She has been called one of the best athletes ever, man or woman (Natta). In April 1950, Zaharias was diagnosed with cancer and had an operation, and doctors said she would not be able to return to sports “Three and a half months later, though, she played in competition [golf]. The next year she won the United States Women's Open by twelve strokes… Afterward, she shared her victory with her doctors and the thousands of cancer patients who had written to her and rooted for her” (Natta). She was inspiring to not just women, but also to the million of cancer patients around the world. She showed courage and dedication to everyone. She lived with sexism from women and men, but never lost who she was. She dealt with sexist reporters, golfers, and fans throughout her entire career. At one point in her …show more content…
People called her “lesbian” and “a male”, but she never backed down, instead she accepted who she was. “Didrikson became the first woman to play against men in a PGA Tour event” (Natta). She showed the world what women were capable of when she was a founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (“Babe”). She was critical to the female’s sports world, and opened a door to female athletes everywhere. In addition, to athletes like Babe Didrikson Zaharias, the All-American Professional Girls Baseball League was game changing to female sports. The All-American Professional Girls Baseball League was the first, and only, female baseball league in history. This league was developed during World War II when “ in the interests of patriotism, women were encouraged to do all the things normally reserved for men” (Johnson XIX). At the time the book, When Women Played Hardball, was written in 1994, no other professional sports team had lasted as long as this baseball league. The league lasted a solid nine years. These women did not just play baseball, they broke records. “ Kurys, the "Flint Flash", stole 201 bases [in a season]. Her
During World War II a group of baseball team owners, led by Chicago Cubs owner and candy baron Walter Harvey (Garry Marshall), search for a way to keep their profits up while most of their male baseball players are sent off to war. Their answer is to create a new baseball league made up of all women players they call the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (this is a minor deviation from the actual historic events where the league was founded first as the All-American Girls Softball League but it isn’t a huge deal). Talent scouts are sent out across the nation in search for women players to fill the four new teams, the Rockford Peaches, Racine Bells, Kenosha Comets, and the South Bend Blue Socks. One scout, Earnie Capadino (Jon Lovitz) is sent to rural Oregon and attends a game of catcher Dottie Hinson (Genna Davis) and her sister, pitcher Kit Keller (Lori Petty). He thinks that Dottie is perfect for the league and offers her a spot in tryouts but Dottie, whose husband is overseas in the war, refuses unless he takes her sister Kit also. It is worth m...
But it was her arm that opened the most eyes. During her winter vacation in Iowa one year, she celebrated her first snowfall by packing a snowball and literally heaving it out of sight. Jennie’s hometown was also close to Dodger Stadium, where the Finches had season tickets on the third-base line. Bev, the baseball nut in the family, listened to Vin Scully on a pair of headphones while she took in the action. As soon as Jennie was old enough, she began accompanying her mom to Chavez Ravine, bleeding Dodger blue and rooting for heroes like Kirk Gibson, whose dramatic homer sparked LA to a World Series title a few weeks after Jennie’s eighth birthday.
story follows the girls who take the team to the World Series during a time when the league
Many women have taken up the positions of engineers, factory workers and many more jobs normally occupied by men. Many women that wanted to help with the war effort had worked, bought war bonds, donated clothing and foods and anything else needed to help and support our troops. Some women now had the opportuinty to play baseball and still help promote help for the war. However the idea of women playing baseball and acting like men was completely absurd during that day and age. That year of attendance of The AAGPBL approached one million, with the players completely defined the image of a respectable lady, the girls played ball with a new baseball of fast pitching, stolen bases and injuries, epically skin abrasions from sliding to bases in short skirts. Though the female ball players were skilled and athletic, their required uniform were one piece dresses and had to wear makeup at all times so that it was a reminder to the spectators that these were indeed women playing in the field( ). No player was allowed to drink, smoke, date, cut their hair short or be seen in public with slacks or shorts. Every player were required to join and had to endure “charm schools” where they were obligated to learn ladylike behavior. Though there were many limitations and requirements for the female players this new form of
Kathrine Switzer is not a name you as often as Susan B. Anthony or Sojourner Truth in the fight towards women's equality, but in 1967 she made a stand for all women and proved that she was and still is strong enough to do anything a man can do. Run the Boston Marathon, this little task to some now was a huge step for her, she had to push against everything almost every man most of her life except or few, including one of the men's coaches “A woman can't run the Boston Marathon. Women are too weak and too fragile for 26.2 miles. No dame ever ran no marathon.”(ESPN). During a time period where women in the United States were fighting for equality in the world, Kathrine Switzer battled her way for equality in the world of sports. In 1967 she
The WWII time period was a hard time for American families. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League helped to change the rights of women in the industrial world. Men took care of their responsibilities and served their time in war, but in the meantime, the world-winning women of the AAGPBL stormed the country by surprise. This league was a major success in our history and will leave its legacy among baseball fans for years to come.
Diana is an excellent illustration of the many struggles of women to find a place for themselves in sports. On an individual level, defying societal stereotypes is extremely difficult. The buriers that the first person must overcome are often extreme. However once the first person breaks down those buriers, it becomes increasingly easier for others to follow in their footsteps. Diana's struggle demonstrates both how far women have come and how far women still have to go.
The film “A League of Their Own,” depicts a fictionalized tale of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. This league was started during World War II when many of the Major Leagues Biggest stars were drafted to the war. MLB owners decided to start this league with hopes of making money while the men were overseas fighting. Traditional stereotypes of women in sports were already in force before the league even begins. One of the scouts letts Dottie, one of the films main characters she is the perfect combination of looks as well as talent. The scout even rejects one potential player because she is not as pretty as the league is looking for even though she is a great baseball player. The player, Marla’s father said if she was a boy she would be playing for the Yankee’s. Eventually Mara’s father is able to convince the scout to take Marla to try outs because he raised her on his own after her mother died. Her father says it is his fault his daughter is a tomboy. In this case the film reinforces the traditional stereotype that mothers are in charge of raising their daughters and teaching them to be a lady, where fathers are incapable of raising girls to be anything other than a tomboy. The focus on beauty also reinforces the traditional stereotype that men will only be interested in women’s sports when the females participating in
Frantz, Chris. A. The "Timeline: Women in Sports." Infoplease/Pearson Education, 2007. Web.
For this Women of Diversity Group Project, my group chose to write about female pioneers in sport. Within that category I chose female pioneers of softball. During this paper I will discuss the history of the sport and female participation in the sport. I will also give some statistics and make comparisons between females and males involved in softball and baseball.
Shattuck, Debra (2011). “Women’s baseball in the 1860s: Reestablishing a historical memory.” Nine,19(2), 1-26. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nine/vo19 /19.2.shattuck.html
Lesko, J. (2005). League History. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association. Retrieved for this paper Mar 20, 2014 from, http://www.aagpbl.org/index.cfm/pages/league/12/league-history
...ing on strong: Gender and sexuality in twentieth-century women's sport. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
A central theme in this film correlates to the first concept of the 7 principles describing gender socialization in the United States (Rozema, notes, 2014). This film pervasively focuses on males as the more valued sex (Rozema, notes, 2014). Here, women should easily partition back into a doll mold or submissive role apart from the masculine roles women were called upon to fill during the war. The importance of men never left the focal point. For instance, the black and white scene presenting all the heroic baseball players enlistment to fight for their country, the announcer praises the men for fighting for America, yet questions, “what does this mean for baseball” (Marshall, 1992)? How would baseball continue without men? Ostensibly, a women’s baseball league was a desperate attempt saving rich men’s pocketbooks. Initially, most sport lovers and supporters (mostly male) viewed the women’s league as a superficial and an insignificant replacement to the “real” male version. Just as Dottie expressed to her daughter in the opening scene as she is packing her suitcase, “It was never important to me, it was just something I did” (Marshall, 1992),...
Women are being allowed to participate now, including professional leagues such as the Women’s National Basketball Association, and the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Women in sports, especially softball and basketball, have become a big-time business. World War II is when the basis of women’s professional sports began. While the men were overseas fighting the war against the Nazis and Germans, the women entertained the people who stayed back by playing baseball.