AAGPBL Post War Years
Life was great. The All-American host cities organized Junior Leagues for young girls 14 years and older. The teams traveled to exotic locations for spring training: Pascagoula, Mississippi in 1946; Havana, Cuba in 1947; and Opalocka, Florida in 1949. The rules were modified each year to lengthen infield distances and approve first side-arm pitching (1946) and overhand pitching (1948). The League acquired franchises for two more teams in Peoria, Illinois and Muskegon, Michigan, and a four-team minor league was established in Chicago as the Chicago Girls Baseball League (CGBL). Ambitious post-season tours to Cuba and South America were organized as part of a plan to create an International League of Girls Baseball. The Springfield (Illinois) Sallies and Chicago Colleens were added to the League's roster in 1948 but lost their franchises by the end of that season. For the next two years the Colleens and Sallies became rookie training teams that played exhibition games and recruited new talent as they toured through the South and East. Highlights of these tours included contests in Washington, D.C.'s Griffith Park and New York's Yankee Stadium.
In the first three years after World War II, teams often attracted between two and three thousand fans to a single game. One League highlight occurred when an estimated 10,000 people saw a 1946 Fourth of July double-header in South Bend, Indiana. The AAGPBL peaked in attendance during the 1948 season, when ten teams attracted 910,000 paid fans. However, attendance declined in the following years. One of the reasons for decreasing attendance and a resulting decrease in revenues was the decentralization of the League. At the end of the 1950 season, team directors voted to purchase the AAGBBL from Arthur Meyerhoff and operate their teams independently. Max Carey resigned as League President and was replaced by his assistant, Fred Leo. With no centralized control of publicity, promotion, player procurement, and equalization of player talent, the League began to break down.
Individual team owners' financial circumstances declined and hindered their ability to operate on deficit spending resulting from declining attendance. The shrinking of the local fan base resulted in part from the rise of other forms of recreation and entertainment and the advent of televised major league games in the early 1950s. In addition, by this time the All-American game was purely baseball and talented women baseball players were not easy to find. Talented softball players needed training and experience for success in the All-American baseball game with its longer infield distances, smaller ball, and overhand pitching. As revenues fell, individual teams were no longer able to support rookie training teams like the Colleens and Sallies, and funds were limited to advertise nationally as a way of recruiting scattered baseball talent. By 1952, only six teams remained in the league after Kenosha and Peoria were disbanded. In 1953, the Battle Creek team was relocated to Muskegon, and by the end of the season, it too, folded. The 1954 season ended with only five teams remaining: Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford.
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball and to play it at a level never before attained. The League operated from 1943 to 1954 and represents one of the most unique aspects of our nation's baseball history.
