In the 1970s, several dozen determined girls brought lawsuits to play in Little League baseball. But none of them was actually the first to breach the gender barrier there. That honor goes to Kathryn “Kay” Johnston Massar.
For her story, we have to go all the way back to 1950.
Kay lived in Corning, New York, a hot spot for Little League baseball. A Corning team had gone to the Little League World Series quarter-finals in 1948 and the semifinals in 1949. Kids could really play ball in Corning.
But no matter how much she loved baseball, Kay realized that her gender would shut her out of the game.
“My mother was braiding my hair one day when I was 13 years old and my brother left the house with his bat to go practice, and I started crying,” she recalled. “I knew I could play. I was just as good as him and better than some of the other boys.”*
The braids gotta go
Kay and her mother hatched a plot. They cut off her waist-length braids, and on the day of the Little League tryouts, she borrowed a pair of her brother’s baseball pants, grabbed a baseball cap and her glove and took off out the door.
Only one thing remained to pull off the deception. How could she sign up as Kay? She wouldn’t even be allowed to try out. So Kay borrowed one more thing — the name of a character in “Little Lulu,” her favorite comic strip. Tubby. She tried out for the King’s Dairy team across town, where no one knew her or would recognize her.
Kay — I mean, Tubby — made the team, as she knew she would. Her father bought her a first baseman’s glove. She slept with the mitt under her pillow, breathing in the smell of the leather.
“I was so happy,” Kay said. “I wasn’t thinking, I’m breaking a barrier; I was just playing the sport I loved.”**
Better ‘fess up
She played for a few weeks before her nerves got the best of her. Afraid of being discovered and kicked off the team, she confessed to her coach what she’d done. He waved off her concern. “You’re my first baseman,” he said.***
Kay had the time of her life on that team. “I played the whole season,” she said. “So much fun, a thrill!”
Despite Kay’s new look and name, word soon got around that a girl was playing with the boys. While her teammates didn’t seem to mind, other people did.
“It was the other [opposing] players that would push me down or call me names, and the parents initially booed when I went out to play,” Kay said. “They could see that I was a better player than some of their sons.”****
And that’s that… until…
Eventually, word reached Little League headquarters that a girl was playing on a team in Corning. The higher-ups put a stop to the insurrection, adding wording into the Little League rules that excluded girls. Unofficially, the rule became known as the Tubby Johnston Rule.
That rule stood for the next 24 years, until 1974, when Maria Pepe, a 12-year-old girl in Hoboken, New Jersey, sued Little League for the right to play, and she won.
Kay’s story was eclipsed by Maria’s for a long time, but on September 27, 2006, she threw out the first pitch at a Yankees game; she’s also thrown out a first pitch for the Oakland A’s. She is honored as a trailblazer at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. But in the end, her status as a first has always been eclipsed by her love of the game.
“You know, I have to tell you, when I went out pretending to be a boy, I had no idea I was setting some sort of a record,” she said.† “That was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted to play the game.”
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* Joe Davidson, “Yolo County’s Nakken inspires as first base coach for Giants,” The Sacramento Bee (July 24, 2020), p. B4. About her age — years later, Kay confessed that she was actually 14 years old when she tried out for the team. In reality, she’d aged out of Little League, which was open to boys ages 9-12.
** Selena Roberts, “She had a secret,” Sports Illustrated (June 20, 2011).
*** This quote and the next one comes from the Sacramento Bee article.
**** “A Little League Of Her Own: The First Girl In Little League Baseball,”NPR Morning Edition (March 30, 2018).
† NPR