Women in Baseball: The Forgotten History

The reader of this book quickly realizes that the history of women in baseball has been little written about because there hasn't been much. Baseball became a sport at women's colleges almost simultaneously with the development of professional men's baseball. But 19th-century college authorities initially discouraged and then prohibited intercollegiate games, so baseball never became a major campus sport. There was also pressure on women to play softball instead of hardball. Then, between 1943 and 1954 the short-lived All American Girls Baseball League in the Chicago area played an amalgam of softball and hardball. Berlage, a sociology professor at Iona College in New York, has done prodigious research to uncover the few women who played semi-pro ball, but the results, especially given his pedestrian writing, hardly justify his efforts. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Apr.)