From the 1890s to the 1950s, there was organized professional women's baseball in America. Since the 1950s, there have been no professional women's leagues, and just a few pro teams, the last being the Colorado Silver Bullets who folded in 1997.



Why are there very successful professional women tennis players, golfers, gymnasts? Women's basketball at the college level is quite popular. Women's soccer is a big draw at the Olympics. What's different about baseball?



In No Girls in the Clubhouse, Marilyn Cohen addresses the question and finds that the answer is sexism, pure and simple. There's a lot of evidence to back up her conclusion.



Cohen gives an entertaining and comprehensive history of women's baseball from its earliest days in the 1860s. When professional men's teams began to form in the 1880s, it wasn't too long before women followed suit. The first women's teams were a loosely formed "league" of traveling exhibition teams called The Bloomer Girls. Each team had a few men players dressed in skirts and curly wigs, fooling no one. In fact, the men looked on their time with the Bloomer Girls teams as a stepping stone to the big leagues. Rogers Hornsby was a Bloomer Girl in 1912.



Although there were no racially integrated Bloomer Girl teams, there were all-black women's Bloomer Girls. The Bloomer Girls teams played against men's minor league and semi-pro teams. They rarely, if ever, played each other.



Bloomer Girls lasted until the mid 1930s and it wasn't until World War II that women's pro ball returned with the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, made famous again with the movie A League of Their Own. This time the women played other women's teams, almost exclusively. After the All American Girls were phased out after the return of Major League Baseball, there have been few professional women's teams.



Even after Title IX was passed in 1972, prohibiting any discrimination based on sex in schools which receive federal funding, women have been shut out of baseball. No Girls in the Clubhouse advocates women be allowed on men's baseball teams, but even those who'd be satisfied with separate but equal teams have been disappointed. There are few women's baseball teams in any schools at all. For the most part, women are relegated to softball, a sorry substitute for baseball.



After reading No Girls in the Clubhouse, it's hard to find any reason other than sexism for the lack of women in baseball at almost every level. In fact, it seems that women are even further from achieving baseball parity than ever. Even though the Bloomer Girls played in bloomers and long skirts, and the All American Girls played in short skirts and bare legs, they were all recognized as professional baseball players and attracted crowds at every game. We've come a long way, baby.