Barbara Gregorich - Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball

As one intimate with the ground, Sophie Kurys judged ballparks from an unusual angle: she was less concerned with the depth of the outfield or smoothness of the infield than with the nature of the dirt. The playing field at Fort Wayne she remembers as the worst in the league, because whenever it rained, the grounds crew burned the field. "To get it playable they put oil and gasoline on it and burned it," she explains. "It was like a brick."

But even on a field merely ground-hard instead of brick-hard, hitting the dirt in a skirt was torture. "They thought that having skirts would show that we were extremely feminine," she says, "but I think all of us would have rather played in standard uniforms." Sliding across the ground in bare skin gave players abrasion upon abrasion: broken skin bled into their clothing and large bruises showed on their legs. "That one year I set the record, my chaperone made this donut affair so the wound wouldn't leak onto my clothes, because if it did, it would be torture to try and get the clothes off."

As a form of protection, the AAGBL provided players with sliding pads. The women were expected to tape the bulky pads to their thighs, but after trying them, the ballplayers unanimously rejected them. Aside from the fact that the pads looked awful hanging down from a short skirt, "they were too cumbersome," Kurys explains. "So I took them off and took my chances with strawberries. I had strawberries on strawberries. Sometimes now, when I first get up in the morning, I have problems with my thighs."

Kurys is amazed that today some promoters want to start a women's league, "just like ours, skirts and all." She doesn't understand the thinking behind asking anybody to slide in a skirt. If such a league ever does get started, she predicts that "You aren't going to get [today's athletes] to do the things we did. You've got to protect them."

— Sidebar from the chapter "Sophie Kurys," Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball

Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball

Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball was the first book to tell the dramatic story of women who played baseball, starting with young Maud Nelson, who pitched Bloomer Girl teams to victory from the 1890s into the 1920s.

The book received a boxed review in The New York Times and was awarded the SABR-MacMillan Award for best baseball research. In December of 2017 Women at Play was brought back to popular attention when Francis Ford Coppola, in a NY Times Book Review, asked the question of which book readers would be surprised to find on his shelf, answered: "Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, by Barbara Gregorich." In January 2018 the digital text-only edition of Women at Play was published in celebration of the book's 25th anniversary. Buy now.

To date the story of women in baseball, like the story of blacks in baseball prior to 1947, is one of persistent, skilled individuals — pioneers — who were set apart not because they were the only ones who could play or umpire or manage, but because they were the few who couldn't be stopped by all the social, cultural and political barriers placed between them and the realization of their baseball talents. These are compelling stories, and they are well-told here. . . . Gregorich is a fine writer whose prose is lucid and lively, and she knows her baseball.

— Elysian Fields Quarterly

Gregorich is to be commended for bringing out of obscurity such baseball pioneers as Maud Nelson, Lizzie Arlington, Amanda Clement, and Alta Weiss.

— The New York Times

Women at Play can do for women in baseball what Only the Ball Was White did for African Americans: illuminate decades of accomplishment in the face of prejudice to, if not a general audience, then at least to that segment of baseball fans who care about history and justice.

— The Cooperstown Review

Gregorich postulates that somewhere out there, playing T-ball or Little League, is the girl who will crack the gender barrier in major league baseball. After reading Women at Play, I believe her.

— Oxford Review

An important new text.

— USA Today's Baseball Weekly

Q: What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

A: Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, by Barbara Gregorich.

— Francis Ford Coppola interview, NY Times Book Review, December 21, 2017

________________

Writing Women at Play: Video