Take them out to the ballgame
New documentary, new league show women’s growing interest in playing baseball
When I was a kid, I loved baseball. Not just the game, the ball itself. I loved the way it felt in my hand, I loved the way it felt in my glove. And when that first warm day of spring came, my sister Lori and I would be outside playing catch, often with a baseball and not a softball.
Then when it came time to join a league, the league was softball. I was just a little kid, so I happily joined and didn’t give much thought beyond a wish that it was baseball. But we played softball, no questions asked.
Eventually, questions were asked. By girls. By parents. By lawyers. The answers to years of those questions are coming to fruition and a beautiful example of that is the documentary “See Her Be Her” now showing on Prime Video.
As Opening Day comes to the lush fields of major league ballparks, an equally gorgeous sight is this travelogue of women playing baseball throughout the world. Filmmaker Jean Fruth piled up the frequent flier miles to tell the stories of women baseball players in the U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Uganda.
In a variety of languages, the message is the same: We love this game and just want to play.
At the 2024 Women’s Baseball World Cup and games leading up to it, we meet women who are doing just that. There’s Ayami Sato of Japan, a six-time World Cup gold medalist considered by some to be the greatest women’s baseball player in the world. There’s Kelsie Whitmore, a member of Team USA who was the first woman to sign a contract to play for a Major League Baseball-affiliated minor league team when she signed with Staten Island FerryHawks of the Atlantic League.
And there are women juggling the dream of playing baseball with the realities of their lives, like Canada’s Alli Schroder, whose day job is fighting forest fires and wildfires in British Columbia. “See Her Be Her” shows how she was badly burned fighting a fire four days before arriving in Thunder Bay for the World Cup tournament, but, as Schroder said, fortunately it was her left hand and not her throwing arm.
These are some badass women.
The film weaves together current baseball dreams with those in the past. Most famous of all is the World War II-era All American Girls Professional Baseball League, featured in the classic film “A League of Their Own.”
But there’s more than that.
Shortly after the AAGPL’s short-lived fame, girls and women were shunted toward softball because its larger ball, smaller field, underhand pitching and seemingly slower pace were deemed more appropriate for the delicate females who might want to play – a point of view that could only be held by someone who has never seen the badass women who play softball. (None of this is a knock on softball. It’s a great game; it’s just not the same as baseball.)
An uglier aspect of the AAGPL’s history is its segregation; it did not allow Black players. But the famed Negro Leagues did and three women played in that league. In 1972, a New Jersey girl, Maria Pepe, wasn’t allowed to play Little League baseball because she was a girl. Her family, along with the National Organization for Women, sued for discrimination and won. By the time the ruling came, Pepe had aged out of Little League but the decision has helped generations of girls play their preferred game.
Because softball has such a stronghold, it seems unlikely that baseball is going to knock it off its sports perch. Yet, things are moving forward for girls and women in baseball, on the field and in front offices. An organization called Baseball For All launched a national collegiate club championship in 2021.
And beginning in 2026, women’s pro baseball will come to the U.S. The Women’s Professional Baseball League will launch with six teams, based in the Northeast.
“See Her Be Her” is a beautiful reminder of people’s dreams, what it takes to reach them and the ridiculous things that can deny them along the way.
I wish I would have seen it with my sister. Maybe next time we get together we can play catch.
Another baseball groundbreaker
Later this spring, I will host a Zoom call for subscribers with former Major League Baseball writer Melissa Ludtke. She has a new book, Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside, and it’s an important one in the story of women and baseball.
During the 1977 World Series, Ludtke was a reporter for Sports Illustrated and barred from entering the New York Yankees’ locker room though the male reporters were allowed. She sued MLB and the Yankees for discrimination and won. It’s a landmark case that opened the door, literally, for female sports writers in the decades since (though it still hasn’t always made their lives easy).
She also has a great Substack called Let’s Row Together, about sports and a variety of other topics.
Ludtke will join us to discuss the book and her experiences. A date hasn’t been set, but it’s good to announce it now so those interested can get going on the book.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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