All-American Girls Softball League · Chicago, Illinois · 1943

Batting Figures Can Be Fat—but That's All!

May 29, 1943, the eve of the very first All-American Girls games. The Washington Daily News reports that 70 girls have finished spring training, part of it at Wrigley Field and the rest in a beauty parlor, because league President Ken Sells had decreed that the girls must be beautiful. Rockford shortstop Terrie Davis bats .400 and designs dresses.

The Washington Daily News of May 29, 1943 caught the All-American Girls Softball League on the eve of its very first games. “A new league where a slim figure will be as important as a fat batting average opens tomorrow with the backing of two major league baseball magnates,” wrote Jayne Miller from Chicago, and she named them: “P. K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, and Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

The four charter teams were “Rockford, Ill., Racine and Kenosha, Wis., and South Bend, Ind.,” and the preview promised “beauty at the bat, pulchritude on the pitcher’s mound, and glamour in the gardens.” The 70 recruits had just wrapped up ten days of spring training: “Part of the training was done in the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field. The rest took place in a beauty parlor because league President Ken Sells had decreed that the girls must be beautiful.” That was no joke. The league really did send its players through charm school, and the papers ran the angle as hard as the box scores.

The player chosen to carry the story deserved better copy than she got. Terrie Davis of Toronto played shortstop for Rockford, and buried in the mannequin talk are her actual credentials: a batting average that “nudged .400” with a championship team back home. The caption under her batting photo shows exactly what these players were up against: “Her batting figure may not be the envy of a major leaguer, but it looks good from where we sit.” She was hitting .400 and the paper still led with her measurements. The closing line notes that “when Terrie isn’t keeping house or playing baseball, she designs dresses,” which at least concedes she was doing three jobs at once.

Note the word that slipped in there: baseball. The league had been announced in March as a softball loop, and the game these women opened with on May 30 was underhand softball in spirit, but the papers were already reaching for the other word. The tug of war between those two words is the story of this league, and it was starting before the first pitch.