WOMEN IN BASEBALL
Over 100,000 girls play youth baseball, but only 1,000 girls play high school baseball. What happened to those 99,000 players? Their love of baseball didn’t just go away, nor did their talent.
Too many girls are still told they can’t play baseball because they are girls. NABF empowers girls to believe in themselves and to keep playing the game they love. We want girls to know they can follow their passions. That they have no limits. That their dreams matter.
USA Baseball and MLB have both recently initiated efforts. In 2004, USA Baseball started the USA Women’s National Baseball Team. MLB’s involvement could begin breaking down barriers as well. Jessica Mendoza became the first woman to call an MLB playoff game on television.
The next generation is growing up listening to Mendoza call a major league game or seeing Justine Siegal coach a pro team. (She was hired by the Oakland A’s to coach at the minor league level). To the next generation it’s not even going to standout, it will be the norm! But, it hasn’t always been that way……….
In the 1800’s, there were teams like “The African American Dolly Vardens of Philadelphia, the Blondes and Brunettes of Springfield, Illinois, playing professional baseball on all women teams. The Resolutes became an all women team from Vassar and the Bloomer Girls barnstormed the U.S. and played semi-pro, and Minor League teams.
But what about women playing baseball on men’s teams. Lizzie Murphy became the first woman to play against a Major League team in an exhibition game and the first person, of either gender, to play for All-Star teams in both the American League and National League in 1928. But 14 years before that, in 1914, Lottie M. Gapski signed a contract on March 12th, to play with men on the “Telling Strollers”, a Cleveland Amateur Baseball Association team. She had already been playing with a men’s team in Portage, PA in 1913, and had become a celebrity there!