The first of five perfect games in the history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was pitched on July 29, 1944. Annabelle Lee, the aunt of future major leaguer Bill Lee, was a southpaw knuckleballer for the Minneapolis Millerettes, and she managed to stop the Kenosha Comets from reaching first base as the Millerettes trounced the Comets, 18-0.
Several years ago, I wrote about baseball during World War I with the intention of following up with a post about the game during World War II. It has taken longer than I intended to circle back, but today, I finally make the return to what I started.
World War II began in September 1939, though the United States did not enter the war until December 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. During the 1941 season, prior to the U.S. entering the war, Ted Williams batted .406, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games, and Lefty Grove earned his 300th career win. These led Major League Baseball to enjoy one of its most popular seasons to date, with its fifth-highest attendance total of 9.6 million spectators. As the war raged on through the 1942 and 1943 seasons, baseball would see a decline in attendance to 8.1 million and 7.4 million respectively. However, attendance would rebound during the 1944 season to pre-war levels, and by 1945, the league experienced an all-time high of 10.8 million people attending baseball games.
At first, there was some speculation as to whether or not baseball would even continue during the war. On January 14, 1942, baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt asking if baseball should stay in operation. FDR’s response to Landis became known as the Green Light Letter, stating, “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. […] And, incidentally, I hope that night games can be extended because it gives an opportunity to the day shift to see a game occasionally.” Roosevelt did also stress that any ballplayer capable of joining the military should absolutely do so, but he felt the popularity of the sport would not be diminished as a result.
Over 500 major leaguers and 4,000 minor leaguers saw action during World War II. The first major leaguer drafted into the war was pitcher Hugh Mulcahy, and the first to enlist was pitcher Bob Feller. Other major leaguers involved in the war included stars like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, and Hank Greenberg. As a result of so many major leaguers joining the war effort, many players who previously did not see a lot of action on the diamond and a lot of minor league players now had the opportunity to play big roles on major league ball teams.
Some players were classified as 4-F during the draft, meaning that they were not fit for military service. There was some criticism of the fact that there could be some individuals identified as unfit for military service, yet still in good enough condition to play baseball. Others noted that 4-F status was determined by Army and Navy doctors, and therefore was not related to their status as baseball players. Furthermore, while some 4-Fs may not have served in the military, many of them did serve in defense industries, and thus still contributed to the war effort.
During the war, military personnel showed overwhelming support for the continuation of baseball. Myriad service men’s teams formed across all theatres of war, and equipment was even made available to these teams. Exhibition games were put on by military teams for the entertainment of the troops, and pickup games were aplenty among deployed servicemen and in POW camps during the war.
Some known baseball stars were deliberately kept out of harm’s way, such as Joe DiMaggio, who spent most of his military career playing for baseball teams and in exhibition games against fellow major leaguers and minor league players. But this wasn’t the case for all major leaguers. Warren Spahn, for example, served as a combat engineer in Europe and was decorated with a Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and a Battlefield Commission for action at the Battle of The Bulge. Hoyt Wilhelm also earned a Purple Heart fighting in Europe.
In the fall of 1942, many minor league teams disbanded, as many minor league players found themselves being drafted to serve in the war. This plus the concern that major league teams might be in danger of collapsing prompted Philip K. Wrigley to begin the All-American Girls Softball League. Before long, the rules were changed and the name of the new organization was updated to the All-American Girls Baseball League. 280 women were invited to tryouts in Chicago, where 60 were ultimately chosen to become the first women to play professional baseball. Teams consisted of 15 players, a manager, a business manager, and a woman chaperone, and salaries ranged from $45 to $85 per week. League play began May 30, 1943, and each team played 108 games in the season. The league peaked in 1948, when a total of ten teams attracted 910,000 fans. However, following the war, the league began to break down and eventually folded in 1954. In the end, the AAGPBL gave over 600 women the opportunity to play professional baseball.
The end of World War II finally came on September 2, 1945, when U.S. General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s formal surrender aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri. Over the course of the war, two MLB players lost their lives in battle: Captain Elmer J. Gedeon (Washington Senators) died during a bombing mission over France on April 20, 1944 and First Lieutenant Harry O’Neill (Philadelphia Athletics) was killed by a sniper on Iwo Jima on March 6, 1945. Hundreds of men who served in World War II played Major League Baseball, with even more having spent time playing for minor league teams. Most survived the war, and continued their careers on the field, but a small number paid the ultimate sacrifice, and never returned to the field.
I spent much of the last week visiting an old friend who now lives in New York state. Though I was only there for a few days, we managed to cram a lot into our limited time together. We spent a full day in Manhattan — my first time ever in New York City. Another day, we went on a five-mile hike up a mountain in the Hudson River Valley. I also insisted, so long as I was making the trip halfway across the country, that we had to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The day we reserved for visiting the Hall of Fame came the day after our NYC day, and we didn’t get to bed until about 2:00 a.m. that night before. Cooperstown is about a three-hour drive from my friend’s home, and as late as we were out the previous night, there was no way we were going to be on the road by 6:00 am to be there in time for the 9:00 open time. Instead we pulled into town a bit after noon, and we stopped for sandwiches and coffee at a nice little café called Stagecoach Coffee (which I highly recommend, by the way, if you’re ever in Cooperstown).
We finished our lunch and arrived at the Hall of Fame around 1:00, leaving us about four hours to explore before closing time. There ended up being a couple of exhibits we didn’t get to see (pro tip: don’t go out the night before so you can get there earlier than we did), but we did see most of it, and I took an insane number of pictures in the process. For sanity’s sake, I’ll just post a few of the highlights here, but if you are somehow just morbidly curious, I’ve created a public album including all my photos here.
The Sixth Inning of Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns explores the national pastime during the 1940s, which was quite the tumultuous decade in American history. It was a decade of war as the United States recovered from the Great Depression and found itself in a position of having to enter World War II. It was also the decade of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, of 
women’s professional baseball, and of Jackie Robinson.
In a chronological sense, the Sixth Inning was an easier one to follow along with than any of the Innings that preceded it. The first part of this disc was dominated by two of the game’s greatest hitters. 1941 was the summer of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, whose hitting performances captivated the baseball world. Joe DiMaggio’s fifty-six game hitting streak and Ted Williams’s .406 season average have both remained unmatched ever since.
The 1941 World Series resulted in a devastating loss for the Brooklyn Dodgers to the New York Yankees. At the end of the season, Dodgers general manager Larry MacPhail , drunk and belligerent, threatened to sell off all his players. The Dodgers instead opted to let go of MacPhail and brought in Branch Rickey, thus setting the stage for the breaking of the color barrier in the coming years.
When the United States entered the war, Franklin Roosevelt insisted that baseball ought to continue. The country would be working longer and harder, and thus recreation became more important than ever, he said. However, this didn’t shield players from the draft, and baseball still suffered as a result. Players like DiMaggio and Bob Feller joined the war effort. Meanwhile, baseball turned to signing players (and umpires) who didn’t meet the usual caliber of play just to keep going.
As the war also drew away a number of minor leaguers, Philip Wrigley came up with the idea of starting a women’s professional baseball league in order to fill the baseball void as minor league teams fell apart. Women from all over, particularly softball players, were recruited. They had to be able to play ball, but they were also required to remain unequivocally feminine. Off the field, any time they were in public, they were required to be in skirts, heels, and makeup — a requirement that I, for one, would find very difficult to swallow.
Following the war, the disc goes into the story of Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson. The story from Rickey’s time coaching at Ohio Wesleyan University, checking into a hotel in South Bend, Indiana to play Notre Dame, is absolutely heartbreaking, and certainly explains a lot regarding his determination to integrate baseball.
Branch Rickey certainly did his homework when choosing a player to break the color barrier, and clearly, he choose well. Promising not to retaliate and turn the other cheek for three years (three years!), Jackie Robinson signed with the Montreal Royals.
Burns breaks from the Jackie Robinson saga long enough to cover the 1946 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox. Though the Sox were the heavy favorites to win, the Cards employed the “Williams shift” to prevent Ted Williams from having much success at the plate. Thanks in part to this strategy, the Cardinals won that year’s Series. Roger Angell says it well when he explains that baseball is not a game about winning, like we think it is, but rather, it is a game about losing.
Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 was certainly an event, one that we continue to celebrate today. As expected, he endured an endless stream of taunts, threats, and even attempts at actual bodily harm. Through it all, he bit his tongue. Instead, he let his performance on the field speak for him. Not only was he named Rookie of the Year at the end of the season, he was also determined to be the second most popular man in America, after Bing Crosby. Robinson’s efforts eventually allowed other black players, including the great pitcher Satchel Paige, to break into the majors as well.
Ken Burns does a good job of pointing out that, for all the virtues that surrounded Robinson’s trek into Major League Baseball, it was a devastating event for the Negro Leagues. The Brooklyn Dodgers became the team of black America, and attendance at Negro Leagues games declined. As we know now, the Negro Leagues would eventually meet its end as a result.
The disc ends with the death of Babe Ruth in 1948. It’s only appropriate that the Sultan of Swat would receive this kind of nod (and convenient that he would die at the end of a decade — not to be morbid or anything). Burns never touches on what Ruth thought of Jackie Robinson, nor on what Robinson thought of Ruth. Perhaps nobody knows. But as Buck O’Neil points out, both men were giants in the game. Each of them, in their own way, changed baseball forever.
Earlier this week, cast members from A League of Their Own got together for a little reunion baseball game. The event was organized by Geena Davis, who played Dottie Hinson in the 1992 film. The game took place at the Bentonville Film Festival, which Davis co-founded.
Along with Davis, Megan Cavanagh, Anne Ramsey, Tracy Reiner, Ann Cusack, Freddie Simpson, and Patti Pelton all showed up to play. The women were also joined by one of the original Rockford Peaches, Gina Casey. Casey threw out the first pitch for the reunion game.
Through the Bentonville Film Festival, Geena Davis has focused on a message of female empowerment. The message and plot of A League of Their Own fits right in with this theme!
I re-watched A League of Their Own over the weekend, and I’ve had this song stuck in my head ever since. I wish I could find a video that featured the track alone, without the movie footage, but this will do for now.
Batter up! Hear that call!
The time has come for one and all
To play ball.
We are the members of the All-American League.
We come from cities near and far.
We’ve got Canadians, Irishmen and Swedes,
We’re all for one, we’re one for all
We’re All-Americans!
Each girl stands, her head so proudly high,
Her motto ‘Do or Die.’
She’s not the one to use or need an alibi.
Our chaperones are not too soft,
They’re not too tough,
Our managers are on the ball.
We’ve got a president who really knows his stuff,
We’re all for one, we’re one for all,
We’re All-Americans!
Here’s a great little blurb by NPR on Lavonne “Pepper” Paire Davis, who passed away in early February of this year. Davis was a catcher with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the 1940s and co-wrote the Official Song of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League with Nalda Bird.
“There’s no crying in baseball!”
Thanks to the 1992 comedy-drama, A League of Their Own, how many of us have not heard this classic line? The movie dramatizes for us the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. When World War II broke out, and many of the men in Major League baseball were called to away to serve, the prosperity of professional baseball was threatened. In order to keep the sport alive (and to salvage some lost profits), baseball owners created the AAGPBL, scouted women players across the country, dressed them in skirts, and sent them out to play ball.
However, women’s involvement in baseball existed long before World War II. In New York and New England, baseball was being played in women’s colleges as early as the mid-nineteenth century. In 1867, Philadelphia played host to an African-American women’s team, the Dolly Vardens. One great story you might have heard involves Jackie Mitchell of the Chattanooga Lookouts. As a pitcher during an exhibition game in the 1930s, Mitchell struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Unfortunately, this event was quickly promoted as a mere publicity stunt, rather than a serious effort on the parts of Ruth and Gehrig.
Today, there persists a distinction between baseball as a male’s game and softball as a female’s game, but this separation did not exist until the 1890s when softball was invented. For three decades prior to this, however, women played baseball, even as baseball leaders like Albert Spalding promoted it as a “manly” or “gentleman’s” game. No doubt they looked ridiculous, as the uniforms of college women ballplayers consisted of baseball caps and full-length dresses, but women loved playing the game and they proved themselves to be just as competitive and physical as their male counterparts. Unfortunately, society considered it too strenuous and unhealthy for women to engage in too much travel or competition, and as a result, women’s college baseball was confined to existing as an intramural sport, rather than an intercollegiate one. As a result of the sexism of the period, from males and females alike, women’s attempts to establish themselves in baseball were doomed to failure.
As fans, however, the presence of women at baseball games was often encouraged. It was believed that the presence of women would help to discourage the fighting and cat-calling that sometimes happened at the ballpark. In the late-nineteenth century, Ladies’ Day promotions came into being, in an attempt to attract women fans to games. By 1900, middle-class women were attending ballgames throughout the country. In 1909, the National League, convinced that women had become sufficiently interested in the game to start paying for admission, brought an end to the Ladies’ Day promotion.
While the creation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was certainly a breakthrough for women in the sport, baseball owners made it clear that the league was only temporary, and there was to be no question that those who played were women first and baseball players second. From the short skirts and team names to the mandatory chaperones and strict rules on the women’s behavior, every measure was taken to reassure the public and the girls’ families that their femininity would remain intact.
The sport of softball continues to flourish today, but questions continue to circulate about its impact in perpetuating sexist stereotypes. The common belief is that due to the physical differences between men and women, confining them to separate sports helps to maintain a fair playing field and protects women from needless injuries. But when you think about it, baseball is a game that requires coordination, timing, knowledge of the game, control, and competitiveness — all characteristics that are not exclusively male. Sure, perhaps strength and size can be useful assets, but even male players like Ichiro Suzuki have proven that they are not absolute essentials to being successful ballplayers. And I know from personal experience that, out of the playing field, girls can be just as brutal and ruthless as the guys, if not more so. After all, baseball is considered to be “America’s Pastime,” and as the AAGPBL Victory song points out, “we’re All-Americans” too.
Sources:
“A League of Their Own.” The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). IMDb.com, Inc., 1990-2013. Web. Accessed 11 March 2013. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104694/
Frommer, Harvey. Old-Time Baseball: America’s Pastime in the Gilded Age. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2006.
Gems, Gerald, Linda Borish, and Gertrud Pfister. Sports in American History: From Colonization to Globalization. Human Kinetics, 2008.
Heaphy, Leslie. “Women Playing Hardball.” Baseball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter’s Box. Ed. Eric Bronson. Chicago: Open Court, 2004. pp. 246-256.
Riess, Steven A. Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood P, 1980.
Ring, Jennifer. Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball. U of Illinois P, 2009.