The Amazing True Story of A League of Their Own

The Amazing True Story of A League of Their Own on Amazon Prime

Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re looking at The Amazing True Story of A League of Their Own.

For this video, we’ll be looking at the history behind the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

Did you know there was a professional women's baseball league? What’s your favorite little known sports fact? Sound off in the comments below!

The movie adaptation of “A League of Their Own” is one of the most popular stories of women in sports ever told. So popular that the story has been reimagined into a TV show - twice! A lot has changed since the original movie's release in 1992, and even more has changed since the professional women’s baseball league was started in 1943. And now we are getting to see more of the true history of the organization and the players that made it possible.

The AAGPBL Formed During Wartime

As long as there have been sports, there have been women that wanted to be a part of the team. Due to societal norms though, femininity has historically been more highly regarded than a woman’s desire to be included. So women’s professional sports were not as common as men’s in the early 1900s. But when the draft started for World War II, there grew a gap in pro-ball entertainment as troves of physically able men were being sent to war, opening up a space in the world of baseball and entertainment for women to fill.

The League Was Started by Philip K. Wrigley

By 1942, several men's minor league baseball teams had disbanded. Philip K. Wrigley, who had inherited the Chicago Cubs franchise, decided to take action before the disbanding trend could impact MLB Parks and Major league teams. He put together a committee to brainstorm ideas to get paying patrons in the seats of their stadiums. Like in many other industries, women were available to fill the spaces left over by the men that went overseas. So the group recommended establishing a women’s league. And just like that, the All-American Girls Softball League was born in 1943.

The Game Started Out Looking a Lot Like Softball

That’s right: the women’s league was never supposed to be for baseball players. The league's board of trustees had to establish rules for their game. And at the time, the only organized ball game for women was softball. With the help of former pro-baseballer Jack Sheehan, they developed game play that was a mix between softball and baseball. The first year of the league, they played with 12-inch softball and underhand pitching. This distinct play led the decision makers to realize they needed a more prominent name to go along with their unique game, so they changed the league’s name from the softball league to the All-American Girls Baseball League. The name would undergo a few more changes before permanently landing on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

The League Was Informally Segregated

Despite the name and rule change, recruiters for the league still focused their efforts in finding women from existing softball teams. The organization was started while the Jim Crow era was still going on, leading to racist practices. The women recruited to the teams were exclusively white women or white-passing Latina women. The Amazon prime version of the story addresses this injustice by following the story of Max, who was based on 3 real women named Toni Stone, Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, and Connie Morgan, who were all players too skilled to be ignored. These women were so talented that they made the men’s professional black League. What a shame it is that those women, and countless others’, talents weren’t given the same opportunities as the women in the AAGPBL.

Talent Wasn’t Enough to Join the Team

Within the limiting recruitment policies, recruiters tried to get the best of the best for the first 60 player roster. But being an extremely talented ball player was just a small part of what the board of trustees wanted. No, they wanted femininity. The women invited to join the roster were put through vigorous charm school. This was more than just the teaching manners and makeup depicted in the movie. Women were expected to appear and act a certain way during every waking moment of their lives, on and off the field. Then when gameplay actually started, they were put in tunic dress uniforms on the field. Talk about impractical! Since the new game incorporated slides from baseball, injuries from lack of proper protective uniforms were frequent.

Women Weren’t Expected To Draw a Crowd

Despite all their efforts, the women of the AAGPBL were not highly thought of in the sports world. Wrigley had a hard time convincing other Major League owners that a new type of baseball league would be profitable. Even with all of the extra measures the women athletes were subject to, the people in charge weren’t convinced that super fem girls playing baseball in dresses would bring in the fans. While the players made their best effort on the field, it was still an uphill battle finding an audience. Ultimately, the owners fell back on the familiar. They got notable figures in men’s baseball to serve as the managers to draw interest in the new organization.

Many Players Were Queer

The AAGPBL wasn’t all super strict rules and sexist expectations though. Some players, like former pitcher Maybelle Blair have since spoken in interviews about just how much fun the girls had while on the teams. Unfortunately, a lot of them had to hide major parts of their personal life to stay a part of them.. According to Blair, up to two thirds of the players were gay, which was socially unacceptable at the time, and made their lifes really hard. Nonetheless, love prevailed for many of the women - including former player Terry Donahue, who eventually got her 60+ years-long love story with Pat Henschel shared in a Netflix documentary in 2020.

The Success Didn't Last

Throughout the duration of the war, the AAGPBL had gradually growing success. In its peak, the organization had ten teams. But as the drafted men started to come home, the women’s league started to lose fans and audience attendance. In the height of the organization’s decline, the team directors voted to operate their teams on their own rather than under a centralized control. This led to poor communication and a lack of promotion for the teams that were still playing in the league. With not enough advertising, audience, or money, only five teams remained when the league disbanded after the 1954 season.

The Players Got Deserved Recognition

The women who got to play for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League were trailblazers. They had to fight tooth and nail for a place on the field. Even though the league didn’t last, the fight these women had did. In the 1980s, some of the former players started having reunions, prompting them to search for a way for their accomplishments to be remembered. By 1988, the women had played an integral part in starting an exhibit in the MLB Hall of Fame as well as changing the official name of the league to All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: a feat worthy of being remembered.

The 2022 Show Is a More Authentic Depiction of the League

In both the 1992 film and the 2022 show, the team of focus is one of the AAGPBL’s real leagues teams. The Rockford Peaches were one of the original four teams at the start of the league and one of the five at the end. But outside of that, the movie missed a lot of the more serious issues the tv show seems to be addressing. With society becoming more accepting of all people, we are finally getting to see their stories, which are stories that are worth watching and learning from. We only hope this trend sparks a change that might allow us to have a women’s pro baseball league again one day!