Book Review: Cohen, M. No girls in the clubhouse: The exclusion of women from baseball. (2009)

Cohen, M. (2009). No girls in the clubhouse: The exclusion of women from baseball. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

Author Marilyn Cohen, an Associate Professor and Director of Women’s Studies at St Peter’s University, New Jersey, has written an accessible account of the problems faced by American women seeking to play what has been perceived as a male sport.  While the content does not require specialized academic knowledge and the writing is clear and unaffected, a stronger editor might have eliminated what appear to be frequent redundancies.  Absent notes, indices, front matter, and illustrations, content amounts to less than 200 pages.

Though the chapters and discussions proceed chronologically, this is not an account seeking to document the role of women in American baseball.  That work, Marilyn Cohen observes, has been ably completed by a host of previous researchers, allowing her to focus more on theory and analysis.  Her methodology is that of most theorists - reading lots of books and articles.  Her principal sources are journalistic accounts and legal documents relating to cases of sex discrimination.  She says she also conducted interviews, through with whom is not clear.

Her analysis is “informed by social science perspectives, principally critical feminist theory, anthropology, and sociology.”   She sees sport as vital to the understanding of the process of the encoding of biological differences with symbolic meaning.  "No single social institution, with the exception of the military, has influenced the cultural construction of masculinity more strongly or has justified in biological terms more directly the inferiority of the female body resulting in the acceptance of gender-based discrimination.”  (I’d say religion has been far more damaging for a far longer time than modern sport, but that’s another book.)

Citing Henry Aaron’s comments about himself as not being remarkably big or possessing great strength, Cohen points to baseball as a unique sport in which small and medium-sized men may excel, yet from which women (with similar physiques and talent) have until very recently been excluded at all levels, typically on the grounds of physical inferiority.  Cohen refers to this as myth, idealized justification of social constructs such as gender.  Women have been and in many corners are still considered to be physically frail and likely to suffer gender confusion by working too closely with males (becoming too assertive, competitive, or even engaging in lesbian relationships).  Such concerns did not extend, needless to say, to working class women - black, brown or white - whose manual labor produced the goods and services consumed by the same class worried about the physical and moral integrity of women.

Cohen places the first documented female baseball games in the late 19th century at white women’s colleges, where players were suitably protected from excess exertion and competitiveness.  They were shielded, as well, from the male gaze, and perhaps from possible lesbian tendencies, by proper female attire:  long dresses with high necks and long sleeves.  There is no evidence these white, educated women saw sport as a means of contesting Victorian gender ideology.  On the contrary, many seemed concerned about how they were viewed by outsiders and strived to maintain standards of decorum and respectability.

NY Bloomer Giants

While these college teams may be some of the first documented, there must have been many unrecorded instances of rural or urban working class playing ball informally.  Cohen cites the case of Sister Miriam Cecil, a former New York Bloomer Girl (an all female team) who grew up in the early 20th century next to a baseball field and whose brothers would get her into local pick-up games.  Another NY Bloomer girl of the same period relates growing up as the only sister of six brothers, who would often insert her into a game to even up sides.  It seems unlikely that similar stories could not be told by women who grew up 20 or 30 years earlier in the late 19th century.

The first popular challenges to Victorian ideals were financially motivated.  Promoters found a ready market of male audiences for female teams - black and white - playing in less “respectable” costume. Reports from the period suggest talent was not of primary importance to spectators, “the attraction [being] the novelty of seeing eighteen girls prettily attired in gymnastic dress.”  These were not college girls from well-heeled families, but the working poor who could not afford Victorian values of feminine propriety.  These Bloomer Girl teams (named after a loose fitting pantaloon promoted by Amelia Jenks Bloomer) travelled the country playing local amateur and semi-pro teams and usually included a couple of male members playing pitcher and catcher in female costume.  Here we have an interesting example of ideological give-and-take, with women being permitted to play in public while simultaneously being protected from the overexertion of assuming the most physically demanding roles on the team.  More interesting still, men are permitted to perform in female attire without any fear of their masculinity being compromised (as Roger Hornsby’s future accomplishments attest).

Men and Women playing togeher:  The Bloomer Girls

Jackie Mitchell clipping

From this milieu a number of highly-talented female players emerged who were at every turn blocked from entering professional male ball.  Cohen notes two who made it - but only briefly.  Lizzie Arlington was the first woman to sign a minor league contract in 1898, but her tenure lasted only as long as the curious crowds who paid to see her.  Jackie Mitchell fared somewhat better, but in the end also had no future at the professional level.  The 17 year old was signed to a minor league contract in 1931 and in an exhibition game with the Yankees struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Landis subsequently voided her contract, justifying his decision with reference to the Victorian-era concern for the physical integrity of females and baseball as too strenuous an activity for women.  He saw no contradiction, though, promoting women’s leagues as beneficial to women’s health.  

Sports journalism of the period was largely condescending to female teams and players, focusing largely on their appearance and berating their skills or presenting them as “naturally” inferior.  If females bested males, it was usually because the men weren’t trying hard enough, or acted chivalrously by falling on their bats, as it were, to let the women win.

America’s participation in WWII and the massive mobilization of male labor to Europe and the Pacific left home industries bereft of workers, providing many women significant opportunities for work outside the home.  Besides filling in for men on the farms and in the factories, women stepped in as baseball surrogates with the founding in 1943 of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), which ran until 1954, a year short of a decade following the close of the war in 1945.

Cohen argues that while a women’s league might appear a significant advance for women's baseball, the AAGPBL was in fact a step-backwards.  Team roles were clearly separated, with female players under the direction of male coaches and managers.  Unlike the mixed play and unisex uniforms of the Bloomer teams, the new league was sex segregated and feminine qualities were hyper-emphasized, not just in the cut of uniforms, but in rules prohibiting short hair cuts and requirements for the regular use of make-up. Through the display of overt forms of femininity, the league sought to deflect concerns of masculinization and the compromising of gender or sex orientation.  Female players were typically referred to as America’s daughters, a term that reinforced notions of patriarchy and the role of females as property of families.  Players away from home were often hosted by local families, who served as surrogate parents offering protection from sexual suitors as well as instruction in feminine tasks such as housekeeping.  The endeavor to mark these women as protected and feminine was abetted by journalistic descriptions that focused on player appearances and the inferiority of female play.  Gender was deliberately constructed to protect the dominance of male athleticism;  the presence of women, like blacks, was seen as compromising the integrity of the white male game.  Perhaps furthest from the center of pro ball were black women, who would never be considered “America’s daughters.” As with the male leagues, the first successful entry of non-Anglos were white Latins, a few of whom joined the AAGPBL following an exhibition tour of Cuba.  (Though not covered by Cohen, it may be worth noting that a number of male Cubans helped fill out the US pro leagues during the war years.)

The Cuban Babes:  The Story of Seven Cubana Women in Professional Baseball

Toni Stone

The post-war admission of black players to the white professional leagues led to an immediate decline in the Negro Leagues.  Taking a cue from the Bloomer Girls, three black women (Toni Stone, Mamie Johnson and Connie Morgan) were added to Negro League rosters as a means of boosting attendance.  For a short time the novelty worked, but in the end nothing could stem the shift in interest among black players, and audiences, for integrated play.  Unlike white women of the AAGPBL, these three women made no pretense of being feminine and rejected representation of themselves as sex objects by wearing the same uniform as men.  They rejected as well the idea of women as frail and vulnerable by traveling in the same busses, staying at the same hotels, and generally adapting themselves to a male environment.  Although all these women worked hard and wanted nothing more than to play the game, they encountered frequent episodes of racial and sexual harassment and were often derided by their teammates, who resented them for being the equivalent of mascots and for denying a living to males who might otherwise play their positions.  Being black and women, their histories have been marginalized and largely forgotten.   The Hall of Fame inducted Jackie Robinson in 1962, but didn’t even recognize Toni Stone until 1991.

Following the disbanding of the AAGPBL in 1954, the most successful coach of that league carried on with Allington’s World Champion All Americans, a barnstorming women’s team that played across  the United States and Canada between 1954 and 1957.  Afterwards, there were no professional women’s baseball teams, or female baseball players, until 1994, though one promoter made a mighty effort in 1988 to launch a Class A minor league team that would compete against male clubs.  Despite the pedigree of promoter Bob Hope, formerly of Coca-Cola and the Atlanta Braves corporate office, his enlistment of Braves alumni such as Henry Aaron to help promote the cause, and massive media interest, Hope’s franchise bid was denied.  Journalistic opinion was strongly divided.  A cohort of traditionalists asserted the inferiority of female athletic ability, as well as female concern with appearance over performance.  Others claimed women were emotionally unequipped to deal with public criticism, and were likely to demonstrate emotions inappropriate to the locker room, clubhouse, or baseball field.

Colorado Silver Bullets

Hope returned to the idea of a women’s team in 1994.  With the financial backing of Coors Brewing, he launched The Silver Bullets, a barnstorming team that was coached by former Major Leaguers and that played against men’s minor league, semi-professional and college teams.  The Bullets were disbanded in 1997 when Coors withdrew sponsorship, but before bowing out managed to change expectations for female participation in baseball.  In media accounts, players were not represented as sex objects, nor as mannish freaks.  Women’s baseball skills were still depicted as inferior, but these were now attributed to social rather than biological causes.  Most significant among these was the lack of opportunity for girls to play baseball after entering their teenage years.  Many females were, and still are, shunted into softball, a game that leaves them unprepared to compete in professional baseball.  The Bullets’ most singular accomplishment was in drawing large audiences of boys and men, thereby molding cultural expectations around female athletes.

Cohen goes on to profile one of the Silver Bullets players, Julie Croteau, as a player whose experiences exemplify the difficulties faced by women trying to break into amateur and professional baseball.  Croteau was one of the few women players with teenaged baseball experience, but her journey up the ranks was often fraught.  It was suggested she play softball, but when she insisted - suggesting boys are never asked to switch to softball - she sat on the bench for most of the season.  Her coach and the school principal felt girls shouldn’t be on a boy’s team and she was eventually released.  In return, she sued the school for sex discrimination.  Although she lost her case, media coverage of the trial brought her to the attention of a nearby semi-pro team and she subsequently became the first professional female player in the state of Virginia, and later went on to coach men’s college baseball in Massachusetts.  Another female from the same period with a similar profile - apart from playing with the Bullets - was Californian Ila Borders.  Coached by a supportive father, himself a former minor league player, Ila played continuously from the age of 3, starting on junior high and high school teams before going on to play college and minor league ball.  She faced many of the same issues as her predecessors:  belittled as a novelty, shunned by teammates, abused by parents of players from opposing teams, resented for taking the spot of a male athlete, despised for striking out men, but adored by the media and groups of supportive fans.

Ila Borders

The book closes with a review of the codification of the baseball/softball distinction.  It seems the origins of softball are not entirely clear, but grew out of the efforts of social reformers to bring sport and sporting facilities to American urban youth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Different versions of the game grew up in different places, including a number of indoor leagues, and were known by different names, including women’s baseball, playground baseball, mush ball, and kitten ball.  Softball was standardized in the mid-30’s with the institution of two national associations and the establishment of uniform rules.  Though promoted as inclusive, softball typically featured large numbers of female teams.  The history presented here suggests softball’s organic growth parallel to baseball, rather than as a reaction to de jure exclusion of females.  It will be recalled Landis banned women from professional baseball in 1931, only days after Jackie Mitchell struck out and Ruth and Gehrig in an exhibition game.  Amateur youth baseball preceded Landis by two years following the success, and subsequent male resentment, of 14-year old Margaret Gisolo, who helped power her team to the American Legion’s National Junior Baseball championship tournament in 1928.

America’s biggest youth baseball organization, Little League, didn’t have to confront such issues until it grew beyond the town and region where it was established in 1939. A new rule appeared in Little League regulations in 1951 banning female participation, though as presented by Cohen, this was not as a result of a particular female attempting to join the league, but as a preemptive measure in an era of Cold War suspicion, fear, and hyper-conservatism.  It was at this time Little League was granted a Federal charter, making it a tax-exempt, quasi-governmental organization whose mission and values had to be approved by the US Congress.  These came to include baseball as a means of teaching values of citizenship, making baseball games patriotic moral events.  Sympathetic coaches and local communities occasionally tried sneaking in a skilled female player, but as soon as they were found out, Little League authorities threatened revocation of the offending team’s charter.  This most always worked in having females expelled, until the passage in 1972 of Title IX (barring discrimination against girls and women in educational institutions and in sports) gave lawyers the tool needed to force Little League to accept female players.

Between 1972-1974 fifty-seven lawsuits were brought against Little League for sex discrimination.  In its defense, Little League argued that biological differences would result in physical harm to girls, and psychological damage to both girls and boys.  In the 1974 landmark case, an Appeals Court rejected both arguments and required Little League to accommodate female players.  In a dissenting opinion, one of the judges provided Little League the ideological cover needed to establish separate softball leagues for females, arguing that post-pubescent females would have no chance to capitalize on baseball skills learned as children and should therefore be provided separate softball facilities.  As with the racial integration of schools a decade earlier, legal requirements to accommodate female players led to creative ways to discourage females from registering for or participating on male teams, while Little League officials scrambled to establish a separate softball league into which females could be legally channeled. (An oral history of female players documents some of the more recent iterations of exclusion.)

While there are now in America many prepubescent baseball teams featuring members of both sexes, the number of teenaged girls playing baseball are few.   Reasons cited for their absence include pressure from male coaches and teammates, as well as from female peers.  While those who wish to play are protected under Title IX, there is often a great emotional cost to those who assert their rights, a cost many are unwilling to bear.  Elite travel leagues, with costs upwards of US$30,000 per year, are entirely male populated, a response to populist community leagues that strive to include everyone, including “underperforming” females.  Recruitment of overseas players is also a factor in blunting efforts to develop domestic female talent, as is the search for power hitters with physiques and strength few women can possibly match.  Today there are several national organizations promoting female baseball, as well as homosocial leagues attempting to provide opportunities for females to develop baseball skills over the entire course of childhood.   These separate but equal leagues, created by and for women, point to a division among feminists, some of whom desire equal access to resources in order to create spaces where women can develop free from male interference or coercion, and others who wish to compete equally with men in order to challenge ideologies of gender.

Cohen concludes with no specific solutions or recommendations, noting that the persistence of the “lone ponytail” image “suggests the persistent structured inequality behind [an] egalitarian facade. The underlying reality is that baseball is not a people’s game. It’s still a nowoman’s land where only young prepubescent girls can transgress the gender boundary, temporarily.”

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