The 1940s

9 clippings from the 1940s.

Photo feature headed Beauty at Bat. A large portrait shows pitcher Gloria Marks of the Racine team smiling with a catcher's mitt on one hand. The caption says she comes from San Diego, was second choice in a beauty contest held at an Army camp judged by Bing Crosby from girls' photos, and will help open the Girl's National Softball League at Wrigley Field Sunday. Below, six players from the Kenosha and Racine teams stride across the field in flared skirted uniforms holding gloves and balls: Irene Ruhnke, Elise Harney, Marion Wohender, Annabella Thompson, Leola Mae Brody and Gloria Marks.

Beauty at Bat

All-American Girls Softball League
Chicago, Illinois · 1943

Bordered feature headed Batting Figures Can Be Fat—but That's All!, by Jayne Miller, reporting from Chicago that 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, P. K. Wrigley of the Chicago Cubs and Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The 70 girls wound up spring training partly at Wrigley Field and partly in a beauty parlor. A photo shows shortstop Terrie Davis of the Rockford team at bat, with the caption Her batting figure may not be the envy of a major leaguer, but it looks good from where we sit.

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

All-American Girls Softball League
Chicago, Illinois · 1943

Short news item headed Softy Girls Plan Major Pro Loop, reporting from Chicago that the new all-American Girls' Professional Softball League, backed financially by Phillip K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, plans to operate this summer mainly in the Chicago area but will scout for talent throughout the Nation, with tryouts in May in cities throughout the United States.

Softy Girls Plan Major Pro Loop

All-American Girls Softball League
Chicago, Illinois · 1943

Magazine feature headed Casey Is A Lady!, with the deck These gals are real ball players. Watch them. Three photos: a batter mid-swing captioned It's a Hit! She swings like Joe DiMaggio, shortstop Ellen Ahrndt leaping to corral a hot line drive, and players watching from the bench captioned Anxious. Score's tied, it's last of the ninth. The text by George Berkowitz explains that the All-American Girls' Professional Ball League plays a game much like regular baseball, uses nine players instead of softball's ten, pitches underhand but it isn't soft pitching, and pays 40 to 100 dollars a week.

Casey Is A Lady!

All-American Girls Professional Ball League
Chicago, Illinois · 1944

News item headed Carey Is Named Pilot Of Girls' Ball Teams, reporting from Chicago that Max Carey, best remembered as one of the National League's top base stealers and once Brooklyn manager, will manage one of the six teams of the All-American Girls' Professional League, joining a managerial staff of Marty McManus, Claude Jonnard, Bert Niehoff, Jack Kloza and Johnny Gottselig, with franchises in Racine, Kenosha, Rockford, South Bend, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

Carey Is Named Pilot Of Girls' Ball Teams

All-American Girls Professional League
Chicago, Illinois · 1944

Front page story headed Trailbreakers In Girls Baseball Arrive For Practice, Plan Exhibition Games, reporting that a baseball aggregate of 144 damsels moved into Pascagoula for two weeks of spring training, arriving from Canada and almost every state in the Union by train and bus. A sidebar headed Mother Plays In League profiles Racine pitcher Joan Winter and Pat Keagle, one of three mothers in the league. The continuation from page six adds WAC veteran Gloria Tippy Tipton, who played exhibition baseball across Europe, a section headed Girls Not Tomboyish quoting players on men and marriage, Esther Johnson, whose uncle played ball with the St. Louis Cardinals, and Rockford shortstop Dorothy Snookie Harrell, who works off seasons as an I.B.M. key punch operator. The story closes: And these are only five of the 144, there are all types and sizes of girls in the league, but when they are together there is just the one job for them all, baseball.

Trailbreakers In Girls Baseball Arrive For Practice

All-American Girls Baseball League
Pascagoula, Mississippi · 1946

Associated Press story headed Chicago's Girls' Baseball Loop Offers Good Pay, Clean Fun, reporting that more than 100 lassies from 21 states and Canada begin playing professional baseball in Chicago at salaries from 40 to 100 dollars weekly, in four well-manicured parks with six teams playing a 90 game night schedule, attendance expected to top 500,000, Red Grange installed as league commissioner, Parichy Stadium foremost in the dress parade with a 7,500 dollar red and white dressing room, and the average girl baseball player 22 years old, 5 feet 5 inches, 127 pounds, wearing red fingernail polish.

Chicago's Girls' Baseball Loop Offers Good Pay, Clean Fun

National Girls Baseball League
Chicago, Illinois · 1947

Associated Press story headed Flick of Wrist Tells Max Carey If a Girl Has Baseball Talent, reporting from Newark that Max Carey, former Brooklyn Dodger manager and National League base-stealing record holder, scouts for the All-American Girls' Baseball League, the only feminine professional baseball circuit in the country. Next Monday 180 of Carey's finds convene at Miami for spring training at Opa Locka. Grand Rapids Chicks shortstop Teeny Petras describes training days from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Players earn 55 to 100 dollars a week and wear short athletic skirts, knee-length socks, baseball caps and spiked shoes. Slacks are out, but lipstick is a must, Carey said.

Flick of Wrist Tells Max Carey If a Girl Has Baseball Talent

All-American Girls Baseball League
Newark, New Jersey · 1948

Sale! Baseball Gloves

Plaza Sport Shop
Washington, D.C. · 1949