May 17, 2025 • 31 mins
This 2020 episode covers the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which was founded in 1943. Some of these women athletes believed they were starting on a career in professional baseball.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. On May seventeenth, nineteen forty three, spring training
started for what would eventually be known as the All
American Girls Professional Baseball League. That was eighty two years
ago on the day that this episode publishes, so that
is today's Saturday Classic. Since we released this episode, which
was on March eighteenth, twenty twenty, there has been a
(00:23):
remake of A League of Their Own, which was in
the form of a TV show that ran for sadly
only one season on Amazon Prime. The documentary A Secret Love,
which we mentioned at the very end of this episode,
is also indeed available on Netflix, so enjoy. Welcome to
(00:45):
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey B. Wilson and
I'm Holly Fryne. I am sure you've seen a League
of their Own? I have. I feel like it's safe
(01:06):
to say most of our listeners have either seen a
League of their Own or at the very very least
have heard someone say there's no crying in baseball, which
is probably its most quoted line. I think you could
come to my house and hear it once a week
out of my husband's mouth. If you want to just
hang out. So this is a nineteen ninety two film
(01:26):
that tells the story of the All American Girls Professional
Baseball League. It is a work of fiction, but it
also gets some of the highlights correct. The league was
founded during World War Two, as many of Major League
Baseball's male players had joined the military, but the movie
also kind of makes it seem like this was a
temporary diversion that ended when the war did. There's a
(01:49):
line basically about continuing on with it, but it's not
really explored beyond that. In reality, though these women were athletes,
some of them thought they were starting a lifelong career
in professional baseball that would last as long as they
were able to play. The league itself also went on
for years after the war was over. And this is
also a listener request. We've heard about it at various
(02:11):
points over the years, but the one that I wrote
down was from listener morev So, by nineteen forty three,
when this league was founded, baseball was considered both the
national pastime in the United States and a man's game,
but it didn't start out that way. As the game
of baseball was developing in the nineteenth century, it wasn't
just for men and boys. Children played together in neighborhood
(02:34):
games regardless of their gender. Semi professional and professional leagues
included women players and women's teams, and there were also
teams at women's colleges, the first being at Vassar in
eighteen sixty six. An all black women's team called the
Dolly Vardens was established in Philadelphia in eighteen sixty seven.
During baseball's earlier years, the rules weren't particularly standardized, and
(02:57):
there were all kinds of variations and things like the
size of the playing field, the size of the ball,
and the style of pitching, and a lot of places
everyone played by the same rules regardless of their gender.
Although it was not uncommon for women to be expected
to play in floor length dresses. It was also common, though,
for girls baseball teams specifically to have modified rule sets that,
(03:21):
for example, made the playing field a little smaller. Barnstorming
became an important part of baseball's development starting in eighteen
sixty Teams would go on the road to play exhibition
matches outside of official league play. By the eighteen nineties,
barnstormers included all women teams known as Bloomer Girls because
of their billowy uniform legs, so they resembled the loose
(03:43):
trousers advocated by dress reformers in the nineteenth century. That's
not underwear, imagining that when they said bloomer girls, it
meant playing in their underwear. Maybe giggle a little bit,
but that's not what it meant. Over time, one set
of baseball rule modification morphed into its own distinct sport,
and that sport was softball. These two games have a
(04:06):
lot of similarities. They both involve hitting a throne ball
with a bat and then rounding a set of bases
that are arranged as a diamond, but softball uses a larger,
softer ball, thus the name. That ball is pitched underhanded
rather than overhand or sidearm, the pitching distance is shorter
and the overall field of play is a little smaller. Initially,
(04:27):
the game that developed into softball was meant as a
baseball alternative that could be played indoors in bad weather.
Sometimes it was even called just indoor baseball. It became
particularly popular in places where space was limited or were
the only place to play was indoors. It was also
played outdoors in places with limited space In the late
(04:48):
nineteenth century, settlement houses in the US started establishing playgrounds
and encouraging active play in urban areas, especially among boys.
Softball became so closely connected to the settlement movement into
these playgrounds that some sources have erroneously credited Chicago's Hull
House with inventing it, and we talked about Hull House
(05:08):
and its founder, Jane Adams in a previous two parter
on the show. Did not invent softball, No, did play
it a whole lot, though The overlap between baseball and
softball and who was playing it continued until about nineteen
thirty three. That is when the Amateur Softball Association was
founded as that sports governing body and the name softball
(05:31):
was formally adopted for it, and at this point girls
baseball teams that had been using some kind of modified
rule set generally moved over to playing softball. It did
not take long before people took for granted that baseball
was for boys and softball was for girls, a distinction
that persists in a lot of places today. When Little
(05:52):
League Baseball was founded in nineteen thirty nine, it was
intended for boys, although that did not become an official
rule until nineteen fifty one, in response to Kay Johnston
of New York cutting her hair to join a team
under the name Tubby. The Tubby rule remained in place
until nineteen seventy four, after a series of court cases
(06:13):
and a ruling by the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.
I guess that's such a good illustration of how it
was assumed to be for boys, so much so that
it wasn't even in the rules until after a girl
cut her hair to join a team. Like Yeah, it
was just taken totally for granted. So by the nineteen forties,
(06:34):
both softball and baseball were well established in the United States.
They were two separate sports, one for men and boys,
the other for women and girls. Both had amateur, semi professional,
and professional teams and leagues. And that brings us to
World War Two, if you remember our October twenty nineteen
episode on the Black Sox scandal. During World War One,
(06:54):
the idea of Major League Baseball continuing on in spite
of the war was deeply controversial. Secretary of War Newton D.
Baker issued a work or Fight order which required any
man eligible for the draft to either work in a
war critical industry or join the military. Men who continued
to play baseball were viewed as abandoning their patriotic duty,
(07:17):
and after the US joined the war, Major League Baseball
shortened the nineteen eighteen season. As war once again started
to spread through Europe in nineteen thirty nine, people feared
that the sport of baseball would be disrupted, as it
had been a couple of decades earlier. These fears escalated
after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December of nineteen
(07:38):
forty one, and the United States entered the war at
that point. In January of nineteen forty two, Kennesaw Mountain Landis,
the commissioner of baseball, wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
to ask, quote, what you have in mind as to
whether professional baseball should continue to operate? On January fifteenth,
nineteen forty two, Roosevelt, who was a fan of baseball,
(08:00):
responded with what has become known as the green Light Letter.
It read, in part, quote, I honestly feel that it
would be best for the country to keep baseball going.
There will be fewer people unemployed, and everybody will work
longer hours and harder than ever before, and that means
that they ought to have a chance for recreation and
for taking their minds off their work even more than before.
(08:22):
And his letter, the President stressed that players who were
of an age should join the military should do so,
but that they might be replaced with older players who
could still play an exciting game. The President also advocated
for more night games so that day shift workers at
wartime factories could go The President ended the green light
letter by saying, quote, here is another way of looking
(08:44):
at it. If three hundred teams use five thousand or
six thousand players, these players are a definite recreation asset
to at least twenty million of their fellow citizens, and that,
in my judgment, is thoroughly worthwhile. So, even though baseball
had the p President's seal of approval, roughly half of
the regular players in Major League Baseball wound up serving
(09:06):
in the military. Some of its best and most popular
players were drafted. Of course, that trend also applied to
the minor leagues and to other baseball teams as well.
So even though the President himself had given the ok
for baseball to continue, there were people worried that the
sport was going to struggle, and that this might even
lead to the closure of some of the nation's ballparks.
(09:28):
One of these concerned people was Philip K. Wrigley. His father,
William Wrigley Junior, had died in nineteen thirty two, leaving
Philip the William Wrigley Junior Chewing Gum Company, a fortune
and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. We will get to
what he did after a quick sponsor break. About three
(09:55):
million women joined the workforce in the United States between
nineteen forty and nineteen two, and Philip K. Wriggley thought
that maybe the same trend could apply to professional ball.
Women's teams could play in ballparks where the home teams
were on the road, keeping the sport in the parks
going while so many men were away at war. These
teams of women could also help boost the national morale
(10:19):
and help the war effort with things like fundraising and
recruitment drives. Wriggly teamed up with Ken Cells, who had
previously worked for the chewing gum business but had become
assistant general manager of the Chicago Cubs. On February seventeenth,
nineteen forty three, they issued a press release announcing the
creation of the All American Girls Softball League. Their plan
(10:41):
was to recruit players from the women's softball teams that
had been established all over the country at the beginning.
Jim Hamilton was the lead talent scout in the US,
and Johannes Gottselig, known as Johnny, headed up recruitment in Canada.
But Wriggly also wanted to make the game a little
closer to what spectators might expect from a baseball game,
(11:02):
so they worked out a rule set that had elements
of both baseball and softball. Like softball, it used a
larger ball and an underhanded pitching style, but like baseball,
the teams had nine players per side rather than softball's ten.
The playing field would also have a longer pitching distance
and running path than softball did, but it was still
(11:23):
shorter than what was being used in baseball. Players in
this game would also be allowed to steal bases, something
that was not allowed in softball. These changes caused some
controversy about exactly what sport was being played out there
on the field, and the league changed its name to
the All American Girls Baseball League part way through the
nineteen forty three season. As recruiters visited softball teams to
(11:46):
look for players. Hundreds of women and girls expressed interest
in playing professionally. About two hundred and eighty were invited
to the final tryouts, and sixty players from the US
and Canada were ultimately selected to play in the nineteen
forty three season. Some of these young women were as
young as fifteen, although most of them were between eighteen
(12:07):
and twenty two. As was the case with Major League
Baseball at the time, the newly established Women's League excluded
black players. These players were arranged into four teams of
fifteen players each, the Rockford Peaches of Illinois, the South
Bend Blue Socks of Indiana, and the Racing Bells and
the Kenosha Comets of Wisconsin. Each of these was not
(12:30):
far away from a much larger major city. They were
also close enough together to allow the teams to travel
from one city to the next for games while still
conserving fuel and rubber during wartime rationing. The league setup
was significantly different from Major League Baseball or most other
leagues at the time. The league itself was a non
(12:50):
profit organization, with Philip Wrigley, Paul Harvey, and Branch Rickey
as trustees. Much of the initial funding came from Wrigley himself.
It's been about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars getting
the whole project started, and he contributed to the team's
maintenance costs, especially in the first year. The player's contracts
were also centrally owned by the league, rather than being
(13:13):
owned by one of the four teams. This meant that
the players pay was set by the league. There were
no bidding wars with teams trying to entice the best
players to sign on with them. That first year, the
players made between forty five dollars and eighty five dollars
a week. That does not sound like much, but it
is significantly more than most of them had been making
(13:33):
an agricultural or factory work, or maybe playing in a
paying softball league. Players in the league were prohibited from
doing any other work during the season. The centrally owned
player contracts also meant that the league had the right
to trade players from one team to another. One of
the league's goals was for all the games to be
as evenly matched and exciting to watch as possible, so
(13:57):
player trades happened throughout the season as they tried to
get keep this balance. Each team had a manager who
also acted as a coach. These were typically men who
had experience in major league or minor league baseball. Every
team also had a business manager as well as a
chaperone who was a woman and was a paid part
of the staff during the league's history. Most of the
(14:18):
chaperones had some experience in working with women's athletic teams.
The chaperones who were responsible for making housing arrangements for
the team, handling money, and approving any housing and dining
accommodations that the team was going to use. In some ways,
they were a little like athletic trainers. As well, being
trained in first aid and responsible for the team's first
(14:38):
aid kit and the treatment of injuries. They were also
ultimately responsible for the player's conduct, behavior, and appearance. That
last point was a lot. Most of the players came
from working class and agricultural communities that didn't really regard
women's participation in softball as unusual in any way. A
(14:59):
lot of them had been playing on teams that had
been organized by their employers, with that involvement being seen
as pretty normal and fun. But that wasn't necessarily true
among the middle class, which was a big part of
the audience that the league was hoping to attract. The
idea that women were playing baseball, which was considered to
be a game for men, also raised some suspicions about
(15:20):
the players. A common stereotype was that women athletes were lesbians.
That's a stereotype that still exists today, but without nearly
the level of stigma that was attached to it in
the nineteen forties. So the league went to great lengths
to reinforce the idea that these players weren't just women,
they were ladies, specifically patriotic, wholesome, middle class, heterosexual ladies. Outwardly,
(15:45):
the league described all its rules and training about things
like beauty and conduct as a service teaching working class
girls to be middle class ladies, which of course suggested
that to be middle class was better than to be
working class. And on top of that, a lot of
the rules and standards in place were also meant to
reduce suspicions of lesbianism. This included the player's uniforms. These
(16:09):
were one piece pastel colored tunic like garments with a
flared skirt, which were worn with satin shorts and knee socks.
They were designed by Wrigley's wife, Ada, along with poster
artist Otis Shepherd and softball player An Harnett. They were
also patterned after women's figure skating and tennis attire. These
(16:29):
uniforms were meant to set the players apart from the
barnstorming bloomer girls that we referenced earlier, and to reinforce
the idea that the players on the field were feminine women.
These skirts did not really do much to protect the
player's legs from scrapes and other injuries, but the players
were also expected to look pristine at all times and
not really have any visible injuries. Perfectly prim athletic lady.
(16:55):
It's the whole kind of convoluted tangle. Yeah. The specific
rules varied over the league's history, but the general idea
of players being the right kind of woman was part
of it. Throughout each player was issued a guide for
all American girls how to look better, feel better, be
more popular. In the nineteen forty three season, Helena Rubinstein's
(17:19):
Beauty Salon taught charm and beauty lessons for the players
that included hygiene, personal appearance, etiquette, and things like how
to gracefully get in and out of a car or
go up and downstairs. The Ruth Tiffany School provided these
lessons the next year. Formal charm lessons ended after that point,
but a focus on appropriate feminine behavior continued. Players were
(17:42):
also issued a beauty kit that they were expected to
keep stock. It included cleansing cream, lipstick, rouge, deodorant, astringent,
face powder, hand lotion, and hair remover. They were required
to be attractive and presentable at all times, and they
had to wear a dress or a skirt any time
time they were seen in public. Most of the players
wore trousers on the bus for the sake of comfort,
(18:05):
especially during nighttime road trips between games, but kept a
skirt with them to change into if they stopped for
something like a restroom break or a meal. Some of
the other rules from the player's code of conduct no
boyish bobbed hair, no smoking, no drinking alcohol, and no
social engagements unless they were approved by a chaperone. Lipstick
(18:26):
was mandatory at all times, and there were also more
mundane rules about things like punctuality. The player's Code of
Conduct specified a five dollars fine for the first offense,
a ten dollars fine for the second offense, and suspension
for the third, but there were players that faced harsher penalties.
Josephine DiAngelo, known as Jojo, was cut from the Blue
(18:47):
Socks in her second year from the team after she
got a bobbed haircut that was described as too short
and butchy in some accounts. Frida and Olympia Savona, who
were star players from the New Orleans Jackson Brewing Company
softball team, were passed over for the All American Girls
League because of their masculine appearance. There were definitely some
(19:08):
news stories that made disparaging comments about the Savona's appearance,
but Frieda wrote to a reporter to say this had
nothing to do with why she was not in the league.
She said she was just happier and better paid where
she was. Fraternizing with members of other teams was also
forbidden within the league. The league framed this as a
way to keep the level of competitiveness high, but many
(19:30):
of the players interpreted it as a way to discourage
romantic relationships between them. So that's kind of an overview
of what the league was like. When spring training started
its first season on May seventeenth of nineteen forty three.
That happened in Chicago, the first pitch of the season
was thrown on May thirtieth of nineteen forty three, and
we'll talk about how things grew and evolved from there
(19:53):
after we first have a little sponsor break. The All
American Girls Baseball League's first season included sporting events as
well as wartime patriotism. Teams made appearances at recruitment drives
(20:13):
and fundraisers, and they visited wounded soldiers that had returned stateside.
On July first, they held an all Star game against
a team from the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, which was
played under the lights at Wrigley Field. This event was
part of a recruitment drive, held free of charge and
at night so that working women could attend. Some of
the league's patriotism was more symbolic, like having the two
(20:36):
teams that were going to be competing lined up in
a V for victory during the national anthem at the
beginning of every game. The nineteen forty three season ended
with a five game championship series in which the Racing
Bells defeated the Kenosha Comets. More than one hundred and
seventy five thousand fans attended games in that first season.
(20:56):
Then in nineteen forty four, the league expanded to sixteen.
Another competing league was founded that same year, the National
Girls Baseball League, established in Chicago. This league continued until
nineteen fifty four, although its history and activities aren't nearly
as well documented as the All American Girls League. At
the end of the nineteen forty four season, Philip Wrigley
(21:19):
sold the league to Arthur Meyerhoff for ten thousand dollars,
which was a fraction of what he had put into
getting it started and operating it. In those first two seasons,
it had become clear that the sport of men's baseball
was not in any kind of actual peril from the war,
But apart from that, Wrigley was just not really interested
in being so heavily involved in the league anymore. Meyerhoff
(21:41):
had also been a big part of the league since
its inception, and Wrigley was confident that he would maintain
the same standards that Wrigley had established in terms of
quality and entertainment. The biggest change at this point was
that the league went from being a nonprofit to a
for profit entity. Otherwise, the player's contracts were still cently owned,
and each team continued to have paid managers and chaperones.
(22:05):
Meyerhoff put a big focus on marketing and promoting the league.
He also organized postseason exhibition tours to Cuba and South America,
mainly to countries where Wrigley chewinghum had a presence thanks
to the rubber and chickle industries. Over time, the style
of play within the league continued to shift and become
more and more like men's baseball. The ball gradually got
(22:27):
smaller and harder, pitching and infield distances got longer. Sidearm
pitching was introduced in nineteen forty six, and overhand pitching
in nineteen forty eight. Some players that had been recruited
from softball teams had a little trouble adjusting to these changes,
and Meyerhoff established a junior league in farm teams to
cultivate new talent. Although the All American Girls Baseball League
(22:49):
had started out with the idea of being a substitution
for men's baseball during World War Two, its popularity really
peaked after the war ended in nineteen forty five. In
nineteen forty a July fourth double header in South Bend, Indiana,
drew a crowd of between ten thousand and twenty thousand people,
Attendance peaked in nineteen forty eight, with nearly a million
(23:10):
fans in attendance that year. The league had ten teams
from Rockford, Peoria, Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin,
South Bend and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Grand Rapids in Muskegan, Michigan.
Most of the team names were distinctly feminine, including the Peaches, Chicks, Millarets, Daisies, Lassies, Colleen's, Sally's,
(23:34):
and Bell's. Although the league grew between nineteen forty five
and nineteen forty eight, it also faced some struggles in
those years. The idea of women playing baseball had drawn
suspicion since the beginning, but that increased when there was
no longer a wartime patriotic need for women to take
up what was seen as men's work. Individual teams also
(23:55):
folded for various reasons from time to time, and then
that put a strain on the rest to the league
as it tried to absorb those other players. After a while,
friction started to develop between individual teams in Meyerhoff's management company.
While the league owned the player's contracts, the teams all
had their own owners who started to object to the
requirement to send some of their ticket revenues back to Meyerhoff.
(24:19):
Meyerhoff was putting most of the proceeds back into the league,
but even so, a perception grew that Meyerhoff was making
money off of the team's work. As attendance started to
fall off. In nineteen forty eight, Meyerhoff embarked on some
ambitious plans to try to revive the league. This included
an attempt to start an International women's Baseball League, which
(24:40):
would play in Florida, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Cuba during
the winter and early spring. Although an international league was
formed very briefly, it never really got off the ground.
At the end of the nineteen fifty season, the teams
bought out Meyerhoff and became self governing and decentralized. The
league's name had been through slight tweaks through the years,
(25:01):
and at this point it became the American Girls Baseball
League or AGBL, although most people still use the word all.
At this point, players started contracting with teams for their
rates rather than the league, which increased paid disparities as
teams tried to attract and keep the best players. The
only paid position in the league at this point was
(25:22):
the commissioner, and without a central league organization that was
promoting and marketing the games, attendance continued to drop. The
league also faced increased competition from other forms of entertainment
in the fifties, including televised men's baseball games. The American
Girls Baseball League dissolved in nineteen fifty four. During its history,
about six hundred women from the United States, Canada, and
(25:44):
Cuba had played for teams in fourteen Midwestern cities. During
baseball season. They played six or seven games a week,
with doubleheaders on Sundays and holidays, sleeping on buses overnight
as they traveled from one city to the next. This
was a grueling schedule, which may be one reason why
about a quarter of the players only played for one
season or less. Although Major League Baseball had started to
(26:08):
desegregate in the late nineteen forties and President Harry Truman
issued an executive order to desegregate them armed forces in
nineteen forty eight, the All American Girls Baseball League was
segregated throughout its history. Although two black women practiced with
the South Bend Blue Sox in nineteen fifty one, neither
of them wound up signing a contract with the league. However,
(26:30):
there were three black women who played on men's teams
in the Negro Leagues in the nineteen fifties, Mamy Panut Johnson,
Connie Morgan, and Marcinia Lyle, who used the name Tony
Stone professionally. All three started with the Indianapolis Clowns. Tony
Stone replaced Hank Aaron there and her contract was sold
to the Kansas City Monarchs before the nineteen fifty four season.
(26:54):
There are reports that Tony Stone tried out for the
All American Girls League as well, but those are not
concretely document After the All American Girls League was dissolved,
many of the players adopted what's been described as a
self imposed silence. Most of them did not really talk
about their time playing professional baseball, even among their families.
Reasons why are not entirely clear, but stigma may have
(27:16):
been one factor. According to one survey that was conducted
in the nineties, about twenty percent of players reported facing
discrimination because of their history as an athlete. However, many
used the money that they'd earned playing baseball to go
to college or to start a career, with some attending
college and graduate school during the off season. One researcher
(27:37):
who interviewed players later in their life found that about
thirty five percent had graduated from college, compared to less
than ten percent of women in the general population in
the same era. This has been described as a precursor
to Title nine's effects on women's college enrollment, giving women
educational opportunities that they didn't have access to otherwise. When
(27:57):
the women's liberation movement started nineteen sixties and seventies, historians
and other researchers started unearthing the league's history, and the
players started reconnecting with each other and documenting their own history.
At the same time. In the late seventies, Dorothy Camney, Camischeck,
and Marge Winzel and June Peppys all met up and
started talking about organizing a reunion. In October of nineteen eighty,
(28:22):
Peppa sent a letter to the few players whose addresses
she had been able to find and started trying to
track people down. By January of nineteen eighty one, this
had morphed into a newsletter, which grew from a handful
of addresses to more than one hundred within a month.
This also coalesced into a player's association that still exists today.
(28:43):
The first of many reunions was held in Chicago in
nineteen eighty two, and the newsletter became part of an
effort to establish a league archive and to get some
kind of recognition in the National Baseball Hall of Fame
in Cooperstown, New York. It was during this process that
the league's name became formally finalized as the All American
Girls Professional Baseball League. The player's efforts for recognition came
(29:07):
to fruition on November fifth of nineteen eighty eight, with
the formal unveiling of a permanent Women in Baseball exhibit
at the Baseball Hall of Fame. The league's players had
been an active part in this exhibit's creation, including donating
their photographs, uniforms, equipment, and memorabilia. A league archive was
established at the Northern Indiana Historical Society Museum now called
(29:30):
the History Museum in South Bend, Indiana. There was also
an exhibition through the Smithsonian. The league was also the
subject of a short documentary called A League of their
Own that aired nationally on public television on September thirtieth,
nineteen eighty seven. And of course, there's the nineteen ninety
two feature film directed by Penny Marshall, which was a
blockbuster and was actually when many people first heard about
(29:52):
women's baseball. Another documentary tells the story of Terry Donahue
and pat Henschel. Donahue was recruited from Saskatchewan, Canada, and
played for the Peoria Red Wings for four seasons. After
these two women met. In between seasons, Henschell left her
life in Canada behind to join Donahue in the United States.
(30:12):
Although the two of them described themselves at the time
as cousins and roommates, they were really a couple and
the documentary tells the story of their lives together. The
film is called A Secret Love. It was supposed to
premiere at south By Southwest in March of twenty twenty,
but of course, because of the pandemic, south By Southwest
has been canceled. So I'm not sure what the status
(30:34):
of the film's debut is at this point, but at
some point I think it might come to Netflix, because
there is a page for it in the Netflix Media Center. Exciting.
Henschell is also one of the people Brittany de la
Creda interviewed when reporting her article The Hidden Queer History
behind a league of their own. At that point, both
Donahue and Henschell were still living, but Donahue died in
(30:55):
twenty nineteen. At that time, she and Henschell had been
together for years. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League's
website for the player association also has a wealth of
information on the individual players, including their photos, their team histories,
their biographies, and for those who are no longer living,
many of their obituaries are there as well. It is
(31:19):
really a ton if you want to go read about
some women baseball players, lots and lots to look at
their Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
If you'd like to send us a note, our email
addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and you can
(31:39):
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. On May seventeenth, nineteen forty three, spring training
started for what would eventually be known as the All
American Girls Professional Baseball League. That was eighty two years
ago on the day that this episode publishes, so that
is today's Saturday Classic. Since we released this episode, which
was on March eighteenth, twenty twenty, there has been a
(00:23):
remake of A League of Their Own, which was in
the form of a TV show that ran for sadly
only one season on Amazon Prime. The documentary A Secret Love,
which we mentioned at the very end of this episode,
is also indeed available on Netflix, so enjoy. Welcome to
(00:45):
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey B. Wilson and
I'm Holly Fryne. I am sure you've seen a League
of their Own? I have. I feel like it's safe
(01:06):
to say most of our listeners have either seen a
League of their Own or at the very very least
have heard someone say there's no crying in baseball, which
is probably its most quoted line. I think you could
come to my house and hear it once a week
out of my husband's mouth. If you want to just
hang out. So this is a nineteen ninety two film
(01:26):
that tells the story of the All American Girls Professional
Baseball League. It is a work of fiction, but it
also gets some of the highlights correct. The league was
founded during World War Two, as many of Major League
Baseball's male players had joined the military, but the movie
also kind of makes it seem like this was a
temporary diversion that ended when the war did. There's a
(01:49):
line basically about continuing on with it, but it's not
really explored beyond that. In reality, though these women were athletes,
some of them thought they were starting a lifelong career
in professional baseball that would last as long as they
were able to play. The league itself also went on
for years after the war was over. And this is
also a listener request. We've heard about it at various
(02:11):
points over the years, but the one that I wrote
down was from listener morev So, by nineteen forty three,
when this league was founded, baseball was considered both the
national pastime in the United States and a man's game,
but it didn't start out that way. As the game
of baseball was developing in the nineteenth century, it wasn't
just for men and boys. Children played together in neighborhood
(02:34):
games regardless of their gender. Semi professional and professional leagues
included women players and women's teams, and there were also
teams at women's colleges, the first being at Vassar in
eighteen sixty six. An all black women's team called the
Dolly Vardens was established in Philadelphia in eighteen sixty seven.
During baseball's earlier years, the rules weren't particularly standardized, and
(02:57):
there were all kinds of variations and things like the
size of the playing field, the size of the ball,
and the style of pitching, and a lot of places
everyone played by the same rules regardless of their gender.
Although it was not uncommon for women to be expected
to play in floor length dresses. It was also common, though,
for girls baseball teams specifically to have modified rule sets that,
(03:21):
for example, made the playing field a little smaller. Barnstorming
became an important part of baseball's development starting in eighteen
sixty Teams would go on the road to play exhibition
matches outside of official league play. By the eighteen nineties,
barnstormers included all women teams known as Bloomer Girls because
of their billowy uniform legs, so they resembled the loose
(03:43):
trousers advocated by dress reformers in the nineteenth century. That's
not underwear, imagining that when they said bloomer girls, it
meant playing in their underwear. Maybe giggle a little bit,
but that's not what it meant. Over time, one set
of baseball rule modification morphed into its own distinct sport,
and that sport was softball. These two games have a
(04:06):
lot of similarities. They both involve hitting a throne ball
with a bat and then rounding a set of bases
that are arranged as a diamond, but softball uses a larger,
softer ball, thus the name. That ball is pitched underhanded
rather than overhand or sidearm, the pitching distance is shorter
and the overall field of play is a little smaller. Initially,
(04:27):
the game that developed into softball was meant as a
baseball alternative that could be played indoors in bad weather.
Sometimes it was even called just indoor baseball. It became
particularly popular in places where space was limited or were
the only place to play was indoors. It was also
played outdoors in places with limited space In the late
(04:48):
nineteenth century, settlement houses in the US started establishing playgrounds
and encouraging active play in urban areas, especially among boys.
Softball became so closely connected to the settlement movement into
these playgrounds that some sources have erroneously credited Chicago's Hull
House with inventing it, and we talked about Hull House
(05:08):
and its founder, Jane Adams in a previous two parter
on the show. Did not invent softball, No, did play
it a whole lot, though The overlap between baseball and
softball and who was playing it continued until about nineteen
thirty three. That is when the Amateur Softball Association was
founded as that sports governing body and the name softball
(05:31):
was formally adopted for it, and at this point girls
baseball teams that had been using some kind of modified
rule set generally moved over to playing softball. It did
not take long before people took for granted that baseball
was for boys and softball was for girls, a distinction
that persists in a lot of places today. When Little
(05:52):
League Baseball was founded in nineteen thirty nine, it was
intended for boys, although that did not become an official
rule until nineteen fifty one, in response to Kay Johnston
of New York cutting her hair to join a team
under the name Tubby. The Tubby rule remained in place
until nineteen seventy four, after a series of court cases
(06:13):
and a ruling by the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.
I guess that's such a good illustration of how it
was assumed to be for boys, so much so that
it wasn't even in the rules until after a girl
cut her hair to join a team. Like Yeah, it
was just taken totally for granted. So by the nineteen forties,
(06:34):
both softball and baseball were well established in the United States.
They were two separate sports, one for men and boys,
the other for women and girls. Both had amateur, semi professional,
and professional teams and leagues. And that brings us to
World War Two, if you remember our October twenty nineteen
episode on the Black Sox scandal. During World War One,
(06:54):
the idea of Major League Baseball continuing on in spite
of the war was deeply controversial. Secretary of War Newton D.
Baker issued a work or Fight order which required any
man eligible for the draft to either work in a
war critical industry or join the military. Men who continued
to play baseball were viewed as abandoning their patriotic duty,
(07:17):
and after the US joined the war, Major League Baseball
shortened the nineteen eighteen season. As war once again started
to spread through Europe in nineteen thirty nine, people feared
that the sport of baseball would be disrupted, as it
had been a couple of decades earlier. These fears escalated
after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December of nineteen
(07:38):
forty one, and the United States entered the war at
that point. In January of nineteen forty two, Kennesaw Mountain Landis,
the commissioner of baseball, wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
to ask, quote, what you have in mind as to
whether professional baseball should continue to operate? On January fifteenth,
nineteen forty two, Roosevelt, who was a fan of baseball,
(08:00):
responded with what has become known as the green Light Letter.
It read, in part, quote, I honestly feel that it
would be best for the country to keep baseball going.
There will be fewer people unemployed, and everybody will work
longer hours and harder than ever before, and that means
that they ought to have a chance for recreation and
for taking their minds off their work even more than before.
(08:22):
And his letter, the President stressed that players who were
of an age should join the military should do so,
but that they might be replaced with older players who
could still play an exciting game. The President also advocated
for more night games so that day shift workers at
wartime factories could go The President ended the green light
letter by saying, quote, here is another way of looking
(08:44):
at it. If three hundred teams use five thousand or
six thousand players, these players are a definite recreation asset
to at least twenty million of their fellow citizens, and that,
in my judgment, is thoroughly worthwhile. So, even though baseball
had the p President's seal of approval, roughly half of
the regular players in Major League Baseball wound up serving
(09:06):
in the military. Some of its best and most popular
players were drafted. Of course, that trend also applied to
the minor leagues and to other baseball teams as well.
So even though the President himself had given the ok
for baseball to continue, there were people worried that the
sport was going to struggle, and that this might even
lead to the closure of some of the nation's ballparks.
(09:28):
One of these concerned people was Philip K. Wrigley. His father,
William Wrigley Junior, had died in nineteen thirty two, leaving
Philip the William Wrigley Junior Chewing Gum Company, a fortune
and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. We will get to
what he did after a quick sponsor break. About three
(09:55):
million women joined the workforce in the United States between
nineteen forty and nineteen two, and Philip K. Wriggley thought
that maybe the same trend could apply to professional ball.
Women's teams could play in ballparks where the home teams
were on the road, keeping the sport in the parks
going while so many men were away at war. These
teams of women could also help boost the national morale
(10:19):
and help the war effort with things like fundraising and
recruitment drives. Wriggly teamed up with Ken Cells, who had
previously worked for the chewing gum business but had become
assistant general manager of the Chicago Cubs. On February seventeenth,
nineteen forty three, they issued a press release announcing the
creation of the All American Girls Softball League. Their plan
(10:41):
was to recruit players from the women's softball teams that
had been established all over the country at the beginning.
Jim Hamilton was the lead talent scout in the US,
and Johannes Gottselig, known as Johnny, headed up recruitment in Canada.
But Wriggly also wanted to make the game a little
closer to what spectators might expect from a baseball game,
(11:02):
so they worked out a rule set that had elements
of both baseball and softball. Like softball, it used a
larger ball and an underhanded pitching style, but like baseball,
the teams had nine players per side rather than softball's ten.
The playing field would also have a longer pitching distance
and running path than softball did, but it was still
(11:23):
shorter than what was being used in baseball. Players in
this game would also be allowed to steal bases, something
that was not allowed in softball. These changes caused some
controversy about exactly what sport was being played out there
on the field, and the league changed its name to
the All American Girls Baseball League part way through the
nineteen forty three season. As recruiters visited softball teams to
(11:46):
look for players. Hundreds of women and girls expressed interest
in playing professionally. About two hundred and eighty were invited
to the final tryouts, and sixty players from the US
and Canada were ultimately selected to play in the nineteen
forty three season. Some of these young women were as
young as fifteen, although most of them were between eighteen
(12:07):
and twenty two. As was the case with Major League
Baseball at the time, the newly established Women's League excluded
black players. These players were arranged into four teams of
fifteen players each, the Rockford Peaches of Illinois, the South
Bend Blue Socks of Indiana, and the Racing Bells and
the Kenosha Comets of Wisconsin. Each of these was not
(12:30):
far away from a much larger major city. They were
also close enough together to allow the teams to travel
from one city to the next for games while still
conserving fuel and rubber during wartime rationing. The league setup
was significantly different from Major League Baseball or most other
leagues at the time. The league itself was a non
(12:50):
profit organization, with Philip Wrigley, Paul Harvey, and Branch Rickey
as trustees. Much of the initial funding came from Wrigley himself.
It's been about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars getting
the whole project started, and he contributed to the team's
maintenance costs, especially in the first year. The player's contracts
were also centrally owned by the league, rather than being
(13:13):
owned by one of the four teams. This meant that
the players pay was set by the league. There were
no bidding wars with teams trying to entice the best
players to sign on with them. That first year, the
players made between forty five dollars and eighty five dollars
a week. That does not sound like much, but it
is significantly more than most of them had been making
(13:33):
an agricultural or factory work, or maybe playing in a
paying softball league. Players in the league were prohibited from
doing any other work during the season. The centrally owned
player contracts also meant that the league had the right
to trade players from one team to another. One of
the league's goals was for all the games to be
as evenly matched and exciting to watch as possible, so
(13:57):
player trades happened throughout the season as they tried to
get keep this balance. Each team had a manager who
also acted as a coach. These were typically men who
had experience in major league or minor league baseball. Every
team also had a business manager as well as a
chaperone who was a woman and was a paid part
of the staff during the league's history. Most of the
(14:18):
chaperones had some experience in working with women's athletic teams.
The chaperones who were responsible for making housing arrangements for
the team, handling money, and approving any housing and dining
accommodations that the team was going to use. In some ways,
they were a little like athletic trainers. As well, being
trained in first aid and responsible for the team's first
(14:38):
aid kit and the treatment of injuries. They were also
ultimately responsible for the player's conduct, behavior, and appearance. That
last point was a lot. Most of the players came
from working class and agricultural communities that didn't really regard
women's participation in softball as unusual in any way. A
(14:59):
lot of them had been playing on teams that had
been organized by their employers, with that involvement being seen
as pretty normal and fun. But that wasn't necessarily true
among the middle class, which was a big part of
the audience that the league was hoping to attract. The
idea that women were playing baseball, which was considered to
be a game for men, also raised some suspicions about
(15:20):
the players. A common stereotype was that women athletes were lesbians.
That's a stereotype that still exists today, but without nearly
the level of stigma that was attached to it in
the nineteen forties. So the league went to great lengths
to reinforce the idea that these players weren't just women,
they were ladies, specifically patriotic, wholesome, middle class, heterosexual ladies. Outwardly,
(15:45):
the league described all its rules and training about things
like beauty and conduct as a service teaching working class
girls to be middle class ladies, which of course suggested
that to be middle class was better than to be
working class. And on top of that, a lot of
the rules and standards in place were also meant to
reduce suspicions of lesbianism. This included the player's uniforms. These
(16:09):
were one piece pastel colored tunic like garments with a
flared skirt, which were worn with satin shorts and knee socks.
They were designed by Wrigley's wife, Ada, along with poster
artist Otis Shepherd and softball player An Harnett. They were
also patterned after women's figure skating and tennis attire. These
(16:29):
uniforms were meant to set the players apart from the
barnstorming bloomer girls that we referenced earlier, and to reinforce
the idea that the players on the field were feminine women.
These skirts did not really do much to protect the
player's legs from scrapes and other injuries, but the players
were also expected to look pristine at all times and
not really have any visible injuries. Perfectly prim athletic lady.
(16:55):
It's the whole kind of convoluted tangle. Yeah. The specific
rules varied over the league's history, but the general idea
of players being the right kind of woman was part
of it. Throughout each player was issued a guide for
all American girls how to look better, feel better, be
more popular. In the nineteen forty three season, Helena Rubinstein's
(17:19):
Beauty Salon taught charm and beauty lessons for the players
that included hygiene, personal appearance, etiquette, and things like how
to gracefully get in and out of a car or
go up and downstairs. The Ruth Tiffany School provided these
lessons the next year. Formal charm lessons ended after that point,
but a focus on appropriate feminine behavior continued. Players were
(17:42):
also issued a beauty kit that they were expected to
keep stock. It included cleansing cream, lipstick, rouge, deodorant, astringent,
face powder, hand lotion, and hair remover. They were required
to be attractive and presentable at all times, and they
had to wear a dress or a skirt any time
time they were seen in public. Most of the players
wore trousers on the bus for the sake of comfort,
(18:05):
especially during nighttime road trips between games, but kept a
skirt with them to change into if they stopped for
something like a restroom break or a meal. Some of
the other rules from the player's code of conduct no
boyish bobbed hair, no smoking, no drinking alcohol, and no
social engagements unless they were approved by a chaperone. Lipstick
(18:26):
was mandatory at all times, and there were also more
mundane rules about things like punctuality. The player's Code of
Conduct specified a five dollars fine for the first offense,
a ten dollars fine for the second offense, and suspension
for the third, but there were players that faced harsher penalties.
Josephine DiAngelo, known as Jojo, was cut from the Blue
(18:47):
Socks in her second year from the team after she
got a bobbed haircut that was described as too short
and butchy in some accounts. Frida and Olympia Savona, who
were star players from the New Orleans Jackson Brewing Company
softball team, were passed over for the All American Girls
League because of their masculine appearance. There were definitely some
(19:08):
news stories that made disparaging comments about the Savona's appearance,
but Frieda wrote to a reporter to say this had
nothing to do with why she was not in the league.
She said she was just happier and better paid where
she was. Fraternizing with members of other teams was also
forbidden within the league. The league framed this as a
way to keep the level of competitiveness high, but many
(19:30):
of the players interpreted it as a way to discourage
romantic relationships between them. So that's kind of an overview
of what the league was like. When spring training started
its first season on May seventeenth of nineteen forty three.
That happened in Chicago, the first pitch of the season
was thrown on May thirtieth of nineteen forty three, and
we'll talk about how things grew and evolved from there
(19:53):
after we first have a little sponsor break. The All
American Girls Baseball League's first season included sporting events as
well as wartime patriotism. Teams made appearances at recruitment drives
(20:13):
and fundraisers, and they visited wounded soldiers that had returned stateside.
On July first, they held an all Star game against
a team from the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, which was
played under the lights at Wrigley Field. This event was
part of a recruitment drive, held free of charge and
at night so that working women could attend. Some of
the league's patriotism was more symbolic, like having the two
(20:36):
teams that were going to be competing lined up in
a V for victory during the national anthem at the
beginning of every game. The nineteen forty three season ended
with a five game championship series in which the Racing
Bells defeated the Kenosha Comets. More than one hundred and
seventy five thousand fans attended games in that first season.
(20:56):
Then in nineteen forty four, the league expanded to sixteen.
Another competing league was founded that same year, the National
Girls Baseball League, established in Chicago. This league continued until
nineteen fifty four, although its history and activities aren't nearly
as well documented as the All American Girls League. At
the end of the nineteen forty four season, Philip Wrigley
(21:19):
sold the league to Arthur Meyerhoff for ten thousand dollars,
which was a fraction of what he had put into
getting it started and operating it. In those first two seasons,
it had become clear that the sport of men's baseball
was not in any kind of actual peril from the war,
But apart from that, Wrigley was just not really interested
in being so heavily involved in the league anymore. Meyerhoff
(21:41):
had also been a big part of the league since
its inception, and Wrigley was confident that he would maintain
the same standards that Wrigley had established in terms of
quality and entertainment. The biggest change at this point was
that the league went from being a nonprofit to a
for profit entity. Otherwise, the player's contracts were still cently owned,
and each team continued to have paid managers and chaperones.
(22:05):
Meyerhoff put a big focus on marketing and promoting the league.
He also organized postseason exhibition tours to Cuba and South America,
mainly to countries where Wrigley chewinghum had a presence thanks
to the rubber and chickle industries. Over time, the style
of play within the league continued to shift and become
more and more like men's baseball. The ball gradually got
(22:27):
smaller and harder, pitching and infield distances got longer. Sidearm
pitching was introduced in nineteen forty six, and overhand pitching
in nineteen forty eight. Some players that had been recruited
from softball teams had a little trouble adjusting to these changes,
and Meyerhoff established a junior league in farm teams to
cultivate new talent. Although the All American Girls Baseball League
(22:49):
had started out with the idea of being a substitution
for men's baseball during World War Two, its popularity really
peaked after the war ended in nineteen forty five. In
nineteen forty a July fourth double header in South Bend, Indiana,
drew a crowd of between ten thousand and twenty thousand people,
Attendance peaked in nineteen forty eight, with nearly a million
(23:10):
fans in attendance that year. The league had ten teams
from Rockford, Peoria, Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin,
South Bend and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Grand Rapids in Muskegan, Michigan.
Most of the team names were distinctly feminine, including the Peaches, Chicks, Millarets, Daisies, Lassies, Colleen's, Sally's,
(23:34):
and Bell's. Although the league grew between nineteen forty five
and nineteen forty eight, it also faced some struggles in
those years. The idea of women playing baseball had drawn
suspicion since the beginning, but that increased when there was
no longer a wartime patriotic need for women to take
up what was seen as men's work. Individual teams also
(23:55):
folded for various reasons from time to time, and then
that put a strain on the rest to the league
as it tried to absorb those other players. After a while,
friction started to develop between individual teams in Meyerhoff's management company.
While the league owned the player's contracts, the teams all
had their own owners who started to object to the
requirement to send some of their ticket revenues back to Meyerhoff.
(24:19):
Meyerhoff was putting most of the proceeds back into the league,
but even so, a perception grew that Meyerhoff was making
money off of the team's work. As attendance started to
fall off. In nineteen forty eight, Meyerhoff embarked on some
ambitious plans to try to revive the league. This included
an attempt to start an International women's Baseball League, which
(24:40):
would play in Florida, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Cuba during
the winter and early spring. Although an international league was
formed very briefly, it never really got off the ground.
At the end of the nineteen fifty season, the teams
bought out Meyerhoff and became self governing and decentralized. The
league's name had been through slight tweaks through the years,
(25:01):
and at this point it became the American Girls Baseball
League or AGBL, although most people still use the word all.
At this point, players started contracting with teams for their
rates rather than the league, which increased paid disparities as
teams tried to attract and keep the best players. The
only paid position in the league at this point was
(25:22):
the commissioner, and without a central league organization that was
promoting and marketing the games, attendance continued to drop. The
league also faced increased competition from other forms of entertainment
in the fifties, including televised men's baseball games. The American
Girls Baseball League dissolved in nineteen fifty four. During its history,
about six hundred women from the United States, Canada, and
(25:44):
Cuba had played for teams in fourteen Midwestern cities. During
baseball season. They played six or seven games a week,
with doubleheaders on Sundays and holidays, sleeping on buses overnight
as they traveled from one city to the next. This
was a grueling schedule, which may be one reason why
about a quarter of the players only played for one
season or less. Although Major League Baseball had started to
(26:08):
desegregate in the late nineteen forties and President Harry Truman
issued an executive order to desegregate them armed forces in
nineteen forty eight, the All American Girls Baseball League was
segregated throughout its history. Although two black women practiced with
the South Bend Blue Sox in nineteen fifty one, neither
of them wound up signing a contract with the league. However,
(26:30):
there were three black women who played on men's teams
in the Negro Leagues in the nineteen fifties, Mamy Panut Johnson,
Connie Morgan, and Marcinia Lyle, who used the name Tony
Stone professionally. All three started with the Indianapolis Clowns. Tony
Stone replaced Hank Aaron there and her contract was sold
to the Kansas City Monarchs before the nineteen fifty four season.
(26:54):
There are reports that Tony Stone tried out for the
All American Girls League as well, but those are not
concretely document After the All American Girls League was dissolved,
many of the players adopted what's been described as a
self imposed silence. Most of them did not really talk
about their time playing professional baseball, even among their families.
Reasons why are not entirely clear, but stigma may have
(27:16):
been one factor. According to one survey that was conducted
in the nineties, about twenty percent of players reported facing
discrimination because of their history as an athlete. However, many
used the money that they'd earned playing baseball to go
to college or to start a career, with some attending
college and graduate school during the off season. One researcher
(27:37):
who interviewed players later in their life found that about
thirty five percent had graduated from college, compared to less
than ten percent of women in the general population in
the same era. This has been described as a precursor
to Title nine's effects on women's college enrollment, giving women
educational opportunities that they didn't have access to otherwise. When
(27:57):
the women's liberation movement started nineteen sixties and seventies, historians
and other researchers started unearthing the league's history, and the
players started reconnecting with each other and documenting their own history.
At the same time. In the late seventies, Dorothy Camney, Camischeck,
and Marge Winzel and June Peppys all met up and
started talking about organizing a reunion. In October of nineteen eighty,
(28:22):
Peppa sent a letter to the few players whose addresses
she had been able to find and started trying to
track people down. By January of nineteen eighty one, this
had morphed into a newsletter, which grew from a handful
of addresses to more than one hundred within a month.
This also coalesced into a player's association that still exists today.
(28:43):
The first of many reunions was held in Chicago in
nineteen eighty two, and the newsletter became part of an
effort to establish a league archive and to get some
kind of recognition in the National Baseball Hall of Fame
in Cooperstown, New York. It was during this process that
the league's name became formally finalized as the All American
Girls Professional Baseball League. The player's efforts for recognition came
(29:07):
to fruition on November fifth of nineteen eighty eight, with
the formal unveiling of a permanent Women in Baseball exhibit
at the Baseball Hall of Fame. The league's players had
been an active part in this exhibit's creation, including donating
their photographs, uniforms, equipment, and memorabilia. A league archive was
established at the Northern Indiana Historical Society Museum now called
(29:30):
the History Museum in South Bend, Indiana. There was also
an exhibition through the Smithsonian. The league was also the
subject of a short documentary called A League of their
Own that aired nationally on public television on September thirtieth,
nineteen eighty seven. And of course, there's the nineteen ninety
two feature film directed by Penny Marshall, which was a
blockbuster and was actually when many people first heard about
(29:52):
women's baseball. Another documentary tells the story of Terry Donahue
and pat Henschel. Donahue was recruited from Saskatchewan, Canada, and
played for the Peoria Red Wings for four seasons. After
these two women met. In between seasons, Henschell left her
life in Canada behind to join Donahue in the United States.
(30:12):
Although the two of them described themselves at the time
as cousins and roommates, they were really a couple and
the documentary tells the story of their lives together. The
film is called A Secret Love. It was supposed to
premiere at south By Southwest in March of twenty twenty,
but of course, because of the pandemic, south By Southwest
has been canceled. So I'm not sure what the status
(30:34):
of the film's debut is at this point, but at
some point I think it might come to Netflix, because
there is a page for it in the Netflix Media Center. Exciting.
Henschell is also one of the people Brittany de la
Creda interviewed when reporting her article The Hidden Queer History
behind a league of their own. At that point, both
Donahue and Henschell were still living, but Donahue died in
(30:55):
twenty nineteen. At that time, she and Henschell had been
together for years. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League's
website for the player association also has a wealth of
information on the individual players, including their photos, their team histories,
their biographies, and for those who are no longer living,
many of their obituaries are there as well. It is
(31:19):
really a ton if you want to go read about
some women baseball players, lots and lots to look at
their Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
If you'd like to send us a note, our email
addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and you can
(31:39):
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.