For American women, playing baseball is almost an underground experience. Girls who may start off playing Little League are soon steered into softball. This book, however, chronicles the mostly invisible history of women in baseball and pays special attention to the experiences of 11 members of Team USA, which competed in the fourth Women’s Baseball World Cup in 2010.
Here’s an excerpt from “A Game of Their Own”:
“Most of the women interviewed in this book would prefer sex-segregated baseball: they would rather play with women, if women’s baseball teams and leagues were competitive. But the virtual nonexistence of women’s baseball keeps them banging at the door of men’s baseball, not because they prefer to play with men, but because there is so little competitive women’s baseball available. Nobody’s baseball dream is to be a solitary, marginalized girl playing on a boys’ team. For most, Team USA is the first elite women’s team they have played on, and although most enjoy it more than any other baseball they have played, the tournaments are not frequent enough to satisfy the need to play regularly. With that desire to play as the common denominator, opinions differ among the players about the benefits of playing baseball with men and softball with women.”
