http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en studes@hardballtimes.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-24T08:08:15+00:00 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/its-our-national-game-too/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/its-our-national-game-too/#When:09:11:15
That isn't the kind of headline we see on our sports pages. But it represents what's really happening in baseball.

When a guy says, "What happened in baseball today?" he refers only to male players and only to the two major leagues. A lot more baseball goes on outside those two leagues, and women are right into it, although the media lags behind in revealing their story to readers.

Women's baseball history is full of dramatic events and fascinating players. Changes occur every day. When women players refer to "what's happening in baseball," this is what they are talking about.

In researching women's baseball history, I realized that by the time of the thirties some women players had reached a high level of skill. Although some men continued to disparage women's efforts and sneer at their accomplishments, others recognized good playing when they saw it.

Minor-league managers in particular actually tried to hire good female players for their teams. Guess who blocked them: Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

David Pietrusza, in his biography of Landis, calls him "a hopeless ham" with "a flair for the dramatic." Studying Landis' life would give any reader the additional impression that Landis was an opinionated and narrow-minded man. I think it's safe to say Landis had never seen a skilled female player in action. Nevertheless, he felt qualified to rule on all women players' ability to do the job.

At least twice and probably three times in history, a woman player was hired for a minor-league team only to have her contract cancelled on account of her gender before she even had a chance to display her skill. Discrimination against a person because of gender wasn't yet illegal.

Apparently, the managers who hired these women failed to fight for them, and the teams lost their services. These players went home quietly, as women were supposed to do in those days, and found some other athletic activity to engage in. Organized Baseball gave up the chance to start being inclusive.

These events made me wonder what would have happened if one of these women had refused to accept her rejection. What if she became angry and made some sort of fuss about it? I realized that I had found the theme for an intriguing historical novel. That's how I came to write Drawing Card: A Baseball Novel, which has just been published by McFarland.

I've written historical novels in the past, but most of my work (except for my children's books) is nonfiction, and the bulk of it lies in the field of baseball history. It occurred to me that this was my opportunity to combine my two special interests, writing baseball history and writing historical novels.

I knew that if my main character's objection to having her contract cancelled was to be believable, she would have to be an unusual woman for the times, so I portrayed her as a descendant of truculent Sicilians resentful of the constant invasions of their island by the Greeks and other invaders. Flashbacks to earlier Sicilian history gave me the opportunity to show that throughout history, athletic women's aspirations have constantly been blocked.

Why is that important? Because it still happens today. Many baseball men have no idea that women possess a solid history in baseball since the 1860s, with each generation producing some good players who might have at least made the minor leagues if men had permitted them to show their talents. Today's female baseball players (and umpires) have a hard time getting recognition for their abilities.

When baseball fans and baseball officials begin to realize that women really do play the National Game, scouts and managers may turn from the Caribbean back to their own home shores for the development of future major leaguers. Look around, guys, for what's right under your noses. Many of these women have been playing baseball since they were five years old and don't need to be taught how to do it.

My next writing project may help. I'm under contract with a publisher of electronic books to write a history of women's baseball for young people. They all know about Babe Ruth, but they've never heard of Babe Didrickson. They've heard the stories about Jackie Robinson, but not about Jackie Mitchell. It's about time they discovered that women have produced some baseball heroes, too. And they're not done yet.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Dorothy Seymour Mills 2012-06-21T09:11:15+00:00