All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was a professional women’s baseball league in the Midwestern United States during the 1940’s and 1950’s. The league attracted players from the United States, Canada, and Cuba. More than 600 women played in the AAGPBL.
Large numbers of men, including many top Major League Baseball (MLB) players, were called to serve in the military during World War II (1939-1945). The American businessman Philip K. Wrigley, owner of the MLB Chicago Cubs , founded a women’s league in the hopes of maintaining interest in baseball and drawing fans to ball parks. The All-American Girls Softball League was created in 1943. Halfway through the first season, the league changed its name to the All-American Girls Baseball League. The league changed its name a few times over the years and was later recognized as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
The AAGPBL included elements of both baseball and softball , and eventually just baseball. The league consisted of 15 teams. Each team represented a city in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, or Wisconsin. Notable teams included the Rockford Peaches of Rockford, Illinois; the South Bend Blue Sox of South Bend, Indiana; and the Grand Rapids Chicks of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Top players included Dorothy Kamenshek of the Rockford Peaches and Helen “Nickie” Fox of the Kenosha (Wisconsin) Comets.
AAGPBL games proved popular with fans. Attendance reached its height in 1948 with about 1 million spectators. The AAGPBL ended in 1954 due to such factors as declining attendance and low revenue. The televising of major league games also contributed to the AAGPBL’s decline. In 1988, a permanent exhibit about women in baseball, prominently featuring the AAGPBL, opened at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The motion picture A League of Their Own (1992) revived interest in the AAGPBL.
