Women's baseball

Women's baseball is currently played in several countries. The strongest and most organized women's baseball leagues are in the United States, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Cuba and Canada. Those countries have national governing bodies that support girls' and women's baseball programs. Other countries/regions that currently have organized women's baseball are Korea, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Argentina and the Dominican Republic.

History

One of the various 1886 Allen & Ginter's female player cards

Women appear to have been involved with baseball since at least the 1850s, meaning there were organized women's teams before the founding of Major League Baseball. The first documented mixed-gender game appears to have taken place prior to the Civil War in 1859, though it is possible that women were playing the game even before this, since Alexander Cartwright went around spreading the game all over the country, but due to lack of any solid proof, nobody really knows. Vassar College is credited for having the first women's collegiate baseball team, which first took the field in 1866.

With the support of Brooklyn Excelsiors president Joseph B. Jones, who was a known feminist, and of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a women's club was organized in 1868. The Philadelphia City Item reported the following: “At Peterboro, writes Mrs. (Elizabeth) Cady Stanton, there is a baseball club of girls. Nannie Miller, a grand-daughter of Gerrit Smith, is the captain, and handles the bat with a grace and strength worthy of notice. It was a pretty sight to see the girls with their white dresses and blue ribbons flying, in full possession of the public square, while the boys were quiet spectators of the scene.” This was not the first female baseball team though. Apparently there was a female club that played in Portsmouth, VA in 1867 and an even earlier group of clubs in New York, NY that started play in 1866. Harry Chadwick's "Ball Player's Chronicle" says that a women's team in Pensacola, FL from 1867 would expel any players who tripped over their dresses in a game. In 1870, a women's club appeared in Lancaster, OH, and a Chicago Inter Ocean article from November 21 gives the names of the girls on the roster. Female clubs continued to pop up occasionally throughout the 1870s and 1880s. In 1886 Allen & Ginter printed a set of baseball cards featuring female ballplayers as a promotion for their Virginia Brights cigarettes. In the 1890s, women began appearing in games with all-men's clubs, such as Lizzie Arlington who became the first woman to play in the minor leagues, and Maud Nelson also played for men's teams too. 2 Also in the 1890s came the "Bloomer Girls," which were a number of all-female clubs that would travel the country challenging all-male teams to exhibition matches. A notable team were the Boston Bloomer Girls which was known to allow cross-dressing male players to slip onto their team to outperform other teams and "wow" the crowd. Among these cross-dressers were none other than future major leaguer Smoky Joe Wood and future Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby.

"The pitcher I'm talking about was the immortal Smoky Joe Wood. A pitcher who can never be forgotten even though he did get his start posing as a girl." - Ted Williams on Smoky Joe Wood

Sylvester Wilson and the near-downfall of women's baseball

One of Wilson's clubs, called the Chicago Black Stockings

One big organizer of early women's baseball was a man named Sylvester F. Wilson who had began organizing women's baseball clubs around 1879. Women's baseball had become a bit of a notorious thing and something that came as a horror to hear about in a society where baseball alone was not considered an honorable profession. Wilson was a known pedophile who had numerous offenses and run-ins with the law. Him and his business partner, William Powell were arrested for engaging in sexual activities with underage girls shortly after organizing his first clubs. In 1891, he was in trouble yet again for abducting a 15-year-old girl to join one of his teams. He had sexually assaulted a number of female ballplayers over his career, some of which were minors. There were lawsuits filed against him and in 1892 he received a $1,000 fine as well as a prison sentence. Following this, New York State Assembly representative W. E. McCormick had attempted to pass a bill to ban women's baseball. One SABR article says "Though nothing came of the bill, the fact that a New York politician thought to introduce it in the first place indicates the extent to which Wilson had besmirched the reputation of all female baseball players." Less than two months after being released in 1898, his name came up again after he made creepy remarks towards a 17-year-old store cashier. Wilson had a warrant for his arrest requested by the manager of the St. George Cricket Grounds after he apparently pocketed the game revenue following a match between one of his clubs and the Hudson Athletic Club. He managed to avoid being arrested and headed to Philadelphia, PA where he was pointed out by the Pennsylvania Society for the Protection of Children from Cruelty after attempting to abduct young girls as well as suspicions of attempting to pay women to sleep with him. The Society for the Protection of Children from Cruelty in Philadelphia worked with the New York Society for the Protection of Children from Cruelty to get him arrested again. A year later he ended up back in the slammer in Pennsylvania. He was released in December of 1902 and a month later he was back in New York attempting to find a business partner to help him organize a women's basketball team. The NYSPCC came across one of his ads, which requested that any girls who were interested in joining should meet him at a shady theater to discuss it and decided to keep a close eye on him. A hotel employee named Max Bracklow told them that he had encountered Wilson at one point and that he had conned him out of $200. Wilson was found and plead guilty, receiving a 9-year sentence that was then turned into a life sentence. He was moved to a mental hospital in 1910 and died there in 1921.

Professional baseball

United States

In 1943 the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was founded and became the first "major league" for women which featured 15 different teams until it folded in 1954.

There was another attempt to create a female professional league in the 1990s, following the success of the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, about the AAGPBL. However, the Ladies Professional Baseball League folded after one truncated season in 1997 and part of a second the following year.

From 1994 to 1997, the Colorado Silver Bullets were organized as a professional all-female team that would compete against minor league teams.

International competition

International competition in women's baseball began with the 2001 Women's World Series played in Toronto, ON's Skydome. Women's World Series events were held in 2002 (St. Petersburg, FL), in 2003 (Gold Coast, Australia), and in 2004 (Uozu-city, Japan). The Women's World Series events paved the way for official International Baseball Federation sanctioned Women's World Cup competitions.

In 2004 five countries competed in the 2004 Women's Baseball World Cup in Edmonton, AB. They were the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and Taiwan. In 2006 seven countries competed in the 2006 Women's Baseball World Cup in Taiwan. Those countries were Australia, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Cuba, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. The United States won the Gold Medal in both events. The Women's World Cup name has been changed to the Women's World Championship. The International Baseball Federation has sanctioned Women's World Championships biannually through to 2018. There was then a five-year break due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2023-2024 Women's Baseball World Cup was played in two phases, with preliminary rounds in 2023 and the final round in 2024; a total of 12 countries participated.

Further Reading

• David Adler and Andrew Simon: "These women broke barriers in baseball", mlb.com, November 13, 2020. [1]
• Jean Ardell: Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL, 2005.
• Anne Aronson: "Dames in the Dirt: Women's Baseball Before 1945", in Daniel R. Levitt, ed.: Short but Wondrous Summers: Baseball in the North Star State, The National Pastime, Volume 42 (2012), pp. 111-116.
• Gai Berlage: Women in Baseball: The Forgotten History, Praeger Books, Westport, CT, 1994.
• Marilyn Cohen: No Girls in the Clubhouse: The Exclusion of Women from Baseball, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7864-4018-4
• Theo DeRosa: "International Women's Day: 5 who are changing the game", mlb.com, March 8, 2024. [2]
• Merrie Fidler: The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2006. ISBN 978-0-7864-6089-2
• Megan Garcia: "Baseball options for girls, women expanding", mlb.com, April 9, 2021. [3]
• Barbara Gregorich: Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, Harcourt Brace, San Diego, CA, 1993.
• Donna L. Halper: "Marvels or Menaces? How the Press Covered 'The Lady Baseballists', 1865-1915", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 51, Number 1 (Spring 2022), pp. 7-15.
• Leslie A. Heaphy and Mel Anthony May, ed: Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2006. ISBN 978-0-7864-2100-8
• Leslie Heaphy: "Women in the Negro Leagues", in Sean Forman and Cecilia M. Tan, eds.: The Negro Leagues Are Major Leagues: Essays and Research for Overdue Recognition, Baseball-Reference and SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2021, pp. 45-46. ISBN ISBN 978-1-970159-63-9
• Leslie Heaphy: "Black Women Playng Baseball: An Introduction", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 51, Number 1 (Spring 2022), pp. 24-27.
• John M. Kovach: Women's Baseball, Arcadia Publishing, Mount Pleasant, SC, 2005. ISBN 9780738533803
• Dorothy Seymour Mills: Drawing Card: A Baseball Novel, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2012. ISBN 978-0-7864-6814-0
• Gladys Palmer: Baseball for Girls and Women, A.S. Barnes and Company, New York, NY, 1929.
• Jennifer Ring: Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL, 2009.
• Jennifer Ring: A Game of Their Own: Voices of Contemporary Women in Baseball, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2015. ISBN 978-0-8032-4480-1
• Harold Seymour: Baseball: The People's Game, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1990.
• Debra A. Shattuck: Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL, 2017. ISBN 978-0-252-04037-5