Tag Archives: Little League

Rebel in the 1950s

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.”

                                                _________________

* 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

Little League firestorm

The story of how Maria Pepe, a 12-year-old girl from Hoboken, New Jersey, forced Little League to accept female players is pretty well known. I’ve written about it myself.

            But in reality, the Little League story is not one of a single girl up against a behemoth. It’s more a case of nationwide spontaneous combustion.

            In 1974, about twenty girls across the country brought lawsuits against the all-boy Little League baseball organization. The lawsuits stretched from the East Coast to the West Coast. Maria Pepe’s lawsuit was simply the first one to go to court — and the lawsuit that won the day.

            By the time that court case was settled, Maria was too old to qualify for Little League. In 1972, she had made a team, but she only played in three games before she was forced off the field.

Fighting small minds

            Meanwhile, a girl in Peabody, Massachusetts, had a similar story. When 10-year-old Janine Cinseruli showed up for tryouts in her town, she was barred from the field.

             “When I went to sign up, a guy said, ‘You can’t play,’ and I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because you’re a girl,’” she recalled. “I was not that smart or worldly, but I knew right then it was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. … I said, ‘But I can play, I’m really good.’”*

            Janine’s mother, Marion, went to bat for her. She hired a lawyer and filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Their argument was the same as Maria Pepe’s — that Little League uses public fields and therefore can’t exclude girls from participating.

            When the case went to court, the Suffolk County Superior Court agreed.

            “The boys used to play with the boys, and the girls with the girls, but times have changed,” said Judge Samuel Adams.**

            The ruling came down in favor not only of Janine, but also of 10-year-old Susan Wegryn of Wellesley, Massachusetts, who had filed her own suit. “Baseball is my sport, and I want to play it,” she said in court.***

            The ruling also covered Janet Bowe of Allston, Mass., and Debbie MacColl of Wellesley. Janet had been barred from tryouts, while Debbie had been accepted one year when she signed up using her initials only, but barred the next year, when she wrote out her full name. 

Storming the field

            Trailblazers like these girls don’t forge a path easily. Janine’s family was bombarded with hate mail, which they tried to ignore, but it wasn’t easy.

            “Most of the letters I couldn’t even repeat because they were obscene, that’s just what they were,” Janine’s mother, Marion, said. “But I feel they come from small-minded people and I just burn them, throw them away.”****

            Little League didn’t really see the light. They caved because the cost of the mounting lawsuits would have bankrupted the organization. They continued to insist that Little League was the “prerogative” of males only.

            Meanwhile, after the ruling, in Peabody alone, 25 girls showed up for tryouts.

            Janine celebrated her win in court by dedicating her first game to her attorney, Ruth Budd. She pitched in that game and struck out 16 batters.

            “Roger Clemens did that for the Red Sox [in 1997] and I thought, ‘Cool, I did that, too, when I was 11,’” she said later as an adult.

            Janine went on to play not only regular season Little League, but in all-star teams for the next two summers. She was even elected team captain. I guess she showed them! As did all the other ball-playing girls who started a firestorm on the baseball field.  

                                                __________________________

* Melissa Isaacson, “The girls who toppled Little League,” ESPN.com (June 24, 2014).

** Joseph M. Harvey, “Peabody girl wins Little League trial,” The Boston Globe (April 25, 1974), p. 3.

*** Paul Langner, “2 Mass. girls win Little League case,” The Boston Globe (May 19, 1974), p. 29.

**** This quote and the following one come from Isaacson, “The girls.”