Peter Dreier / Negro Leagues, Ladies Leagues
Women
Will Be Playing
Hardball on TV This Season
by PETER
DREIER
MS.
August
17, 2022
(Courtesy
of Prime Video)
“There’s
no crying in baseball,” says Tom
Hanks in A
League of Their Own.
But the film’s more subtle theme is that there are no lesbians
in baseball. The 1992 film made no mention of the fact that many of the
athletes in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League
(AAGPBL) were
gay—although none of them were open about their sexuality except to
close
friends and some teammates. Reflecting the homophobia of the period,
one 1943
magazine article expressed concern that the AAGPBL players would
turn
women’s baseball into an “uncouth
Amazonian spectacle.”
But
last Friday, Amazon Prime Video unveiled
an eight-episode
series,
also called A
League of Their Own, that
includes openly lesbian AAGPBL
players. It was co-created by Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson, who stars
as
Carson Shaw, a catcher for the AAGPBL’s Rockford Peaches. The show
follows the
lives of Peaches players on and off the field. Rosie O’Donnell, who was
in the
1992 film, plays the owner of a gay bar.
The
show breaks from the earlier film in
another way. The AAGPBL never had a Black player, even after Jackie
Robinson
broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Prohibited
from playing in the AAGPBL, three African American women—Toni
Stone,
Mamie “Peanut” Johnson and Connie Morgan—played in the
otherwise all-male Negro Leagues.
The
new TV series includes Black players, but
they play on an otherwise all-male Negro League team, not in the AAGPBL.
Toni
Stone, the first woman baseball player in
the Negro Leagues. (AP Photo / Courtesy of Negro Leagues Baseball
Museum)
The
AAGPBL, which lasted from 1943 through
1954, had been almost forgotten until 1987, when Kelly Candaele made a
public
television documentary called A
League of Their Own,
based in part on the experiences of his
mother, Helen Callaghan, who played for three AAGPBL teams in the
’40s. Candaele’s film inspired director Penny Marshall to make a
Hollywood
version with the same title.
According
to Candaele, “My mom … told me that
she didn’t even know about lesbianism until she joined the Minneapolis
Millerettes. She said that all the players knew that gay relationships
in the
league were common, but also that nobody seemed to make much of it.”
Among his
mother and her fellow players, Candaele said, “their attitude seemed to
be that
what happens within the team stays within the team.”
The
AAGPBL was founded by Philip K. Wrigley,
owner of the Chicago Cubs. Wrigley figured that baseball fans might buy
tickets
to see women play the game while many of their favorite major league
stars were
in the military during World War II.
Many
AAGPBL players were recruited from
softball teams, which had exploded during the 1930s and ’40s, but
Wrigley
insisted that the AAGPBL play regular baseball. The league started with
four
teams—the Racine Belles and Kenosha Comets (Wis.), the Rockford Peaches
(Ill.),
and the South Bend Blue Sox (Ind.)—and grew to 10 teams. In its 12
years, over
600 players filled the league’s rosters.
Because
many of the best ballplayers were
lesbians, the league could not exclude them. But AAGPBL executives
insisted
that the teams avoid the perception that any players were lesbians. The league
handbook required
players to radiate the “highest ideals of womanhood”
and “dress, act, and carry themselves as befits the feminine sex.”
The
AAGPBL expected players to “Play like a man, look like a lady”—or, as
player
Lois Youngen put it, “Look like Betty Grable and play ball like Joe
DiMaggio.”
They
played in flared skirts like those worn
by women in figure skating, field hockey and tennis, even though they
were
expected to slide—which led to many bruises. Players were prohibited
from
smoking or drinking in public, required to get their chaperones’
permission for
“all social engagements,” and obeyed a curfew. The league sent player
profiles
to local newspapers that focused not only on their playing skills but
also
their domestic hobbies, such as cooking and sewing. Players had to
attend classes run by Helena Rubenstein’s charm school that
included
makeup tips, etiquette, language, posture, social skills and personal
hygiene.
Connie
Wisniewski—a five-time All-Star player
from 1944 to 1952—was told that she would be released if she got a
close-cropped haircut. Dottie Ferguson, a player between 1945 and 1954,
was
warned not to wear Oxford shoes because they were too masculine.
Many
AAGPBL players were married, engaged or
had boyfriends back home or in the military. However, some had affairs
during
the baseball season—with men and women, including teammates. League
officials
monitored the players’ behavior and punished those who engaged in
same-sex
relationships or even had the appearance of being lesbian.
One
manager released two players whom he
suspected were lesbians, worried that they would “contaminate” other
players. When AAGPBL publicity director Fred Leo learned that a
married
player was having an affair with another woman, he contacted the
player’s
husband, who came and took her home.
Most
players were from working-class families.
Their salaries which initially ranged from $45 to $85 a week—were
considerably
higher than those of most jobs available to women, including jobs in
defense
plants. Even so, most had to work during the off-season, in factories
or at
office jobs.
While
only 8.2 percent of women of their
generation earned college degrees, 35
percent of AAGPBL players earned
college degrees, with 14 percent
earning graduate degrees. Many became teachers, coaches and advocates
for
women’s sports.
Some
players had lesbian relationships during
and after their playing days but remained closeted. Most came out of
the
closest after they died, through phrases in their obituaries like
“long-term
companion.”
The
lesbian stereotype about women athletes
persisted for many years. When tennis star Billie
Jean King came
out of the closet in 1981, it
sparked a major controversy, and she lost many endorsements. But
feminism and
the LBGTQ+ movement have impacted the world of sports. Today, many
lesbian
athletes are open about their sexuality. As the stigma has eroded,
fewer
straight women athletes are worried about the stereotypes.
Maybelle
Blair was an accomplished softball
player when she joined the AAGBPL’s Peoria Redwings in 1948. After she
suffered
an injury, she moved to Chicago to play professional softball, then
worked for
Northrop Corporation for 37 years. She maintained her ties to the
AAGPBL,
serving on its alumni board of directors and encouraging girls
and women to participate in sports.
During
that time, she kept her sexuality a
secret. But in June 2022, on stage at the Tribeca film festival
premiere of the
new Amazon series, the 95-year-old Blair came out. She was inspired by
the
show’s unapologetic acknowledgement of some players’ lesbianism.
“I
think it’s a great opportunity for these
young girl ball players to come to realize that they’re not alone and
you don’t
have to hide,” she
said about
the film. “I hid for 75, 85 years, and this is
actually, basically the first time I’ve ever come out.”
After
the AAGPBL folded in 1954, there were
few opportunities for girls and women to play baseball—which changed
after
Congress passed Title IX in 1972. Little League, which had banned
girls
since it began in 1939, revised its charter in 1974 to allow girls to
play.
Girls’ participation in Little League was boosted in 1976 when actress
Tatum
O’Neal starred as the only girl on her Little League team in the film
”Bad News
Bears.”
Since
then, the number of girls and women
participating in sports—from childhood through the professional
ranks—has
skyrocketed. The number of high school girls playing softball grew
from 110,140 to 362,038 between 1982 and 2018. The
number playing in college has grown from 7,465 to 20,316. These
numbers
don’t include the growing number of women participating in college club
sports and amateur or professional leagues around the
country.
Women’s Professional Fastpitch, a pro softball league which began play
this
year, is the latest.
In
1996, Justine Siegal started Baseball
for All (BFA),
a
nonprofit organization, now supported by Major League Baseball,
to encourage girls to pursue baseball (not softball) beyond Little
League.
Last month, BFA held its seventh national tournament for 400 girls from
6 to 16
at Bell Bank Park in Mesa, Ariz.
In
March, BFA held the first Women’s College
Club Championships, with teams from California State University at
Fullerton,
Montclair (N.J.) State University, Occidental College, and the
University of
Washington.
On
Aug. 13 and 14, 28 women participated
in BFA’s Women’s College Baseball Invitational at Boston College to
prepare for
college baseball on both all-women and all-male teams. This spring,
eight women
are expected to play on all-male college teams—an all-time peak.
Some
women have even played professional minor
league baseball. Ila Borders—the first woman to receive a scholarship
for men’s
college baseball—played in several professional minor leagues from 1997
to
2000. She stayed in the closet until after she left baseball.
Kelsie
Whitmore was
the only female on her high school
baseball team in Temecula, California. She played softball for Cal
State-Fullerton, and led the U.S. Women’s Baseball team to a gold medal
at the
Pan American Games in 2015 and 2019. This season, the 24-year-old
Whitmore is
the only woman player on an all-male professional baseball roster.
She’s
pitching and playing outfield for the Staten Island FerryHawks in the
independent Atlantic League, one or two rungs below the majors.
The
only woman to play in the major leagues so
far has been Genevieve “Ginny” Baker, who pitched for the San Diego
Padres on
the fictional TV series Pitch in
2016. While Fox canceled that
show after one season, the makers of Amazon’s A
League of Their Own are
hoping that the eight episodes are
only the first of many seasons.