All-american Girls Professional Baseball League

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate September 2001

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"Each girl stand, her head so proudly high, her motto do or die." This is a line from the victory song written and sung by the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGBL) in 1943-1954. During those days it wasn't common for a woman to be out playing a sport. Much less, playing a sport before the eyes of thousands of paying spectators. However, when the professional men were sent off to fight for their county in World War II, these women not only played the sport, but eventually replaced men by playing just as hard.

Before World War II, when America was avoiding the idea of war, families were formed as if from a template. The father was the head of the house and worked all day long while the mother raised the family and took care of the household chores. This system was all that women in those days knew.

Although women were granted the 19th amendment to vote with the rest of America, society clung to the idea that women were still dependant on men.

As America suffered many changes as the war went on, so did the American woman's role. Women began to work out of the house, doing jobs such as teachers, nurses, and factory workers. But the women that participated in the league suffered greater changes and had to climb higher barriers. These women such as Dorothy Kamenshek, Joanne Winter, and Connie Wisniewski, all had to prove to America, to their families and even to the founder of the All-American Girls Softball League, that they were better than what was expected.

The founder, Philip K. Wrigley did not create the league as an opportunity for athletic women, but as an alternative form of entertainment to baseball fans. Although the women were mainly doing this for...