Women Baseball Essay

The women’s baseball league, also known as the All-American Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), was created by Chicago Cubs team owner, Phillip K. Wrigley. As the league went through its years, only lasting from 1943 until 1954, it went through different ownerships besides Wrigley, such as Arthur Meyerhoff. During the final couple years of the league’s existence, they were individually owned. This league took place around World War II, and with these women playing baseball, it kept the public eye’s attention in order while the majority of men were away fighting. However, even before this league came about, something else stirred up decades after the Civil War happened. This professional league did more than just give women baseball; it helped

In Tracy Everbach’s Ebscohost article, “Breaking Baseball Barriers: The 1953–1954 Negro League and Expansion of Women’s Public Roles” (2005), Everbach explains, “Three women earned spots beside men in the Negro Baseball League during the 1953 and 1954 seasons. Second base women, Toni Stone and Connie Morgan, and pitcher Mamie “Peanut” Johnson” (Everbacli, pg.14). All three of these women played on a team called the Indianapolis Clowns, and Stone also played for another team called the Kansas City Monarchs. These women were recruited as novelties and earned actual spots after white organized baseball integrated racially. These women performed well athletically and gained the respect of their teammates as they stepped on the field to play with and against men. Everbach tells us, “The coverage shows these three pioneers shattered gender barriers two decades before the United States Congress approved Title IX” (Everbacli, pg.14). This was a huge deal because Title IX was a law made to ensure that women get equal funding and facilities in sports. These women were participating in a men’s sport back in a time where there was no equality among sports. Finally, women had entered the public sphere, working in factories and in the defense industry, to replace the men who had gone to war overseas. Everbach describes that, “In July 1944, nineteen million women worked outside the home, while in 1941 only five million women participated in the workforce” (Everbacli, pg.15). So Stone, Morgan, and Johnson were a unique breed of women, not for being African American, but for playing professional men’s baseball for a living while other women were in the