Women in Baseball

One of three sports cards at the DRT Library featuring female baseball players, circa 1880s.

To mark the convergence of Women’s History Month and the upcoming start of the baseball season, we wanted to feature three sports cards featuring female baseball players. We were excited to discover these intriguing items with a scrapbook containing several hundred sports cards (these were featured in an October blog post).

Female baseball player, playing at third base.

Preliminary research indicates that the women’s baseball cards date to the 1880s. Each card measures approximately 1.5 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall. In addition to showing a picture of the athlete, the front of each card also lists the position she plays as well as the name “Dixie Cigarettes”; like men’s cards from that era and the early twentieth century, tobacco companies produced baseball cards as promotional tools. Unlike men’s cards, the names of these female players are not included; as a result, at this time they have not been identified and nothing is known about them. The back of each card is blank.

Female baseball player, catcher.

Even though baseball is currently regarded as a sport for men, this has not always been the case. In her article “Transition of Women’s Baseball,” Gai Ingham Berlage writes that “from 1866 to 1935, women and girls were actively involved in amateur, semiprofessional, and professional baseball. On playgrounds, in high schools, in colleges, on industrial teams, on professional barnstorming teams, women and girls played baseball and excelled.” It has only been since 1935 or so that “softball [has] almost completely replaced baseball as a sport for women.” Beginning at that time, “baseball as a male domain and softball as the female equivalent became the cultural norm.” Notably, “this transition from women’s baseball to women’s softball was so complete that the public was no longer aware that women had ever played baseball” (72). As a result, when Phlip K. Wrigley developed the All-American Girls’ Baseball League in 1943, people incorrectly believed it was an “unprecedented idea” (77). Likewise, when A League of Their Own, a film about the league, was released in 1992, “it was a revelation to the public” (72).

To read more about the history of women in baseball, check out Berlage’s complete article, published in the journal Nine in 2000, by clicking here. (Note: article is a PDF document.)

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.

Historic Baseball Cards

With the World Series getting underway later this week, this entry highlights the DRT Library’s collection of early twentieth-century baseball cards. (Caitlin, the library’s archivist, was particularly excited about the cards for her hometown teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns. Reference Librarian Stephanie was enthusiastic about cards relating to teams from Boston, where she lived for eight years.) An unknown person compiled and pasted almost all of the cards into a scrapbook. Also, while the majority of the cards feature baseball players, one page in the scrapbook contains cards for boxers like Jack Johnson and Jim Corbett.

Examples of cigarette and tobacco advertisements on the back of baseball cards.

Almost three hundred baseball cards in the collection are T206 White Border cards, which were produced by the American Tobacco Company between 1909 and 1911. Measuring 1-7/16” by 2-5/8”, the baseball cards fit perfectly into packs of cigarettes and tobacco and were therefore used as promotions for these products. The front of each card includes a color lithograph image of the player surrounded by a white border; the player’s name and team are listed at the bottom. The back of each card contains an advertisement for one of the fourteen brands of cigarettes or two brands of tobacco owned by the American Tobacco Company. The set of T206 cards includes 389 major league players and 134 minor league players; however, there are thousands of variations of cards, as the same player could be featured in different uniforms and poses and with a different product advertised on the card’s back.

One page of T206 White Border cards.

The DRT Library’s collection of T206 baseball cards includes players from all of the “Classic Eight” National League teams: Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Four of these cities (Boston, Chicago, New York, and St. Louis) also had American League teams, and their players are represented in the collection. There are also cards for players on the American League teams in Washington D. C., Cleveland, and Detroit. (It might be noted here that before Major League Baseball’s expansion in the 1960s, St. Louis had the westernmost and southernmost team in the United States.) Furthermore, the DRT Library’s collection includes cards for minor league players on teams from Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama; Rochester, New York; Jersey City, New Jersey; Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee; and Kansas City, Missouri. Finally, while many of the baseball cards are for players who are not well-known today, the collection does include cards for famous Hall of Famers like Ty Cobb; Cy Young; and Chicago Cubs players Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance.

Cutouts of players and circular baseball cards.

In addition to the T206 cards, the scrapbook contains other interesting baseball cards and ephemera from the early twentieth century. Several pages contain cardboard cutouts of players that could stand independently, allowing children to recreate games between their favorite teams (see above). The scrapbook also includes fifty-six round cards with black-and-white images of players (see above). One page contains twenty-eight cards with red borders; preliminary research indicates that the players featured on these cards played in the Texas League.

Texas League baseball players.

To see more early baseball cards, see the Library of Congress’s online collection, “Baseball Cards, 1887-1914.”

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.