Thelma “Tiby” Eisen: An Oral History

A few Jewish women, not many (three or four depending on how you define Jewishness), were involved in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (aagpbl). One Jewish player was a league star, Thelma “Tiby” Eisen. Her iconoclastic life tells a story about how Jewish women negotiated difference in the years between the first and second wave of feminism. Eisen was born and raised in Los Angeles in a Jewish home, playing softball and football from age twelve. She was a center fielder on several of the aagpbl teams from 1944 to 1952. The life Eisen lived was not in any way typical of the experiences of most Jewish girls growing up in this era, and it gives us a window into a rarely noted world of Jewish working-class women’s enthusiasm for sport and other alternative careers.

Jewish women in baseball

Beginning in the 1860s, when baseball was popularized in the United States, women were encouraged to be fans and play indoor and other modified forms (such as softball, town ball) and discouraged from playing the “man’s version” of the game, reflecting an ambivalence about women in team sports. If women did play baseball, it was predominantly at women’s colleges. There is also some evidence that Jewish communal organizations supported women playing baseball. Linda Borish also found evidence that at least a few Young Women’s Hebrew Associations (ywha) included baseball among their sports for young women, as she writes:

Another outdoor sport available to young women, baseball, provided a team experience in the athletic program of several Jewish associations. … New Haven ywha President Celia H. Duhan commented on baseball played by girls in her annual report for 1924–25: “Our jr. Baseball Team is one of the teams in the Baseball League. They have played two games with the Ansonia teams and four with the New Haven teams.”

Women also played on the controversial semiprofessional barnstorming “Bloomer Girl” teams that were popular in the 1920s. Men played on these teams, often as pitcher and catcher—the “difficult” positions—and often dressed in women’s clothing. Women on these teams were often thought to be of low moral character. While we have no records of Jewish women’s involvement in Bloomer Girl teams, Jewish baseball entrepreneur Syd Pollock organized several teams in the late teens and early 1920s; and in the 1930s, two teams were named after Jewish boxing legends: Slapsie Maxie [Rosenbloom]’s Curvaceous Cuties and Barney Ross’s Adorables. While most of the teams originated in the East, during the 1930s there was also a Hollywood Bloomer team, made up mostly of women in the film industry.

There were also women who attempted to integrate the men’s game and caused much consternation. There was a subversive aspect to women playing baseball; but in the 1930s, concerns increased about women who were too masculine and tough playing baseball. When Jackie Mitchell, who was playing on a men’s minor-l eague team, struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at an exhibition game against the Yankees, the baseball commissioner voided her minor-league contract. In the 1930s, official softball rules were developed, and women were again encouraged to play softball, not the more rigorous game of baseball. And so softball came to be seen as a woman’s sport and also as a place where “masculine women” began to congregate. We know Jewish women were involved in and proficient at softball during this decade, because the Jewish women in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League were recruited from these teams.

The league existed from 1943 to 1954. It originated as an effort by Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley to make up for the poor quality of play during World War II, when so many players were away and fighting. It also provided a backup plan in case President Roosevelt decided to cancel the baseball seasons entirely during wartime. Like Rosie the Riveter, women who played professional baseball were seen as part of the war effort, as Roosevelt described it, to “keep up the morale of women” and provide entertainment during the...