Should Women Play Professional Baseball Again? (Yes, Again)
Baseball has already admitted women to its ranks. Will the MLB do it again?

Opinion

Brian Ross
Sr. Editor

Mamie "Peanut" Johnson was one of a small handful of women who played professional baseball. Not in the national association. Dr. Johnson played for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues in the 1950s, when another heinous form of segregation was still in effect.

For all you purists who scoff at the notion that women can play baseball, Dr. Johnson had a 38-6 career against men as a pitcher for Indianapolis. Not too shabby a record in a league with arguably some of the best athletes of their time. One of her mentors was the legendary Satchel Page.

It took modern, professional baseball a century to truly integrate African Americans and Hispanics, and more than a century to acknowledge that Asian players could play baseball.

Can Asians, Hispanics and African Americans play baseball? Without question. Can women play the national pastime in an age where women are CEOs and astronauts?

The fault lies not in their abilities, but in the male ego.

Male ballplayers grumble about the physical roughness that bars women from the sport. Yet it is the bruising of their egos, not the arms and legs of women, that is the far bigger barrier to women.

Many men would like to dispute that women can play as well as a great percentage of the men in the game, but it is more prejudice than fact. There are women who put up good numbers in colleges and in regional women's baseball and nascent semi-pro leagues. Mamie Johnson proved that sex is not a determining factor in pitching prowess.

We saw the PGA, the apex of another sport based more on skill than the ability to overpower, rocked by women daring to play in tour events.

The Williams sisters are rewriting the rules of tennis by redefining the physical power of the women's game. There are many highly ranked men in tennis who would not fare so well against either Venus or Serena.

While it is infrequent, women are being allowed to try out and are not being actively barred from minor league hockey.

The WPFL (Women's Professional Football League) fields semi-pro teams of women playing NFL-style, pads-on football that draw good crowds.

There are those that will argue that the physicality of basketball, football, or hockey create an uneven playing field that handicaps women. The national pastime lacks this excuse.

Baseball is a game of the physical, the psychological, and the emotional. So why are women barred in the 21st century from baseball? Changes in the game, and the wounding of male pride.

Women are physically able to pitch, hit, field, and run. Many are strong enough to keep up with and surpass many of their male counterparts. While there might not be a woman with the physical power of a Mark McGwire, most professional ballplayers aren't built as power hitters.

Women would bring a change in the psychology of baseball that would better it, but would change it in ways that would take a lot of re-education of men in the game.

Skin tone, as seemingly insurmountable a barrier as it has been, is far less daunting than applying female perspective to a male-dominated game.

If men are from Mars and women from Venus, women will undoubtedly change the game of baseball in the ways in which they play the game. While I may be seen by many of my gender as a Benedict Arnold, I'd have to say they'll change it for the better.

While I have no statistical data to back up the claim, I can say, based solely on observation, that today's women play a more team-oriented game. They play more strategically, much as men did back in the days before the free-agent, I'm-in-it-for-me, dixieland-style baseball clubs of today.

Like Dixieland bands, modern baseball clubs are collections of talented players, all playing their own gigs, hoping that a central rhythm evolves to keep them all glued together for the year or two that they have before finances send this or that player packing.

Minors As Proving Ground

Women, just like men, need to pay their dues, and work their way through the system. Introducing integrated baseball would undergo less shock if women were able to move up through the affiliated ranks just as the men do. Issues of ego, resentment for "losing" slots to women, and other issues might be resolved easier beginning at the entry-level ranks of baseball

The Next Jackie Robinson & Her Patron

Jackie Robinsons aren't born, they are discovered. A talent like Robinson would have disappeared into the legions of Negro League players had there not been the will to bring him into the game.

Visionaries the likes of Branch Rickey, Sr. are few and far between.

A respected person from baseball must step up and validate women in the MLB, just as those in the front office have validated Asian players. Right now, there isn't any indication that there is such a visionary.

Perhaps it will be the female ownership in minor ball clubs. Perhaps a female CEO of one of the conglomerates that owns a major league club will lead the call, or a male GM who longs for butts in now-empty seats.

Baseball needs to find ways to get into sync with the 21st century. In an age where the glass ceiling for women erodes by the day, admitting women to baseball that more and more mirrors the diversity of America would be a historic change that insures baseball's place as the leader of all professional sports for years to come.

-Ed.

The National Pastime As Barometer

Baseball has always been a barometer of life in the United States, both good and bad. Often ahead of its time, as it was with Jackie Robinson, baseball has the ability to reflect and amplify the culture.

Our nobility, our ability to disagree without violence, and the ability to rally people from all walks of life around the passion for a sport have reflected the strengths of the nation.

Racism, gambling, sexism, and poor labor-management relations have been a few reflections of the darker side of America.

Hey Bud... Who's on First?

Commissioner Selig searches for ways to bring fans back to the game, to make the game more exciting, and to secure his place in baseball history as something other than an apostrophe or an apocalypse.

Making the league-winner of the All-Stars the home field is just plain dishwater dull. Adding women would be a boon to the game in ways that it badly needs: Attendance, focus, and money.

Introducing the Jaqueline Robinson of our time is appropriate to the age,and inspired for the level of controversy it will stir up amongst the old-guard of baseball.

It is also a way for Selig to cement his place in history for something other than being the first commissioner to end an All-Star game in a tie, and turn his back on the near-century-old prohibition on gambling in baseball.

The best reason of all for admitting women to baseball is that making baseball fun for everyone is good for business.

Women Bring Revenue Back To Baseball.

All change is fundamentally financial. Admitting women to the game is good business.

Women and girls make up the largest increase of "casual fan" attendance at most minor league ballparks. Adding women to the roster would bring in greater numbers of women. The controversy would bring legions of men back to the game, both supporters and scoffers.

Minor league clubs that are merchandising gear, food and beverages more specifically to women are finding that women are a great growth market. Putting women on the field can only accelerate that trend. A pink Isotopes hat moves quicker with the name of the fan's favorite femme shortstop on the back.

Unlike desegregating baseball, women have been so systematically excluded from most developmental levels of baseball that the first woman player may be playing for the Dodgers, but more likely the Vero Beach Dodgers.

.