Sue's on first : lessons learned from the oral histories of women baseball players : an honors thesis (HONRS 499)

The girls who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s and 1950s are often credited as pioneers whose accomplishments continue to have farreaching effects for women. The purpose of this project is to bring new relevance to women's baseball. The current era of professional baseball has been challenged by conservative fans as lacking the strategy, the respectability, and the significance of earlier periods. I propose that by applying an understanding of the history of the AAGPBL to Major League Baseball today, the spirit of the game can be revived. The issues highlighted in this paper as a springboard for considering men's and women's baseball include fan relations, player attitude, and team organization, which are discussed within a framework of historical literature, scholarly journals, scrapbooks, and personal interviews.