SYMHC Classics: All American Girls Professional Baseball League

This 2020 episode covers the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which was founded in 1943. Some of these women athletes believed they were starting on a career in professional baseball. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Holly Frey?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 1:42Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment. A Lincoln Original Series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:15Holly Frey?

  Happy Saturday. On May 17th, 1943, spring training started for what would eventually be known as the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. That was 82 years ago on the day that this episode publishes, so that is today's Saturday classic.

• 2:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Since we released this episode, which was on March 18th, 2020, there has been a remake of A League of Their Own, which was in the form of a TV show that ran for sadly only one season on Amazon Prime. The documentary, A Secret Love, which we mentioned at the very end of this episode, is also indeed available on Netflix. So enjoy.

• 2:58Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson.

• 3:12Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 3:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Holly, I am sure you've seen A League of Their Own.

• 3:16Holly Frey?

  I have.

• 3:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  I feel like it's safe to say, most of our listeners have either seen A League of Their Own, or at the very, very least, have heard someone say, "There's no crying in baseball," which is probably its most quoted line.

• 3:31Holly Frey?

  I think you could come to my house and hear it once a week out of my husband's mouth, if you want to. Just hang out.

• 3:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this is a 1992 film that tells the story of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. It is a work of fiction, but it also gets some of the highlights correct. The league was founded during World War II, as many of Major League Baseball's male players had joined the military. But the movie also kind of makes it seem like this was a temporary diversion that ended when the war did. There's a line, basically, about continuing on with it, but it's not really explored beyond that. In reality, though, these women were athletes. Some of them thought they were starting a lifelong career in professional baseball that would last as long as they were able to play. The league itself also went on for years after the war was over. And this is also a listener request. We've

• 4:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  heard about it at various points over the years, but the one that I wrote down was from listener Morav.

• 4:29Holly Frey?

  So by 1943, when this league was founded, baseball was considered both the national pastime in the United States and a man's game. But it didn't start out that way. As the game of baseball was developing in the 19th century, it wasn't just for men and boys. Children played together in neighborhood games regardless of their gender. Semi-professional and professional leagues included women's players and women's teams. And there were also teams at women's colleges, the first being at Vassar in 1866. An all-black women's team called the Dolly Vardens was established in Philadelphia in 1867.

• 5:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  During baseball's earlier years, the rules weren't particularly standardized, and there were all kinds of variations in things like the size of the playing field, the size of the ball, and the style of pitching. In a lot of places, everyone played by the same rules regardless of their gender, although it was not uncommon for women to be expected to play in floor-length dresses. It was also common, though, for girls' baseball teams specifically to have modified rule sets that, for example, made the playing field a little smaller.

• 5:37Holly Frey?

  Barnstorming became an important part of baseball's development, starting in 1860. Teams would go on the road to play exhibition matches outside of official league play. By the 1890s, barnstormers included all-women teams, known as "bloomer girls" because of their billowy, uniformed legs. So they resembled the loose trousers advocated by dress reformers in the 19th century. That's not underwear.

• 6:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Imagining that when they said "bloomer girls," it meant playing in their underwear made me giggle a little bit, but that's not what it meant. Over time, one set of baseball rule modifications morphed into its own distinct sport, and that sport was softball. These two games have a lot of similarities. They both involve hitting a thrown ball with a bat and then rounding a set of bases that are arranged as a diamond. But softball uses a larger, softer ball, thus the name. That ball is pitched underhanded rather than overhand or sidearm. The pitching distance is shorter, and the overall field of play is a little smaller.

• 6:40Holly Frey?

  Initially, the game that developed into softball was meant as a baseball alternative that could be played indoors in bad weather. Sometimes it was even called just "indoor baseball." It became particularly popular in places where space was limited or where the only place to play was indoors. It was also played outdoors in places with limited space. In the late 19th century, settlement houses in the US started establishing playgrounds and encouraging active play in urban areas, especially among boys. Softball became so closely connected to the settlement movement and to these playgrounds that some sources have erroneously credited Chicago's Hull House with inventing it. And we talked about Hull House and its founder Jane Adams in a previous two-parter on the

• 7:25Holly Frey?

  show. Did not invent softball.

• 7:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  No, did play it a whole lot, though. The overlap between baseball and softball and who was playing it continued until about 1933. That is when the Amateur Softball Association was founded as that sport's governing body and the name softball was formally adopted for it. And at this point, girls' baseball teams that had been using some kind of modified rule set generally moved over to playing softball.

• 7:55Holly Frey?

  It did not take long before people took for granted that baseball was for boys and softball was for girls, a distinction that persists in a lot of places today. When Little League Baseball was founded in 1939, it was intended for boys, although that did not become an official rule until 1951, in response to Kay Johnston of New York, cutting her hair to join a team under the name Tubby. The Tubby Rule remained in place until 1974, after a series of court cases and a ruling by the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.

• 8:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  I guess that's such a good illustration of how it was assumed to be for boys, so much so that it wasn't even in the rules until after a girl cut her hair to join a team.

• 8:44Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  It was just taken totally for granted. So by the 1940s, both softball and baseball were well-established in the United States. They were two separate sports, one for men and boys, the other for women and girls. Both had amateur, semi-professional, and professional teams and leagues.

• 9:00Holly Frey?

  And that brings us to World War II. If you remember our October 2019 episode on the Black Sox scandal, during World War I, the idea of Major League Baseball continuing on in spite of the war was deeply controversial. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker issued a work-or-fight order, which required any man eligible for the draft to either work in a war-critical industry or join the military. Men who continued to play baseball were viewed as abandoning their patriotic duty. And after the US joined the war, Major League Baseball shortened the 1918 season.

• 9:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  As war once again started to spread through Europe in 1939, people feared that the sport of baseball would be disrupted as it had been a couple of decades earlier. These fears escalated after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December of 1941, and the United States entered the war at that point. In January of 1942, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of baseball, wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to ask, quote, "What you have in mind as to whether professional baseball should continue to operate."

• 10:08Holly Frey?

  On January 15th, 1942, Roosevelt, who was a fan of baseball, responded with what has become known as the Green Light Letter. It read in part, quote, "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before."

• 10:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  In his letter, the president stressed that players who were of an age to join the military should do so, but that they might be replaced with older players who could still play an exciting game. The president also advocated for more night games so that day shift workers at wartime factories could go.

• 10:53Holly Frey?

  The president ended the Green Light Letter by saying, quote, "Here is another way of looking at it. If 300 teams use 5,000 or 6,000 players, these players are a definite recreation asset to at least 20 million of their fellow citizens. And that, in my judgment, is thoroughly worthwhile."

• 11:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  So even though baseball had the president's seal of approval, roughly half of the regular players in Major League Baseball wound up serving in the military. Some of its best and most popular players were drafted. Of course, that trend also applied to the minor leagues and to other baseball teams as well. So even though the president himself had given the okay for baseball to continue, there were people worried that the sport was going to struggle and that this might even lead to the closure of some of the nation's ballparks.

• 11:42Holly Frey?

  One of these concerned people was Philip K. Wrigley. His father, William Wrigley Jr., had died in 1932, leaving Philip the William Wrigley Jr. Chewing Gum Company, a fortune, and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. We will get to what he did after a quick sponsor break.

• 12:03Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other? Tune

• 12:48Holly Frey?

  in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rallies so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing, and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at nsl.sport.

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• 13:56Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 14:11Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 14:22Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 14:27Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 14:33Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 14:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  About 3 million women joined the workforce in the United States between 1940 and 1942. And Philip K. Wrigley thought that maybe this same trend could apply to professional ball. Women's teams could play in ballparks where the home teams were on the road, keeping the sport in the parks going while so many men were away at war. These teams of women could also help boost the national morale and help the war effort with things like fundraising and recruitment drives.

• 15:28Holly Frey?

  Wrigley teamed up with Ken Sells, who had previously worked for the chewing gum business, but had become assistant general manager of the Chicago Cubs. On February 17, 1943, they issued a press release announcing the creation of the All-American Girls Softball League. Their plan was to recruit players from the women's softball teams that had been established all over the country. At the beginning, Jim Hamilton was the lead talent scout in the US, and Johannes Gottseelig, known as Johnny, headed up recruitment in Canada.

• 16:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  But Wrigley also wanted to make the game a little closer to what spectators might expect from a baseball game. So they worked out a rule set that had elements of both baseball and softball. Like softball, it used a larger ball and an underhanded pitching style. But like baseball, the teams had nine players per side rather than softball's 10. The playing field would also have a longer pitching distance and running path than softball did, but it was still shorter than what was being used in baseball. Players in this game would also be allowed to steal bases, something that was not allowed in softball. These changes caused some controversy about exactly what sport was being played out

• 16:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  there on the field, and the league changed its name to the All-American Girls Baseball League partway through the 1943 season.

• 16:49Holly Frey?

  As recruiters visited softball teams to look for players, hundreds of women and girls expressed interest in playing professionally. About 280 were invited to the final tryouts, and 60 players from the US and Canada were ultimately selected to play in the 1943 season. Some of these young women were as young as 15, although most of them were between 18 and 22. As was the case with Major League Baseball at the time, the newly established Women's League excluded black players.

• 17:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  These players were arranged into four teams of 15 players each: the Rockford Peaches of Illinois, the South Bend Blue Sox of Indiana, and the Racine Bells and the Kenosha Comets of Wisconsin. Each of these was not far away from a much larger major city. They were also close enough together to allow the teams to travel from one city to the next for games while still conserving fuel and rubber during wartime rationing.

• 17:47Holly Frey?

  The league's setup was significantly different from Major League Baseball, or most other leagues at the time. The league itself was a nonprofit organization with Philip Wrigley, Paul Harvey, and Branch Rickey as trustees. Much of the initial funding came from Wrigley himself. He spent about $250,000 getting the whole project started, and he contributed to the team's maintenance costs, especially in the first year.

• 18:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  The players' contracts were also centrally owned by the league rather than being owned by one of the four teams. This meant that the players' pay was set by the league. There were no bidding wars with teams trying to entice the best players to sign on with them. That first year, the players made between $45 and $85 a week. That does not sound like much, but it is significantly more than most of them had been making in agricultural or factory work or maybe playing in a paying softball league. Players in the league were prohibited from doing any other work during the season.

• 18:48Holly Frey?

  The centrally-owned player contracts also meant that the league had the right to trade players from one team to another. One of the league's goals was for all the games to be as evenly matched and exciting to watch as possible. So, player trades happened throughout the season as they tried to keep this balance.

• 19:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Each team had a manager who also acted as a coach. These were typically men who had experience in Major League or Minor League Baseball. Every team also had a business manager, as well as a chaperone, who was a woman and was a paid part of the staff. During the league's history, most of the chaperones had some experience in working with women's athletic teams.

• 19:27Holly Frey?

  The chaperones were responsible for making housing arrangements for the team, handling money, and approving any housing and dining accommodations that the team was going to use. In some ways, they were a little like athletic trainers as well, being trained in first aid and responsible for the team's first aid kit and the treatment of injuries. They were also ultimately responsible for the players' conduct, behavior, and appearance.

• 19:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  That last point was a lot. Most of the players came from working class and agricultural communities that didn't really regard women's participation in softball as unusual in any way. A lot of them had been playing on teams that had been organized by their employers with that involvement being seen as pretty normal and fun. But that wasn't necessarily true among the middle class, which was a big part of the audience that the league was hoping to attract. The idea that women were playing baseball, which was considered to be a game for men, also raised some suspicions about the players. A common stereotype was that women athletes were lesbians. That's a stereotype that still exists today, but without nearly the level of stigma that was attached to it in the 1940s.

• 20:36Holly Frey?

  So the league went to great lengths to reinforce the idea that these players weren't just women, they were ladies. Specifically patriotic, wholesome, middle-class heterosexual ladies. Outwardly, the league described all its rules and training about things like beauty and conduct as a service, teaching working-class girls to be middle-class ladies, which of course suggested that to be middle-class was better than to be working-class. And on top of that, a lot of the rules and standards in place were also meant to reduce suspicions of lesbianism.

• 21:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  This included the players' uniforms. These were one-piece, pastel-colored, tunic-like garments with a flared skirt, which were worn with satin shorts and knee socks. They were designed by Wrigley's wife Ada, along with poster artist Otis Shepherd and softball player Anne Harnett. They were also patterned after women's figure skating and tennis attire. These uniforms were meant to set the players apart from the barnstorming Bloomer Girls that we referenced earlier and to reinforce the idea that the players on the field were feminine women. These skirts did not really do much to protect the players' legs from scrapes and other injuries, but the players were also expected to look pristine at all times and not really have any visible injuries.

• 21:56Holly Frey?

  Perfectly prim, athletic lady.

• 21:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's the whole kind of convoluted tangle.

• 22:03Holly Frey?

  Yeah. The specific rules varied over the league's history, but the general idea of players being the right kind of woman was part of it throughout. Each player was issued a guide for All American Girls. How to look better, feel better, be more popular. In the 1943 season, Helena Rubenstein's beauty salon taught charm and beauty lessons for the players. That included hygiene, personal appearance, etiquette, and things like how to gracefully get in and out of a car, or go up and down stairs. The Ruth Tiffany School provided these lessons the next year. Formal charm lessons ended after that point, but a focus on appropriate feminine behavior continued.

• 22:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Players were also issued a beauty kit that they were expected to keep stock. It included cleansing cream, lipstick, rouge, deodorant, astringent, face powder, hand lotion, and hair remover. They were required to be attractive and presentable at all times, and they had to wear a dress or a skirt anytime they were seen in public. Most of the players wore trousers on the bus for the sake of comfort, especially during nighttime road trips between games, but kept a skirt with them to change into if they stopped for something like a restroom break or a meal.

• 23:18Holly Frey?

  Some of the other rules from the players' code of conduct. No boyish bobbed hair, no smoking, no drinking alcohol, and no social engagements unless they were approved by a chaperone. Lipstick was mandatory at all times. And there were also more mundane rules about things like punctuality.

• 23:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  The players' code of conduct specified a $5 fine for the first offense, a $10 fine for the second offense, and suspension for the third. But there were players that faced harsher penalties. Josephine D'Angelo, known as JoJo, was cut from the Blue Sox in her second year from the team after she got a bobbed haircut that was described as too short and butchy. In some accounts, Frida and Olympia Savona, who were star players from the New Orleans Jack's Brewing Company softball team, were passed over for the All American Girls League because of their masculine appearance. There were definitely some news stories that made disparaging comments about the Savona's appearance, but Frida wrote to a reporter to say this had nothing to do with

• 24:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  why she was not in the league. She said she was just happier and better paid where she was.

• 24:26Holly Frey?

  Fraternizing with members of other teams was also forbidden within the league. The league framed this as a way to keep the level of competitiveness high, but many of the players interpreted it as a way to discourage romantic relationships between them.

• 24:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  So that's kind of an overview of what the league was like when spring training started, its first season on May 17th of 1943. That happened in Chicago. The first pitch of the season was thrown on May 30th of 1943.

• 24:55Holly Frey?

  And we'll talk about how things grew and evolved from there after we first have a little sponsor break.

• 25:03Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other? Tune

• 25:48Holly Frey?

  in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rallies so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing, and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.

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• 27:00Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 27:14Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.

• 27:30Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 27:36Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 28:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  The All American Girls Baseball League's first season included sporting events as well as wartime patriotism. Teams made appearances at recruitment drives and fundraisers, and they visited wounded soldiers that had returned stateside. On July 1st, they held an All-Star Game against a team from the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, which was played under the lights at Wrigley Field. This event was part of a recruitment drive held free of charge and at night so that working women could attend. Some of the league's patriotism was more symbolic, like having the two teams that were going to be competing lined up in a V for victory during the National Anthem at the beginning of every game.

• 28:42Holly Frey?

  The 1943 season ended with a five-game championship series in which the Racine Bells defeated the Kenosha Comets. More than 175,000 fans attended games in that first season.

• 28:55Holly Frey?

  Then in 1944, the league expanded to six teams. Another competing league was founded that same year, the National Girls Baseball League, established in Chicago. This league continued until 1954, although its history and activities aren't nearly as well documented as the All-American Girls League.

• 29:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  At the end of the 1944 season, Philip Wrigley sold the league to Arthur Meyerhoff for $10,000, which was a fraction of what he had put into getting it started and operating it in those first two seasons. It had become clear that the sport of men's baseball was not in any kind of actual peril from the war, but apart from that, Wrigley was just not really interested in being so heavily involved in the league anymore. Meyerhoff had also been a big part of the league since its inception, and Wrigley was confident that he would maintain the same standards that Wrigley had established in terms of quality and entertainment.

• 29:49Holly Frey?

  The biggest change at this point was that the league went from being a nonprofit to a for-profit entity. Otherwise, the players' contracts were still centrally owned, and each team continued to have paid managers and chaperones. Meyerhoff put a big focus on marketing and promoting the league. He also organized postseason exhibition tours to Cuba and South America, mainly to countries where Wrigley chewing gum had a presence, thanks to the rubber and chicle industries.

• 30:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Over time, the style of play within the league continued to shift and become more and more like men's baseball. The ball gradually got smaller and harder, pitching and infield distances got longer, sidearm pitching was introduced in 1946, and overhand pitching in 1948. Some players that had been recruited from softball teams had a little trouble adjusting to these changes, and Meyerhoff established a junior league and farm teams to cultivate new talent.

• 30:46Holly Frey?

  Although the All-American Girls Baseball League had started out with the idea of being a substitution for men's baseball during World War II, its popularity really peaked after the war ended in 1945. In 1946, a July 4 doubleheader in South Bend, Indiana drew a crowd of between 10,000 and 20,000 people. Attendance peaked in 1948 with nearly a million fans in attendance.

• 31:11Holly Frey?

  That year, the league had 10 teams from Rockford, Peoria, Chicago, and Springfield, Illinois, Racine in Kenosha, Wisconsin, South Bend in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Grand Rapids in Muskegon, Michigan. Most of the team names were distinctly feminine, including the Peaches, Chicks, Millerets, Daisies, Lassies, Colleens, Sally's, and Bells.

• 31:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Although the league grew between 1945 and 1948, it also faced some struggles in those years. The idea of women playing baseball had drawn suspicion since the beginning, but that increased when there was no longer a wartime patriotic need for women to take up what was seen as men's work. Individual teams also folded for various reasons from time to time, and then that put a strain on the rest of the league as it tried to absorb those other players.

• 32:01Holly Frey?

  After a while, friction started to develop between individual teams and Meyerhoff's management company. While the league owned the players' contracts, the teams all had their own owners, who started to object to the requirement to send some of their ticket revenues back to Meyerhoff. Meyerhoff was putting most of the proceeds back into the league, but even so, a perception grew that Meyerhoff was making money off of the teams' work.

• 32:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  As attendance started to fall off in 1948, Meyerhoff embarked on some ambitious plans to try to revive the league. This included an attempt to start an international women's baseball league, which would play in Florida, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Cuba during the winter and early spring. Although an international league was formed very briefly, it never really got off the ground.

• 32:49Holly Frey?

  At the end of the 1950s season, the teams bought out Meyerhoff and became self-governing and decentralized. The league's name had been through slight tweaks through the years, and at this point, it became the American Girls Baseball League, or AGBL, although most people still use the word "all." At this point, players started contracting with teams for their rates rather than the league, which increased pay disparities as teams tried to attract and keep the best players.

• 33:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  The only paid position in the league at this point was the commissioner, and without a central league organization that was promoting and marketing the games, attendance continued to drop. The league also faced increased competition from other forms of entertainment in the 50s, including televised men's baseball games.

• 33:35Holly Frey?

  The American Girls Baseball League dissolved in 1954. During its history, about 600 women from the United States, Canada, and Cuba had played for teams in 14 Midwestern cities. During baseball season, they played six or seven games a week, with double headers on Sundays and holidays, sleeping on buses overnight as they traveled from one city to the next. This was a grueling schedule, which may be one reason why about a quarter of the players only played for one season or less.

• 34:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Although Major League Baseball had started to desegregate in the late 1940s, and President Harry Truman issued an executive order to desegregate the armed forces in 1948, the All-American Girls Baseball League was segregated throughout its history. Although two black women practiced with the South Bend Blue Sox in 1951, neither of them wound up signing a contract with the league.

• 34:27Holly Frey?

  However, there were three black women who played on men's teams in the Negro leagues in the 1950s: Mamie Peanut Johnson, Connie Morgan, and Marcenia Lyle, who used the name Toni Stone professionally. All three started with the Indianapolis clowns. Toni Stone replaced Hank Aaron there, and her contract was sold to the Kansas City Monarchs before the 1954 season. There are reports that Toni Stone tried out for the All-American Girls League as well, but those are not concretely documented.

• 34:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  After the All-American Girls League was dissolved, many of the players adopted what's been described as a self-imposed silence. Most of them did not really talk about their time playing professional baseball, even among their families. Reasons why are not entirely clear, but stigma may have been one factor. According to one survey that was conducted in the 90s, about 20% of players reported facing discrimination because of their history as an athlete.

• 35:25Holly Frey?

  However, many used the money that they'd earned playing baseball to go to college or to start a career, with some attending college and graduate school during the offseason. One researcher who interviewed players later in their life found that about 35% had graduated from college, compared to less than 10% of women in the general population in the same era. This has been described as a precursor to Title IX's effects on women's college enrollment, giving women educational opportunities that they didn't have access to otherwise.

• 35:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  When the women's liberation movement started in the 1960s and 70s, historians and other researchers started unearthing the league's history, and the players started reconnecting with each other and documenting their own history at the same time. In the late 70s, Dorothy Camney Kamenscheck and Marge Winsell and June Pepas all met up and started talking about organizing a reunion. In October of 1980, Pepa sent a letter to the few players whose addresses she had been able to find and started trying to track people down. By January of 1981, this had morphed into a newsletter, which grew from a handful of addresses to more than 100 within a month. This also coalesced into a players' association that still exists today.

• 36:41Holly Frey?

  The first of many reunions was held in Chicago in 1982, and the newsletter became part of an effort to establish a league archive and to get some kind of recognition in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. It was during this process that the league's name became formally finalized as the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.

• 37:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  The players' efforts for recognition came to fruition on November 5th of 1988 with the formal unveiling of a permanent Women in Baseball exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame. The league's players had been an active part in this exhibit's creation, including donating their photographs, uniforms, equipment, and memorabilia. A league archive was established at the Northern Indiana Historical Society Museum, now called the History Museum, in South Bend, Indiana. There was also an exhibition through the Smithsonian.

• 37:34Holly Frey?

  The league was also the subject of a short documentary called "A League of Their Own" that aired nationally on public television on September 30th, 1987. And of course, there's the 1992 feature film directed by Penny Marshall, which was a blockbuster and was actually when many people first heard about women's baseball.

• 37:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Another documentary tells the story of Terri Donahue and Pat Henshaw. Donahue was recruited from Saskatchewan, Canada, and played for the Peoria Red Wings for four seasons. After these two women met, in between seasons, Henshaw left her life in Canada behind to join Donahue in the United States. Although the two of them described themselves at the time as cousins and roommates, they were really a couple, and the documentary tells the story of their lives together. The film is called A Secret Love. It was supposed to premiere at South by Southwest in March of 2020, but of course, because of the pandemic, South by Southwest has been canceled. So I'm not sure what the status of the film's debut is at this point, but at some point,

• 38:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  I think it might come to Netflix because there is a page for it in the Netflix Media Center.

• 38:40Holly Frey?

  Exciting. Henshaw is also one of the people Brittany De La Crata interviewed when reporting her article, "The Hidden Queer History Behind a League of Their Own." At that point, both Donahue and Henshaw were still living, but Donahue died in 2019. At that time, she and Henshaw had been together for 71 years.

• 39:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  The All American Girls Professional Baseball League's website for the player association also has a wealth of information on the individual players, including their photos, their team histories, their biographies, and for those who are no longer living, many of their obituaries are there as well. It is really a ton. If you want to go read about some women baseball players, lots and lots to look at there. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 39:50Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 42:25Speaker 12

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• 42:29Speaker 09

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