Womens Baseball
Know that moment in Fever Pitch where Drew Barrymore realizes that her boyfriend is crazy-obsessed with baseball? You readers are about to have that moment with me. Baseball season has finally started
An essay to read: THE GIRLS OF SUMMER: WOMEN HAVE ALWAYS LOVED AMERICA’S PASTIME. IT HAS NEVER LOVED THEM BACK, by Kaitlyn Tiffany. Published in The Atlantic, April 2025.
I knew I’d be obsessed with the article, based on the title alone but the first line made me love it even more. Tiffany quotes a 1998 Faith Hill lyric and I immediately thought of my well-worn Faith Hill disc glinting from the CD sleeve velcroed to my car’s pull-down visor back in high school.
But back to baseball. The author, like me, is obsessed with baseball despite having zero playing skills. She joins a Yankee’s fantasy camp and spends a weekend with a group of gals playing 35 innings of baseball in real jerseys, being coached by former Yankees. In between describing her on-the-field experience, and the love her teammates have for the game, she reports on the past and present state of women’s baseball. Or lack thereof:
There is no such thing as high-school or college baseball for women. There is no such thing as professional baseball for women, apart from a World Cup team that is assembled and disassembled every few years. Not only is this the baffling reality; it’s a baffling reality that hardly anybody talks about.
Tiffany covers the typical historical nonsense that warned of infertility, breast cancer, and typhoid if women played baseball. She writes about Maria Pepe, who “pitched three games before angry parents reported her team to Little League’s national office,” and kicked her out of the league in 1972. A court case ultimately gave girls the right to play Little League, though Pepe had aged out by the time lawyers were done arguing. Although girls can play Little League these days, they are typically steered towards softball, with the warning that there is not future as a female baseball player.
Justine Siegal is trying to change that. As co-owner (and likely future commissioner) of a new Women’s Pro Baseball League, she’s busily planning for an opening season in 2026. It will start with six teams in the Northeast. I can’t wait.
A lesson to teach: MAMIE ON THE MOUND, by Leah Henderson, illustrated by George Doutsiopoulos
How have I not written about MAMIE ON THE MOUND yet?!? It’s one of my favorite picture books.
In the 1940s, Mamie, a young Black girl who loved baseball, “came across a group of boys playing ball in a sandlot. They were on a Police Athletic League team…Mamie marched into the police station and asked for the opportunity to try out.” The coach of the all-white, all-boys league gave her the chance to try and was rewarded for his acceptance. The team won two division championships with Mamie on the mound.
While Mamie does face closed dugouts and angry faces of racists in this book, the first few pages are ones of acceptance and inclusion. The picture book references Jackie Robinson breaking the color line, Mamie’s frosty reception attempting to try out for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and then her ultimate success playing professional ball for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro Leagues. Her three seasons with the Clowns (racking up an impressive 33 - 8 record as a pitcher) are beautifully told and illustrated in the book.
I think this would be a good elementary read aloud, as it was one of the first books I read to my daughters which led to a discussion of segregation. They were about 5 and 7 at the time. The book provides a good framework for those first conversations with little ones, as there were both examples of Mamie being accepted by others, and being left out due to her race and gender.
I firmly believe in using picture books at the middle and high school level as well. If I taught American History (*shutter, shutter*), I’d gather up a bunch of picture book biographies from the Civil Rights Era (like this one and this one and this one…Check out NY Public Library’s list for more) and have students do some book “speed dating.”
It works like this:
I explain to students that they’ll have five minutes to read a section of each book. In some books, I’ve stick-noted the most impactful scenes. Some books they can pick up and read through in five minutes. Sometimes, a student just gets through a few pages. That’s fine.
I’ll set a time for five silent minutes of reading.
After the timer goes off, they have two minutes to record the title/author, give a rating, and record a one-sentence summary of what they read on this sheet here. Then they grab a new book.
We do the first round as a class. I read a couple of pages from MAMIE ON THE MOUND and model step #3
Then they are off. They all grab a book, I set a timer, and we have a blissful silent reading sesh. I plop down at a table and read silently right along with them.
We repeat steps #2 and #3 as many times as we can.
The next day, I ask what they learned while they were reading. They compile a list of learnings and share with partners.
For an alternate explanation of book speed dating, check out Write On With Miss. G, right here.
Like most non-fiction picture books, the Afterword, Source Notes, and Bibliography of MAMIE ON THE MOUND are curriculum gold. If you are interested in having older students choose one book, study it carefully and then dig into the back matter for more in-depth learning, a framework to do so is right here. Here is a slide deck presentation about the framework if you don’t feel like reading an academic article :)
A place to explore: Spring Training in Arizona
When the Women’s Pro Baseball League begins next summer, I’ll write about exploring those stadiums, cities, and fandoms. I can’t wait.
Until then, I have a plethora of other baseball sites to discuss…all of them decidedly male. That’s okay. I love all baseball players1. I’ve already covered my favorite baseball museum in Kansas, that cornfield in Iowa, and my favorite hotel room inside Toronto’s Rogers Centre. Since I just went to Phoenix last month, I still have Spring Training on my mind, so lets go there.
I’ve been to Spring Training a zillion times. I went during college with my mom, grandma, and cousin. Back when I lived in Las Vegas, going to Spring Training was an annual tradition. My parents would fly into Vegas and then we’d drive down Highway 93 for some baseball. Even when I lived in Colorado, I flew to the desert and met friends in Phoenix for a few games.
However, I haven’t been to Spring Training lately. My school has a mid-winter break in February that is usually right before games start, and by the time our Spring Break happens, we are already a couple weeks into the season.
I was in Phoenix last month just in time to catch the first full squad practice, so my friend and I drove from her house in the far-away Phoenix ‘burbs to the Mariners/Padres stadium in Peoria just to hear a bat crack before I had to fly back home.
At Spring Training, I almost like watching workouts and practice sessions more than actual games. Going to a Spring Training game is like going to a minor league game: There are tickets, concessions, 9-innings played, etc. It’s very fun, but something I get to do dozens of time during the summer.
Going to a practice is different. You don’t have to pay. You walk through a metal detector and then they you have free roam of the place. There are several different fields. Usually the minor league guys practice on the west fields and the major league guys are at the one near the clubhouse. There are Little-League style aluminum benches to sit on to watch Julio Rodriguez or Harry Ford take practice swings. Practice usually ends around 1, and then the players walk the gauntlet between the field and their clubhouse, either dodging fans (J.P.), stopping to sign autographs for every single kid (Cal), or stopping to take pictures with every single person (Jay).
Oh, and if you need an adult novel about Spring Training, check out The Cactus League, written by (Seattle Mariner fan) Emily Nemens.
Happy teaching, traveling, and reading! See y’all next Sunday.
Affiliate book links in this newsletter are through Bookshop, a book-buying platform that gives independent bookstores tools to compete online and maintain their presence in local communities. If you purchase books via the links in this newsletter, you’ll are financially supporting me AND your local independent book store, so thank you!
Except members of the cheating 2017 - 2019 Houston Astros team
Fun fact: when shooting Fever Pitch they actually had to change the ending because the Red Sox WON that year breaking the Curse of the Bambino. The scriptwriters (rightly) assumed they'd lose, as they had been doing for decades, and then were like uh....
I love baseball too but I think I’m an amateur fan by comparison. My so. Is obsessed and plays so many games…I’m a baseball mom. I’ve never done spring training but now I really want to!