How Baseball Walked Away From Women
Written in 2018 as part of an academic paper
The year 2007 was the year Alton, New Hampshire united with excitement from the second Boston Red Sox’ world series win of the decade. When kids wore baseball jerseys to school like uniforms and flags flaunting championships lined bar windows. 2007 was also the last year that 12-year-old resident Aly St. Laurent, along with most of the girls on her team, would ever step into the batters’ box. Soon they’d enter high school and have to fight for a spot of a consolidated softball team, the only place in Alton to play. With few incentives of college scholarships or championship flags flying in windows, it was easier for most of the girls to simply stop.
In a town whose culture is as intertwined with sports as Alton is, was there any chance for young girls to play baseball? “For girls, there wasn’t really. Baseball was designated for boys and softball was for girls. The one exception was a girl named Kelly Jones, who was cherry-picked as a talented pitcher. That wasn’t an offer given to any other girl I’d seen though.” St. Laurent, a former outfielder, explained her experience.
St. Laurent’s story is not a rare one. Girls all over America are growing up on the outside looking into a sport that defines their local culture. There is no major league baseball for women or any women playing on an MLB team, there is only one woman playing baseball in the entire NCAA, and on a developmental level more girls end up like Aly and have nowhere to play after twelve.
Even the lucky ones, the Kelly Jones’ of the world, will stop playing or switch to softball, facing less stability than a single-A minor league player in either route.
Mo’ne Davis was thirteen when she made national headlines for pitching a no-hitter in the Little League World Series. The sports world was fascinated with her talent and unusual story, but even winning an ESPY for her performance and support from President Obama himself was not enough to keep Davis in baseball. Once she reached high school, Davis’ was denied paying time and decided to switch to the all-girls softball team at seventeen years old. “I would always ask the coach, and he wouldn't ever give me a really good answer behind it. So then I was like, ‘You know what, if I’m just going to be sitting here and not really doing anything, I might as well just try softball out.”
The women who stick with baseball, like the USA Women’s National Baseball Team, often find themselves left wondering if the ends justifies the means. Journalist Natalie Weiner described the struggles of various Team USA players and how competing at the highest level doesn’t necessarily provide more opportunities
“After the national team trials in June, [Malaika] Underwood invited teammates who also lived in the Southeast to spend weekends at her house in Jacksonville so that they could practice together...All the training and travel happened on their own dimes...players sent videos of their pitches and swings to their coaches, who would try to make adjustments remotely.” Outfielder and two-time world champion Underwood elaborated on the inequality “Guys make sacrifices to play baseball, too, but there’s just a much clearer path for them.”
While it may be easy to blame the inequity on girls playing baseball being a recent development, women like Underwood and Davis are not the first to venture into baseball. Women have been in baseball as early as the 1890s when traveling women’s team Boston Bloomer Baseball Club was legally barred from competition in cities where authorities banned women from playing sports. Legal barriers didn’t stop Bloomers star pitcher Maud Nelson from finding places to compete, who would then inspire the next generation of women players such as Lizzie Murphy. The early 1900s star was another product of New England, raised only 150 miles from Alton in the town of Warren, and is the first player in history to compete in both American and National league teams before they merged under one umbrella.
Names like Murphy and Nelson are unknown to young girls today when they pick out their first glove. History is buried.
The most notable instance of women playing baseball is the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), due to the Hollywood movie A League Of Their Own. The AAGPBL conditions were far from ideal. Average playing career was only three years due to injury, and as planned, investment in the league would falter when the men returned from World War Two. Minor league or high school men's teams would get more coverage than the AAGPBL following the war. Heavy restrictions were placed on players' lives during the league's success. Strict dress codes, make up rules, no cursing, no dating during the season, a curfew, and chaperones were enforced. Sports sociology professor Karen Weiller notes “Wrigley believed the image was a vital selling factor for the new league and judged the women who tried out for their beauty just as much as their skill.” The biggest failure of the AAGPBL was racism, the league refusing to allow Black women to play. Instead, Toni Stone, Mamie Johnson, and Connie Morgan made history in the 1940's being the first and only three women to play for Negro League Baseball's Indianapolis Clowns. The league faced a decline due to Black men finally being allowed in the MLB, causing Indianapolis to turn to women to fill roster spots. Playing in a league with men, the three were not always warmly welcomed, citing being spiked by opponents when on base, or Stone being denied hotels on the road because they assumed she was a sex worker. Newspapers, owners, and teammates would criticize the women for not being feminine enough, and media coverage talked about their appearance instead of skill.
AAGPBL players still had one thing the women of today don’t: a pro league where they were paid decent money to play. Baseball is one of the few sports in which we have seen progress go backward for women. It is also one of the few where Title IX has hurt, not helped.
Title IX has aided soccer, basketball, and hockey in creating developmental programs due to its requirement that every men's sports team must have a women’s equivalent. For baseball, softball is considered the women's equivalent, but women in baseball don’t agree. Team USA outfielder, Underwood, explained “It’s the only sport where we’ve allowed the equivalent for women to be something totally different. No one was telling Serena Williams to play ping-pong.”
Originally beginning as a way for baseball players to practice indoors, softball now is culturally viewed as the easier/softer game of baseball, therefore the women’s version of baseball. The field is smaller, the balls are bigger, and brute strength is considered less important for players. Current day softball has evolved into a different sport than baseball entirely, deserving of respect, but requiring different strategies and skillsets than the game of baseball despite sharing some mechanics. Not unlike badminton and tennis. Team USA outfielder Kelsie Whitmore notes that there’s a cultural difference as well. “The biggest difference for me is the atmosphere, [Softball] is quicker, the girls have their cheers [in the dugout], they do their makeup when they play…it’s just different.”
Growing differences haven’t enabled women to make a choice between softball and baseball, still being systematically coerced into softball instead. For women like St. Laurent, softball was the only option. Davis, on the other hand, had the choice, but only one was viable due to sexism limiting her baseball career. Title IX causes many girls to have to choose softball as it is the only sport they’ll earn a scholarship. No woman had received a scholarship to play baseball in college until Sarah Hudek of Bossier Parish Community College in 2015, and no one has since. Playing both is rarely an option with timing and monetary resources.
The systematic way that women have been denied their baseball history, forced out of the sport at a young age, and financially punished if they chose to pursue it is no mistake. Jennifer Ring, the author of Stolen Bases and expert in gender and sports issues, explains “...Each girl has to feel like she’s the first. It allows us to see every successful girl as an outlier, when in fact it’s just that we’re erasing girl’s and women’s baseball history.” She goes on to explain how the view of women athletes is skewed with “If she got a hit, it was a fluke — an event — and if she didn’t get a hit, it was because she was a girl,” With the method being confirmed, motivation comes into question.
In the compilation Thinking Outside The Batters Box by Eric Bronson, experts explain why America chooses to limit their talent pool. “The roots of softball and baseball discrimination are embedded in the story of Western philosophy.” Baseball being a major part of the United States’ culture means that it must comply with the systems of oppression the country profits off of, including misogyny.
When women play sports like baseball and become role models that not only young girls but young boys look up to, it chips away at the idea that women are physically and mentally inferior to men. It asks the questions on why women aren’t allowed in certain spaces, and ideas that women are biologically different from men is challenged. In Women Don’t Ask, a book about women’s hardship in the workplace, Professor of management Judy Rosener is cited explaining overall resistance to granting women positions including in athletics. “The glass ceiling for those below it is the floor for those above it. When we take away our ceiling, we take away their floor, and they have a fear of falling.”
Proof of the societal boundaries women face in athletics has not made the road easier for women athletes. With hundreds of years of challenging the norm, people are running out of patience and wondering how we can break the glass ceiling for everyone.
Japan lends hope into what the future of women’s baseball in North America may look like. Their national team for women’s baseball has not lost a game since 2012, and within the country, women have the choice to compee on four professional teams. Ability to engage in constant high-level competition in the Japanese Women’s Baseball League has helped players like Ayami Sato, considered the best women’s baseball player in the world, get recognition. The league gets commercial support and investments as well as drawing up to 5,000 spectators per game. A pipeline from developmental programs to professional leagues is more clear cut in Japan too, with around 30 private high schools and select public schools offering women's baseball teams. The fight for equality isn’t over for the women in Japan, who saw budget and roster cuts in 2019, but the country as a whole has the gold medals from their national team to prove they’ve advanced America in the sport.
For women in the United States, there are several problems to tackle before the pieces of stability Japan has fall into place. NCAA recognition of women’s baseball and integration of teams, starting on the d3 level and working its way up, is one of the first steps. The NCAA has been the main mid-level developmental program for athletes in America since it’s beginnings and is relied heavily on by other women’s sports such as basketball and hockey. Support from colleges is also necessary as, without being paid fully, many of the women who would like to play pro baseball are going to need other full-time jobs and often time degrees. This impact is evident in the WNBA, where at least an associate’s degree is needed to complete, or the NWHL that requires college degrees for it’s players. Investment in national team programs is another needed move, with visibility and coverage of the team in the international competition encourages young girls to pursue baseball and creates demand for programs at the developmental level. With these offers, more little league and development opportunities would follow, as seen in Japan’s rise in private high school programs.
Women’s baseball’s intentional treatment as a novelty causes America to miss out on some of the greatest to ever play. To only cover the first to do something means missing out on the second, third, and fourth women who are great athletes that followed in their footsteps. The lack of opportunities in baseball is blamed on women not being good enough or not caring enough. A burden best refuted by Kat Williams, president of the International Women’s Baseball Center.
“Women didn’t walk away from baseball, Baseball walked away from women."
Luther, Jessica, and Jessica Luther. “What Does Japan Know About Women's Baseball That The U.S. Doesn't?” HuffPost, HuffPost, 25 Aug. 2018, www.huffpost.com/entry/japanese-women-baseball_n_5b804007e4b0cd327dfc774b.
Given, Karen. “75 Years After The Women's Pro League, Bringing Baseball Back To Girls.” 75 Years After The Women's Pro League, Bringing Baseball Back To Girls | Only A Game, WBUR, 17 Aug. 2018, www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/08/17/women-baseball-mone-davis.
Weiner, Natalie. “Why It's so Hard for American Women to Simply Play Baseball.” SBNation.com, SBNation.com, 22 Aug. 2018, www.sbnation.com/mlb/2018/8/22/17764996/team-usa-womens-baseball-world-cup-2018.
Ring, Jennifer. Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Dont Play Baseball. University Of Illinois Press, 2013.
Bronson, Eric. Baseball & Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter's Box. Open Court Publishing, March, 2004
Babcock, Linda, and Sara Laschever. “4. Scaring the Boys.” Women Dont Ask, 2003, doi:10.1515/9781400825691-006.
Weiller, Karen H., and Catriona T. Higgs. “The All American Girls Professional Baseball League, 1943–1954: Gender Conflict in Sport?” Sociology of Sport Journal, vol. 11, no. 3, 1994, pp. 289–297., doi:10.1123/ssj.11.3.289.
Amira Rose Davis, Radical History Review 125, ““No League of Their Own: Baseball, Black Women, and the Politics of Representation”