American Girls Professional Baseball League

Ken Sells, the AAGPBL's first hot seat asserts that the women of the first professional female baseball indorse league non only played for fun and money, but also to raise "that women didn't have to sacrifice their femininity to be wheelouts in what was and so a man's world" (qtd. in Fincher).

Maintaining the image of a madam was central to Wrigley's idea of a professional wo men's baseball league. When recruiting for the spick-and-span league, scouts not only looked for girls who "could play," but for ladies. Players who signed "play-for-pay" contracts with the league were expect to attend charm school, wear only skirts or dresses in public (never pants), meet a rigorous code of conduct, and ooze "the highest ideals of womanhood" - healthy, wholesome, "all-American" girls (qtd. in Fincher). Despite their intense, high level of play, the players wore one-piece skirted uniforms hardly suitable for sliding into bases, stockings and socks, a neatly pinned baseball cap atop their perfectly groomed hairstyle, and of course, a bounteous face of properly applied makeup (Fincher).

Skimming complete the top of the wildly popular amateur softball leagues at the time, scouts brought women and girls from both the U.S. and Canada to meet in Chicago in may 1943 for tryouts. At the end of that first training camp, Wrigley's managers selected 60 girls and fork them up among the four teams. Players were p

Turner, Joanna R. "Diamonds ar a Girl's Best Friend." All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. 1993. 10 October 2004.

time women's baseball had become immensely popular, the organization of the league last became decentralized and fell apart, lacking leadership and direction, and eventually take to the league's demise in 1954. Furthermore, once the men returned from war and women generally returned to their homes, along with the advent of national television coverage of men's baseball, the small towns of the mid-west no longer needed women's baseball for frolic - they could simply turn on the T.V. and watch a game in the comforts of their own living room (AAGPBL).

charge between $65 and $125 a week for the age of a 108-game, three-month season (Turner).

By the end of the second season, Wrigley's league was amassing fans as attendance rose to 250,000 and looked likely to increase still. Wrigley had alienated money in the start-up, however, and since the league was non-profit, he did not stand to earn a return on his investment. As a result, Wrigley decided it was time to get out and he exchange the league to his Chicago advertising associate, Arthur Meyerhoff, for only $10,000 and the league became a
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