Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. On May seventeenth, nineteen forty three, spring training
Speaker 1: started for what would eventually be known as the All
Speaker 1: American Girls Professional Baseball League. That was eighty two years
Speaker 1: ago on the day that this episode publishes, so that
Speaker 1: is today's Saturday Classic. Since we released this episode, which
Speaker 1: was on March eighteenth, twenty twenty, there has been a
Speaker 1: remake of A League of Their Own, which was in
Speaker 1: the form of a TV show that ran for sadly
Speaker 1: only one season on Amazon Prime. The documentary A Secret Love,
Speaker 1: which we mentioned at the very end of this episode,
Speaker 1: is also indeed available on Netflix, so enjoy. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey B. Wilson and
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fryne. I am sure you've seen a League
Speaker 1: of their Own? I have. I feel like it's safe
Speaker 1: to say most of our listeners have either seen a
Speaker 1: League of their Own or at the very very least
Speaker 1: have heard someone say there's no crying in baseball, which
Speaker 1: is probably its most quoted line. I think you could
Speaker 1: come to my house and hear it once a week
Speaker 1: out of my husband's mouth. If you want to just
Speaker 1: hang out. So this is a nineteen ninety two film
Speaker 1: that tells the story of the All American Girls Professional
Speaker 1: Baseball League. It is a work of fiction, but it
Speaker 1: also gets some of the highlights correct. The league was
Speaker 1: founded during World War Two, as many of Major League
Speaker 1: Baseball's male players had joined the military, but the movie
Speaker 1: also kind of makes it seem like this was a
Speaker 1: temporary diversion that ended when the war did. There's a
Speaker 1: line basically about continuing on with it, but it's not
Speaker 1: really explored beyond that. In reality, though these women were athletes,
Speaker 1: some of them thought they were starting a lifelong career
Speaker 1: in professional baseball that would last as long as they
Speaker 1: were able to play. The league itself also went on
Speaker 1: for years after the war was over. And this is
Speaker 1: also a listener request. We've heard about it at various
Speaker 1: points over the years, but the one that I wrote
Speaker 1: down was from listener morev So, by nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: when this league was founded, baseball was considered both the
Speaker 1: national pastime in the United States and a man's game,
Speaker 1: but it didn't start out that way. As the game
Speaker 1: of baseball was developing in the nineteenth century, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just for men and boys. Children played together in neighborhood
Speaker 1: games regardless of their gender. Semi professional and professional leagues
Speaker 1: included women players and women's teams, and there were also
Speaker 1: teams at women's colleges, the first being at Vassar in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six. An all black women's team called the
Speaker 1: Dolly Vardens was established in Philadelphia in eighteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: During baseball's earlier years, the rules weren't particularly standardized, and
Speaker 1: there were all kinds of variations and things like the
Speaker 1: size of the playing field, the size of the ball,
Speaker 1: and the style of pitching, and a lot of places
Speaker 1: everyone played by the same rules regardless of their gender.
Speaker 1: Although it was not uncommon for women to be expected
Speaker 1: to play in floor length dresses. It was also common, though,
Speaker 1: for girls baseball teams specifically to have modified rule sets that,
Speaker 1: for example, made the playing field a little smaller. Barnstorming
Speaker 1: became an important part of baseball's development starting in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty Teams would go on the road to play exhibition
Speaker 1: matches outside of official league play. By the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: barnstormers included all women teams known as Bloomer Girls because
Speaker 1: of their billowy uniform legs, so they resembled the loose
Speaker 1: trousers advocated by dress reformers in the nineteenth century. That's
Speaker 1: not underwear, imagining that when they said bloomer girls, it
Speaker 1: meant playing in their underwear. Maybe giggle a little bit,
Speaker 1: but that's not what it meant. Over time, one set
Speaker 1: of baseball rule modification morphed into its own distinct sport,
Speaker 1: and that sport was softball. These two games have a
Speaker 1: lot of similarities. They both involve hitting a throne ball
Speaker 1: with a bat and then rounding a set of bases
Speaker 1: that are arranged as a diamond, but softball uses a larger,
Speaker 1: softer ball, thus the name. That ball is pitched underhanded
Speaker 1: rather than overhand or sidearm, the pitching distance is shorter
Speaker 1: and the overall field of play is a little smaller. Initially,
Speaker 1: the game that developed into softball was meant as a
Speaker 1: baseball alternative that could be played indoors in bad weather.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was even called just indoor baseball. It became
Speaker 1: particularly popular in places where space was limited or were
Speaker 1: the only place to play was indoors. It was also
Speaker 1: played outdoors in places with limited space In the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, settlement houses in the US started establishing playgrounds
Speaker 1: and encouraging active play in urban areas, especially among boys.
Speaker 1: Softball became so closely connected to the settlement movement into
Speaker 1: these playgrounds that some sources have erroneously credited Chicago's Hull
Speaker 1: House with inventing it, and we talked about Hull House
Speaker 1: and its founder, Jane Adams in a previous two parter
Speaker 1: on the show. Did not invent softball, No, did play
Speaker 1: it a whole lot, though The overlap between baseball and
Speaker 1: softball and who was playing it continued until about nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three. That is when the Amateur Softball Association was
Speaker 1: founded as that sports governing body and the name softball
Speaker 1: was formally adopted for it, and at this point girls
Speaker 1: baseball teams that had been using some kind of modified
Speaker 1: rule set generally moved over to playing softball. It did
Speaker 1: not take long before people took for granted that baseball
Speaker 1: was for boys and softball was for girls, a distinction
Speaker 1: that persists in a lot of places today. When Little
Speaker 1: League Baseball was founded in nineteen thirty nine, it was
Speaker 1: intended for boys, although that did not become an official
Speaker 1: rule until nineteen fifty one, in response to Kay Johnston
Speaker 1: of New York cutting her hair to join a team
Speaker 1: under the name Tubby. The Tubby rule remained in place
Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy four, after a series of court cases
Speaker 1: and a ruling by the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.
Speaker 1: I guess that's such a good illustration of how it
Speaker 1: was assumed to be for boys, so much so that
Speaker 1: it wasn't even in the rules until after a girl
Speaker 1: cut her hair to join a team. Like Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was just taken totally for granted. So by the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: both softball and baseball were well established in the United States.
Speaker 1: They were two separate sports, one for men and boys,
Speaker 1: the other for women and girls. Both had amateur, semi professional,
Speaker 1: and professional teams and leagues. And that brings us to
Speaker 1: World War Two, if you remember our October twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: episode on the Black Sox scandal. During World War One,
Speaker 1: the idea of Major League Baseball continuing on in spite
Speaker 1: of the war was deeply controversial. Secretary of War Newton D.
Speaker 1: Baker issued a work or Fight order which required any
Speaker 1: man eligible for the draft to either work in a
Speaker 1: war critical industry or join the military. Men who continued
Speaker 1: to play baseball were viewed as abandoning their patriotic duty,
Speaker 1: and after the US joined the war, Major League Baseball
Speaker 1: shortened the nineteen eighteen season. As war once again started
Speaker 1: to spread through Europe in nineteen thirty nine, people feared
Speaker 1: that the sport of baseball would be disrupted, as it
Speaker 1: had been a couple of decades earlier. These fears escalated
Speaker 1: after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one, and the United States entered the war at
Speaker 1: that point. In January of nineteen forty two, Kennesaw Mountain Landis,
Speaker 1: the commissioner of baseball, wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Speaker 1: to ask, quote, what you have in mind as to
Speaker 1: whether professional baseball should continue to operate? On January fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, Roosevelt, who was a fan of baseball,
Speaker 1: responded with what has become known as the green Light Letter.
Speaker 1: It read, in part, quote, I honestly feel that it
Speaker 1: would be best for the country to keep baseball going.
Speaker 1: There will be fewer people unemployed, and everybody will work
Speaker 1: longer hours and harder than ever before, and that means
Speaker 1: that they ought to have a chance for recreation and
Speaker 1: for taking their minds off their work even more than before.
Speaker 1: And his letter, the President stressed that players who were
Speaker 1: of an age should join the military should do so,
Speaker 1: but that they might be replaced with older players who
Speaker 1: could still play an exciting game. The President also advocated
Speaker 1: for more night games so that day shift workers at
Speaker 1: wartime factories could go The President ended the green light
Speaker 1: letter by saying, quote, here is another way of looking
Speaker 1: at it. If three hundred teams use five thousand or
Speaker 1: six thousand players, these players are a definite recreation asset
Speaker 1: to at least twenty million of their fellow citizens, and that,
Speaker 1: in my judgment, is thoroughly worthwhile. So, even though baseball
Speaker 1: had the p President's seal of approval, roughly half of
Speaker 1: the regular players in Major League Baseball wound up serving
Speaker 1: in the military. Some of its best and most popular
Speaker 1: players were drafted. Of course, that trend also applied to
Speaker 1: the minor leagues and to other baseball teams as well.
Speaker 1: So even though the President himself had given the ok
Speaker 1: for baseball to continue, there were people worried that the
Speaker 1: sport was going to struggle, and that this might even
Speaker 1: lead to the closure of some of the nation's ballparks.
Speaker 1: One of these concerned people was Philip K. Wrigley. His father,
Speaker 1: William Wrigley Junior, had died in nineteen thirty two, leaving
Speaker 1: Philip the William Wrigley Junior Chewing Gum Company, a fortune
Speaker 1: and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. We will get to
Speaker 1: what he did after a quick sponsor break. About three
Speaker 1: million women joined the workforce in the United States between
Speaker 1: nineteen forty and nineteen two, and Philip K. Wriggley thought
Speaker 1: that maybe the same trend could apply to professional ball.
Speaker 1: Women's teams could play in ballparks where the home teams
Speaker 1: were on the road, keeping the sport in the parks
Speaker 1: going while so many men were away at war. These
Speaker 1: teams of women could also help boost the national morale
Speaker 1: and help the war effort with things like fundraising and
Speaker 1: recruitment drives. Wriggly teamed up with Ken Cells, who had
Speaker 1: previously worked for the chewing gum business but had become
Speaker 1: assistant general manager of the Chicago Cubs. On February seventeenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, they issued a press release announcing the
Speaker 1: creation of the All American Girls Softball League. Their plan
Speaker 1: was to recruit players from the women's softball teams that
Speaker 1: had been established all over the country at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Jim Hamilton was the lead talent scout in the US,
Speaker 1: and Johannes Gottselig, known as Johnny, headed up recruitment in Canada.
Speaker 1: But Wriggly also wanted to make the game a little
Speaker 1: closer to what spectators might expect from a baseball game,
Speaker 1: so they worked out a rule set that had elements
Speaker 1: of both baseball and softball. Like softball, it used a
Speaker 1: larger ball and an underhanded pitching style, but like baseball,
Speaker 1: the teams had nine players per side rather than softball's ten.
Speaker 1: The playing field would also have a longer pitching distance
Speaker 1: and running path than softball did, but it was still
Speaker 1: shorter than what was being used in baseball. Players in
Speaker 1: this game would also be allowed to steal bases, something
Speaker 1: that was not allowed in softball. These changes caused some
Speaker 1: controversy about exactly what sport was being played out there
Speaker 1: on the field, and the league changed its name to
Speaker 1: the All American Girls Baseball League part way through the
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three season. As recruiters visited softball teams to
Speaker 1: look for players. Hundreds of women and girls expressed interest
Speaker 1: in playing professionally. About two hundred and eighty were invited
Speaker 1: to the final tryouts, and sixty players from the US
Speaker 1: and Canada were ultimately selected to play in the nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three season. Some of these young women were as
Speaker 1: young as fifteen, although most of them were between eighteen
Speaker 1: and twenty two. As was the case with Major League
Speaker 1: Baseball at the time, the newly established Women's League excluded
Speaker 1: black players. These players were arranged into four teams of
Speaker 1: fifteen players each, the Rockford Peaches of Illinois, the South
Speaker 1: Bend Blue Socks of Indiana, and the Racing Bells and
Speaker 1: the Kenosha Comets of Wisconsin. Each of these was not
Speaker 1: far away from a much larger major city. They were
Speaker 1: also close enough together to allow the teams to travel
Speaker 1: from one city to the next for games while still
Speaker 1: conserving fuel and rubber during wartime rationing. The league setup
Speaker 1: was significantly different from Major League Baseball or most other
Speaker 1: leagues at the time. The league itself was a non
Speaker 1: profit organization, with Philip Wrigley, Paul Harvey, and Branch Rickey
Speaker 1: as trustees. Much of the initial funding came from Wrigley himself.
Speaker 1: It's been about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars getting
Speaker 1: the whole project started, and he contributed to the team's
Speaker 1: maintenance costs, especially in the first year. The player's contracts
Speaker 1: were also centrally owned by the league, rather than being
Speaker 1: owned by one of the four teams. This meant that
Speaker 1: the players pay was set by the league. There were
Speaker 1: no bidding wars with teams trying to entice the best
Speaker 1: players to sign on with them. That first year, the
Speaker 1: players made between forty five dollars and eighty five dollars
Speaker 1: a week. That does not sound like much, but it
Speaker 1: is significantly more than most of them had been making
Speaker 1: an agricultural or factory work, or maybe playing in a
Speaker 1: paying softball league. Players in the league were prohibited from
Speaker 1: doing any other work during the season. The centrally owned
Speaker 1: player contracts also meant that the league had the right
Speaker 1: to trade players from one team to another. One of
Speaker 1: the league's goals was for all the games to be
Speaker 1: as evenly matched and exciting to watch as possible, so
Speaker 1: player trades happened throughout the season as they tried to
Speaker 1: get keep this balance. Each team had a manager who
Speaker 1: also acted as a coach. These were typically men who
Speaker 1: had experience in major league or minor league baseball. Every
Speaker 1: team also had a business manager as well as a
Speaker 1: chaperone who was a woman and was a paid part
Speaker 1: of the staff during the league's history. Most of the
Speaker 1: chaperones had some experience in working with women's athletic teams.
Speaker 1: The chaperones who were responsible for making housing arrangements for
Speaker 1: the team, handling money, and approving any housing and dining
Speaker 1: accommodations that the team was going to use. In some ways,
Speaker 1: they were a little like athletic trainers. As well, being
Speaker 1: trained in first aid and responsible for the team's first
Speaker 1: aid kit and the treatment of injuries. They were also
Speaker 1: ultimately responsible for the player's conduct, behavior, and appearance. That
Speaker 1: last point was a lot. Most of the players came
Speaker 1: from working class and agricultural communities that didn't really regard
Speaker 1: women's participation in softball as unusual in any way. A
Speaker 1: lot of them had been playing on teams that had
Speaker 1: been organized by their employers, with that involvement being seen
Speaker 1: as pretty normal and fun. But that wasn't necessarily true
Speaker 1: among the middle class, which was a big part of
Speaker 1: the audience that the league was hoping to attract. The
Speaker 1: idea that women were playing baseball, which was considered to
Speaker 1: be a game for men, also raised some suspicions about
Speaker 1: the players. A common stereotype was that women athletes were lesbians.
Speaker 1: That's a stereotype that still exists today, but without nearly
Speaker 1: the level of stigma that was attached to it in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. So the league went to great lengths
Speaker 1: to reinforce the idea that these players weren't just women,
Speaker 1: they were ladies, specifically patriotic, wholesome, middle class, heterosexual ladies. Outwardly,
Speaker 1: the league described all its rules and training about things
Speaker 1: like beauty and conduct as a service teaching working class
Speaker 1: girls to be middle class ladies, which of course suggested
Speaker 1: that to be middle class was better than to be
Speaker 1: working class. And on top of that, a lot of
Speaker 1: the rules and standards in place were also meant to
Speaker 1: reduce suspicions of lesbianism. This included the player's uniforms. These
Speaker 1: were one piece pastel colored tunic like garments with a
Speaker 1: flared skirt, which were worn with satin shorts and knee socks.
Speaker 1: They were designed by Wrigley's wife, Ada, along with poster
Speaker 1: artist Otis Shepherd and softball player An Harnett. They were
Speaker 1: also patterned after women's figure skating and tennis attire. These
Speaker 1: uniforms were meant to set the players apart from the
Speaker 1: barnstorming bloomer girls that we referenced earlier, and to reinforce
Speaker 1: the idea that the players on the field were feminine women.
Speaker 1: These skirts did not really do much to protect the
Speaker 1: player's legs from scrapes and other injuries, but the players
Speaker 1: were also expected to look pristine at all times and
Speaker 1: not really have any visible injuries. Perfectly prim athletic lady.
Speaker 1: It's the whole kind of convoluted tangle. Yeah. The specific
Speaker 1: rules varied over the league's history, but the general idea
Speaker 1: of players being the right kind of woman was part
Speaker 1: of it. Throughout each player was issued a guide for
Speaker 1: all American girls how to look better, feel better, be
Speaker 1: more popular. In the nineteen forty three season, Helena Rubinstein's
Speaker 1: Beauty Salon taught charm and beauty lessons for the players
Speaker 1: that included hygiene, personal appearance, etiquette, and things like how
Speaker 1: to gracefully get in and out of a car or
Speaker 1: go up and downstairs. The Ruth Tiffany School provided these
Speaker 1: lessons the next year. Formal charm lessons ended after that point,
Speaker 1: but a focus on appropriate feminine behavior continued. Players were
Speaker 1: also issued a beauty kit that they were expected to
Speaker 1: keep stock. It included cleansing cream, lipstick, rouge, deodorant, astringent,
Speaker 1: face powder, hand lotion, and hair remover. They were required
Speaker 1: to be attractive and presentable at all times, and they
Speaker 1: had to wear a dress or a skirt any time
Speaker 1: time they were seen in public. Most of the players
Speaker 1: wore trousers on the bus for the sake of comfort,
Speaker 1: especially during nighttime road trips between games, but kept a
Speaker 1: skirt with them to change into if they stopped for
Speaker 1: something like a restroom break or a meal. Some of
Speaker 1: the other rules from the player's code of conduct no
Speaker 1: boyish bobbed hair, no smoking, no drinking alcohol, and no
Speaker 1: social engagements unless they were approved by a chaperone. Lipstick
Speaker 1: was mandatory at all times, and there were also more
Speaker 1: mundane rules about things like punctuality. The player's Code of
Speaker 1: Conduct specified a five dollars fine for the first offense,
Speaker 1: a ten dollars fine for the second offense, and suspension
Speaker 1: for the third, but there were players that faced harsher penalties.
Speaker 1: Josephine DiAngelo, known as Jojo, was cut from the Blue
Speaker 1: Socks in her second year from the team after she
Speaker 1: got a bobbed haircut that was described as too short
Speaker 1: and butchy in some accounts. Frida and Olympia Savona, who
Speaker 1: were star players from the New Orleans Jackson Brewing Company
Speaker 1: softball team, were passed over for the All American Girls
Speaker 1: League because of their masculine appearance. There were definitely some
Speaker 1: news stories that made disparaging comments about the Savona's appearance,
Speaker 1: but Frieda wrote to a reporter to say this had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with why she was not in the league.
Speaker 1: She said she was just happier and better paid where
Speaker 1: she was. Fraternizing with members of other teams was also
Speaker 1: forbidden within the league. The league framed this as a
Speaker 1: way to keep the level of competitiveness high, but many
Speaker 1: of the players interpreted it as a way to discourage
Speaker 1: romantic relationships between them. So that's kind of an overview
Speaker 1: of what the league was like. When spring training started
Speaker 1: its first season on May seventeenth of nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1: That happened in Chicago, the first pitch of the season
Speaker 1: was thrown on May thirtieth of nineteen forty three, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how things grew and evolved from there
Speaker 1: after we first have a little sponsor break. The All
Speaker 1: American Girls Baseball League's first season included sporting events as
Speaker 1: well as wartime patriotism. Teams made appearances at recruitment drives
Speaker 1: and fundraisers, and they visited wounded soldiers that had returned stateside.
Speaker 1: On July first, they held an all Star game against
Speaker 1: a team from the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, which was
Speaker 1: played under the lights at Wrigley Field. This event was
Speaker 1: part of a recruitment drive, held free of charge and
Speaker 1: at night so that working women could attend. Some of
Speaker 1: the league's patriotism was more symbolic, like having the two
Speaker 1: teams that were going to be competing lined up in
Speaker 1: a V for victory during the national anthem at the
Speaker 1: beginning of every game. The nineteen forty three season ended
Speaker 1: with a five game championship series in which the Racing
Speaker 1: Bells defeated the Kenosha Comets. More than one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand fans attended games in that first season.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen forty four, the league expanded to sixteen.
Speaker 1: Another competing league was founded that same year, the National
Speaker 1: Girls Baseball League, established in Chicago. This league continued until
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, although its history and activities aren't nearly
Speaker 1: as well documented as the All American Girls League. At
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen forty four season, Philip Wrigley
Speaker 1: sold the league to Arthur Meyerhoff for ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which was a fraction of what he had put into
Speaker 1: getting it started and operating it. In those first two seasons,
Speaker 1: it had become clear that the sport of men's baseball
Speaker 1: was not in any kind of actual peril from the war,
Speaker 1: But apart from that, Wrigley was just not really interested
Speaker 1: in being so heavily involved in the league anymore. Meyerhoff
Speaker 1: had also been a big part of the league since
Speaker 1: its inception, and Wrigley was confident that he would maintain
Speaker 1: the same standards that Wrigley had established in terms of
Speaker 1: quality and entertainment. The biggest change at this point was
Speaker 1: that the league went from being a nonprofit to a
Speaker 1: for profit entity. Otherwise, the player's contracts were still cently owned,
Speaker 1: and each team continued to have paid managers and chaperones.
Speaker 1: Meyerhoff put a big focus on marketing and promoting the league.
Speaker 1: He also organized postseason exhibition tours to Cuba and South America,
Speaker 1: mainly to countries where Wrigley chewinghum had a presence thanks
Speaker 1: to the rubber and chickle industries. Over time, the style
Speaker 1: of play within the league continued to shift and become
Speaker 1: more and more like men's baseball. The ball gradually got
Speaker 1: smaller and harder, pitching and infield distances got longer. Sidearm
Speaker 1: pitching was introduced in nineteen forty six, and overhand pitching
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight. Some players that had been recruited
Speaker 1: from softball teams had a little trouble adjusting to these changes,
Speaker 1: and Meyerhoff established a junior league in farm teams to
Speaker 1: cultivate new talent. Although the All American Girls Baseball League
Speaker 1: had started out with the idea of being a substitution
Speaker 1: for men's baseball during World War Two, its popularity really
Speaker 1: peaked after the war ended in nineteen forty five. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty a July fourth double header in South Bend, Indiana,
Speaker 1: drew a crowd of between ten thousand and twenty thousand people,
Speaker 1: Attendance peaked in nineteen forty eight, with nearly a million
Speaker 1: fans in attendance that year. The league had ten teams
Speaker 1: from Rockford, Peoria, Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: South Bend and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Grand Rapids in Muskegan, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Most of the team names were distinctly feminine, including the Peaches, Chicks, Millarets, Daisies, Lassies, Colleen's, Sally's,
Speaker 1: and Bell's. Although the league grew between nineteen forty five
Speaker 1: and nineteen forty eight, it also faced some struggles in
Speaker 1: those years. The idea of women playing baseball had drawn
Speaker 1: suspicion since the beginning, but that increased when there was
Speaker 1: no longer a wartime patriotic need for women to take
Speaker 1: up what was seen as men's work. Individual teams also
Speaker 1: folded for various reasons from time to time, and then
Speaker 1: that put a strain on the rest to the league
Speaker 1: as it tried to absorb those other players. After a while,
Speaker 1: friction started to develop between individual teams in Meyerhoff's management company.
Speaker 1: While the league owned the player's contracts, the teams all
Speaker 1: had their own owners who started to object to the
Speaker 1: requirement to send some of their ticket revenues back to Meyerhoff.
Speaker 1: Meyerhoff was putting most of the proceeds back into the league,
Speaker 1: but even so, a perception grew that Meyerhoff was making
Speaker 1: money off of the team's work. As attendance started to
Speaker 1: fall off. In nineteen forty eight, Meyerhoff embarked on some
Speaker 1: ambitious plans to try to revive the league. This included
Speaker 1: an attempt to start an International women's Baseball League, which
Speaker 1: would play in Florida, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Cuba during
Speaker 1: the winter and early spring. Although an international league was
Speaker 1: formed very briefly, it never really got off the ground.
Speaker 1: At the end of the nineteen fifty season, the teams
Speaker 1: bought out Meyerhoff and became self governing and decentralized. The
Speaker 1: league's name had been through slight tweaks through the years,
Speaker 1: and at this point it became the American Girls Baseball
Speaker 1: League or AGBL, although most people still use the word all.
Speaker 1: At this point, players started contracting with teams for their
Speaker 1: rates rather than the league, which increased paid disparities as
Speaker 1: teams tried to attract and keep the best players. The
Speaker 1: only paid position in the league at this point was
Speaker 1: the commissioner, and without a central league organization that was
Speaker 1: promoting and marketing the games, attendance continued to drop. The
Speaker 1: league also faced increased competition from other forms of entertainment
Speaker 1: in the fifties, including televised men's baseball games. The American
Speaker 1: Girls Baseball League dissolved in nineteen fifty four. During its history,
Speaker 1: about six hundred women from the United States, Canada, and
Speaker 1: Cuba had played for teams in fourteen Midwestern cities. During
Speaker 1: baseball season. They played six or seven games a week,
Speaker 1: with doubleheaders on Sundays and holidays, sleeping on buses overnight
Speaker 1: as they traveled from one city to the next. This
Speaker 1: was a grueling schedule, which may be one reason why
Speaker 1: about a quarter of the players only played for one
Speaker 1: season or less. Although Major League Baseball had started to
Speaker 1: desegregate in the late nineteen forties and President Harry Truman
Speaker 1: issued an executive order to desegregate them armed forces in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, the All American Girls Baseball League was
Speaker 1: segregated throughout its history. Although two black women practiced with
Speaker 1: the South Bend Blue Sox in nineteen fifty one, neither
Speaker 1: of them wound up signing a contract with the league. However,
Speaker 1: there were three black women who played on men's teams
Speaker 1: in the Negro Leagues in the nineteen fifties, Mamy Panut Johnson,
Speaker 1: Connie Morgan, and Marcinia Lyle, who used the name Tony
Speaker 1: Stone professionally. All three started with the Indianapolis Clowns. Tony
Speaker 1: Stone replaced Hank Aaron there and her contract was sold
Speaker 1: to the Kansas City Monarchs before the nineteen fifty four season.
Speaker 1: There are reports that Tony Stone tried out for the
Speaker 1: All American Girls League as well, but those are not
Speaker 1: concretely document After the All American Girls League was dissolved,
Speaker 1: many of the players adopted what's been described as a
Speaker 1: self imposed silence. Most of them did not really talk
Speaker 1: about their time playing professional baseball, even among their families.
Speaker 1: Reasons why are not entirely clear, but stigma may have
Speaker 1: been one factor. According to one survey that was conducted
Speaker 1: in the nineties, about twenty percent of players reported facing
Speaker 1: discrimination because of their history as an athlete. However, many
Speaker 1: used the money that they'd earned playing baseball to go
Speaker 1: to college or to start a career, with some attending
Speaker 1: college and graduate school during the off season. One researcher
Speaker 1: who interviewed players later in their life found that about
Speaker 1: thirty five percent had graduated from college, compared to less
Speaker 1: than ten percent of women in the general population in
Speaker 1: the same era. This has been described as a precursor
Speaker 1: to Title nine's effects on women's college enrollment, giving women
Speaker 1: educational opportunities that they didn't have access to otherwise. When
Speaker 1: the women's liberation movement started nineteen sixties and seventies, historians
Speaker 1: and other researchers started unearthing the league's history, and the
Speaker 1: players started reconnecting with each other and documenting their own history.
Speaker 1: At the same time. In the late seventies, Dorothy Camney, Camischeck,
Speaker 1: and Marge Winzel and June Peppys all met up and
Speaker 1: started talking about organizing a reunion. In October of nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: Peppa sent a letter to the few players whose addresses
Speaker 1: she had been able to find and started trying to
Speaker 1: track people down. By January of nineteen eighty one, this
Speaker 1: had morphed into a newsletter, which grew from a handful
Speaker 1: of addresses to more than one hundred within a month.
Speaker 1: This also coalesced into a player's association that still exists today.
Speaker 1: The first of many reunions was held in Chicago in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, and the newsletter became part of an
Speaker 1: effort to establish a league archive and to get some
Speaker 1: kind of recognition in the National Baseball Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: in Cooperstown, New York. It was during this process that
Speaker 1: the league's name became formally finalized as the All American
Speaker 1: Girls Professional Baseball League. The player's efforts for recognition came
Speaker 1: to fruition on November fifth of nineteen eighty eight, with
Speaker 1: the formal unveiling of a permanent Women in Baseball exhibit
Speaker 1: at the Baseball Hall of Fame. The league's players had
Speaker 1: been an active part in this exhibit's creation, including donating
Speaker 1: their photographs, uniforms, equipment, and memorabilia. A league archive was
Speaker 1: established at the Northern Indiana Historical Society Museum now called
Speaker 1: the History Museum in South Bend, Indiana. There was also
Speaker 1: an exhibition through the Smithsonian. The league was also the
Speaker 1: subject of a short documentary called A League of their
Speaker 1: Own that aired nationally on public television on September thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven. And of course, there's the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: two feature film directed by Penny Marshall, which was a
Speaker 1: blockbuster and was actually when many people first heard about
Speaker 1: women's baseball. Another documentary tells the story of Terry Donahue
Speaker 1: and pat Henschel. Donahue was recruited from Saskatchewan, Canada, and
Speaker 1: played for the Peoria Red Wings for four seasons. After
Speaker 1: these two women met. In between seasons, Henschell left her
Speaker 1: life in Canada behind to join Donahue in the United States.
Speaker 1: Although the two of them described themselves at the time
Speaker 1: as cousins and roommates, they were really a couple and
Speaker 1: the documentary tells the story of their lives together. The
Speaker 1: film is called A Secret Love. It was supposed to
Speaker 1: premiere at south By Southwest in March of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but of course, because of the pandemic, south By Southwest
Speaker 1: has been canceled. So I'm not sure what the status
Speaker 1: of the film's debut is at this point, but at
Speaker 1: some point I think it might come to Netflix, because
Speaker 1: there is a page for it in the Netflix Media Center. Exciting.
Speaker 1: Henschell is also one of the people Brittany de la
Speaker 1: Creda interviewed when reporting her article The Hidden Queer History
Speaker 1: behind a league of their own. At that point, both
Speaker 1: Donahue and Henschell were still living, but Donahue died in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. At that time, she and Henschell had been
Speaker 1: together for years. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League's
Speaker 1: website for the player association also has a wealth of
Speaker 1: information on the individual players, including their photos, their team histories,
Speaker 1: their biographies, and for those who are no longer living,
Speaker 1: many of their obituaries are there as well. It is
Speaker 1: really a ton if you want to go read about
Speaker 1: some women baseball players, lots and lots to look at
Speaker 1: their Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to send us a note, our email
Speaker 1: addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.