Women in Baseball

Very few people are aware that women were active in baseball in the United States as early as 1866. In this volume, Gai Berlage reports the histories of the umpires, players, owners, and sportswriters as well as the teams.

Publishers Weekly

The reader of this book quickly realizes that the history of women in baseball has been little written about because there hasn't been much. Baseball became a sport at women's colleges almost simultaneously with the development of professional men's baseball. But 19th-century college authorities initially discouraged and then prohibited intercollegiate games, so baseball never became a major campus sport. There was also pressure on women to play softball instead of hardball. Then, between 1943 and 1954 the short-lived All American Girls Baseball League in the Chicago area played an amalgam of softball and hardball. Berlage, a sociology professor at Iona College in New York, has done prodigious research to uncover the few women who played semi-pro ball, but the results, especially given his pedestrian writing, hardly justify his efforts. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Apr.)