Description:

Baseball is North America's favorite pastime. Millions of fans thrill to the sound, smell and electricity of the game; a game associated with men. But unknown to many, young women played the game, as hard and as well as most men, at a time when many men were away at war. They could routinely hit 240-foot home runs, slide into bases, skirts flying and bare thighs burning raw into the dirt. They were the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. In Girls of Summer, Lois Browne tells their story - a colorful chronicle of a forgotten league, as recalled by the very women and men who were a part of it all. In 1943, it was Philip K. Wrigley, the great chewing-gum mogul, whose idea of women playing professional baseball grew into the All-American League. The women who answered his recruiters' call came from all over the U.S. and Canada; young women who normally would not work in jobs reserved for men, let alone play a "man's game." But this was war-time 1940s, when Rosie the Riveter - the symbol of a woman's ability to do a man's work - was all the rage. Baseball offered bankable money, and an escape from dead-end jobs and one-horse towns. There was Mary "Bonnie" Baker, the well-groomed stylish player who embodied the virtues of the All-American; Alma "Gabby" Ziegler, the great morale booster and captain of the Grand Rapids Chicks; and Dorothy "Kammie" Kamenshek, who was rated the best all-round player in the League. They were all superb athletes, but their all-male managers expected them to be more. They were expected to be perfect ladies; they had chaperones directing their every move; feminine uniforms that included a knee-length skirt; and to top it all off - "Charm School," directed by none other than Helena Rubinstein, who, with her chain of beauty salons, was synonymous with the feminine ideal. Through all this, the All-American was a magnificent success. In its heyday, stadiums packed in fans and players were shipped off to spring training in Cuba and F Read More