Transition of Women's Baseball: An Overview

Why is baseball thought of as a male sport and softball a female sport despite women's and girls' rich baseball history? From 1866 to 1935, women and girls were actively involved in amateur, semiprofessional, and professional baseball. On playgrounds, in high schools, in colleges, on industrial teams, on professional barnstorming teams, women and girls played baseball and excelled. Based on women's early involvement, it would seem only natural that women would continue to be a part of baseball history and that baseball would be considered a coed sport. But, shortly after 1933, softball almost completely replaced baseball as a sport for women. Baseball as a male domain and softball as the female equivalent became the cultural norm. This transition from women's baseball to women's softball was so complete that the public was no longer aware that women had ever played baseball. This ignorance of women's baseball history meant that when the movie A League of Their Own, about the All-American Girls' Baseball League of World War II, was released in ...., it was a revelation to the public.

Throughout American history, cultural definitions of femininity have limited women's opportunities to play baseball, but despite these limitations, from 1866 to the late 1930s, women played. However, a constant tension existed between the cultural ideals of femininity and baseball as a male domain, and the reality of women's participation. The development of softball in the 1930s provided an escape valve. With a little imagination, all those modified games of baseball that women had been playing could now culturally be redefined as the precursors of softball or simply as early women's versions of softball.

Although softball was invented in ...., it did not become popular until the 1930s. In 1933, the Amateur Softball Association made the term softball official, and this term was substituted for the modified baseball games girls had been playing. When Little League baseball was founded in 1939 as a program for boys only, there was no protest. It was accepted that baseball was a boys' sport. From 1939 through 1973, girls were banned from playing Little League baseball.

Prior to the 1930s, it was acceptable for women to play baseball as long as they played what were considered feminine versions of the men's game or appeared feminine in appearance while playing the men's game. Women's opportunities to play were circumscribed by traditional definitions of femininity and by women's social class. Women who didn't conform to cultural definitions of femininity or who appeared unattractive ran the risk of being labeled masculine, a freak, or a homosexual. The public was also suspicious of the motivation of some of the early male promoters of professional women's baseball. However, the majority of women who played on women's or men's professional teams suffered little or no stigma.

After the Civil War, baseball captured the spirit of the nation and became the national sport. And although distinctions between male and female roles were probably greatest during the Victorian era, 1876-1900, this was the period when women got their chance to play baseball.

The second half of the 1880s set the stage for an unlikely convergence. A small group of Victorian ladies left their parlor couches, their smelling salts, and their feminine frailty behind to participate in the new national pastime, baseball. They defied cultural definitions of femininity that decreed that women were by nature frail, in need of protection, and had limited energy.

Interestingly enough, it was upper- and working-class women rather than middle-class women who had the greatest opportunities to play. Upper-class women had the freedom to experiment with playing baseball in such private settings as their homes, exclusive clubs, and private schools. Mostly out of view of the general public, their playing was largely ignored. Even if the playing came to public attention, the games were seen as "ladylike" amusement for the idle rich. Baseball games played by refined upper-class ladies in long dresses were defined more as social events than sporting events. Consequently, when these society women played...