January 6, 2010 • 17 mins
The first female baseball teams were organized in 1866, yet modern women have only recently started making inroads in professional baseball. Join Molly and Cristen as they discuss the past, present and future of women in baseball in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to step Mom? Never told you?
From House to works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Is that
(00:21):
your announcer voice, Kristen. Yeah, because they're gonna talk about
faceba's my sports announcered voice. Um. We get a ton
of request from people about doing podcast about women in sports,
and it's a massive topic. So I don't know if
we'll continue going this way, but I figured we should
just start with one sport, the American Best Time baseball.
And you know, Kristen, when I think about women in baseball,
(00:42):
I think of the movie A League of their Own
And that is one of those movies that whenever I'm
flipping channels and I see it's on, I just stop
and watch the rest of it. Yeah. I love this movie.
My brothers and I used to act it out, which
is weird because I have two brothers and I'm the
only girls, so I had to play all the women's parts.
Maybe that's why I enjoyed acting out that movie. Um,
and I just gave Molly the shock of a lifetime
(01:02):
by telling her that I've never seen a league of
their own. It's I'm embarrassed for you. Kristen. Well, you
know it's a great movie. I think. No, I'm sure
it isn't. And you know, and I will watch it someday,
but one thing weekend, maybe this weekend. I'll think about
it this weekend. I will consider it this weekend. Okay,
(01:23):
that's the best I think I can do. Okay. Uh Well,
I was listening to n PR earlier this week and
they were talking to someone at the Library of Congress
about this new baseball exhibit that they have, and she
started talking about these bloomer girls who played baseball way
back in the day, and uh they one of the
(01:44):
one of them was so good that she actually she
was a picture and she actually struck out Babe Ruth
and Lou Garrett. And I thought, well, that's that's so cool.
So I came to work the next day and I
told Molly, Molly, women played baseball back in the day,
but now they don't. Let's talk about on the podcast. Okay,
So you were talking about Jackie Mitchell. She was just
seventeen years old when she struck out Babe Ruth and
lou garreg in an exhibition game in the nineteen thirties.
(02:07):
But we need to go back even further, because women
were playing baseball in eighteen sixty six. Can you believe that?
I can't believe it, because it's fact. Students at the
all female Vassar College formed baseball teams in eighteen sixty six,
and then in eighteen seventy five a woman's baseball club
was organized in Springfield, Illinois, and the two teams were
(02:30):
the Blondes and the Brunettes, which I liked, adorable. Yeah,
but you know it wasn't just you know, going out
there playing ball. You had to wear thirty pounds of clothing.
Like can you think of any other sport we have
to wear thirty pounds of clothing, thirty pounds of clothing,
a floor length skirt, under skirts, a longsleeve, high necked blouse,
and high button shoes. That just screams baseball to me.
(02:51):
But you mentioned the Bloomer girls, and then we have
Amelia Bloomer to thank for those. Um Turkish style trousers.
They're kind of baggy, um, quite cute, quite fetching, and
um they were more practical for the women athletes. So
in eighteen nineties, all these baseball teams formed, um called
Bloomer Girl baseball teams, and they basically just go around
the country challenging local teams to play. Yeah. They they
(03:14):
refer to this as barn storming across America. And yeah,
they would just get into towns and challenge semi pro
and minor league men's teams. And sometimes men would also
play on the Bloomer Girls and they would pose as women. Um,
a little bit of a ringer in there, yeah, but
but by and large, these were mostly all female teams
(03:35):
and they were known for pretty good baseball, a solid
day of entertainment. And there were hundreds of teams, including
the All Star Ranger Girls, the Philadelphia Bobbies, and the
New York Bloomer Girls. So these girls are around from
eighteen nineties to nineteen thirty four. And that's where we
got the story of Jackie Mitchell. And she was playing
on double A team, the Chat and Nego Lookouts. Um,
(03:56):
she was seventeen year old. Seventeen years old, as we mentioned,
and based of the New York Yankees. One day stopped
in Chattanooga for an exhibition. Four thousand people are there.
Jackie didn't start, but she came in. She had one
great pitch, a wicked dropping curveball, as it is described
by the Exploratorium in San Francisco. She takes the plate
(04:18):
and Babe strikes out Babe Ruth. Jackie Mitchell struck out
Babe Ruth at seventeen. And then the next batter was
Lou Garrig and struck him out. Took Yeah, and so
she gets the standing ovation that lasts for several minutes,
and then she walks the next batter and the coach
pulls her from the game. You never pull a pitch
(04:40):
here when she's hot. And then, to add insult to injury,
a few days after this exhibition game, the baseball commissioner
Kenna saw a mountain landis how about that for a name,
was very displeased with Jackie's sellar performance because he claimed
that baseball was too strenuous for a woman, and so
he banned women from baseball and nullified her contract. Yeah,
(05:03):
and here's a quote from Babe Ruth and the paper. Um,
after that happened, I don't know what's going to happen
if they begin to let women in baseball. Of course
they will never make good. Why because they are too delicate.
It would kill them to play ball every day. But
Jackie Mitchell did not give up. She began barn storming
along with those uh those other kind of ragtag teams
in a nineteen thirty three when she was nineteen, she
(05:23):
signed on with the House of David, which was a
men's team famous for their long hair and long beards.
But then she only traveled with him for about four
years and got tired of the side show aspects of
barn storming because it was kind of a little bit
of vaudeville in there as well, such as playing an
inning while writing a donkey. That's Jackie Mitchell deserved better
than that. Yeah, she was a real she was a
real athlete. She struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Garrig,
(05:47):
so she's one of the big sort of stars of
that era. But they wound down just because Babe Ruth
was not the only one who thought that women had
inferior abilities. When it came to sports, basically professional baseball
was coming along. It became known as a men's sport.
Women's professional baseball just disappeared completely gone by nineteen thirty four.
But then with World War Two, we obviously have a
lot of these male players who are going overseas to fight.
(06:11):
So in nineteen forty three, Philip K. Wrigley of Wrigley
Gum was worried about the state of American baseball because
the teams were starting to dwindle, and so he organized
the All American Girls Softball League, and the league's rules
permitted stolen basis, but it was essentially just softball. And
if you've seen a league of their own, unlike Kristen,
(06:33):
this is where you might start to recognize elements of
the story because when I was researching this, the movie
is pretty good about depicting things as they happened. The
players weren't based on any real players, so Gina Davis
was not depicting one specific person in the league. But
you know, you think about John Lovett's going out and
scouting out the girls that happened. They had a lot
(06:54):
of scouts. You may remember that movie. There was one
sort of unattractive girl that they didn't want to let
on the team, and that was sort of important as well,
because they wanted to have these really beautiful All American girls.
They did have to at a charm school as they
did in the movie UM, and they were divided equally
based on their talent into several teams, the Rockford Peaches, UH,
(07:15):
the Moskeegan Lassiees, the Racing Bells, just to name a few.
And in the meantime, they Lead changed its name to
the All American Girls Baseball League because they didn't want
to play just watered down softball. They wanted to play
the same game that men were playing. But at the
same time, Wrigley emphasized that the women had to maintain
their femininity because that was part of the attraction, was
(07:36):
attractive girls playing the sport. But it definitely reminded me
of our Cheerlead podcast, Christen, because we were talking about
how that's that UM cheerleading is getting more and more physical,
but at the same time, the women get, you know,
sort of more and more cute because they don't want
to sacrifice that female aspect, and I definitely think that
was in play here. If you go to the a
A g PBL website, you can read a kit they
(07:58):
would hand out about all the cosmetics a woman should
own when they played in the league and how you
could never leave, you know, any any place to be
in public without your hair a certain way. And there's
a section on teeth care and they say, well, we
don't even have to go over this, because every good
American girl in knows how to take care of her teeth.
But it was everything about like when to wash her face,
(08:18):
what to wear, some of the rules where things like
you must always appear in feminine attire when you're not
actively engaged in practice or playing ball. Lipstick always has
to be on. There was one Smithsonian article where this
girl was talking about how you know, her chaperone would
let her go up to bat until she put some
lipstick on. And that was the other thing that was
also pretty actively depicted in the movie was they had
(08:40):
these chaperones who followed them everywhere because no one wanted
these girls to be seen as anything less than an
all American proper girl. Just because she could play a
man's sport didn't mean she wasn't a girl. But some
of these players did try to get on male teams.
For instance, in nineteen fifty two, short Stuff eleanor Angele
was signed on to a minor league contract with the
(09:01):
Double A Harrisburg Senators. And then you have Tony Stone,
Connie Morgan and Maymie Peanuts Johnson, who played on all
male teams in the Negro Leagues in the nineteen fifties.
But by a large I don't think that baseball is
really offered as an option for girls today. I mean
I always played softball, Yeah, so why is that? That's
one question we wanted to answer to this podcast was
(09:23):
why why is softball somehow the woman's sport? I mean,
obviously you got the bigger ball, you've got the underhanded pitching,
and you have a smaller diamond. But one thing we
learned was that softball was invented by men, right, I
mean it was just invented because men were too cold
to go outside and play baseball. I think this was
on the day of a Harvard Yale football game in
(09:44):
eighteen eighties seven in Chicago, and these guys got together
and they turned a glove tied together into a large
ball and then used a broomstick as their bat, exactly.
And because insurance companies started coming into being after World
War two and bay small injuries were expensive, you know,
more men were urged to play softball because they thought,
you know, if you get hit with a softball, it's
(10:06):
not gonna hurt as much as game with a baseball
women stopped playing all these ball sports. But really, when
women started playing softball something I spent many a summer doing.
It all traces back to good old Title nine, which
will keep coming up in these Women in Sports podcast
We're Gonna do Right, We've got Entitle nine. It comes
around in nineteen seventy two that mandates gender equity and
(10:26):
federally funded education programs, and so that really did a
lot to help female sports grow. But it really didn't
do anything for baseball because it brought up all these
stipulations forcing girls to play only softball instead of baseball. Right,
the school could say, well, we're offering baseball for boys
and softball for girls. Therefore that's your gender equity. But
there are girls out there who are saying this is
(10:48):
a completely different game for all the reasons that Kristen mentioned.
You know, bigger ball, smaller, smaller base paths, um underhand pitching,
and so girls want to play baseball. Take July Crowtewl
who had to sue in nineteen four to be able
to play in a baseball team in Little League. Yeah,
and Massachusetts still has high school rules at bar girls
(11:10):
from even trying out for boys baseball in schools that
all also offer softball, and that goes back to the
title nine issue that you were talking about. But we
did find some pretty cool articles about girls who buck
these rules and will search out schools that will let
them play baseball. They try out with the boys, they
accepted on their own merits. It's not you know, obviously
they're not just going to give it to them. Because
(11:32):
there's this thinking now that girls don't play baseball, girls
play softball, and a lot of girls do play softball.
I don't think that we should just discount softball. I mean,
it's a it's a tough sport to play, but it
is a different sport from baseball. But like you said,
a lot of girls do still try to go out
and play on baseball teams. For instance, last year, one
thousand and twelve girls played for for high school teams,
(11:53):
according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
But that account might be a little bit a little
bit higher, right, And so the thinging goes that these
boys are stronger than a girl would be at that age,
that they're gonna be heaving a ball harder swinging a
bat harder. So these girls really do have to go
out and prove themselves or become known for other things
like Jackie Mitchell a really good curve pitch. Uh speed.
(12:15):
But if you're interested in baseball, don't give it up
just because when you get to high school they expect
you to play softball. I think that's the takeaway. But
we have failed to mention one important women's baseball team
that was formed in the Colorado Silver Bullets. And you know,
the a g b L is long since folded, but
this was a minor league all women's baseball team that
(12:39):
that formed and lasted for four seasons. And it wasn't
it wasn't an official league. It was kind of you know,
the like the Bloomer Girls, sort of a ragtag team
that would go around barn storming and challenging other male
teams playing men's college, amateur and semi semi pro teams
around the country. Yeah, they had to fold. They really
didn't feel like like they had equivalent competition basically. Um,
(13:02):
so there's that. And one more thing about women in baseball.
This happened very recently. I found out when we were
researching this podcast. Um, they just had the second annual
Working Women in Baseball conference, because not only do we
think of playing baseball as a men's thing, but also
working in baseball like, yes, we might hold these traditional
female jobs like communications, marketing, but more and more women
(13:25):
are holding leadership positions like in baseball operations of these
major league teams. So at the meeting, they discussed things like, um,
you know, how to balance a family in your career,
how to dress so the guys respect you. You know,
these women weren't reporting that it was necessarily uncomfortable to
work there, but they're really blazing a new trail in
terms of working in this field. And they were just
there to network with each other. So I think that's
(13:48):
pretty cool. Yeah, but you still don't see women in
the dugout. Molly, where are the women in the dugout?
I think we need women all over the place. Maybe
one of the ways to get them into the dugas
to have more women in the in the team leadership.
And the research really gave me a new perspective on
America's past time because we think of you know, the
boys of summer, you know, all male teams and all
of that, but women have been playing baseball just as
(14:10):
long as men. That's right. Yeah. And Jackie Mitchell, one
of our own, struck out the babe and Lubi Eric
that's awesome. That is awesome. And a big tip of
my baseball hat to all the girls who are fighting
to be on the baseball team today and softball teams.
You know, we don't want to We're not just given
an underhanded pitch to softball players. Let's work in all
(14:32):
our baseball metaphors here at the end. Yes, I think
we've run the bases on this podcast. I think we
had the ninth inning, Molly, and it's about time to
do Listener, would you say we've had a home run
with this one. I don't know. Listeners you tell us, okay,
but our listeners have all right told us some things
that I guess we should get too. First. Yeah, Well,
(14:52):
to start things off, I've got an email from Anne
in regard to our Disney Princesses podcast. She says, the
one issue I do have with the Disney Princesses in
general is that I'm trying to teach my daughter's to
dress modestly, Yet several with the Princesses show quite a
lot of skin. I agree. Sleeping Beauty's outfit and the
current merchandizing has been altered from the original movies so
(15:13):
that her dress is now office shoulder and shows a
little bus like bells dress jasmine and aerial of course,
or wearing halter tops and seashell bikini tops, and Pocahona's
is a skin tight office shoulder buckskin outfit that is
split up the thigh. Me. You know, I'm trying to
teach my girls that they don't need to dress and
skinpy clothes get attention. Yet here I am with a
five year old girl who would give anything for a
(15:35):
real arrow outfit with a seashell top, and who loves
to draw pictures of our family's mermaids, complete with an
emphatically drawn belly button over our fishy tails. Still, she
doesn't understand that an outfit like that would be a
costume non an everyday outfit. Now that it matters, since
there's no way I'm getting her that one. But it's
a bit of a relief to see that she least
has drawn a distinction between the two. So thanks an okay.
(15:58):
Our next email is from Lisa. She writes um about
how we basically said the conclusion the podcast was that
that wasn't how we saw the Disney princesses as bad
role models, and she agrees. She says, often I find
the feminist reading of the Princesses it is equally degrading
to women. By stripping all their characteristics down, You're just
discounting these female figures completely, regardless of their positive features.
(16:19):
I'd like to defend Ariel, as she is the one
that comes under attacks so often. People said that she
changes her ap parents and loses her voice all for
a man. But as a child, I never saw her
that way. As adults, we interpret Ariel's loss of voice
as a metaphor that she should be seen and not
hurt in her relationship. It was a child, I just
thought the evil sea, which was a meaning. Even though
I still think of Ariel as a really strong woman.
She loved the human world even before she met Eric,
(16:41):
and she had the courage to give everything and leave
her home to live the way she wanted to live.
Eric or no, Eric, he was just the icing on
the cake. It really is about how the child used
the princesses, though, and not some highbrow feminist interpretation we
may have if the child sees Arile is strong and
that's that, and most of my friends think Ariel is
pretty badass. All right, well, guys, why don't you pitch
us some more emails if you care had to get
(17:04):
one more in Our email is mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com and as always, you can check
out our blog during the week. It's called how to Stuff,
and it, along with a library of other fascinating articles
about sports and other things, are all to be found
on how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(17:28):
and thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to step Mom? Never told you?
From House to works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Is that
(00:21):
your announcer voice, Kristen. Yeah, because they're gonna talk about
faceba's my sports announcered voice. Um. We get a ton
of request from people about doing podcast about women in sports,
and it's a massive topic. So I don't know if
we'll continue going this way, but I figured we should
just start with one sport, the American Best Time baseball.
And you know, Kristen, when I think about women in baseball,
(00:42):
I think of the movie A League of their Own
And that is one of those movies that whenever I'm
flipping channels and I see it's on, I just stop
and watch the rest of it. Yeah. I love this movie.
My brothers and I used to act it out, which
is weird because I have two brothers and I'm the
only girls, so I had to play all the women's parts.
Maybe that's why I enjoyed acting out that movie. Um,
and I just gave Molly the shock of a lifetime
(01:02):
by telling her that I've never seen a league of
their own. It's I'm embarrassed for you. Kristen. Well, you
know it's a great movie. I think. No, I'm sure
it isn't. And you know, and I will watch it someday,
but one thing weekend, maybe this weekend. I'll think about
it this weekend. I will consider it this weekend. Okay,
(01:23):
that's the best I think I can do. Okay. Uh Well,
I was listening to n PR earlier this week and
they were talking to someone at the Library of Congress
about this new baseball exhibit that they have, and she
started talking about these bloomer girls who played baseball way
back in the day, and uh they one of the
(01:44):
one of them was so good that she actually she
was a picture and she actually struck out Babe Ruth
and Lou Garrett. And I thought, well, that's that's so cool.
So I came to work the next day and I
told Molly, Molly, women played baseball back in the day,
but now they don't. Let's talk about on the podcast. Okay,
So you were talking about Jackie Mitchell. She was just
seventeen years old when she struck out Babe Ruth and
lou garreg in an exhibition game in the nineteen thirties.
(02:07):
But we need to go back even further, because women
were playing baseball in eighteen sixty six. Can you believe that?
I can't believe it, because it's fact. Students at the
all female Vassar College formed baseball teams in eighteen sixty six,
and then in eighteen seventy five a woman's baseball club
was organized in Springfield, Illinois, and the two teams were
(02:30):
the Blondes and the Brunettes, which I liked, adorable. Yeah,
but you know it wasn't just you know, going out
there playing ball. You had to wear thirty pounds of clothing.
Like can you think of any other sport we have
to wear thirty pounds of clothing, thirty pounds of clothing,
a floor length skirt, under skirts, a longsleeve, high necked blouse,
and high button shoes. That just screams baseball to me.
(02:51):
But you mentioned the Bloomer girls, and then we have
Amelia Bloomer to thank for those. Um Turkish style trousers.
They're kind of baggy, um, quite cute, quite fetching, and
um they were more practical for the women athletes. So
in eighteen nineties, all these baseball teams formed, um called
Bloomer Girl baseball teams, and they basically just go around
the country challenging local teams to play. Yeah. They they
(03:14):
refer to this as barn storming across America. And yeah,
they would just get into towns and challenge semi pro
and minor league men's teams. And sometimes men would also
play on the Bloomer Girls and they would pose as women. Um,
a little bit of a ringer in there, yeah, but
but by and large, these were mostly all female teams
(03:35):
and they were known for pretty good baseball, a solid
day of entertainment. And there were hundreds of teams, including
the All Star Ranger Girls, the Philadelphia Bobbies, and the
New York Bloomer Girls. So these girls are around from
eighteen nineties to nineteen thirty four. And that's where we
got the story of Jackie Mitchell. And she was playing
on double A team, the Chat and Nego Lookouts. Um,
(03:56):
she was seventeen year old. Seventeen years old, as we mentioned,
and based of the New York Yankees. One day stopped
in Chattanooga for an exhibition. Four thousand people are there.
Jackie didn't start, but she came in. She had one
great pitch, a wicked dropping curveball, as it is described
by the Exploratorium in San Francisco. She takes the plate
(04:18):
and Babe strikes out Babe Ruth. Jackie Mitchell struck out
Babe Ruth at seventeen. And then the next batter was
Lou Garrig and struck him out. Took Yeah, and so
she gets the standing ovation that lasts for several minutes,
and then she walks the next batter and the coach
pulls her from the game. You never pull a pitch
(04:40):
here when she's hot. And then, to add insult to injury,
a few days after this exhibition game, the baseball commissioner
Kenna saw a mountain landis how about that for a name,
was very displeased with Jackie's sellar performance because he claimed
that baseball was too strenuous for a woman, and so
he banned women from baseball and nullified her contract. Yeah,
(05:03):
and here's a quote from Babe Ruth and the paper. Um,
after that happened, I don't know what's going to happen
if they begin to let women in baseball. Of course
they will never make good. Why because they are too delicate.
It would kill them to play ball every day. But
Jackie Mitchell did not give up. She began barn storming
along with those uh those other kind of ragtag teams
in a nineteen thirty three when she was nineteen, she
(05:23):
signed on with the House of David, which was a
men's team famous for their long hair and long beards.
But then she only traveled with him for about four
years and got tired of the side show aspects of
barn storming because it was kind of a little bit
of vaudeville in there as well, such as playing an
inning while writing a donkey. That's Jackie Mitchell deserved better
than that. Yeah, she was a real she was a
real athlete. She struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Garrig,
(05:47):
so she's one of the big sort of stars of
that era. But they wound down just because Babe Ruth
was not the only one who thought that women had
inferior abilities. When it came to sports, basically professional baseball
was coming along. It became known as a men's sport.
Women's professional baseball just disappeared completely gone by nineteen thirty four.
But then with World War Two, we obviously have a
lot of these male players who are going overseas to fight.
(06:11):
So in nineteen forty three, Philip K. Wrigley of Wrigley
Gum was worried about the state of American baseball because
the teams were starting to dwindle, and so he organized
the All American Girls Softball League, and the league's rules
permitted stolen basis, but it was essentially just softball. And
if you've seen a league of their own, unlike Kristen,
(06:33):
this is where you might start to recognize elements of
the story because when I was researching this, the movie
is pretty good about depicting things as they happened. The
players weren't based on any real players, so Gina Davis
was not depicting one specific person in the league. But
you know, you think about John Lovett's going out and
scouting out the girls that happened. They had a lot
(06:54):
of scouts. You may remember that movie. There was one
sort of unattractive girl that they didn't want to let
on the team, and that was sort of important as well,
because they wanted to have these really beautiful All American girls.
They did have to at a charm school as they
did in the movie UM, and they were divided equally
based on their talent into several teams, the Rockford Peaches, UH,
(07:15):
the Moskeegan Lassiees, the Racing Bells, just to name a few.
And in the meantime, they Lead changed its name to
the All American Girls Baseball League because they didn't want
to play just watered down softball. They wanted to play
the same game that men were playing. But at the
same time, Wrigley emphasized that the women had to maintain
their femininity because that was part of the attraction, was
(07:36):
attractive girls playing the sport. But it definitely reminded me
of our Cheerlead podcast, Christen, because we were talking about
how that's that UM cheerleading is getting more and more physical,
but at the same time, the women get, you know,
sort of more and more cute because they don't want
to sacrifice that female aspect, and I definitely think that
was in play here. If you go to the a
A g PBL website, you can read a kit they
(07:58):
would hand out about all the cosmetics a woman should
own when they played in the league and how you
could never leave, you know, any any place to be
in public without your hair a certain way. And there's
a section on teeth care and they say, well, we
don't even have to go over this, because every good
American girl in knows how to take care of her teeth.
But it was everything about like when to wash her face,
(08:18):
what to wear, some of the rules where things like
you must always appear in feminine attire when you're not
actively engaged in practice or playing ball. Lipstick always has
to be on. There was one Smithsonian article where this
girl was talking about how you know, her chaperone would
let her go up to bat until she put some
lipstick on. And that was the other thing that was
also pretty actively depicted in the movie was they had
(08:40):
these chaperones who followed them everywhere because no one wanted
these girls to be seen as anything less than an
all American proper girl. Just because she could play a
man's sport didn't mean she wasn't a girl. But some
of these players did try to get on male teams.
For instance, in nineteen fifty two, short Stuff eleanor Angele
was signed on to a minor league contract with the
(09:01):
Double A Harrisburg Senators. And then you have Tony Stone,
Connie Morgan and Maymie Peanuts Johnson, who played on all
male teams in the Negro Leagues in the nineteen fifties.
But by a large I don't think that baseball is
really offered as an option for girls today. I mean
I always played softball, Yeah, so why is that? That's
one question we wanted to answer to this podcast was
(09:23):
why why is softball somehow the woman's sport? I mean,
obviously you got the bigger ball, you've got the underhanded pitching,
and you have a smaller diamond. But one thing we
learned was that softball was invented by men, right, I
mean it was just invented because men were too cold
to go outside and play baseball. I think this was
on the day of a Harvard Yale football game in
(09:44):
eighteen eighties seven in Chicago, and these guys got together
and they turned a glove tied together into a large
ball and then used a broomstick as their bat, exactly.
And because insurance companies started coming into being after World
War two and bay small injuries were expensive, you know,
more men were urged to play softball because they thought,
you know, if you get hit with a softball, it's
(10:06):
not gonna hurt as much as game with a baseball
women stopped playing all these ball sports. But really, when
women started playing softball something I spent many a summer doing.
It all traces back to good old Title nine, which
will keep coming up in these Women in Sports podcast
We're Gonna do Right, We've got Entitle nine. It comes
around in nineteen seventy two that mandates gender equity and
(10:26):
federally funded education programs, and so that really did a
lot to help female sports grow. But it really didn't
do anything for baseball because it brought up all these
stipulations forcing girls to play only softball instead of baseball. Right,
the school could say, well, we're offering baseball for boys
and softball for girls. Therefore that's your gender equity. But
there are girls out there who are saying this is
(10:48):
a completely different game for all the reasons that Kristen mentioned.
You know, bigger ball, smaller, smaller base paths, um underhand pitching,
and so girls want to play baseball. Take July Crowtewl
who had to sue in nineteen four to be able
to play in a baseball team in Little League. Yeah,
and Massachusetts still has high school rules at bar girls
(11:10):
from even trying out for boys baseball in schools that
all also offer softball, and that goes back to the
title nine issue that you were talking about. But we
did find some pretty cool articles about girls who buck
these rules and will search out schools that will let
them play baseball. They try out with the boys, they
accepted on their own merits. It's not you know, obviously
they're not just going to give it to them. Because
(11:32):
there's this thinking now that girls don't play baseball, girls
play softball, and a lot of girls do play softball.
I don't think that we should just discount softball. I mean,
it's a it's a tough sport to play, but it
is a different sport from baseball. But like you said,
a lot of girls do still try to go out
and play on baseball teams. For instance, last year, one
thousand and twelve girls played for for high school teams,
(11:53):
according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
But that account might be a little bit a little
bit higher, right, And so the thinging goes that these
boys are stronger than a girl would be at that age,
that they're gonna be heaving a ball harder swinging a
bat harder. So these girls really do have to go
out and prove themselves or become known for other things
like Jackie Mitchell a really good curve pitch. Uh speed.
(12:15):
But if you're interested in baseball, don't give it up
just because when you get to high school they expect
you to play softball. I think that's the takeaway. But
we have failed to mention one important women's baseball team
that was formed in the Colorado Silver Bullets. And you know,
the a g b L is long since folded, but
this was a minor league all women's baseball team that
(12:39):
that formed and lasted for four seasons. And it wasn't
it wasn't an official league. It was kind of you know,
the like the Bloomer Girls, sort of a ragtag team
that would go around barn storming and challenging other male
teams playing men's college, amateur and semi semi pro teams
around the country. Yeah, they had to fold. They really
didn't feel like like they had equivalent competition basically. Um,
(13:02):
so there's that. And one more thing about women in baseball.
This happened very recently. I found out when we were
researching this podcast. Um, they just had the second annual
Working Women in Baseball conference, because not only do we
think of playing baseball as a men's thing, but also
working in baseball like, yes, we might hold these traditional
female jobs like communications, marketing, but more and more women
(13:25):
are holding leadership positions like in baseball operations of these
major league teams. So at the meeting, they discussed things like, um,
you know, how to balance a family in your career,
how to dress so the guys respect you. You know,
these women weren't reporting that it was necessarily uncomfortable to
work there, but they're really blazing a new trail in
terms of working in this field. And they were just
there to network with each other. So I think that's
(13:48):
pretty cool. Yeah, but you still don't see women in
the dugout. Molly, where are the women in the dugout?
I think we need women all over the place. Maybe
one of the ways to get them into the dugas
to have more women in the in the team leadership.
And the research really gave me a new perspective on
America's past time because we think of you know, the
boys of summer, you know, all male teams and all
of that, but women have been playing baseball just as
(14:10):
long as men. That's right. Yeah. And Jackie Mitchell, one
of our own, struck out the babe and Lubi Eric
that's awesome. That is awesome. And a big tip of
my baseball hat to all the girls who are fighting
to be on the baseball team today and softball teams.
You know, we don't want to We're not just given
an underhanded pitch to softball players. Let's work in all
(14:32):
our baseball metaphors here at the end. Yes, I think
we've run the bases on this podcast. I think we
had the ninth inning, Molly, and it's about time to
do Listener, would you say we've had a home run
with this one. I don't know. Listeners you tell us, okay,
but our listeners have all right told us some things
that I guess we should get too. First. Yeah, Well,
(14:52):
to start things off, I've got an email from Anne
in regard to our Disney Princesses podcast. She says, the
one issue I do have with the Disney Princesses in
general is that I'm trying to teach my daughter's to
dress modestly, Yet several with the Princesses show quite a
lot of skin. I agree. Sleeping Beauty's outfit and the
current merchandizing has been altered from the original movies so
(15:13):
that her dress is now office shoulder and shows a
little bus like bells dress jasmine and aerial of course,
or wearing halter tops and seashell bikini tops, and Pocahona's
is a skin tight office shoulder buckskin outfit that is
split up the thigh. Me. You know, I'm trying to
teach my girls that they don't need to dress and
skinpy clothes get attention. Yet here I am with a
five year old girl who would give anything for a
(15:35):
real arrow outfit with a seashell top, and who loves
to draw pictures of our family's mermaids, complete with an
emphatically drawn belly button over our fishy tails. Still, she
doesn't understand that an outfit like that would be a
costume non an everyday outfit. Now that it matters, since
there's no way I'm getting her that one. But it's
a bit of a relief to see that she least
has drawn a distinction between the two. So thanks an okay.
(15:58):
Our next email is from Lisa. She writes um about
how we basically said the conclusion the podcast was that
that wasn't how we saw the Disney princesses as bad
role models, and she agrees. She says, often I find
the feminist reading of the Princesses it is equally degrading
to women. By stripping all their characteristics down, You're just
discounting these female figures completely, regardless of their positive features.
(16:19):
I'd like to defend Ariel, as she is the one
that comes under attacks so often. People said that she
changes her ap parents and loses her voice all for
a man. But as a child, I never saw her
that way. As adults, we interpret Ariel's loss of voice
as a metaphor that she should be seen and not
hurt in her relationship. It was a child, I just
thought the evil sea, which was a meaning. Even though
I still think of Ariel as a really strong woman.
She loved the human world even before she met Eric,
(16:41):
and she had the courage to give everything and leave
her home to live the way she wanted to live.
Eric or no, Eric, he was just the icing on
the cake. It really is about how the child used
the princesses, though, and not some highbrow feminist interpretation we
may have if the child sees Arile is strong and
that's that, and most of my friends think Ariel is
pretty badass. All right, well, guys, why don't you pitch
us some more emails if you care had to get
(17:04):
one more in Our email is mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com and as always, you can check
out our blog during the week. It's called how to Stuff,
and it, along with a library of other fascinating articles
about sports and other things, are all to be found
on how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(17:28):
and thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
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