioning of the National Association, the governing body of minor league baseball. In this period, the Carolina League was competing with official National Association leagues for talent, and at one point, the head of minor league baseball, Judge Bramham, offered the Carolina League sanctioned status if they would come into the fold.12

There were also leagues that had roots in textile baseball like the Bi-State League, with teams in North Carolina and Virginia. That loop was accepted into “organized baseball” in 1934 and competed until 1942.13,14 The line between textile league baseball and minor league baseball was blurry at best.

SWEPSONVILLE AND ALAMANCE COUNTY TEXTILE INDUSTRY

For generations, Alamance County was defined by the textile industry that grew up along the banks of the Haw River. The first mill was established in 1832 by John Trollinger.15 Within a few years, E.M. Holt had opened the first mill for what would become one of the area’s most important textile companies.16 These mills were often in locations that originally housed the grist mills built by early settlers, some as early as 1745. The ready availability of water power from the Haw helped the industry grow in the region. Eventually, Alamance County became something of a brand in the textile industry, as dyed yarns became popular and the resulting distinctive patterns became known as the “Alamance Plaid.”17

Among the early mills was a production facility south of Graham, North Carolina, in a settlement that derived its name from the original owner of the mill, George William Swepson. Despite the location on the banks of the Haw, the mill was originally known as the Falls Neuse Mills, owing to Swepson’s prior ownership of a paper mill located alongside the Neuse River near Raleigh.

The Falls Neuse Mill was producing the distinctive Alamance Plaid in 1870. By 1883, though, Swepson was dead, amid rumors he may have committed murder and arson before his death. The mill was taken over by Ashby L. Baker, who was married to Swepson’s niece, Virginia McAden. Baker renamed the mill in her honor shortly after her death in 1893.18 The Virginia Cotton Mill continued to be the centerpiece of life in Swepsonville for decades. It thrived during World War I, but the Great Depression took its toll, leading to bankruptcy and reorganization in 1933.19 The Depression affected all areas of the economy, and baseball was not immune. There were 26 professional minor leagues across the country in 1929, but by end of the 1933 season, only 14 were still operating.20

Mill teams in Piedmont communities like Swepsonville, though, were able to continue playing ball. In fact, like many area mills, the leadership of Virginia Mills looked to provide their workers more recreation as a distraction from both a struggling economy and nascent unionization efforts that were taking hold in North Carolina. “Big companies of every kind promoted baseball for their workers. Management believed it promoted teamwork, provided a healthy way to fill spare time that might otherwise be devoted to labor agitation and taught immigrant workers how to be ‘real Americans.’”21

Virginia Mills built a ballfield just down the road from the mill, at the end of West Main Street, in 1926.22 This was happening as Alamance County saw growing unrest between labor and management. Some of these tensions dated back to the turn of the century, moving into a critical period following the “stretch-out” of the 1920s, when mill workers were faced with increasing automation and higher production quotas.23 This unrest included the declaration of a general strike by the United Textile Workers in 1934, and the arrival of union activist “Flying Squadrons,” causing some mill owners to call on the National Guard to protect their mills.24

Against this backdrop, many mill owners across the South offered various enticements to reduce the attraction to unions. These included free housing and diversions like mill baseball teams.25,26 Union organizers were not able to make much progress in the mill villages. Life in North Carolina continued with little change, as workers lived in housing provided by the mill and shopped at the company store. Their children attended schools provided by the mills, and their recreation and social opportunities were largely provided by the mill.27 There are newspaper accounts of Swepsonville teams competing in a circuit called the Central Carolina League as far back as 1934, playing against teams from Glencoe, Burlington, and Graham.28 Accounts from 1935 show Central Carolina League standings including teams from Graham, “Greensboro (Prox)” (denoting Proximity Manufacturing, the predecessor of textile giant Cone Mills), Swepsonville, and Burlington.29

As the 1930s turned into the 1940s, World War II created tremendous demand for textiles, and brought prosperity and growth to many local manufacturers, including Virginia Mills. In fact, Swepsonville’s Virginia Mills added 90,000 square feet of additional space between 1934 and the end of the war.30 In 1943, the mill’s owner created the Baker Foundation, which was established for the promotion of social and recreational activities in the village.31 The foundation’s works included building a community center, a playground, adult softball leagues, and a junior baseball program. The foundation also constructed a covered grandstand and installed lights on what had been just a ballfield since play began there in 1926.32

Remarkably, this grandstand is still in place today. Aside from repairs and maintenance work, this is essentially the same ballpark where mill workers sat to cheer on their coworkers over seventy years ago. It’s a simple wood grandstand, built of boards, poles, and planks, with just five rows of simple bench seats beginning at ground level, and a total capacity of roughly two hundred people. Unlike the typical design, made up of one section of seats directly behind home plate, and two flanking sections angled down the lines, this grandstand is composed of just two sections that meet directly behind home plate. The resulting shape is like a very shallow “V.” The secret to its survival is likely the size of the roof, which completely overhangs the entire seating areas and has protected the structure from the damaging elements for many decades. For a small-town mill team in the 1940s, it was a state-of-the art facility.

The grandstand project included lighting, ushering in night baseball. The park also was surrounded by a board fence designed to prevent people from watching the mill team’s games without paying.

The teams that played in Swepsonville and the Central Carolina League may not have been as strong as the best industrial teams, like the Bi-State League that moved up to Class D status in 1934, or the aforementioned Carolina League, which fielded teams studded with former minor-and major-league players.33 Despite that, there was a healthy competitive scene in the central part of North Carolina, not only with teams from Alamance County playing one another in the Central Carolina League, but also a yearly tournament that was billed as a “Semi-pro State Championship” for these teams and others, held in Roxboro.34,35 Like many of the industrial leagues, this team operated in territory that eventually included minor league professional teams. The Central Carolina League, which was an organized entity by the 1930s, centered around the Burlington area, which also fielded teams in the Bi-State and Carolina Leagues in 1942, 1945-55, and 1958-72.36 By the 1950s, Swepsonville and other mill towns were still sponsoring semi-pro teams, but many were also fielding community youth teams filled with sons of the mill employees.37

THE ROAD TO THE SHOW

Most area textile teams were made up of some talented local players who happened to work at the mill, as well as a handful of players who were recruited to work at the mill specifically to play baseball. But some years, these teams would include players who were on their way to the big leagues, like Tal Abernathy of the 1940 Burlington Mills team that won the state semipro championship.38 The Alamance County area had produced notable ballplayers decades before, including Tom Zachary, a successful major league pitcher from 1918 to 1940, who unfortunately became best known for surrendering Babe Ruth’s record-setting 60th home run.39 The Swepsonville community and the surrounding areas produced their share of talent as well. Dusty Cooke was born in Swepsonville in 1907, and made his major league debut with the New York Yankees in 1930. He was a lefthanded-hitting outfielder who played in 608 big league games before returning to the minor leagues after the 1938 season.40 Don Thompson went from the Swepsonville ballpark to the majors. He spent four years in the big leagues, including the 1953 season with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He played 96 games that year, sharing left field with Jackie Robinson, who split time between the outfield and second base. The Dodgers won the National League pennant that year before falling to the Yankees in the World Series.41,42 Floyd Wicker from nearby Burlington was another Alamance County product who played at the Swepsonville Ballpark on his way to the big leagues. He played 81 games for Montreal, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and San Francisco between 1968 and 1971. He originally signed with the Cardinals after playing a single season for East Carolina University (then College), helping the Pirates to the NAIA World Series championship.43 Among the most well-known hometown teams was a group of 12-13-year-old youths from Swepsonville known as the “Overall Boys,” who won a state championship in 1947. This team, playing in overalls while competing against teams from larger, more affluent communities in full uniforms, became a crowd favorite during the tournament.44,45

A player who was recruited to play ball for the mill, Bob Vaughn became such a favorite son of Swepsonville that one of the roads leading to the ballpark was named for him. He also recorded an early version of the “Splash Home Run” that Barry Bonds made famous in San Francisco. Playing for the Swepsonville mill in the 1950s, he hit a mammoth home run down the right field line, which carried beyond the outfield fence and another fifty feet, landing in the neighboring Haw River.46

LIFE BEYOND THE MILL; YOUTH BASEBALL, HIGH SCHOOL AND SUMMER COLLEGE BALL

World War II was an era of great prosperity and growth. But, like many of the mills in the area, Virginia Mills saw decline in the postwar period, as textile production migrated out of North Carolina in search of lower wages. Virginia Mills was closed in 1970. In 1989, the mill complex was destroyed by what is said to be the largest structure fire in the history of North Carolina.47

This was also an era of increasing competition for locally-oriented entertainment like mill team baseball. Television was growing in popularity and air conditioning was beginning to appear in homes.48 Posing even more immediate competition just up the road, the city of Burlington opened a new concrete and steel ballpark in 1960 with a capacity of several thousand fans to house their MLB-affiliated minor league team, the Alamance Indians of the Carolina League.49

The site of Virginia Mills is now a large open field dotted with brick and concrete foundations. One can only imagine the noise and activity level while the mill complex was still operating, as it cranked out textiles for the U.S. efforts in both world wars. As late as 1969, the mill was still running three shifts, with roughly 1200 people employed. The death of Walter M. Williams, who led the mill and had strong ties to the garment industry in New York City, was identified by many in the community as a death blow to the mill as well, as it closed shortly thereafter.50

Although the mill is no more, the ballpark lives on, and currently hosts baseball at a variety of levels. Of course, even when the mill was in its heyday, the field was used for more than textile league games. Youth baseball and adult softball sponsored first by the mill, later by the Alamance County Recreation Department, has continued to be played there.

Nearby Southern Alamance High School used the field for baseball and softball games prior to construction of fields on their campus. One of those Southern Alamance High School players was Raymond Herring, who played outfield for Southern when they won a state championship in 1965.

It was during his high school years that Herring met a girl from Swepsonville who became his wife, and the couple moved there after they were married. While running a successful construction company, Herring spearheaded Swepsonville’s efforts to become an incorporated town, and then served as mayor for 22 years, from 1997 to 2019.51

During that time, he led the way on a number of projects. One was the Swepsonville River Park, a part of the Haw River Hiking and Paddle Trail that sits on the opposite bank of the Haw River, within sight of the ballpark. But the ballpark was always especially close to Herring’s heart, and even before he took over as mayor, preservation of this gem was a priority for him and other concerned citizens of Swepsonville.

Shortly before the mill closed down, the Swepsonville Community Development Association, a group of civic-minded local residents, took over the ballpark, community center, and playground from the Baker Foundation. A lease was signed in 1967, giving all the community’s facilities over to the association for $3 a year.52

Over the years, the association undertook renovations, including a major round of work in the early 1990s. The group built a picnic area, walkways, handicapped accessible bathrooms, and a modern concession stand. Herring was hands-on with much of this work, including pouring “every bit of the concrete” in the ballpark.53

The association also oversaw a replacement of the lighting system in the late 1980s, funded by a distribution of money resulting from the closing of the Graham Savings Bank. While the association kept the facility in operation and were able to undertake some repairs, the town took over management and ownership of the ballpark in the late 1990s.54

Recently, the Old North State League, a summer college baseball league based in North Carolina, approached the town about using the Swepsonville Ballpark as the home field for a team. The Swepsonville Sweepers took the field with a roster consisting mostly of players from North Carolina, representing schools like Greensboro College, Guilford Tech, North Carolina Central University, Fayetteville Tech, and Catawba.55

The Old North State League also sponsors a showcase league for high-school-age players. The league also played Old North State League tournament games in Swepsonville, making this ballpark a very busy place.56 In exchange for the use of the field for the college team and the showcase ball, the Old North State League improved and repaired fencing, and invested in improving the playing surfaces.

This was a tremendous benefit to a small municipality like Swepsonville, which has no property tax and relies on their pro-rated share of the county’s sales tax for all its funding, according to Town Administrator Brad Bullis. He grew up in the area and remembers playing youth baseball in the Alamance County Recreation Department’s recreation leagues at the Swepsonville Ballpark. Bullis was pleased with both the improvements, and the visitors it brought to Swepsonville and the county.57

“A REAL GEM”

This ballpark is hidden away in a modest residential neighborhood just a few blocks from the traffic light at Swepsonville’s main crossroads, Main Street and Swepsonville-Saxapahaw Road. Nestled between the Haw River and a large pond, with only trees and the river beyond the outfield wall, this ballpark is a true step back in time. With the pop of the glove and the sound of the ball hitting the bat, attending a game here can give visitors a glimpse into the history of the game, and perhaps, an ever-rarer glimpse into its heart. 

MARK CRYAN is an assistant professor of sport management at Elon University. He previously served as the general manager of the Burlington (NC) Indians in the Appalachian League, helped found the Coastal Plain League, and was athletic director for the Burlington (NC) Recreation & Parks Department. He is the author of Cradle of the Game: Baseball and Ballparks in North Carolina.

 

Author’s Note

This research project was greatly aided by Mayor Robert Herring, a former local ballplayer and fan who has been termed the “George Washington” of Swepsonville, as well as Burlington Recreation Director Tony Laws, and Swepsonville Town Administrator Brad Bullis.

 

Further Reading

Anyone who is interested in learning more about textile league baseball and the early history of minor league baseball in North Carolina should pick up Hank Utley and Scott Verner’s meticulously researched and eminently readable book, The Independent Carolina League, 1936-1938: Baseball Outlaws.

Few counties have such a thorough and well-written history available as Shuttle & Plow: A History of Alamance County by Carol Troxler and William Vincent.

The Minor League Baseball Encyclopedia by Miles Wolff and Lloyd Johnson, even in the Internet age, remains an invaluable resource, just as it was when I was scouting cities for the Coastal Plain League.

 

Notes

1. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Baseball: An Illustrated History (New York: Knopf, 1994), 146.

2. Mark Cryan, Cradle of the Game: Baseball and Ballparks in North Carolina, 2nd Ed. (Middleton, Wis.; August Publications, 2014)

3. R.G. (Hank) Utley, Scott Verner, The Independent Carolina League, 1936-1938: Baseball Outlaws (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999) and Chris Holaday, Professional Baseball in North Carolina; An Illustrated City-by-CityHistory, 1901-1996 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998), 200.

4. Chris Holaday, Professional Baseball in North Carolina; An Illustrated City-by-City History, 1901-1996 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998) 200.

5. Heather S. Shores, “Working to Play, Playing to Work: The Northwest Georgia Textile League,” The National Pastime: Baseball in the Peach State, #30, 2010, 18-30.

6. Raymond Herring (former Swepsonville mayor) in discussion with the author, December 15, 2020.

7. Holaday, 197.

8. Shores, 18-30 and Mary Frederickson, “Four Decades of Change: Black Workers in Southern Textiles, 1941-1981,” Radical AmericaVol. 16 #6, 1982, 27-43.

9. Shores, “Working to Play,” 18-30.

10. Don Bolden, 20th Century Alamance: A Pictorial History (Burlington, NC: Times-News Publishing, 2002), 56.

11. Holaday, 200.

12. Utley and Verner, 138.

13. Utley and Verner, 225 and Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, 2nd ed. (Durham, NC: Baseball America, 1997), 45.

14. Utley and Verner, Baseball Outlaws, 225.

15. Carol W. Troxler and William M. Murray, Shuttle & Plow: A History of Alamance County, North Carolina (Burlington, NC: Alamance County Historical Association, 1999), 344.

16. Bolden, 56.

17. Troxler and Murray, 349.

18. Troxler and Murray, 359.

19. Troxler and Murray, 345.

20. Johnson and Wolff, 263

21. Ward and Burns, 124.

22. Jessica Williams, “Swepsonville’s Founding Father Retires,” Burlington Tmes-News, March 25, 2019, accessed February 22, 2022. https://www.thetimesnews.com/story/news/politics/county/2019/03/25/swepsonvillesfirst-and-only-mayor-to-retire-after-22-years/5628093007.

23. Troxler and Murray, 373

24. Troxler and Murray, 373.

25. Shores, 18-30 and Troxler and Murray, 371.

26. Troxler and Murray, Shuttle & Plow, 371.

27. Herring interview.

28. “Graham to Meet Sweps in Headliner at Sweps,” Burlington Daily Times-News, August 3, 1934, 3.

29. “Central Carolina League; Graham Blanks Sweps,” Burlington Daily Times-News, May 24, 1935, 3.

30. Troxler and Murray, 359.

31. Troxler and Murray, 359.

32. “Baker Foundation Finishes Summer Activity Programs at Swepsonville,” Burlington Daily Times-News, September 22, 1948, 11.

33. Utley and Verner.

34. Tony Laws (Burlington Recreation and Parks Director) in conversation with author December 2020 and ’’Swepsonville in Action Against Oak Ridge Nine,” Burlington Daily Times-News, July 26, 1951, 6.

35. “Swepsonville in Action Against Oak Ridge Nine,” Burlington Daily Times-News, July 26, 1951, 6.

36. Johnson and Wolff, 45.

37. Bolden, 75.

38. Bolden, 56.

39. “Tom Zachary,” Baseball Reference, accessed February 22, 2022. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/z/zachato01.shtml.

40. Bill Nowlin, “Dusty Cooke,” SABR Biography Project, accessed February 22, 2022. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/dusty-cooke.

41. Herring interview and “Don Thompson,” Baseball Reference, accessed February 22, 2022. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/thompdo01.shtml.

42. Herring interview.

43. “Floyd Wicker,” Baseball Reference, accessed February 22, 2022. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wickefl01.shtml

44. Herring interview and ”Swepsonville Juniors Win State Crown,” Burlington Daily Times-News, August 21, 1947, 15.

45. Herring interview.

46. Herring interview.

47. Troxler and Murray, 359.

48. Johnson and Wolff, 411.

49. Cryan, 28-31.

50. Herring interview.

51. Williams.

52. Connor Jones, “Swepsonville Gets Recreation Units from Baker Foundation,” Burlington Daily Times-News, March 15, 1967, 36.

53. Herring interview.

54. Brad Bullis (Swepsonville town administrator) in conversation with the author, December 2020.

55. “Swepsonville Sweepers,” The Official Home of the Old North State League, accessed February 22, 2022. https://oldnorthstateleague.com/members/swepsonville/Swepsonville_Sweepers.

56. “Schedule,” The Official Home of the Old North State League, accessed February 22, 2022. https://oldnorthstateleague.com/schedule-all.

57. Bullis interview.