WOMEN IN BASEBALL SPECIAL COLLECTION (continued...)
1883 barnstorming tour. Still, figures like Francis C. Richter - owner of The Sporting Life - crafted a decidedly anti-female narrative when it came to baseball, frequently printing accounts of the failings of professional female teams and criticizing women who elected to play. Late into the 19th Century, the most visible depictions of women “playing” baseball came to people via fictionalized illustrations of female baseball players published in various newspapers, or through the depiction of nameless women in uniform on baseball cards and cabinet photos - images designed to titillate or misinform, sexualizing women or deliberately making them appear clumsy or unskilled. Despite the unflattering portrayals, baseball is a beautiful game that appeals to everybody, and because of this, female baseball endured. More and more female players and teams were established, and more surprisingly, more women began playing on men’s teams. Early athletes like Lizzie Arlington, Ruth Egan, Maud Nelson and Alta Weiss played professionally with men’s teams, Arlington becoming the first woman paid to play baseball for a men’s team, signing a contract with Atlantic League president Ed Barrow to pitch in exhibitions. Barnstorming teams like Sylvester Wilson’s “Black Stockings Nine” continued to be popular in the late 19th Century. Wilson was a notorious figure, a tireless promoter of female baseball but also a criminal and pedophile who was arrested in the late 1870s for “engaging girls under 16 For immoral purposes.” As Wilson piled up arrests and accusations, he moved from state to state, sometimes under assumed names, establishing female teams along the way. One of Wilson’s barnstorming teams sparked a near-riot in Weehawken, New Jersey in 1890, when several hundred rowdy spectators caused fighting and threatened the team, ultimately causing the Nine to flee. Professional “Bloomer Girls” teams, named after the bloomer-style pants they wore, barnstormed the country from the nineteenth century through the 1930s, taking on all comers, male or female - sometimes with a male player or two in drag. While the first Bloomer Girls teams began in the 1890s, by the early 1900s Bloomer Girl teams were everywhere, dozens of them providing hundreds of young women (and more than a few young men) paying jobs in baseball. In turn, they inspired a host of female teams and athletes in a variety of sports, helping reverse negative stereotypes for female athletes, trailblazing that continues today. On May 1, 2022, Kelsey Whitmore became the first woman to start an Atlantic League game, playing left field for the Staten Island FerryHawks. Three days later, she became the first female to pitch in an Atlantic League game, entering the game in relief with two outs and the bases loaded, retiring former major leaguer Ryan Jackson to end the inning. Whitmore remains with the FerryHawks, having pitched 6.2 innings in relief so far this season. This past March, Brown University’s Olivia Pichardo became the first woman to play in a Division I baseball game, grounding out in a pinch hit appearance. The day before this paragraph was written, Pichardo became the first woman to hit a home run in a collegiate baseball league game, and her teammates exploded off the bench in response. As the doors open wider and more and more women are given opportunities to compete, superstars will emerge, and someone will demonstrate the talent required to compete at the highest level. I hope we all get to see it. But until then, enjoy this trip through the earliest days of women in baseball.
182. c.1880’s Allen & Ginter Black Stocking Nine Cabinet Photo MINIMUM BID: $100
183. c.1880’s Virginia Brights Black Stocking Nine Cabinet Photo MINIMUM BID: $100
SPRING 2021 PREMIER AUCTION − CLOSES AUGUST 19, 2023 55
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