That year, a whopping 910,000 people attended AAGPBL games. The league began with four teams, based in Racine, Kenosha, Rockford, and South Bend, and by the league’s most successful year, in 1948, it had 10. Though Wrigley had at first hoped to use MLB parks for AAGPBL games, other teams refused to participate in the scheme, and the new league set up camp in cities without an MLB team. Wrigley, the Chicago Cubs’ owner, and other members of his organization decided to recruit women to fill the gap and maintain public interest in the sport. Major league team owners worried about what might happen if they lost even more players, and Philip K. Though the MLB continued being played during WWII, its player pool was depleted as a result of the draft, and as the official history of the AAGPL notes, many minor league teams shut down because they didn’t have enough players. The AAGPBL was originally born out of necessity.
Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images What was the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League? But surviving members of the league and baseball historians are intent on preserving their history - which you can read more about below. Sadly, interest in the league diminished in the 1950s.
In the 1940s, women’s baseball flourished in America: AAGPBL games drew packed crowds and newspapers reported on box scores, injuries, and accomplishments of AAGPBL teams and players - just as they reported on Major League Baseball. The film (and series) was inspired by a documentary of the same title, made by Kim Wilson and Kelly Canaele, whose mother Helen was a player in the AAGPBL.īut there’s more to the history of the AAGPBL than A League of Their Own. It’s possible that many viewers don’t realize that the story it depicts - of young women across America being recruited to play professional ball during WWII, when most athletic young men were serving in the military - is based on facts.
Now, Amazon is releasing a television version of A League of Their Own, starring D’Arcy Carden and Abbi Jacobsen as players for the Rockford Peaches - a team in the 1940s-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) - and Nick Offerman as their curmudgeonly manager. Ever since its release in 1992, the women’s baseball film A League of Their Own established itself as an instant classic, beloved by sporty girls, baseball fans, and everyone in-between.
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