A Whole New Ballgame: Seventy-five years ago, when many pro baseball players went off to war, female ballplayers stepped up to the plate.

• Author: Bubar, Joe
• Position: TIMES PAST 1943

In May 1943, Betsy Jochum stepped onto the diamond at Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs. She and nearly 300 other women from across the United States and Canada had been invited to try out for the first professional baseball league for women.

"Women playing on Wrigley Field--could you imagine that?" says Jochum, now 97.

Not many people could imagine that 75 years ago, when a woman's place was supposed to be in the home, not playing pro sports. But America's entry into World War II in 1941 had forced the nation to rethink gender roles in a variety of fields, and that helped open the door for the creation of the new league, which would come to be known as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

Only 60 players would make the cut for the original four teams. Jochum, who had grown up playing softball in Cincinnati, Ohio, impressed the scouts with her speed, hitting, and fielding, and was selected to play for the Blue Sox of South Bend, Indiana.

She and the league's other players had been chosen for two important tasks: to boost Americans' morale during wartime and to keep the national pastime alive while millions of men were overseas fighting.

Long before the 1972 passage of Title IX banned gender discrimination in high school and college athletics (see "A Level Playing Field?") and fueled the rise of women's professional sports, these pioneering women proved that they belonged among the ranks of pro athletes.

$50 per Week

During her first season with the Blue Sox, Jochum earned $50 per week--more than a lot of jobs paid back then, and about the same as many male minor league ballplayers made.

"It was quite an opportunity to get paid to play a game," says Jochum. "It was the greatest feeling in the world."

When Jochum was growing up, there were no professional sports leagues for women, though some individual female athletes had achieved stardom. In 1931, a 17-year-old girl named Jackie Mitchell did play for the Lookouts, a minor league team from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and she even struck out New York Yankees Hall of Famers Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig back-to-back in an exhibition game. But, Mitchell said, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Landis then banned her from ever playing major league ball.

Women were kept out of jobs in many industries. But World War II led to a change in the way women were viewed in the workplace. By 1943, more than 10 million men had joined the armed forces to fight overseas, leaving a shortage of workers on the home front. As a result, the U.S. government started the Rosie the Riveter ad campaign to attract women to the workforce, and more than 6 million women answered the call during the war, often stepping in to fill jobs that only men had done before. Many went to work in factories, where they built the weapons, ships, and planes used against Germany, Japan, and the other Axis Powers.

The war had taken a toll on Major League Baseball. By 1943, more than half of the league's players had traded their baseball uniforms for combat fatigues after getting drafted or enlisting to fight, and attendance at games was dropping. Commissioner Landis had even considered suspending baseball altogether during the war. In 1942, he wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for his advice. Roosevelt responded the next day, urging him to keep the players on the field.

"I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going," the president wrote. "There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work."

'Truly a Feminine Game'

But how could baseball executives keep fans interested in the game when so many of the top players were off to war? Philip K. Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs and the Wrigley chewing gum company, came up with an idea: to create a women's league that combined both baseball and softball with its own modified rules. His hope was that women would help keep the national pastime going, just as they were carrying on the work in offices, on farms, and in factories.

Wrigley sent scouts to softball and baseball fields across the country and Canada to recruit women for the new league. All the players had to be white, just as in Major League Baseball, which wouldn't allow a black player until 1947.

The scouts were in search of athletic talent, but they also paid close attention to the players' appearances and behavior. Wrigley and his partners felt that fans would buy into the idea of a women's baseball league only if the players exhibited the feminine standards of the era. In a letter to potential players in 1943, they wrote that the game "will be truly a feminine game without taking away any of the thrilling action.... Girls will dress, act, and carry themselves as befits the feminine sex."

The players were expected to act "ladylike," both on the field and off. They were forbidden from drinking alcohol or smoking in public, they had to be accompanied by a team chaperone at all times, and they always had to wear "feminine attire." They even had to play while wearing shorts and a skirt, often leaving them bruised and bloody from sliding. And during the league's first two seasons, all the women were required to attend charm school, where they were taught how to walk, talk, and sit "like a lady" and to put on makeup.

Some players resented the league's emphasis on their femininity rather than on their athleticism, but they knew they had to play by the rules if they wanted to play ball.

"They wanted us to look...