Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

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“We would rather play ball than eat,” claimed catcher Lavonne “Pepper” Paire, one of the more than six hundred women who were part of the All-American Girls Professional Ball League (AAGPBL)“We put our hearts and souls into the leaguer. We thought it was our job to do our best, because we were the All-American girls. We felt like we were keeping up our country’s morale.”

As with all industries during World War II, professional baseball lost men to the war effort. Many were drafted, and others, like New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio, enlisted. Major league executives eyed their checkbooks with growing concern. A lot of their talent was gone, and thanks to gasoline rationing team travel was limited. How could they keep the public’s interest? Would they be forced to cease operations until the end of the war?

Enter chewing gum magnate and Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley who devised the concept of a women’s baseball league. In an interview, he stated, “The need for additional recreation in towns busy with war defense work prompted the idea.” Women’s work in the factories was supposed to be temporary. Why not women in baseball as a temporary solution?

Together with former ballplayer-turned-executive Branch Rickey, attorney and University of Chicago

Courtesy: This Day in Baseball

trustee Paul V. Harper, and others, Wrigley founded the league as a nonprofit and sent out scouts to recruit from various women’s amateur softball leagues from around the U.S. Tryouts were held at Wrigley Field on a sunny day in the spring of 1943. More than two hundred women showed up and about sixty were selected to play for four teams. Unfortunately, like the male league, the women’s league was segregated, and African-American women were not recruited or hired.

Skills were important, but so was the appearance of being wholesome and feminine. In fact, part of the contract required the women to attend classes at Helena Rubinstein’s charm school where they were taught “proper” etiquette, personal hygiene, mannerism, and dress code. In an effort to enhance the women’s appearance, they were given a beauty kit and instructions on how to use it. The league issued “Rules of Conduct” that required the women to wear lipstick at all times and prohibited them from smoking or drinking in public places, wearing pants, and having short hair. The following year, Josephine “JoJo” D’Angelo would be fired for cutting her hair short. In addition to the rules, the league assigned a chaperone to each team.

Reminiscent of women’s figure skating, field hockey and tennis costumes of the day, the women’s baseball uniforms featured a short-sleeved tunic dress with a flared skirt, belted at the waist. The skirt could be no more than six inches above the knee. The outfit was completed with a one-size-fits-all baseball cap that featured elastic bands in the back to hold them in place. Without pants to protect them, the women developed welts, bruises, and lacerations, often referred to as “strawberries” from sliding into base.

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The teams were comprised of fifteen players, a manager/coach, business manager, and female chaperone. Salaries ranged from $45 to $85 per week (the equivalent of $761-$1437 in 2022 dollars), and were higher than that of many women in the workforce, including those in the defense industry. In later years, the salary rose to about $125 per week. After the first year’s success, additional teams were created and financed by civic groups and other big-league players such as Jimmie Foxx, Johnny Rawlings, Leo Murphy, Bill Wambsganss, and Dave Bancroft served as league managers.

Pitcher Jean Faut, who died in 2023 at the age of ninety-eight, summed up in a 1988 interview what many players had stated over the years, “Those years in the league were the greatest years of my life.”

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War’s Unexpected Gift

Love and war don’t mix. Or do they?

Eager to do even more for the war effort, nurse Gwen Milford puts in for a transfer from a convalescent hospital outside of London to an evac hospital headed across Europe. Leap-frogging from one location to the next, nothing goes as expected from stolen supplies to overwhelming numbers of casualties. Then, there’s the handsome doctor who seems to be assigned to her every shift. As another Christmas approaches without the war’s end, can she find room in her heart for love?

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Linda Shenton Matchett writes happily-ever-after historical Christian fiction about second chances and women who overcome life’s challenges to be better versions of themselves.

Whether you choose her books set in the Old West or across the globe during WWII, you will be immersed in the past through rich detail. Follow the journeys of relatable characters whose faith is sorely tested, yet in the end, emerge triumphant. Be encouraged in your own faith-walk through stories of history and hope. Visit her at http://www.LindaShentonMatchett.com