No Girls in the Clubhouse: The Exclusion of Women from Baseball, and: Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball (review)

Women’s baseball scholarship is a new and growing field. Marilyn Cohen and Jennifer Ring’s new books add greatly to this burgeoning area of research. While the general topic is similar in both texts—why women don’t play much baseball in the United States—the approaches used are different. Jennifer Ring’s book takes a more traditional and historic approach to exploring the reasons for exclusion, while Cohen looks more closely at anthropological and feminist views to discover why women play softball more than baseball. Part of the reason for the differences comes from the disciplines of the authors and the questions they are asking. Ring is a political scientist, Cohen is a sociologist, and both have women’s studies backgrounds.

In No Girls in the Clubhouse, Cohen explores the reasons why girls seem to gravitate more towards softball than baseball. She points out early in her text that her interest is solely in players and not umpires, coaches, owners, etc. She says other books have explored those avenues, and she wants to see how society affects players’ decisions. For example, how do constructions of the female body affect young girls’ choices?

In the first chapter of her book, Cohen explores some of the “patriarchal myths” in society that have helped to push girls towards softball, sometimes without their being aware it is happening. By opening her book with two stories of children who strive to play baseball but who end up in different places, Cohen makes her overall point. She says talent should drive players, but, unfortunately, gender is the deciding factor. Alta Weiss had all the support in the world to play baseball but still struggled because of the barriers society placed in her way. Gender is socially constructed and varies over time, Cohen says, but it is always used to assign people their place in society, even in sports.

After establishing her theoretical base, Cohen begins to examine the stories of individuals during different periods in history to see how these ideas about gender led to the inclusion or exclusion of female ballplayers. During the late-nineteenth century, the notion that women were inferior and dependent on men was a given. As a result, the role of women in baseball reflected these feelings and led to race and class also being emphasized as reasons for some playing and others staying away. Girls at Vassar who played baseball did so with their first thoughts being about maintaining Victorian ideals of womanhood; learning baseball skills came second. In almost all accounts of these early players and teams, the emphasis in reporting was on image not skill.

Cohen points out the changes that allowed for the creation of more bloomer teams in the early-twentieth century as Victorian ideals were challenged. The Progressive Era and war years provided new roles for women in the public realm and helped them challenge the notion of women’s inferiority. This did not eliminate all the barriers to playing baseball, as Cohen rightly points out, using stories of Maud Nelson, Sister Miriam Cecil, and Alma Korneski. Coverage of these women and others revealed the conflicting views of femininity in society.

The AAGPBL from 1943 to 1954 holds a unique place in women’s baseball history, and Cohen says it is mainly because the league was to be temporary. The league was not advocating major changes in feminist ideals but rather a lessening of restrictions because of war needs. Women entered the work force in new fields and in larger numbers, so it was harder to argue they could not play baseball, even though the All-American league did start out more as softball than baseball. And even when they were playing baseball the players attended charm school...