The 1890s saw a revolution in the women’s game. Newer players, unlike the earlier ones, came almost exclusively from working-class or rural backgrounds. Many of them had grown up playing ball with brothers and cousins, and were immune to the stigma of being branded masculine or freakish.
Baseball’s Bloomer Girls Era
In this decade, women’s professional baseball clubs, known as bloomer teams because of the baggy Turkish style trousers originally worn by the players, were established. Having already broken society’s idea that “a woman’s place was in the home,” by working in shops and factories or on farms, these women had no inhibitions about their choice of profession.
Although the bloomer teams were racially segregated, they were integrated by gender, each team normally having one to three male players. Among the men were several future major leaguers such as Hall of Fame infielder Rogers Hornsby.
The teams rarely played each other, instead competing against men’s town, semi-pro, college, and minor league teams in the U.S., Canada and even Japan. Many of the teams were only mediocre, but others did very well against all-male competition, showing a level of athletic skills not known before. Between 1892 and 1900, one team compiled a very respectable record of 731 wins and 646 losses.
Standout Bloomer Era Players
Among the many notable bloomer players, the best was Maud Nelson, a pitcher and third baseman, whose career paralleled bloomer history. Nelson first played at the age of sixteen for the Boston Bloomers in 1897 and once led Boston to 28 wins in 26 days. Over the next three decades, she played for several bloomer and men teams, including the Cherokee Indian Base Ball Club owned by her husband, John B. Olson.
However, Nelson’s biggest contribution may have been as a promoter of the game. Starting in 1911, she and Olson organized several franchises including the Western Bloomer Girls and the American Athletic Girls. Following Olson’s death, Nelson and her second husband formed and operated the All-Star Ranger Girls, a team which lasted until the dying days of the bloomer teams in the 1920s. Nelson also brought respectability to the sport --- her promotional posters urged women and children to attend the games, describing the contests as “Clean, Moral and Refined.”
Another standout was Elizabeth Stride. In 1898, playing under the name Lizzie Arlington, she pitched for Reading, Pennsylvania, in a regular season minor league game against Allentown. Although she was signed to play as a publicity stunt, she made the most of her one inning stint, giving up two hits and no runs.
Lizzie Murphy also played men’s semipro ball in the United States and Canada and in the 1920’s played first base in two exhibition games against the Boston Red Sox and the Boston Braves, the first woman to play against a major league team. Murphy’s feat was duplicated by Babe Didrikson in 1934.
In 1931, pitcher Beatrice (Jackie) Mitchell signed a minor league contract with Chattanooga. In an exhibition game against the fabled New York Yankees, she recorded back-to-back strikeouts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Although there were immediate cries of “fix”, Mitchell maintained until her death in 1987 that her feat was legitimate. Unfortunately, her minor league career came to a quick end when baseball’s commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, voided her contract, maintaining that baseball was “too strenuous” for a woman.
Other Leagues for Women
Industry and businesses also provided an outlet for women desiring to play baseball. In the years prior to World War I, industrial leagues were formed across the country for workers. Originally established for men, within a few years women’s industrial teams were also formed. These leagues, which were extremely popular with both players and spectators, lasted for several decades before being replaced with less costly softball teams in the 1930s.
By the mid-1930s, Bloomer and other women’s baseball teams were gone. However, there was a revival in the 1940s with the creation of the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League.
Recommended reading: Berlage, Gai Ingham, Women in Baseball: The Forgotten History (Westport, CT: Praeger Trade,1994)
John K. Davis - John is a retired teacher/librarian and has also been doing freelance writing since the late 1970s. Over this period of time, he has had ...
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