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Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball
This history of women in baseball demonstrates that, far from being strictly a men's sport, baseball has long been enjoyed and played by Americans of all genders, races, and classes since it became popular in the 1830s. The game itself was invented by English girls and boys, and when it immigrated to the United States, numerous prominent women's colleges formed intramural teams and fielded intensely spirited and powerful players. With the professionalization of the sport in the late nineteenth century, however, American boys and men shoved girls off the diamonds and sandlots. Girls have been fighting to get back in the game ever since. Jennifer Ring questions the forces that try to keep girls who want to play baseball away from the game. Focusing on a history that, unfortunately, repeats itself, Ring describes the circumstances that twice stole baseball from American once in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and again in the late twentieth century, after it was no longer legal to exclude girls who wanted to play. In the early twentieth century, Albert Goodwill Spalding--sporting goods magnate, baseball player, and promoter--declared baseball off limits for women and envisioned global baseball on a colonialist scale, using the American sport to teach men from non-white races and non-European cultures to become civilized and rational. And by the late twentieth century, baseball had become serious business for boys and men at all levels, with female players perceived as obstacles or detriments to rising male players' chances of success. Stolen Bases also looks at the backgrounds of American softball, which was originally invented by men who wanted to keep playing baseball indoors during cold winter months but has become the consolation sport for most female players. Throughout her analysis, Ring searches for ways to rescue baseball from its arrogance and sense of exclusionary entitlement.
216 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2009
3 people are currently reading
187 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Ring
9 books5 followersMy love of baseball dates back further than my academic career, which began in 1979 with a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley and continues today at the University of Nevada, where I am Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies. I have loved the game since I was a girl in the 1950’s, before even the Dodgers were in Los Angeles, where I was born. This was also a time when girls weren’t allowed in Little League or anywhere else that baseball was played. With no obvious incentive to fall in love with the game, my passion must have been the result of genetic endowment. When my younger daughter, who inherited the baseball gene, was pressured at age twelve to quit youth baseball, I had flashbacks to my own exclusion from the game, and began writing about girls and baseball in the United States. That might have been the end of the story except that my daughter didn’t quit baseball: she battled her way through high school and college baseball, and onto the Women’s National Baseball Team. While this was happening, I wrote two books about girls and women and baseball in the United States: Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball (University of Illinois Press, 2009) and The Shutout: American Women and the National Pastime (University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming 2014). Stolen Bases traces the history of women’s baseball in the United States to the nineteenth century, and before that to an English girls’ game centuries ago. Women have played and loved the game from its very beginning, and probably had a hand in inventing it. So where did “No Girls Allowed!” come from? My new book, The Shutout, is based on oral histories I conducted with eleven members of the USA Baseball Women’s National Team of 2010.
If girls have been pushed out of baseball in the United States, how did the players who compete on the national team manage to stay in the game and become good enough for international competition? And why doesn’t anybody in the United States know that there is a Women’s National baseball Team? The mystery unfolds, and so do the politics of baseball and softball in The Shutout. The eleven ballplayers in the book who describe their baseball journeys are a diverse group of accomplished athletes and women: smart, honest, introspective, funny. They describe the passion and courage it takes to stick with the national pastime as an American girl.
If girls have been pushed out of baseball in the United States, how did the players who compete on the national team manage to stay in the game and become good enough for international competition? And why doesn’t anybody in the United States know that there is a Women’s National baseball Team? The mystery unfolds, and so do the politics of baseball and softball in The Shutout. The eleven ballplayers in the book who describe their baseball journeys are a diverse group of accomplished athletes and women: smart, honest, introspective, funny. They describe the passion and courage it takes to stick with the national pastime as an American girl.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
November 29, 2018
All painful to read. Perhaps of most interest to the mainstream is the last chapter.
December 15, 2019
One thing that becomes painfully and infuriatingly evident extremely early on in Stolen Bases is that the reason why men prevented women from playing baseball boils simply down to "They just didn't want them to." I truly wish that there was a more complex, complicated reason for the exclusion of women in baseball, but unfortunately standard sexism is the answer here. Men justified that baseball was a men-only sport using sexist gender stereotypes, and this has become upheld as the social norm. I think the unfortunate thing is that Stolen Bases kind of suffers from this reality; there's not much to unpack or explore from that angle so you end up with repetitive parts. As such, I really struggled to get through this book, despite the text being only 170-ish pages.
Where I think Stolen Bases really shines is the multitude of examples that combat the assumption that women and girls have never actively played, fought to play, or desired to play baseball. I think Jennifer Ring also emphatically makes it clear that there is no reason why women cannot play baseball, which is again a much needed argument. I just wish I had an easier time getting through this book.
Where I think Stolen Bases really shines is the multitude of examples that combat the assumption that women and girls have never actively played, fought to play, or desired to play baseball. I think Jennifer Ring also emphatically makes it clear that there is no reason why women cannot play baseball, which is again a much needed argument. I just wish I had an easier time getting through this book.
June 11, 2014
Baseball is one of America's most sacred and cherished sports. However, it also has one of the most complex and difficult histories to try and accept and understand. For years it has been called America's Pastime, but racism and sexism have continued to tarnish the true spirit of the game up to this day.
Jennifer Ring explores both of these issues in this fascinating sociological study of baseball. She traces the history of the game from its origins in the USA (although it was heavily based on similar games in the UK), and explains how it became a "manly" and "all-white" game via the efforts of Albert Spalding. Ring then breaks down the cultural, economic, and social issues that have continued to systematically keep women out of baseball. These issues are explored from every age an league (little league, high school, college, and professional).
This book is a true eye-opener, and uses baseball as a microcosm of America's many problems. I strongly recommend this book to any person interested in sports and the study of American culture. It completely shifted my views on some of the issues it explores, and made me realize that a lot of work is still yet to be done.
Jennifer Ring explores both of these issues in this fascinating sociological study of baseball. She traces the history of the game from its origins in the USA (although it was heavily based on similar games in the UK), and explains how it became a "manly" and "all-white" game via the efforts of Albert Spalding. Ring then breaks down the cultural, economic, and social issues that have continued to systematically keep women out of baseball. These issues are explored from every age an league (little league, high school, college, and professional).
This book is a true eye-opener, and uses baseball as a microcosm of America's many problems. I strongly recommend this book to any person interested in sports and the study of American culture. It completely shifted my views on some of the issues it explores, and made me realize that a lot of work is still yet to be done.
November 9, 2018
As others have said - this book could have used a little more editing for clarity and to omit some repetition. Nevertheless, it brings to the world an important message about the exclusionary nature of American baseball. Ring highlights a lot of neglected late nineteenth and early twentieth century history of women in baseball and manages to combine it with personal narratives and remarks about the current state of Little League, college, and Major League baseball. She also devotes some time to breaking down the issues with the current college athletics industrial complex. As a woman who as a young girl dreamed of becoming a Major Leaguer - I'm definitely biased towards this one. But coming in at under 200 pages - I would say it's worth the read for any fan (or player) of the game.
May 7, 2017
Although I found Jennifer Ring repetitive at times, she delivered a much needed look at the lengths American society has gone through with shutting women out of our nation's pastime. I recommend Stolen Bases to anyone who has an interest in baseball, gender politics or both without reservations.
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June 11, 2019This had good history of women’s baseball in the US but then was talking shit on softball and it kinda soured me on it. Just because softball is supposed to be an ‘inferior’ sport doesn’t mean it is!!
August 13, 2018
A fantastic academic read for all with an interest in baseball and/or women’s rights, civil rights, and equality.
April 3, 2020
Amazing introduction and conclusion where you can really feel the author's anger. A bummer she wrote a more traditional history and didn't continue in that vein throughout.
April 23, 2010
This was intermittently interesting but ultimately unsatisfying. The first half felt like an academic paper expanded to book-length -- lots of repetition of the main points without enough additional background. The second half, especially Chapter 5 ("How Baseball Became Manly and White") and Chapter 6 ("American Womanhood and Athletics"), was much more interesting to me, and I would recommend those two chapter to anyone interested in a survey of the exclusionary history of American baseball and/or the challenges faced by women in sports in general over the last century.
Ultimately, though, the answer to the question posed in the title of the book is "because men don't want them to," and that doesn't expand well to 180 pages. One way Ring attempted to broaden the scope of the book was to build on previous scholarly inquiry with her own theories, which tended to fall victim to weak writing and questionable conclusions. And not mentioning the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League at all until the Epilogue seems strange -- was it left out because it didn't fit the narrative, or was there another, less-sinister (but still unwise) reason?
(On a more pedantic note, the misspellings of the names of Hall of Fame baseball players (Cal Ripken, Dennis Eckersley) and the erroneous inclusion of Mike Krukow on a list of multi-generational major leaguers was distracting, and made me question the veracity of some of the other research.)
Ultimately, though, the answer to the question posed in the title of the book is "because men don't want them to," and that doesn't expand well to 180 pages. One way Ring attempted to broaden the scope of the book was to build on previous scholarly inquiry with her own theories, which tended to fall victim to weak writing and questionable conclusions. And not mentioning the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League at all until the Epilogue seems strange -- was it left out because it didn't fit the narrative, or was there another, less-sinister (but still unwise) reason?
(On a more pedantic note, the misspellings of the names of Hall of Fame baseball players (Cal Ripken, Dennis Eckersley) and the erroneous inclusion of Mike Krukow on a list of multi-generational major leaguers was distracting, and made me question the veracity of some of the other research.)
August 8, 2016
This book is a special one. Its most impressive feature may be that it makes so many compelling, deep points in under 200 pages.
The book is many things. At its core, the central question is in the title: why do girls play a different stick and ball game than boys? Is there some genetic predisposition toward underhand pitching in women? When you ask the question, really ask it, it's clear that you're not going to find a good answer. That's where the book is most exceptional. It helps deconstruct our assumptions about baseball as a sport, specifically, and also about how we deal with gender and raising our children generally.
I would use this as a concise case to show people "No, please understand, if you think about it, you're already a feminist." Our culture clearly holds some poison in its veins and the universal insistence that women play softball, *not* baseball, is a symptom of that. This book skillfully uses the baseball/softball dichotomy as a metaphor for the distinct universes we've allowed for our children.
Some familiarity with baseball may make this more enjoyable, but it's not strictly useful on that level. This is a book I'd recommend broadly to paint a picture of the history of American culture, where we're weak and where we're strong.
The book is many things. At its core, the central question is in the title: why do girls play a different stick and ball game than boys? Is there some genetic predisposition toward underhand pitching in women? When you ask the question, really ask it, it's clear that you're not going to find a good answer. That's where the book is most exceptional. It helps deconstruct our assumptions about baseball as a sport, specifically, and also about how we deal with gender and raising our children generally.
I would use this as a concise case to show people "No, please understand, if you think about it, you're already a feminist." Our culture clearly holds some poison in its veins and the universal insistence that women play softball, *not* baseball, is a symptom of that. This book skillfully uses the baseball/softball dichotomy as a metaphor for the distinct universes we've allowed for our children.
Some familiarity with baseball may make this more enjoyable, but it's not strictly useful on that level. This is a book I'd recommend broadly to paint a picture of the history of American culture, where we're weak and where we're strong.
March 5, 2022
This is a book of missed opportunities. It started off well with a pretty in depth history of the game, and she accurately points to A.W. Spalding as one of the main culprits for the exclusion of women from baseball.
Unfortunately, her narrative got side tracked after that. She reverts full fledged into Marxist theories floating in academia which caused her narrative to turn into an angry screed based upon the all too familiar divisions of race, class and gender, that every graduate student of liberal arts educational programs gets exposed to. She spends more time playing the blame game instead of having a carefully crafted dialogue as to why this happen (explanatory instead of finger pointing), with providing an accurate assessment of the present with concrete steps on how to proceed in the future learning lessons from the past.
It was somewhat well-researched, which is the saving grace of this book. If you can look past the repetitive narrative and the Marxist theories, there is some substance here, but you have to look hard to find it.
I will be starting her newer book on the topic shortly. Hopefully she leaves the Marxism for the classroom and gives us a better balanced book. But I'll save that review for that book's entry.
Unfortunately, her narrative got side tracked after that. She reverts full fledged into Marxist theories floating in academia which caused her narrative to turn into an angry screed based upon the all too familiar divisions of race, class and gender, that every graduate student of liberal arts educational programs gets exposed to. She spends more time playing the blame game instead of having a carefully crafted dialogue as to why this happen (explanatory instead of finger pointing), with providing an accurate assessment of the present with concrete steps on how to proceed in the future learning lessons from the past.
It was somewhat well-researched, which is the saving grace of this book. If you can look past the repetitive narrative and the Marxist theories, there is some substance here, but you have to look hard to find it.
I will be starting her newer book on the topic shortly. Hopefully she leaves the Marxism for the classroom and gives us a better balanced book. But I'll save that review for that book's entry.
July 26, 2014
Very fascinating. Though it was definitely written by an academic, and could use better editing (at times felt very repetitive). But it was still very good, and very informative. I think one of it's greatest strengths is in pointing out systemic sexism and sexism that lies just under the surface, that people might not even be aware of.
A great quote from the book: "[The] New Jersey Little League suspended their season rather than allow girls to play. Some 150,000 boys lost their chance to play baseball that year because girls wanted to join them. Teaching American manhood to boys does not include lessons in acquiring the courage to risk being bested by a female. Conversely, teaching girls that they are toxic if they are more effective than boys at anything is acceptable. To teach a girl that her health, strength, and spirit are dangerous to boys, is irresponsible and unforgivable....This attitude kills the soul and spirit of girls"
A great quote from the book: "[The] New Jersey Little League suspended their season rather than allow girls to play. Some 150,000 boys lost their chance to play baseball that year because girls wanted to join them. Teaching American manhood to boys does not include lessons in acquiring the courage to risk being bested by a female. Conversely, teaching girls that they are toxic if they are more effective than boys at anything is acceptable. To teach a girl that her health, strength, and spirit are dangerous to boys, is irresponsible and unforgivable....This attitude kills the soul and spirit of girls"
September 30, 2015
Ring's book is a rare hybrid in that at various times it's rigidly academic and personal reflections. The author is pretty respected in the world of feminist theory and women's history, and she definatly brings this perspective to the book.
Chapters on women in cricket and about how exploitative South American baseball camps are seem out of place, but I especially liked her writing about forgotten heroines of female players and appreciated her gendered critique of the "manly" mystique of athletics.
Chapters on women in cricket and about how exploitative South American baseball camps are seem out of place, but I especially liked her writing about forgotten heroines of female players and appreciated her gendered critique of the "manly" mystique of athletics.
February 10, 2016
A good, well-researched treatise on the lack of opportunities for girls and women to play baseball. Jennifer Ring, a sociology profesor, touches on early chauvinism, American history, and definitions of masculinity as factors in the disappointing and often frustrating absence of half of our population in our "National Pastime." With a daughter of my own, the book left me more knowledgeable, but more frustrated than ever, becasue there is no reason that I can swallow to explain why girls aren't playing baseball instead of softball.
June 15, 2009
I really enjoyed this book. Ring examines the variety of factors that have led to women being excluded from America's Pastime. She intertwined personal stories from her own experiences and those of her daughter and other women, but also supported her arguments with historical information and medical and sociological data. This would be a very good read for anyone interested in baseball or gender studies.
SBC Baseball
SBC Baseball
March 21, 2012
I'm not someone who needed convincing on this topic but I still found Ring's arguments to be powerful, persuasive and eye-opening. While a slim 182 pages, her treatise is expansive enough to be considered fairly a compact People's History of Sports or, if you rather, a single-issue chronicle of civil rights in America. It might be said that a special interest like access to Baseball is small potatoes compared to broader topics, but if it's so simple, surely it can be fixed?
December 17, 2013
This book was basically doomed for me from the beginning for the faults of being a) nonfiction, but moreso b) academic. If I'm going to read nonfiction, it's going to be some Mary Roach-style, dryly funny, oddly interesting nonfiction that has me bothering my husband with "did you know?"s all day long. Stolen Bases, to put it mildly, does not do that.
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December 17, 2016
Stolen Bases can get a little too academic for its own good, but overall it is fascinating, informative and often frustrating. Its focus is very narrow and so may not be broadly appealing, but a very worthy read for people interested in baseball/softball, gender roles, sports history or (as in my case) the basic question of why women seem so far off from having a presence in the major sport that is best suited for it
October 10, 2014
Great summary of women playing baseball's history (from it's origins to the present) as well as why girls should not be directed to softball.
February 9, 2016
MUST read if you are to understand why American girls don't play baseball in larger numbers and the incredible barriers girls who do play baseball face.
February 7, 2017
I really liked this book, particularly the beginning and end. And I am also infuriated that American baseball has been so resistant to the African American & woman. Totally sad.
September 9, 2009
My full thoughts are here:
http://www.cave17.com/?p=913
http://www.cave17.com/?p=913
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews