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... home team said Fran Janssen (Janssen interview). Many of the girls lived in the towns they played in, and that gave newspapers great coverage on the hometown heroes that the girls would prove to be. Even national magazines and papers were covering the league. Life and Newsweek highlighted many of star players in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.
This helped the All American Girls Professional Baseball League gain even more popularity, and gave it the exposure that it needed to give itself a positive public image. The league required that the girls play with dignity and integrity, and that provided a good example for the fans to follow. The leagues positive public image concerning its hard play was due to one of the girls motto's, Play like men, but look like women. (Life, 46). To gain respect and publicity the girls were sent to charm school before they could play. They were sent to a school that was run by Helena Rubenstein cosmetic company. At this school the girls were given a beauty kit, and taught how to look their best.
Although this charm school idea may seem trite it showed the public that the league wanted to be the best it could be, at baseball and looking good. When Wrigley started up the league he gave each team half of the $ 45, 000 that it needed to get under way. The cities that each team played in were responsible for coming up with the other half of the money (Nash, 89). This generosity allowed for teams to be financially stable and gave the league stability as well. The league was run as a non-profit organization, and any money that was earned helped pay for new projects being done in the cities. The public and city governments loved this aspect of the league, and gave cities reasons for keeping the league financially stable.
The financial stability that the league enjoyed was also due to strong leadership that started immediately from the top. Wrigley was an outstanding leader for the coaches and girls to follow. He was respectable, and seemed to get along with everyone. He also hired great coaches, many of which played in the Major Leagues prior to the war.
Names like Jimmie Foxx, Max Carey, Dave Arlington, Dave Bancroft, and Marty McManus could be seen throughout the All American Girls Professional Baseball League as coaches and managers (web). These men new what it took to be great ballplayers and this experience gave the girls great leaders to follow in this new league. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League was a novelty in its time. There were no other professional girls leagues of any kind. Many people were attracted to the league just for sheer entertainment of watching girls act like men. Pepper Davis, a former All American Girls Professional Baseball League player, once said, Maybe at first the men came out to see the legs, but they stuck around when they realized they were seeing darn good brand of baseball.
To many people the league was a dream come true, or rather just dream. Dorothy Hunter, also a All American Girls Professional Baseball League player, shared her thoughts with Newsweek Magazine (1946) and stated, If anyone would have told me that in two months I would be in the United States playing baseball on a professional team and getting paid for it I would have thought it to be a pipe dream. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League was more than just entertainment and had many great things that people could brag about, but it also had several failures that caused the league to fold in 1954. Failures were hard for the league to handle, and in 1954 the league couldnt rebound from its hard times. Once a success, the financial stability of the league took a 180 -degree turn for the worst. In 1946 Wrigley decided to sell the league for 10 million dollars after he saw that the mens Major Leagues were not going to go under like he thought.
He sold the league to Arthur Meyerhoff, and that is when everything peak, and started to rapidly crash into failures. Meyerhoff immediately decide to make the league a profit organization and that all the proceeds would go straight to him (Fidler, 156). This caused great dissension between him, the teams, and the cities that the teams played in. The teams and cities felt that they were getting ripped off, and attendance started to decline. When Meyerhoff realized that he was in a no-win situation he decided to sell the teams to individual owners in 1950. This proved to be the biggest downfall of the league.
These individual owners didnt have the income to keep the teams afloat, and operational costs, advertising, and salaries were cutback. This problem soon led to many other problems. The cutback in salaries kept a lack of new players coming into the league and forced many players in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League to retire. Injuries, motherhood, marriage, lack of child care, sick families, education, job conflicts, and aging players also contributed to many of the girls retiring. Before the 1950 season, after Meyerhoff sold the league, thirty percent of the current players retired (Fidler, 169). Society also contributed to the end of the girls professional baseball careers because it felt that the women should be back at home with their families, and not out playing ball.
With the end of the war in the wings, many felt it was time for this temporary fill-in for the Major Leagues to end. Various forms of other entertainment also took away any popularity that the All American Girls Professional Baseball League had. America was seeing many changes due to the end of the war. Gas rationing was lifted and Americans began to travel much more. Television also became popular, and in 1950 Americans bought 7. 5 million television sets (compared with only 975, 000 in 1948) (Macy, 176).
Major League baseball games were now being televised more often giving Americans the convince of watching the ballgames in the own living rooms. People were starting to spend more of their income on gadgets like refrigerators, cameras, washers, dryers, and vacuums. This left les money to spend on activities like going to a professional girls baseball league game. The American Dream was also being realized by many Americans, and many Mid-West families began to move towards many parts in the south, namely Florida. These were the people that us to fill the stands at the womens ballgames.
Kids attentions were now being consumed by activities that were gaining popularity like Little League, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, music lessons, and many television programs. It is evident that the All American Girls Professional Baseball League just could not keep their fans. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which operated from 1943 to 1954, represents one of the most unique periods of baseball's history. The league went through a full life cycle in its eleven years of existence and ended up being a predecessor for other womens leagues to come like the Womens National Basketball Association the is still in existence today. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League had many successes that surprised a lot of people but also faced many failures, which resulted in its death as the only womens professional baseball league that the world has ever seen.
The league may not be known by a lot of people, but the girls who worked so hard to realize their baseball dreams will never be forgotten. Bibliography: web
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Research essay sample on All American Girls Professional Baseball League
