Hoboken, New Jersey, considers itself the birthplace of baseball. The first officially recorded game of baseball was played at the town’s Elysian Fields on June 19, 1846. There’s a plaque honoring this fact — I’ve seen it.
It is fitting then that 126 years later, Maria Pepe, a 12-year-old Hoboken girl, broke Little League’s gender barrier.
But she wasn’t the first to try.
Little League Baseball was founded in 1939 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, as a summer program for boys. Girls weren’t specifically addressed — organizers just assumed girls couldn’t play.
But in 1950, Kathryn Johnston tried out for a team in Corning, New York. She tucked her hair into her baseball cap and pretended to be a boy. She made the team and played all season, even though the league manager learned she was a girl.
The next year, however, Little League added a clause to its charter that excluded girls.
In 1964, a congressional act signed by President Johnson granted Little League nonprofit status. Its stated purpose? To help boys develop qualities of citizenship, sportsmanship and manhood.
Whoa, hold on there, girls started to say.
Storming the dugout
On April 6, 1973, 10-year-old Pamela Magill signed up for the Avonworth (PA) Baseball Conference (ABC)’s summer baseball program. But the next day, a league official told her she couldn’t play because the program was for boys only.
The league offered to start a softball program for girls, but Pamela wasn’t interested in softball. Her parents sued the ABC, saying that their daughter’s exclusion violated civil rights guaranteed by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Sadly, that argument didn’t hold. A district court decided that no constitutional right had been violated. The family appealed.
“The right to equal opportunities, the right to at least try out for the team, is a constitutional right,” said American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Stanley Stein, who represented the family.*
Pamela took part in a baseball clinic while the court battle waged. But the organization’s argument that baseball was a contact sport, and thus exempted from Title IX, prevailed. Girls were too fragile to play, the court said.
The windup in Hoboken
Meanwhile, a year earlier, in 1972 — the very dawn of Title IX! — Maria Pepe was invited by a coach to join the Young Democrats, a Little League team in Hoboken.
Maria pitched in three games until opposing teams and parents realized she was a girl and protested. Little League officials ordered the coach to cut her from his team or the entire local league would be dropped.
“I was stripped of my uniform because I was a girl, not because of an inability to play,” Maria said.**
The National Organization for Women, along with the state’s Division of Civil Rights, filed a protest, pointing out that the league used public fields and accepted public funds, so participation had to be open to all children.
Not backing down, Little League officials opined that girls were weaker than boys and their bones too fragile to play. Again with the same argument!
Play halted for New Jersey’s 2,000 Little League teams while the case wound its way through the courts. In 1974, the courts decided in favor of Maria.
“The institution of Little League is as American as the hot dog and apple pie. There is no reason why that part of Americana should be withheld from girls,” Judge Sylvia Pressler ruled.***
Little League appealed but lost. Just days before the end of the baseball season, it was forced to open the organization to girls. The next year, more than 30,000 girls nationwide signed up to play Little League baseball. And in 2004, Maria Pepe threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Little League World Series.
Play ball, girls!
_________________________
* Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (July 7, 1973), p. 5.
** Karen Blumenthal, Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005), p. 55.
*** National Organization for Women, Essex County Chapter v. Little League Baseball, Inc., 67 NJ 320 (NJ 1974). Judge Pressler was serving as a hearing examiner for the state’s Department of Civil Rights.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Maria Pepe (young Maria); Christopher Barth for the Associated Press (adult Maria)
I had no idea of the struggle. I was born in 56 and lived in the country. We were raised with a softball or baseball in hand. I was given a glove for Christmas one year, my favorite gift. But I preferred my sisters glove because it was well broken in. My sister played for Cinderella softball in the 60’s in Corning. We didn’t mix — girls played with girls. Except one day my sister played first base with the boys baseball game and no glove. She made it, but plenty of sprained fingers.
I looked into the Cinderella league! Will write about it. But must talk with you first… tomorrow or Friday?