Barbara Gregorich - Research Notes for Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, Volumes 1, 2, and 3

Boston Herald, August 23, 1903

WOMAN PLAYS GREAT BALL

Miss Neilson, Although Her Team Lost, Struck Out Seven Men in Five Innings and Hit Hard

Special Dispatch to the Sunday Herald.

Lewiston, Me., Aug. 22, 1903 — The Star Bloomers, an aggregation consisting of three men and six women, played a game of baseball this afternoon on Garcelon Athletic Field with the Athletics of this city. The Athletics won by a score of 9 to 8. The feature of the game was the pitching, batting and fielding of Miss Neilson. She made three base hits, and had four put outs and four assists and made no errors. In the five innings she pitched she struck out seven men. One thousand people witnessed the exhibition.

— from Research Notes for Women at Play, Volume 1

The Cleveland Press, Cleveland, Ohio, March 26, 1934

Didrikson Is the McCoy, She Can Throw, Hit, Field, Attention Prexy Bradley

by STUART BELL

Bell's feature column takes up most of the left-hand side of the first page of The Press Sports section. He starts by stating that President Alva Bradley should sign Babe Didrikson to play for the Indians, and states that Babe "isn't any joke as a baseball player."

Bell argues that Didrikson was in a class of her own and that " . . . the old Bloomer Girls and Miss [Jackie] Mitchell didn't play ball like the Babe plays it."

Bell states that Babe pitched two innings for the Indians against New Orleans yesterday. At spring training, Babe "got into all the pepper [unreadable word] games with the regular players and did everything they could do."

"Maybe the Babe can't play second base as well as Boze Berger, though that is hard to tell because nobody ever saw her play second base, but she can beat Boze up there at the dish. The Babe takes that bat off her shoulder and swings it."

—from Research Notes for Women at Play, Volume 2

Research Notes for Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, Volumes 1, 2, and 3

In researching the story that became Women at Play, the author accumulated thousands of pages of articles, notes, interviws, documentation, photographs, etc. All these materials were donated to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2016. But before donating the materials, the author published three volumes of the public domain portion of the original research. These three volumes are used by baseball researchers, fans, historians, and teachers of the research paper. For her research, writing, and speeches on women in baseball history, Barbara Gregorich received the 2024 SABR Dorothy Seymour Mills Award. Buy now.

When I came upon Gregorich's Research Notes, the unexpected pleasure of accessing raw material was reminiscent of another reading experience I had long ago. I'll never forget opening the pages of The Waste Land, facsimile edition, complete with T.S. Eliot's early typewritten drafts and Ezra Pound's assertive revisions. Viewing the rough copy, annotations, and raw materials that evolve into a literary masterpiece is an immense privilege and a joy. Admittedly, it may be a stretch to compare a baseball book with an epic poem crafted by a Nobel laureate, but the learning experiences are not altogether different. In one case, we open to the drafts, scribbles, and edits from which poetry was rigorously yet magically shaped; in another, we glimpse the raw material out of which an entire culture of sport and a whole new literary genre came to be. On both counts, we have an opportunity to delve into valuable primary material, without which the thing itself — a masterful epic poem or an entire culture of baseball — would not exist as we know it.

— Judy Johnson, Watching the Game

This collection of notes is perfect for this sort of introduction to research. The subject appeals to students. Because of the blatant sexism of many articles, the book offers rich grounds for thesis statements on tone, gender bias, and humor — as well as the more concrete and obvious sports topics. The use of outdated sports slang and unfamiliar cultural references presents opportunities to model the common need to do further research to understand sources. In some instances, Gregorich summarizes articles and gives only limited direct quotes. A discussion of her choices could provide insight into how real authors select what goes into direct quotes, indirect quotes, summaries, or paraphrases. Her careful attention to detail, such as the use of [sic] for irregular spellings and score tallies that do not add up, again shows what professional writers do — without sounding pedantic. The final chapter, in which she discusses her four-year search using archives, letters, interviews with relatives, and other venues to find something as simple as the real names of these early female athletes, is an eye-opener. I will use this resource. I am sure.

— Robin D. Smith, PhD, The Needle's Eye
(Newsletter of the Virginia Association of Teachers of English)

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What to Do with Heaps of Research Notes on Women's Baseball History, Volume 1, Video