Research Notes for Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball: Lizzie Arlington, Alta Weiss, Lizzie Murphy, Edith Houghton, Jackie Mitchell, Babe D - Paperback

by Barbara Gregorich (Author)

This eye-opening collection of original author research materials on women pioneers in sports excites baseball fans and historians as well as English teachers and fans interested in the brassy, sassy women who had the audacity to play on men's baseball teams rather than on bloomer girl teams. Among them:

- Alta Weiss, the Ohio-born future doctor whose father bought her a baseball team so she could pitch to her heart's content.

- Jackie Mitchell, the shy Southerner who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game.

- Babe Didrikson, the not-at-all-shy Southerner who, after her Olympic Games wins, pitched batting practice for several Major League teams, then turned to barnstorming with the House of David Baseball Team.

Original newspaper and magazine articles sparkle with sports terms of the 1910s-

Fascinating baseball details from the past. Primary source materials for English teachers and all those interested in women in sports.

Author Biography

Barbara Gregorich's baseball writing started with the well-received novel, She's on First. This story of the first female major leaguer was praised by Publishers Weekly, which wrote that "all baseball fans will appreciate Gregorich's sure feel for the game . . . the baseball scenes are crackerjack, and readers should end up wondering, 'Why not?'" After writing the fictional version of women in baseball, Gregorich began the long job of researching the true story of women who played hardball. The result of that research was Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, published by Harcourt, 1993. Women at Play won the SABR-Macmillan Award for Best Baseball Research of the Year. In 2013 Women at Play was included in Ron Kaplan's 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. The work that went into researching women who played baseball (from 1875 onward) was intense, and the accumulated articles filled several file boxes. In 2010 Gregorich published Research Notes for Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, Volume I, offering the most important of the newspaper articles she had found - some in their entirety and some in summary. This, Volume II of Research Notes, brings the story of women in baseball into the early 20th century, featuring news-making heroes such as Alta Weiss, Jackie Mitchell, and Babe Didrikson. 
Gregorich studied at Kent State University, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard. She worked as an English instructor, a typesetter and a letter carrier. She lives in Chicago with her husband, Phil Passen.