1865–1879: Contesting a National Pastime
1865–1879: Contesting a National Pastime
The Amateur Game
Tension between those wanting to maintain baseball as an amateur game and those wanting to professionalize it increased. Men increasingly identified baseball as a manly pastime yet girls and women continued to play. Both organized pick-up teams, civic teams, business teams, school teams, college teams, amateur teams, and professional teams. There were over 100 female teams located in twenty-one of thirty-eight states plus the Kingdom of Hawaii. Students organized teams at Vassar College in 1866 and 1867. Elizabeth Cady Stanton described a girls’ team at Peterboro, New York in 1868 and, although untrue, some newspaper editors began equating female players with women’s rights. Most female teams were white, but there were a small number of black teams.
Keywords: amateur, professional, civic teams, pick-up teams, college teams, Vassar College, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Peterboro, Kingdom of Hawaii, black teams
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