Chasing Dreams: Baseball & Becoming American, the exhibition on view at the Maltz Museum now, explores how issues around values, identity and race have played out on baseball across America. As a summer intern, I’ve been reading about game-changers in the sport from Moses Fleetwood Walker to Roberto Clemente. That inspired to look into one of the barriers still being challenged in pro-baseball—gender. Here’s just a little of what I learned about women and baseball:
- Women have played professional baseball for longer than I thought. Alta Weiss’ talent in striking out men won the Ohio teen a spot as a starting pitcher with a semipro team in 1907. She played ball for 17 years, using some of the money she earned to help pay her way through medical school.
- They even had their own league. As young men left to fight in World War II, some of the open positions they left here at home were filled by women. Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley thought that women also could help keep the baseball scene alive—an idea that wasn’t popular with everyone. Still, Wrigley forged ahead, recruiting talent and organizing women’s hardball. Although team members played in skirts and were subjected to charm school, The All-American Girls’ Baseball League gave hundreds of women the chance to play baseball at a professional level from 1943 – 1954. The 1992 movie A League of Their Own is a fictionalized portrayal of the league that highlights some of the hardships and triumphs the players experienced. It’s best known for the line, “There’s no crying in baseball!”
- And they’ve broken the gender barrier professionally before. Always athletically inclined, Toni Stone (born Marcenia Lyle Stone) started playing baseball at the age of 10. Against her parents’ wishes, she was playing against the boys by the 1930s. In 1953 the Negro Leagues’ Indianapolis Clowns signed Stone, making her the first woman ever to play professionally in a men’s league.
- Women continue to make noise and make history. Justine Siegal, raised in Cleveland Heights, always had a passion for baseball and, from a young age, dreamed of playing for Cleveland Indians. When Siegal was denied the chance to try out for a baseball league at age 13, she became that much more determined. In 2009 she become the first female to coach pro baseball by taking the position as the first base coach for the Brockton Rox. In 2011 Siegal also went on live her childhood dreams by becoming the first woman to pitch batting practice for a major league team – the Cleveland Indians. (Her jersey is actually in the Chasing Dreams) Siegal is the founder of Baseball For All, a program focused on giving girls meaningful opportunities in baseball.
- The big leagues are beginning to taking notice. Melissa Mayeux is a 16-year-old who plays for the French U-18 junior national team. She recently has been all over the news as the first female player on the international registration list, meaning that she can be signed by the MLB. Mayeux is only 16 so her chances of getting signed right away are unlikely, but the fact that she has been placed on the registry is a huge accomplishment and step forward for females playing in the major leagues.
–Kelsi Moses, Intern
