Book Review: Ring, J. (2015). A Game of Their Own: Voices of Contemporary Women in Baseball

Ring, J. (2015). A Game of Their Own: Voices of Contemporary Women in Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

A Game of Their Own is an oral history of the American female baseball experience as told by ten members of the 2008 Team USA. The interviews were conducted by Jennifer Ring, a professor of Political Science and the Director or Women’s Studies at the University of Nevada.  Ring knows her subject well.  Besides writing a history of American women in baseball, her own daughter was a member of Team USA and experienced many of the difficulties outlined in this book.

In summary, the problem is this.

While American females may play coed baseball as preteens, once they reach adolescence they are largely shut out of any opportunity to continue playing baseball.  They may be offered inducements to switch to softball, which they can continue playing into their young adult years and for which they may even be awarded university scholarships. They are not legally prohibited from playing on high school baseball teams or in independent leagues, but coaches and parents often conspire against them in favor of boys, who have well established paths to collegiate and professional careers. The U.S. Baseball Federation Inc. (USA Baseball) aids in organizing and sponsoring a female team for international tournaments, but American women are always at a disadvantage for having to cobble together ad hoc teams, many composed of present or past softball players. Their rivals at these events — the Japanese, Australians, Canadians, and Venezuelans —  field teams comprised of women who have played coed or all-female baseball since childhood in countries that have local, regional, and national baseball tournaments for females.  Basically, American women are not allowed to play the game they love because there is no institutional support for coed or female leagues within the United States. 

The book consists of three sections, an introduction which sets the scene by introducing the researcher and the project, the interviews (transcribed and composed in narrative format), and a conclusion summarizing some of the salient features from the players’ stories. The oral histories are somewhat repetitive and not the most interesting part of the book, but there is no doubt these will be an important primary source for future researchers and Ring is to be commended for leaving these to baseball posterity.

Ring also reports on an interview with Paul Seiler, executive director and CEO of USA Baseball, the body responsible for organizing and supporting various national teams for competition in international tournaments, including the national women’s team.  His own view is that the absence of female baseball leagues will be best met by the market, that when demand rises, an organization will step in to meet the need. I was surprised Ring did not call him out. The stories she presents demonstrate quite clearly why there is no groundswell of demand for female baseball – anyone expressing serious interest in such is typically ignored, belittled, or harassed by community members, baseball coaches, and school administrators.  (The ideas used to exclude women from baseball have been catalogued and analyzed here.)

Girls may be encouraged to join a league when they see there is a league for them to join, that there are continuing opportunities for them to play baseball in high school, college and beyond. Something like this happened in Japan, where ten years ago there were only five high school baseball teams for girls. A national tournament was staged and there are now female high school baseball teams all across the country, as well as a professional league into which female players can graduate.

What female baseball in America needs is a powerful and well-endowed advocate.  Professional sports franchises are quite adept at creating markets, of stimulating need among their customers. If the will exists to support and encourage young females in their pursuit of sport, there is no reason those same techniques could not be used to stimulate demand for women’s baseball. Combined revenue of all MLB teams in 2016 was US $9 billion.  Given the league’s concern about growing baseball's audience, wouldn’t a ten-year pledge of 1 million annually (0.01% of 2016 combined revenue) to promote women’s baseball be a worthwhile investment in future generations of fans?

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