The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

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[SPEAKER_02]: This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Kelly Theresa Pollock.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app so you never

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[SPEAKER_02]: On Sunday, May 30, 1943, the South Bend Blue Sox faced the rockford peaches, and the Kenosha comets faced the racing bells in the first games of a new professional ball league.

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[SPEAKER_02]: then called the All-American Girls Softball League.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The United States had entered World War II in December of 1941, and by 1943, young men were being drafted into the military and large numbers.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Philip K. Rigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, was concerned that Major League Baseball

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[SPEAKER_02]: and he asked for suggestions for alternatives.

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[SPEAKER_02]: A committee led by Ken cells and assistant general manager for the Cubs proposed a girl's softball league that could play in Major League Parks.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Cells became the league president and regally bankrolled.

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[SPEAKER_02]: What was then a non-profit organization?

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[SPEAKER_02]: which started with the four teams in South Bend, Indiana, Rockford, Illinois, Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Racine, Wisconsin.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The league sent scouts around the United States and Canada and held triodes in major cities to find the women who would be the league's players.

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[SPEAKER_02]: 75 women were invited to Chicago for a final triote at Reglie Field.

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[SPEAKER_02]: and 60 were selected, 15 for each team.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Many of the women had experienced playing competitive softball, not baseball.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And the games played in the All-American League started as a hybrid of the two.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They used 12-inch softballs thrown underhand,

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[SPEAKER_02]: Like baseball, there were nine players on the field, not the ten that softball had at the time.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In the middle of the first season, the league changed names to the All-American Girls Baseball League to reflect the baseball rules that they were using.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Each team had a woman's shaperone who traveled with the team, and the league set rules of conduct for the players

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[SPEAKER_02]: including an admission to appear in feminine attire, not slacks or shorts, at all times, with well-groomed, preferably long, hair, and lipstick.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Smoking and obscene language were prohibited.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Players who broke the rules were fined, and a third offense could result in suspension.

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[SPEAKER_02]: At the legs beginning, players were even sent to Charm School classes at Helena Rubenstein's beauty salon and received beauty kits.

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[SPEAKER_02]: On the field, the players were uniforms that always reminded the fans that these were women playing.

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[SPEAKER_02]: With short dresses, under which they wore satin shorts and knee-high socks.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They may have looked nice, but the uniforms were not ideal for playing baseball.

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[SPEAKER_02]: As player Doris, Sammy, Sam's recalled, quote,

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[SPEAKER_03]: which was more than they would have made in many other professions.

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[SPEAKER_02]: After a successful first season, the league expanded by two teams, adding the Milwaukee chicks and the Minneapolis Millerettes, to fulfill a reduced dream of having the league play in major league ball parks.

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[SPEAKER_02]: That experiment failed, though,

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[SPEAKER_02]: as the leak wasn't nearly as popular in major cities that had other entertainment options, and the chicks and the millerettes later moved to other cities.

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[SPEAKER_02]: After 1944, Riggly lost interest in the leak, and he sold it to advertising executive Arthur Meyerhoff, who reorganized the leak so that representatives from each franchise would have a say in the leak operations.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't only the leadership that changed.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Over the years of league play, the ball got smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and the base pads got longer, and longer.

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[SPEAKER_02]: By 1946, sidearm throwing was permitted, and in 1948, they switched to overhand pitching.

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[SPEAKER_02]: By the last year of the league, the ball they used was nine inches.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The base paths were 85 feet, and the pitching distance was 60 feet.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Making the game nearly the same as men's professional baseball.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The name of the league changed several times too, and in 1950, it became the American Girls Baseball League, although people continued to refer to it as the All-American League.

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[SPEAKER_02]: When the players' association formed in 1987, they adopted the name All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, A-A-G-P-B-L, reflecting their status as professional ball players.

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[SPEAKER_02]: For several years after 1943, attendance continued to grow, with the league drawing peak crowds in 1948.

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[SPEAKER_02]: with over 900,000 fans coming out to see the 10 teams that were then in league.

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[SPEAKER_02]: All of the teams were located in the Midwest.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And except for the short-lived Minneapolis team, they were all located in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

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[SPEAKER_02]: After the 1950 season, the league organization changed again, with individual team directors buying the league and then operating as independent teams.

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[SPEAKER_02]: As a result though, they could no longer rely on centralized publicity or the talent equalization that they previously had.

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[SPEAKER_02]: With dwindling attendance and no central league management

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[SPEAKER_02]: teams started to fold.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In the 1952 season, there were six teams left, and by the 1954 season, only five teams remained in the league.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In 1954, the Fort Wayne Dazeys finished the season in first place, with 54 wins and 40 losses, but the Kalamazoo last season won the postseason play

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[SPEAKER_02]: After that season, the league folded for good.

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[SPEAKER_02]: After league folded though, the league's most successful manager, Bill Allington, a former minor leagueer, kept women's baseball going for a few years.

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[SPEAKER_02]: that played against men's teams across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, from 1955 to 1958.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In November of 1988, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York, opened an exhibit dedicated to the All-American League.

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[SPEAKER_02]: and Hollywood director, Penny Marshall.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Marshall was inspired by a documentary about the league and by her conversations with players to make a movie about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a league of their own, opened in theaters in July 1992, and it grossed $13.2 million in its first weekend.

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[SPEAKER_02]: several of the actual players from the league appear in scenes of reunion game and at the Hall of Fame.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Joining me in this episode is baseball historian, Dr. Leslie Hefe, associate professor of history at Kent State University start campus, chair of the Women in Baseball Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research.

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[SPEAKER_02]: an editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball.

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[SPEAKER_03]: I Leslie, thanks so much for joining me again.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks, Kelly, I really appreciate the opportunity.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm always happy to talk baseball.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, me too.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I could talk baseball all day every day.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But today, we're going to talk about women's baseball specifically.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So let's start by talking about kind of early history of women's baseball, the All-American Girls League was certainly not the first time that women had ever played baseball.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, the earlier history of women's baseball actually merres just baseball history in general, and that's what people don't realize.

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[SPEAKER_03]: They're actually references to women playing the early versions of what we know to be baseball in the late 1700s.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so right from the very beginning, both here and of course the origins, regardless of whether people believe it or not, are English, and they were playing in England as well.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So I was like to say whether people know it or not, women have always been involved in the game with baseball.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so we got references then.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And then, you know, the first half of the 19th century is very much an amateur game.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So there's not a lot of documentation on either side until the early 1930s and 40s.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So for women in terms of being able to document it, we really see it after the Civil War.

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[SPEAKER_03]: As players, certainly.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so in the late 1860s,

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[SPEAKER_03]: just as men's baseball was starting to turn from the amateur to the professional we see that.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so it starts in colleges.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so we start with women playing in the alphimal colleges, starting with vassar, and then spreading from vassar to East Coast, but also up to the West Coast, where there were also women's colleges.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So it didn't stay in one spot.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so they played pretty much against one another, starting playing internally and then going to playing cross colleges.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And then you start to move into the 1880s and we start to see the development of what we're originally called red and blue teams.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing real fancy and usually that man either the color of their caps or the color of their socks It was that simple.

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[SPEAKER_03]: You couldn't really see their socks mostly time So I don't know why they would say the socks because they wore lace-tuck boots like they would have worn when they were Walking around it wasn't anything because they wore the long skirts the whole deal You read some interesting descriptions on newspapers of then tripping over their skirts all of those kinds of things because they were long and and bulky and

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[SPEAKER_03]: But the reds and blue teams then morph into the war-well-known bloomer teams.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so by the late 1880s, early 1890s, all the way through into the 1930s, you have bloomer teams playing all over.

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[SPEAKER_03]: A varying quality just as the red blue teams were.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Early on, they were often described as more entertainment and more like sort of vudville shows.

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[SPEAKER_03]: and whether that's true or not, or whether that was just the way the newspapers chose to portray them is always up for a little bit of debate, but that's the sources we have.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So based on those, we have to accurately say a lot of it, and it's not really a surprise that didn't have much opportunity to practice or to do any of those kind of things.

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[SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't even encouraged that women should be doing those kinds of things in the 1930s, I'd say.

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[SPEAKER_03]: But in the middle of that,

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[SPEAKER_03]: We have a professional, too, African-American women's teams playing the Call of the Valley Gardens and they played in the Philadelphia area in 1883 and 1884 which is the earliest that we have women professional players and so that's kind of a unique opportunity.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so the Bloomer teams is really where things take off.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And at the same time that you have the Bloomer teams by the 1880s and 90s, you just start seeing some individual female players playing on men's teams.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And that will continue with some interruptions right up to the present day.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, you could argue for over a century women have been playing at least.

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[SPEAKER_03]: minimally on men's teams as individuals always playing against men's teams.

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[SPEAKER_03]: You know, everybody from Lizzy Arlington, Lizzy Murphy, Blood Nelson, what's goes on.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And then you hit the 1940s, of course, and that's when you have the all-american league.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And in addition to players, there are female owners, there are a couple of female lumpires, there are female journalists, right?

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[SPEAKER_03]: So they are involved in the game on lots of levels.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone in the owner's side, Helene Britain with the St. Louis Cardinals, all the way up to Famannelee with the Riquecles and Forties, Amanda Clement being one of the first umpires, Eloise Young being one of the first journalists, so there's lots of participation by women, beyond just the players themselves.

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[SPEAKER_02]: in the 40s, the All-American League forms, and this is like many women's opportunities as a result of war and then going off to fight war and women getting new opportunities at home.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So tell me a little bit about the formation of the league and sort of the thinking behind it.

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[SPEAKER_03]: the league officially starts in 1943 and the main founder of the league he certainly wasn't alone, but he's the key figure in all of it.

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[SPEAKER_03]: It is still upregally of the cubs, and for riggly it was very much about the concern that men's baseball was going to grind to a halt because of the war, and he wasn't

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[SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't a totally wrong thought initially because ultimately there are over 570 ball players some minor league and major league baseball who will be drafted and serve in World R2.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And of course there was concern over gas rationing, those kinds of things that that would put a halt to as it was doing in other things.

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[SPEAKER_03]: What he didn't anticipate was that FDR, of course, would exempt baseball from that.

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[SPEAKER_03]: from that gas rationing.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so ultimately that's going to hurt his interest in this league, but that was his initial thought.

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[SPEAKER_03]: He wanted to create something that would provide a necessary entertainment release for people during a time of war.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so women softball girls softball very popular.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so he thought that he would develop a version of that that would allow

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[SPEAKER_03]: a link that would be first and foremost a reminder to people that these were women playing, whatever version of the game that they were playing, and that it was only temporary.

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[SPEAKER_03]: That was the thinking that it would only last as long as the war, and then when the war was over, there would be no more need for it, because the men would come home.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so that was his thought process, keys to his thought process were that, that it was going to be temporary.

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[SPEAKER_03]: that the fans would never lose sight that these were women they were watching.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And that leads to one of the other early decisions, which is he basically gives the go ahead, I guess, would be to his wife.

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[SPEAKER_03]: and a designer at the time, a gentleman by the name of Otis Shepherd, to basically come up with the uniform that would be appropriate.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And from my reading and from the research instrument done, it appears that they may have been inspired and used Sonny Henning, the skater, her skirt, as sort of the model or the inspiration for the skirts that the women were expected to wear

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[SPEAKER_03]: they had did make some adjustments over it because the skirts were a little too long to begin with, skating in baseball very different entities.

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[SPEAKER_03]: But that was one of the other very early key decisions that was made and it fit the thinking.

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[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of like for people who think who are out familiar with baseball to the same thought process that went into Rosie the Riveter, right?

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[SPEAKER_03]: It was meant to be an opportunity for women that was necessary but not permanent.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so when you look at the rows of the riveter picture, right?

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[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, she's wearing a cover alls and the bandana, but she's got to make up on the whole deal.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So it was a reminder that yes, she's doing this work on airplane and some things like that.

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[SPEAKER_03]: But she's not going to lose her feminine because that was the big fear that they'd be playing the and doing these male tasks and they would suddenly.

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[SPEAKER_03]: become less female.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so who they wanted to provide people that know that's not going to happen.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so as a consequence in that first year, the other decision it really made, which was an interesting one, was to create the Charm School that everybody remembers from the movie.

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[SPEAKER_03]: But that only lasts for the first year.

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[SPEAKER_03]: It's not a permanent.

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[SPEAKER_03]: But that was part of that design of teaching them how to walk, how to behave, how to dress, so that both on and off the field, they were presenting the image that really wanted.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And it's all about that image to begin with.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so that, and that original league was not the way people refer to it today as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

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[SPEAKER_03]: That word professional was never in there.

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[SPEAKER_03]: That comes later.

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[SPEAKER_03]: They went through a number of changes from All-American Girls Baseball League to the American Girls Baseball League, even though it was referred to, so.

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[SPEAKER_03]: But it was initially meant to be primarily softball, but a sort of merger of softball at baseball, and the goal was to make it what they thought would be a little more entertaining than a typical softball, and so the goal was it was 12 inches, so it sort of fit between the typical softball and certainly a baseball.

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[SPEAKER_03]: They went with the shorter bases thing and it was still underhand pitching when they started because again that's what women were the head for most for most of them That's the only opportunity they had was playing softball

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[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I think people who think about major league baseball today, think about separate teams, franchises, with owners making decisions, but this league as it starts is very much centralized that there's a central decision making about which players go where and how things are done.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and so the league structure in that first year, it is Philip Riggley that runs the show.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so they're only four original teams.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so they're only four teams.

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[SPEAKER_03]: It's a much smaller league.

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[SPEAKER_03]: It hits the tie point in, they 48 with 10 teams, but they're only four to begin with.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So that helps as well.

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[SPEAKER_03]: It would be harder to have one person overseeing.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So smaller league with 14s, very centralized in the Midwest, because the four original teams are South Bend,

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[SPEAKER_03]: Rockford and Kenosha, and so, and it never moved out of the Midwest ever.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So they're fairly, essentially, located.

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[SPEAKER_03]: They did travel between the different parks or they're going to play.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And, really, as a consequence of the way he said it, basically could make, you know, the decisions like the uniform, without having to consult anybody else, could decide on which ball parks they were going to play in.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And it was great to bat.

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[SPEAKER_03]: and certainly by the second season really had had some different ideas, but the idea was, he wanted initially for them to play in the major league stadiums when the major league teams were not playing very quickly that morphed into organized baseball, which meant minor league stadiums, that kind of thing, and then it dropped down from there to more local stadiums, things like that.

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[SPEAKER_03]: But again, decisions he could make,

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[SPEAKER_03]: all of the marketing decisions, things like that, it lessons of course the overhead and staffing and all of those kinds of things that you don't have.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think those are all advantages in terms of, you know, how the money flows and the amount of money needed to get it up and running and to kind of ensure and you also only had 15 players on the teams and minimal coaching staff.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So there wasn't a lot of overhead there.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that's your advantage.

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[SPEAKER_03]: One of the obvious disadvantages everybody can think about immediately is exactly that same thing.

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[SPEAKER_03]: One person is basically making all the decisions he's like, God, right?

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[SPEAKER_03]: Of the ZAR of Facebook and so there's no, if you don't like the decision you don't, there's nobody to appeal to, there's nobody, right?

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[SPEAKER_03]: It all goes through essentially for the most part one person.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so,

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[SPEAKER_03]: that doesn't allow for any kind of real discussion or changes and thoughts and things like that.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And I think ultimately, that's one of the reasons, because Rickley's only there in the very beginning, and he will leave and 44.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And he's going to sell his colleague to his, one of his people that the guy who did all the Chicago advertiser by the name of Art Meyer Hoff.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And part of the reason that Rigley decides is it didn't turn out on every level quite the way he expected, including, and one of the bigger ones was Major League Baseball didn't disappear.

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[SPEAKER_03]: They were exempted from gas, and so he kind of lost interest.

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[SPEAKER_03]: because he thought it was going to be something that was necessary and then it became in his not necessary.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So he really wasn't as interested as he was because he went back to all the cups or playing and they're doing their things.

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[SPEAKER_03]: So I don't really need this extra over here.

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[SPEAKER_03]: And so he then sells the league to Marhoff, and from that point forward, over the next 10 years, the league's structure will shift and change and come to move away from that centralized.

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[SPEAKER_03]: Ultimately, to by 1950, you're going to have individual investors in each of the teams, as the league continues long past when, really, I mean, in his mind, it should have ended in 45.

24:05.394 --> 24:05.875
[SPEAKER_03]: And it didn't.

24:06.355 --> 24:12.316
[SPEAKER_02]: So you noted that the word professional was not originally in the name, but leader, been added.

24:12.597 --> 24:16.177
[SPEAKER_02]: But these were absolutely professional baseball players that were paid.

24:16.217 --> 24:18.778
[SPEAKER_02]: So who were these women and girls?

24:18.858 --> 24:20.438
[SPEAKER_02]: I should note some of them were quite young.

24:20.739 --> 24:20.959
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

24:21.119 --> 24:26.260
[SPEAKER_02]: And what did this opportunity to play sports professionally mean to them?

24:27.012 --> 24:34.338
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was made up of primarily women between the ages of, and this will surprise people.

24:34.378 --> 24:41.304
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of them, 14, was the youngest of they could be up through in into their 30s when they were starting.

24:41.664 --> 24:49.271
[SPEAKER_03]: The vast majority of them came from the United States, but we do have fairly large contingent that also comes down from Canada.

24:49.631 --> 24:51.693
[SPEAKER_03]: And they varied in terms of,

24:52.133 --> 25:06.785
[SPEAKER_03]: their backgrounds, some of them had played softball, some of them had not, didn't have any softball, you know, and what advantage this advantage, not sure, but they all came from backgrounds that were, in most cases, they had some athletic background.

25:07.105 --> 25:13.547
[SPEAKER_03]: some of them played basketball, some of them, you know, just local kinds of things, but they were all recruited and scouted.

25:13.967 --> 25:18.028
[SPEAKER_03]: There were triouts at various places across the country, even in that first year.

25:18.668 --> 25:33.832
[SPEAKER_03]: And those various triouts, sometimes it was somebody local who was sort of the point person and they would go out looking for where they'd heard about particular women that they wanted to invite, but anybody technically could have gone with

25:34.612 --> 25:52.046
[SPEAKER_03]: a caveat here though it's never really officially stated we are going to see that there are no women of color that are ever going to play in the league and so that would be one of the caveats to that and we do know some least a couple attempted to try out and sent away and so

25:53.407 --> 26:19.227
[SPEAKER_03]: women are invited to try out and then those that are selected are all going to get sent to a second set of tryouts in the initial in Chicago and then they get paired down to ultimately in that first year there's going to be 60 young women and then a lot of cases because of the age of some of the young ladies and women they had to get their parents permission to be able to go and usually what convinced most of the parents was they're going to get paid.

26:19.967 --> 26:26.431
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there's the making money, and there was $45 to up to $85 in terms of paycheck.

26:26.931 --> 26:30.973
[SPEAKER_03]: And so in the 40s, even for young men, that was a lot of money.

26:31.333 --> 26:37.857
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that was the convincing factor for an often, and we've heard stories of sometimes initially parents actually saying no.

26:38.497 --> 27:00.693
[SPEAKER_03]: until they found out that they were that how much money they were going to make and then they're like okay yes well help you back and they were often reassured by the fact that in those first years and this was again a really idea was that the team's had a female shaperone and that was partly because of the age of son and that read was to reassure parents as well there were very strict rules put in place and and finds if you broke those rules

27:01.393 --> 27:09.816
[SPEAKER_03]: and those finds went up and could lead ultimately to suspension if you continued to break through because it was again all about that image idea.

27:10.276 --> 27:22.319
[SPEAKER_03]: But for these young ladies and women who got the opportunity to play whether it was one year or six years or ten years as some of them did, it ultimately became something that changed their lives.

27:22.379 --> 27:23.920
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you hear that from any of

27:27.961 --> 27:43.032
[SPEAKER_03]: doors it opened, the opportunities that come from the travel, from seeing the world, from making their own money, to even just something as simple as realizing it was possible to do something that they hadn't known was possible, right?

27:43.492 --> 28:06.423
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's amazing the number of them that go on to get not just bachelor's degrees, but master's degrees and PhDs to become the first woman to work their way up through major companies into eye positions and all saying without this opportunity to play baseball professionally, they never would have thought some of these things would have been possible.

28:09.684 --> 28:11.605
[SPEAKER_03]: on these women, that's really what you see.

28:11.905 --> 28:13.545
[SPEAKER_03]: In Lois Youngen is a great example.

28:14.305 --> 28:17.026
[SPEAKER_03]: She played from 51 to 54.

28:17.086 --> 28:17.826
[SPEAKER_03]: She was a catcher.

28:18.246 --> 28:25.348
[SPEAKER_03]: She went on to get her PhD from the University of Oregon in 1971 and had a long time career at the University of Oregon.

28:25.808 --> 28:27.469
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's just one example of many.

28:28.009 --> 28:28.749
[SPEAKER_03]: That was true for.

28:29.677 --> 28:32.879
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you met some of these women, some of them are still alive, right?

28:32.919 --> 28:33.219
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

28:33.619 --> 28:39.903
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's 23 or 24 still alive and they're actually having their reunion here coming up into weeks.

28:40.283 --> 28:44.485
[SPEAKER_03]: They have an annual reunion and they're expecting 13 of them hoping to travel.

28:44.805 --> 28:47.327
[SPEAKER_03]: But yes, I have met a number of them over the years.

28:47.987 --> 28:54.591
[SPEAKER_03]: They all to a person talk about the opportunities, talk about what a difference this made in their life.

28:55.151 --> 28:56.733
[SPEAKER_03]: just the opportunities to see the country.

28:56.913 --> 29:02.400
[SPEAKER_03]: And it wasn't just to see the this country because they had spring training when here in Cuba.

29:02.600 --> 29:07.806
[SPEAKER_03]: They did a trip through Latin America in one of the winter seasons.

29:08.247 --> 29:10.810
[SPEAKER_03]: So they traveled outside of the country as well.

29:11.070 --> 29:12.592
[SPEAKER_03]: And then in 48 or 49,

29:15.215 --> 29:17.338
[SPEAKER_03]: can't remember off the top of the head now, which one.

29:17.398 --> 29:23.385
[SPEAKER_03]: But they brought in the eight women from Cuba who came to play in the league and so getting that opportunity, right?

29:23.905 --> 29:35.338
[SPEAKER_03]: And so making their own money, some of them will also talk about the fact that, you know, at the time, they realized they were getting to do something that most people, but they didn't realize how important it really was.

29:36.039 --> 29:46.004
[SPEAKER_03]: and that comes later when, you know, the attention and they realize that they really did do something that opened up opportunities for them, and it was much bigger than just baseball.

29:46.584 --> 29:53.668
[SPEAKER_02]: So as you mentioned, the league went longer than, really initially thought it was going to, but it did eventually fold.

29:54.248 --> 29:57.290
[SPEAKER_02]: What were some of the reasons that kind of led to its downfall?

29:58.088 --> 30:00.389
[SPEAKER_02]: So the league lasts till 54.

30:00.949 --> 30:06.952
[SPEAKER_03]: It really took a big change in leadership in 1950 when it went to individuals investing in the deans.

30:07.392 --> 30:16.355
[SPEAKER_03]: And so in 1950, the league went back to, they were still at eight teams, and then in 1952 it goes down to six, and then it ends with five.

30:16.616 --> 30:18.776
[SPEAKER_03]: So it starts with four and it ends with five, right?

30:18.796 --> 30:21.157
[SPEAKER_03]: So you could sort of see the dwindling.

30:21.177 --> 30:22.178
[SPEAKER_03]: And part of that, I think,

30:22.778 --> 30:23.719
[SPEAKER_03]: is easy to see.

30:23.759 --> 30:46.581
[SPEAKER_03]: The initial first part is simply the wars over the men come home and that presents that challenge for women to be able to stay doing anything that was considered a man's job and some are going to be able to but a lot of them are pushed out and back home and so you start the 1950s with that whole desire right which is reinforced by television

30:48.142 --> 30:55.327
[SPEAKER_03]: The ideal home is dead working, mom at home, and all of those kind of, and so there's that effort to sort of, and so that certainly doesn't help.

30:55.427 --> 31:03.072
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think ultimately, I believe that one of the biggest causes for the end of the league is the advance of television.

31:03.392 --> 31:06.834
[SPEAKER_03]: Television simply makes it so that people have a choice.

31:06.934 --> 31:11.137
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to sit at home and watch the major league ball players or go out to a

31:14.439 --> 31:23.103
[SPEAKER_03]: or even some of the, I mean, it has the same effect on some of the lesser mind of the league and independent mensfall teams, right, because that's sort of the choice.

31:23.263 --> 31:29.905
[SPEAKER_03]: And for a lot of them, and we're also talking about our time period in 1953 and 54 for people thinking about it.

31:30.165 --> 31:35.748
[SPEAKER_03]: And there are a lot of other options, and there's not a whole lot of other and its television is relatively new.

31:36.408 --> 31:49.844
[SPEAKER_03]: And so do you want to watch, you know, the Stan Musules and things like that that you could read about in the newspaper or and so I think ultimately television is the biggest factor in bringing an end to the league after the 54 season.

31:50.638 --> 31:54.103
[SPEAKER_02]: By the end of the league, they're fully playing baseball.

31:54.123 --> 32:00.293
[SPEAKER_02]: You noted that started as kind of this hybrid, but at the end, like it's baseball they're playing with a smaller ball over hand pitching.

32:01.034 --> 32:06.181
[SPEAKER_02]: But after that, you know, with the perceptions, of course, a lot of women in this country

32:06.722 --> 32:09.644
[SPEAKER_02]: only ever get the opportunity to place softball.

32:09.864 --> 32:11.344
[SPEAKER_02]: How does that come about?

32:11.444 --> 32:12.445
[SPEAKER_02]: Like why is there this?

32:12.805 --> 32:18.188
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the only sport where there's this true distinction of like men play this and women play this totally different game.

32:19.008 --> 32:32.415
[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting that when the league ends Bill Allington who is one of the managers in the league, he actually will continue to play with the woman's team, the call the bill Allington all stars, through 58 59.

32:32.515 --> 32:35.117
[SPEAKER_03]: So there are going to be some that travel country in that immediate

32:35.957 --> 32:52.221
[SPEAKER_03]: But for the most part, and we're not going to, we see it when the league ends, those opportunities, certainly there are no professional opportunities again until the 1990s for women to play, and then those are minimal in the 90s, and then hopefully now this year, here in 2020, sites.

32:52.681 --> 32:56.182
[SPEAKER_03]: And so this is always the question that people wonder what happened.

32:56.572 --> 33:05.901
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, got to remember that this league was a was born out of what a small group of individuals thought was an necessity.

33:06.582 --> 33:07.282
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a need.

33:07.903 --> 33:09.384
[SPEAKER_03]: And when that need disappeared,

33:10.460 --> 33:19.843
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, we went back to, and so I was telling my students, it's interesting to look at that and say, okay, if you're wanting to look to see if permanent changes being made, that's how you look at it, right?

33:20.284 --> 33:23.285
[SPEAKER_03]: It met a need and when that need went away, what happened?

33:24.005 --> 33:29.347
[SPEAKER_03]: If the league and opportunities that continued, we could argue that more substantial change has been made.

33:30.047 --> 33:36.409
[SPEAKER_03]: Clearly, that was not the case, because when the league goes away, that's pretty much the end of these opportunities,

33:38.430 --> 33:56.542
[SPEAKER_03]: reverted back to well you've got an alternative and that alternative is softball and softball had been the alternative to some degree since the 1930s when literally is created and it's literally really that solidifies all of this unfortunately.

33:57.022 --> 34:04.667
[SPEAKER_03]: because they were initially still able to play at that younger age and then get pushed into this game that was created in the 1890s.

34:04.787 --> 34:14.053
[SPEAKER_03]: Ironically, softballs, origins, of course, are in Chicago and that was originally created in the 1890s to be an indoor sport.

34:14.713 --> 34:24.320
[SPEAKER_03]: to give men mostly firefighters and things like that who were playing a way to practice and wait to play in the awful winter season when they couldn't play outside in Chicago.

34:24.660 --> 34:30.345
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's why the whole idea of a softer ball came into play because they were playing indoors.

34:30.785 --> 34:32.486
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, a lot of times in the 1890s,

34:33.647 --> 34:52.295
[SPEAKER_03]: the newspapers would refer to it as Kittenball and not softball, and so it's kind of an interesting origin that has nothing to do with the way it evolves right into this idea, but with the creation of Little League and American Legion Ball and things like that is they solidify, it became easy.

34:52.955 --> 34:56.316
[SPEAKER_03]: to use that as a way to push women out of this sport.

34:56.756 --> 34:59.417
[SPEAKER_03]: They were never really welcome in to begin with.

34:59.997 --> 35:03.437
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the question becomes, well, why weren't they welcome to begin with?

35:03.878 --> 35:04.858
[SPEAKER_03]: Because basketball, right?

35:04.878 --> 35:06.578
[SPEAKER_03]: When it totally the opposite.

35:06.618 --> 35:13.800
[SPEAKER_03]: When it starts in the 1890s, within six weeks of the original game starting with men, women's rules are created and they're playing.

35:14.040 --> 35:14.800
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, they're different.

35:15.840 --> 35:18.161
[SPEAKER_03]: But they're playing with the same ball, right?

35:18.321 --> 35:19.901
[SPEAKER_03]: And so right from the beginning.

35:20.301 --> 35:22.222
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it really has to do, I think,

35:23.013 --> 35:41.722
[SPEAKER_03]: with the uniqueness of baseball's history in this country and being seen from the really the 18, late 1830s onward when baseball starts to develop into a more organized amateur game and then by the 50s you've got a national organization and then by the 60s the professional side of things, right?

35:42.263 --> 35:46.445
[SPEAKER_03]: By the late 1850s moving into the 1860s, it has already earned the

35:49.666 --> 36:00.536
[SPEAKER_03]: And so as soon as you add that to it, what it then becomes is it reflects the society at a time's views of what they want this nation to be.

36:00.996 --> 36:02.397
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, it's the 19th century.

36:02.898 --> 36:09.303
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is all about male strength, think about the cowboy, think about all those kind of, right?

36:09.323 --> 36:11.985
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a certain image that many people don't fit.

36:12.646 --> 36:13.747
[SPEAKER_03]: Hence, the reason you have the

36:15.214 --> 36:34.613
[SPEAKER_03]: immigrants being pushed out of the and African Americans and with right because they don't fit that American national ideal and so I think it's that unique history that baseball has from almost the very beginning and then add to it right at the turn of the century there is a desire to sort of

36:35.835 --> 36:44.505
[SPEAKER_03]: establish officially, baseball as an American sport and not having any origins and ties to England, because we're trying it right.

36:44.986 --> 36:54.157
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they create a commission literally that is basically ordered to find the evidence and issue a report that says this is an American game.

36:54.457 --> 36:55.759
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is exactly what they did.

36:56.319 --> 37:07.746
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it is then in writing, and that's when you really solidify then the double-day myth that it was born in a Cooper State, right, with a happier double day who goes on to become a civil warja.

37:08.046 --> 37:12.249
[SPEAKER_03]: So just re-establishes this whole Americanness of the game.

37:12.349 --> 37:13.310
[SPEAKER_03]: None of our other sports.

37:13.710 --> 37:16.992
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't need to because we already had a national pastime, right?

37:17.372 --> 37:19.734
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's the uniqueness of baseball's history.

37:20.034 --> 37:22.936
[SPEAKER_03]: And so as a consequence, I think that whole approach

37:23.716 --> 37:26.678
[SPEAKER_03]: makes it something that says, well, it's, it's a man's domain.

37:27.059 --> 37:34.764
[SPEAKER_03]: And, and so once softball because in literally, they're like, okay, well, if they want to play, they can just play softball because after all, it's the same game, right?

37:35.405 --> 37:37.846
[SPEAKER_03]: And when you tell me, they're like, no, it's not.

37:38.655 --> 37:42.197
[SPEAKER_03]: they share a bat in a ball, but the ball isn't even the same size.

37:42.658 --> 37:56.547
[SPEAKER_03]: Base pat, I mean, all those, you know, and also as a consequence of the rules, and they're both wonderful games, but the idea that one should serve as the equal substitute for the others, so that there's no reason for women to want or need to play baseball.

37:56.947 --> 37:58.749
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what has caused

38:00.061 --> 38:19.522
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we have this one moment in time where there was a need, and of course, think about it that need was created by a war, where the men were going off to do that important kind of duties, and so Riggly's own idea was to create something that wasn't permanent, and that would remind people that these are still women plague.

38:20.123 --> 38:23.205
[SPEAKER_03]: So even then, and they started as a softball, right?

38:23.265 --> 38:25.086
[SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't to play baseball.

38:25.526 --> 38:37.533
[SPEAKER_03]: That involves, and that's really takes place when the women and the individual people who, and some of them are some of the women themselves who invest in the league, make that full transition over to baseball.

38:38.112 --> 38:39.374
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's 2026.

38:39.875 --> 38:42.659
[SPEAKER_02]: Finally, we're going to have the women's pro-based colleague.

38:43.100 --> 38:44.161
[SPEAKER_02]: I am super excited.

38:44.202 --> 38:46.004
[SPEAKER_02]: You're on the advisory board, Philly.

38:46.024 --> 38:51.413
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you talk some about how it came about and what the opportunities are here?

38:52.263 --> 39:14.990
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's been a long time coming and I do always like to point out to people because there's been a lot of discussion that we jumped from 1954 to 2026 and there's no professional league and no professional baseball there is it doesn't last but there are and I was like you want to be accurate so in the 90s we have two couple things happening there is a women's professional single baseball team.

39:15.570 --> 39:19.771
[SPEAKER_03]: established from 1994 to 1997, the Colorado Silver Bullets.

39:20.091 --> 39:30.153
[SPEAKER_03]: But they are one single team playing men's teams, amateur, minor league, college, all of that for four years and they played about 60 games a year.

39:30.293 --> 39:34.594
[SPEAKER_03]: But there is that opportunity for a small group of them in the 1990s.

39:34.874 --> 39:37.455
[SPEAKER_03]: Out of that interest, grow two attempts.

39:38.215 --> 39:42.677
[SPEAKER_03]: one in Florida and one in California to start a league.

39:43.518 --> 39:49.561
[SPEAKER_03]: Neither one of them last more than a season and a half and they were barely localized.

39:49.781 --> 39:57.105
[SPEAKER_03]: That doesn't mean that there weren't a few players that came from other places to play and each of those leagues I believe they'd both had four teams in them.

39:57.645 --> 40:08.025
[SPEAKER_03]: and technically they were paid, so and they played 630 or 35 games, something like that in the one later, so there were a couple small attempts.

40:09.183 --> 40:20.093
[SPEAKER_03]: Which I think just continued to show the growth and the interest and the challenges to this idea that softball should be the only option.

40:20.393 --> 40:23.236
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's important to how we get to where we are today.

40:23.696 --> 40:27.079
[SPEAKER_03]: Because then as you move into the 2000s, you start to see

40:27.940 --> 40:56.100
[SPEAKER_03]: a number of other attempts to try to build and to grow this interest and grow opportunities everything from the beginnings of what have now become the World Cup because they actually started in 2002 and so that was to open up opportunities for women to play at the highest level of competition against other women from around the world because the baseball in other countries doesn't have the same history it has here and so women their women baseball players all around the

40:57.141 --> 41:05.975
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you start to see some young ladies from the starting actually as early as the 80s, but a few playing the college level.

41:06.831 --> 41:14.117
[SPEAKER_03]: and then as you move through the decades of the 2000s, you start to add organizations like baseball for all.

41:14.697 --> 41:24.124
[SPEAKER_03]: That has allowed young girls to start playing and on teams all over the country starting as early as, you know, the eight and under and up, and then you have a group

41:30.169 --> 41:37.718
[SPEAKER_03]: huge anniversary and I don't want to get the years wrong, but I want to say it's been over 40 years that they've been around giving opportunities, but again, localized.

41:38.099 --> 41:40.161
[SPEAKER_03]: And then other leagues have popped up in tournaments.

41:40.321 --> 41:43.205
[SPEAKER_03]: And then Major League Baseball has started to do some development.

41:43.405 --> 41:49.012
[SPEAKER_03]: And all of those things combined have started to create a true pipeline.

41:49.412 --> 42:09.598
[SPEAKER_03]: of women who are getting the opportunity, not just at the seven and eight-year-old age, and then they get pushed over into song, but there's been, they can play it nine and ten and eleven and twelve, and some of them are now playing high school baseball, and there's even some college club teams, and they have, for the last couple of years, they've had their own tournament, and in champion.

42:09.878 --> 42:15.300
[SPEAKER_03]: So, that's, I think, how we end up where we are today is this growth coming from

42:16.020 --> 42:24.483
[SPEAKER_03]: all different areas leading up to the desire to create a women's professional baseball eat.

42:24.863 --> 42:31.765
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's also at the opportunity to build off just the growth in general in the last five to ten years of women's sports.

42:32.305 --> 42:36.706
[SPEAKER_03]: And you have to acknowledge that a lot of that comes from the WNBA.

42:37.306 --> 42:41.148
[SPEAKER_03]: And in most recent New York, Caitlin Clark and the others that have come in and just sort of

42:42.788 --> 42:59.677
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, it seems like an opportune, all these things coming together in an opportune moment to finally see the fruition of all of this work in the creation of a, interestingly, a 14 league, much like the all American league when it started with one person.

43:00.417 --> 43:01.838
[SPEAKER_03]: providing most of the financing.

43:02.338 --> 43:04.620
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's got a little bit of that structure.

43:04.760 --> 43:07.821
[SPEAKER_03]: Differences, they do have a commissioner in Justin Seagull.

43:07.901 --> 43:11.604
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's the financing and there's the other side of that.

43:11.644 --> 43:15.366
[SPEAKER_03]: But it still is a very limited overall structure on purpose.

43:15.646 --> 43:18.888
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, with that idea of trying to keep the expenses.

43:19.228 --> 43:22.369
[SPEAKER_03]: which is the big part of the success of any startup, right?

43:22.750 --> 43:37.816
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the four teams, though, you know, the decision to make was, do they play all over the country or do they and so the decision ultimately was made, so they're going to be playing at Robin Robert Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.

43:38.156 --> 43:39.377
[SPEAKER_03]: So one single place.

43:40.657 --> 44:06.135
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, you could argue, and people have, and we've seen, is that a good idea or not a good, I guess we'll find out, we don't know, but you can see the thinking behind it, which is that immediately cuts down on all your travel expenses, accommodations, all of those kinds of things, which means that you can put all your money into paying the players, and that instant, a wage that makes it possible for them in this particular case, unlike the

44:08.678 --> 44:17.158
[SPEAKER_03]: These are all women who are either in college or those who are older already have full-time professions and they're leaving those.

44:18.264 --> 44:27.006
[SPEAKER_03]: for this time period of 35 games plus then playoffs in it right to take a chance on this and they can't do that without getting paid.

44:27.746 --> 44:32.887
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we'll part of the issue here is making it worth enough for them.

44:33.187 --> 44:35.948
[SPEAKER_03]: And yes, most of them probably taken a huge pick up.

44:35.988 --> 44:36.848
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.

44:38.229 --> 44:43.850
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that was the real reason behind this notion of putting it all in one place.

44:44.390 --> 44:50.892
[SPEAKER_03]: But they've been made in also, I thought, a fascinating decision to the, even though they're all, the four teams will play in one place.

44:51.412 --> 45:08.897
[SPEAKER_03]: They named them for four big cities to create a national excitement, to create connections to those cities, and they started, I thought, fascinatingly, by just naming the cities, and then just yesterday, they actually gave the names of the teams.

45:09.577 --> 45:25.553
[SPEAKER_03]: So the Boston Hunters and the New York Heights, right, and all of the names were chosen with a connection to a single individual female who is important to women's history, civil rights activists baseball, right, then they aren't just baseball.

45:25.933 --> 45:30.315
[SPEAKER_03]: They took a broader look and said, we want to connect this to the larger opportunity.

45:30.535 --> 45:36.598
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it was really smart in terms of thinking about again what this means in larger opportunity, right?

45:36.918 --> 45:41.920
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're going to be the teams like the All-American League have 15 players on them to start with.

45:42.160 --> 45:45.902
[SPEAKER_03]: Unlike the All-American, there are sort of waiting in the wings.

45:46.322 --> 45:52.205
[SPEAKER_03]: There are a whole bunch of women who were drafted out of the trials last fall.

45:52.845 --> 45:56.308
[SPEAKER_03]: where they had nearly over 400 women and they narrowed that down.

45:56.748 --> 45:59.751
[SPEAKER_03]: But those women are all sort of available who got drafted.

46:00.031 --> 46:11.921
[SPEAKER_03]: So somebody gets hurt and things like that, they've got a pipeline to fill in, which I think is important to the potential the overall success of this league and it's ongoing moving beyond this year.

46:12.642 --> 46:15.765
[SPEAKER_03]: And they brought in a big marketing firm.

46:16.145 --> 46:17.606
[SPEAKER_03]: free mantle was the marketing firm.

46:18.027 --> 46:32.299
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, I think that has been the other big focus and the realization, that's the difference in the world from the forties to now, is it's still all about you got to get the fans, you got to get put it bluntly, right, butts in the seats.

46:32.700 --> 46:33.901
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't get people watching.

46:34.441 --> 46:38.803
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, in today's world, that comes through the social media that comes from the marketing.

46:38.843 --> 46:47.908
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, I think that was another big decision they made early on was to invest in a, and rather than trying to do it themselves, small scale.

46:48.388 --> 46:50.049
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, that has resulted in,

46:51.369 --> 46:55.752
[SPEAKER_03]: regular marketing of the league, very timely announcements and stuff like yesterday.

46:55.832 --> 47:03.396
[SPEAKER_03]: So building some excitement and then instead of revealing it all at once, and again, people like that don't like it, but seems to be working.

47:03.877 --> 47:08.940
[SPEAKER_03]: I saw that yesterday after the announcement made was made, and I don't know the numbers, but

47:09.760 --> 47:10.661
[SPEAKER_03]: on their website.

47:10.701 --> 47:17.629
[SPEAKER_03]: You went on to look at merchandise and two of the jerseys were already sold out, you know, and so that kind of stuff creates excitement.

47:17.669 --> 47:21.754
[SPEAKER_03]: But it tells you that people are watching and waiting and paying attention.

47:21.994 --> 47:29.282
[SPEAKER_03]: They've also done a smart thing in connecting and using some of the women ball players who've been playing on the

47:29.883 --> 47:51.768
[SPEAKER_03]: for years on the women's national team or more recently the four women who've been playing and been in the banana ball kingdom right to use them as the face of the league so that you can start we all know fans connect with play but they also connect with the players and so they don't know who the players are there's no ability to start to connect but you know Kelsey Whitmore

47:58.010 --> 47:58.670
[SPEAKER_03]: for a long time.

47:59.551 --> 48:06.974
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they have a reputation and they have started to build, and then when they went to Bernaball, it built it on a national scale.

48:07.455 --> 48:12.737
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you know, when a Davis is another one, and people remember her from her little league fame, right?

48:13.218 --> 48:16.419
[SPEAKER_03]: And so bringing her back in and her opportunity to be there.

48:16.959 --> 48:20.601
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think all of those things are big decisions that they have made

48:22.582 --> 48:39.654
[SPEAKER_03]: Now we get to see in just a few weeks, August 1st being the opening, how this is all going to play out, and hopefully it will be the great success that we all think it will be and It'll provide an opportunity moving forward for girls from every age on up to realize

48:40.815 --> 48:49.508
[SPEAKER_03]: that there is an actual place for them to play, and not just hoping that someday the Gulf, they can finagle away to make a career.

48:50.289 --> 48:52.933
[SPEAKER_03]: They can look at this and say, it's there, it exists.

48:54.411 --> 48:56.553
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I am super excited.

48:56.573 --> 49:06.523
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be at the first two games and I strongly encourage anyone who lives in the Midwest to come to Springfield, Amtrakos right there.

49:06.783 --> 49:09.486
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really excited about the launch of this league.

49:09.526 --> 49:09.847
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

49:10.007 --> 49:11.788
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, and just to that point,

49:12.509 --> 49:32.862
[SPEAKER_03]: If people are thinking about, and you really want to make a trip a bit for a few days, literally July 22nd to the 26th is the Women's World Cup, Group Stage, which is in Rockford, Illinois, which is only a couple of hours since to be a lot of people, including many of the players who are playing on the various national teams, who are going to be playing in that league, because that's the other difference in this league.

49:32.902 --> 49:34.603
[SPEAKER_03]: This league is international.

49:34.663 --> 49:36.885
[SPEAKER_03]: There are players from 10 countries.

49:37.225 --> 49:40.846
[SPEAKER_03]: who will be playing in this prophet and that just tells you the growth of women's base.

49:41.347 --> 49:50.210
[SPEAKER_03]: But a lot of them are playing in the world cup the week before for their various national teams and then heading to Springfield and so for a lot of us that's what we're doing.

49:50.230 --> 49:57.893
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to see him in Rockford and then we're going to follow them just for it building watch and so that's I think an exciting point about this pipeline.

49:58.713 --> 50:09.160
[SPEAKER_03]: and the opportunities that are there because, you know, the world cup has six teams playing here not for it from around the world and then there are six other teams playing in Tainan, China.

50:09.721 --> 50:16.085
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's 12 women's team, national teams, that one there, regional's around the world, right?

50:16.445 --> 50:23.531
[SPEAKER_03]: to make it so that tells you there's a current ranking of the 30 countries national teams.

50:23.611 --> 50:32.538
[SPEAKER_03]: That's how many and it grows all the time and it's very and so all of this is sort of in this perfect moment this year and I think that helps as well.

50:32.558 --> 50:34.620
[SPEAKER_03]: You've got all of these pieces and then

50:36.541 --> 50:39.844
[SPEAKER_03]: the same week that the world cup is taking place.

50:40.324 --> 50:43.547
[SPEAKER_03]: Baseball for all is hosting their tenth nationals.

50:44.207 --> 50:47.009
[SPEAKER_03]: And they started in Rockford, way back when.

50:47.349 --> 50:50.432
[SPEAKER_03]: And so this is them returning to Rockford because they're going to be in Rockford as well.

50:51.012 --> 50:53.094
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're going to be over when they started it.

50:53.514 --> 50:55.436
[SPEAKER_03]: They were little over 400 girls.

50:56.056 --> 50:57.177
[SPEAKER_03]: This year there's going to be over 900.

50:58.857 --> 51:02.538
[SPEAKER_03]: ranging in age from they have an eight in under category up to the eighteen in under.

51:02.598 --> 51:04.559
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a variety of ages and tournaments.

51:04.859 --> 51:22.766
[SPEAKER_03]: But think about that in ten years they've grown from maybe four or somewhere between three and four hundred to over nine hundred including there's at least there's some I don't know if it's a whole team coming from South Africa to participate in the baseball for our national which is really exciting.

51:23.406 --> 51:23.786
[SPEAKER_03]: And so

51:28.788 --> 51:33.510
[SPEAKER_03]: structure is there because it needs the underpinnings as well to make the league a success.

51:34.450 --> 51:43.053
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, Leslie, it was really fun to talk about both the history and the future of women's baseball so excited about all of it.

51:43.213 --> 51:48.915
[SPEAKER_02]: Where can people learn more about the women's pro baseball league and World Cup and other things that are happening?

51:49.255 --> 51:49.435
[SPEAKER_03]: So the

51:49.435 --> 51:54.858
[SPEAKER_03]: The easiest thing is the WPBL has their own website, and that's all it is, WPBL.org.

51:54.938 --> 52:01.662
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the World Cup, there's two places, the IWBC, the International Women's Baseball Center, which I'm present in the board.

52:02.182 --> 52:15.230
[SPEAKER_03]: We have our own website, it's iwbc.org, and you can find all of the World Cup, including, and you can still sign up, if you will, tons and tons of opportunities to sign up to come in and volunteer, because this tournament is a...

52:15.670 --> 52:18.332
[SPEAKER_03]: a nightmare of big proportions in terms of people.

52:18.692 --> 52:21.995
[SPEAKER_03]: We need like 600 volunteers, and so it's kind of crazy.

52:22.175 --> 52:36.765
[SPEAKER_03]: For the world cup overall, the overarching organization is the world baseball softball confederation, the WBSC, and they have the similar WBSC.org, and then baseball for all for the nationals has their and it's baseball for all.

52:37.145 --> 52:44.071
[SPEAKER_03]: So their individual websites are going to give you all of the, all of the, if they're not all linked, they're eventually going to be.

52:44.111 --> 52:45.592
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you go to one, you'll get all of them.

52:45.773 --> 52:46.873
[SPEAKER_03]: A couple of them are right now.

52:46.994 --> 52:48.175
[SPEAKER_03]: But they're pretty easy to find it.

52:48.575 --> 52:59.064
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you just look up the WPBL, you'll find it immediately and then same thing with the, with the World Cup, you had to do have to remember to put in baseball because otherwise it comes off this soccer.

52:59.858 --> 53:04.741
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and the WPBL and some of the players are all over Instagram.

53:04.781 --> 53:07.322
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're on Instagram, follow them there as well.

53:07.342 --> 53:09.384
[SPEAKER_02]: That's actually how I learned about the leagues.

53:09.784 --> 53:11.105
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, all the player.

53:11.185 --> 53:19.790
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, from the top player, Kelsey Whitmore all the way down to, you know, the Maggie Fox and Eddie Franks, and they all have a social media presence today.

53:20.210 --> 53:25.013
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you go on the WPBL and you just look at the rosters and then you go look on them up on Instagram and Facebook.

53:25.833 --> 53:28.135
[SPEAKER_03]: they have their own social media stuff as well.

53:28.455 --> 53:40.225
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's kind of fun to watch as they all are making them the names for themselves and putting themselves out there and you get to sort of see a little bit of the personalities of the various players and things which is a lot of fun.

53:41.146 --> 53:43.528
[SPEAKER_02]: Leslie, thank you so much for speaking with me.

53:44.268 --> 53:46.530
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, thank you for asking it and giving us

53:49.783 --> 53:52.404
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to Unsong History.

53:52.424 --> 53:55.644
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53:55.665 --> 53:58.985
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54:18.808 --> 54:20.690
[SPEAKER_01]: at unsunghistorypodcast.com.

54:21.331 --> 54:27.418
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54:28.239 --> 54:35.187
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54:35.747 --> 54:39.411
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54:43.136 --> 54:47.100
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