America’s Baseball Underground

Abstract

America’s national pastime has long been associated with masculinity and more recently has acknowledged its problems with racial exclusivity. Yet from the time it was professionalized in the 19th century to the aftermath of the Little League Lawsuits of 1973, baseball has excluded girls and women, regarding itself as “too strenuous” or “too violent”, in spite of American girls’ and women’s post-Title IX participation in other more violent contact sports. The contrived exclusion of girls and women ignores their long-abiding affection for and participation in baseball from the early 19th century onward. What explains sequestering baseball for boys only? What are the civic implications of the insistence on masculine exclusivity for the game associated with American national identity?