Women Who Played
Hard Ball: The Real "League of Their Own"
Through 2006
The women who made up the teams of the All-American Girls
Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) were pioneers in
sports--yet played for the love of the game. They
crisscrossed the Midwest making history in ball parks--yet
just wanted to drive in the scoring run. They were
immortalized in the film, A League of Their Own--yet
gathered at annual reunions simply to see “old friends.”
Their story is told in Women Who Played Hard Ball: The Real
“League of Their Own,” on view at the Northern Indiana
Center for History. The new exhibition opens on May 17, the
anniversary of the day in 1943 when final selection of
players took place in Wrigley Field and spring training for
the new League began.
With the entrance of the United States into World War II,
Philip Wrigley was apprehensive that major league baseball
would suffer due to the number of players being drafted into
the armed services. In creating the women’s teams, he hoped
that stadiums would remain full and public support of major
league baseball would stay active.
And it worked. In the mid-sized towns of the Midwest, there
was significant support for the 14 women’s teams that were
part of the AAGPBL. The teams included the Rockford Peaches,
South Bend Blue Sox, Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles,
Milwaukee Chicks, Minneapolis Millerettes, Grand Rapids
Chicks, Fort Wayne Daisies, Muskegon Lassies, Peoria
Redwings, Chicago Colleens, Springfield Sallies, Battle
Creek Belles and Kalamazoo Lassies.
Uniforms, baseballs, gloves, photographs, a baseball signed
by A League of Their Own’s Tom Hanks, Genna Davis and
Madonna, and other artifacts of the AAGPBL can be viewed at
this permanent exhibition at the Center for History, which
is the national repository for the League’s artifacts,
photographs and documents.
