Category: History and More

In 1992, A League of Their Own provided a funny – and loving – tribute to women’s professional baseball. The movie chronicled the exploits of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (1943-54), which featured 10 teams and more than 600 players during its 12-year run. While fictionalized, the comedy captured the spirit of a circuit that had been forgotten by many but deserved respect.

The AAGPBL’s final game was played on September 5, 1954, when the Kalamazoo Lassies defeated the Fort Wayne Daisies, 8-5, to win the championship series three games to two.

In 1994, women’s baseball returned in the form of the Colorado Silver Bullets, a traveling team that took on amateur and semi-pro men’s clubs in exhibition games over four seasons. Made up primarily of softball players who decided to give hardball a try, the club showed that female baseballers were more than just a gimmick.

The swan song of the Silver Bullets came on August 14, 1997, when they defeated the State Farm Machine, 5-3, to cap off a 23-22 campaign.

And more history will be made in May, 2026, but it’ll be a new beginning instead of an untimely end. Women’s play-for-pay baseball is set to return, owing a debt to its past but forging a modern path.

The formation of the Women’s Pro Baseball League was announced last October by co-founders Justine Siegal and Keith Stein. The plan is to begin with six franchises in 2026, located primarily in the northeastern United States, and go from there.

Registration for players closed on May 7, and two-time USA Baseball Sportswoman of the Year Alex Hugo will be overseeing July and August tryouts.

More than 500 players have already registered.

“The WPBL’s summer tryouts mark an important and exciting milestone in women’s sports,” Hugo said. “Female baseball players around-the-world have been waiting for this moment for over 70 years and I am honored to be leading the tryouts for the league.”

The WPBL’s inaugural season will consist of approximately 40 games, followed by playoffs.

Siegal became the first female coach of a pro men’s baseball team when she worked for the Brockton Rox of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball in 2009. She’s also the founder and executive director of Baseball for All, the largest girls’ baseball organization in the United States. 

“I am so excited that there will finally be a professional women’s baseball league – it is a dream come true for all the girls and women who play America’s Pastime,” Siegal said. “The Women’s Pro Baseball League is here for all the girls and women who dream of a place to showcase their talents and play the game they love. We have been waiting over 70 years for a professional baseball league we can call our own. Our time is now.”

Muse Sport was named an advisory partner to the WPBL in April, and founding partner Assia Grazioli-Venier has been appointed chair of the league. Grazioli-Venier was the first woman board member in the 120-year history of Juventus Football Club, helping launch Juventus Women and associated properties.

Members of the WPBL Advisory Board are Donna Cohen, lawyer and member of the World Baseball Softball Confederation’s Diversity and Inclusivity Commission; Emmy-winning documentarian Rhonda Eiffe; espnW co-founder Laura Gentile; communications strategist Kate Childs Graham; Leslie Heaphy, chair of the Society of American Baseball Research’s Women in Baseball Committee; former Arizona Diamondbacks executive Nona Lee; Dr. Digit Murphy, a longtime coach and former president of the Toronto Six pro hockey team; Ayani Sato, Team Japan pitcher, six-time World Cup champion and one of women’s baseball’s all-time great hurlers; and Dr. Kat Williams, professor emeritus of women’s sports history at Marshall University.

Yet, while the WPBL is looking to the future, it hasn’t forgotten its history.

Maybelle Blair, former player in the AAGPBL, is Honorary Chair of the WPBL Advisory Board. Her biography, All the Way: The Life of Baseball Trailblazer Maybelle Blair was released in March.

The addition of baseball seems like a natural fit for women’s professional sports. Basketball and soccer are well-established, and hockey recently joined the ranks with the Professional Women’s Hockey League in 2023.

The WPBL has a chance to give women’s pro ball its own “Big Four.”

“We are fortunate to live in a period of extraordinary growth and transformation in women’s sports,” Grazioli-Venier said. “I believe the WPBL is poised to join the ranks of other great women’s leagues like the WNBA, NWSL, and PWHL.”

How fun would it have been if – last weekend – the Buffalo Bills and Washington Commanders had squared off in the NFL’s third place game?

For the players and coaches, I doubt it would’ve been fun at all.

The teams would be just a week removed from their gut-wrenching conference championship game losses, and forced to serve as a warm-up act for the Super Bowl. Moreover, they’d be reminded they fell short of their ultimate goal.

I’m not sure even fans would have much of an appetite for a “bronze medal” game these days.

However, for 10 consecutive years the NFL did, in fact, host such a game. Known as the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl (and unofficially as the Runner-Up Bowl and, more popularly, the Playoff Bowl), it was contested at the Orange Bowl in Miami each year following the 1960-1969 seasons. Named after the league’s late commissioner, the matchup raised money for the players’ pension fund.

In 1960, the NFL consisted of six teams in the Eastern Conference and seven teams in the Western Conference. The division winners (10-2 Philadelphia in the East and 8-4 Green Bay in the West) earned spots in the NFL Championship Game, but league officials decided another game – played two weeks after the title tilt – would be a good showcase for pro football’s senior circuit.

So, it was decided that the competing teams would be the runners-up from each conference. In 1960, that meant the Cleveland Browns from the East and Detroit Lions repping the West.

Players on the winning teams would pocket $600 while those on the losing side got $400 each.

As a fundraiser for player pensions, the game served a noble purpose. The question, though, was how much incentive players would have to go full throttle in what was basically a glorified exhibition game.

Detroit coach George Wilson thought it was insulting to suggest his guys would give anything short of maximum effort.

“What a foolish approach to such an interview,” Wilson told The Daily Times of Salisbury, Maryland, for a January 5, 1960, story. “Sure, my guys will be putting all out as will the Browns. No, there isn’t much money involved for the players. However, remember every one of them is striving for better contracts next year.

“Other sports writers have asked me such questions. I’m getting tired of hearing such talk.”

Cleveland coach Paul Brown was all- business, even putting his team through full-pads scrimmages to prepare.

“We’re here to get ready for a ballgame,” Brown said.

The game was quite competitive, with Detroit winning, 17-16, in front of 34,891 fans.

Detroit was back in the Playoff Bowl the next season, defeating Philadelphia, 38-10, a week after Green Bay’s 37-0 rout of the New York Giants in the NFL Championship. This time only 25,621 patrons showed up for the third-place game.

Detroit earned the Playoff Bowl “threepeat” to close out the 1962 campaign, edging the Pittsburgh Steelers, 17-10, seven days after the Packers defended their crown with a 16-7 victory over the Giants.

Before the third-place game NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle said a crowd of 35,000 was necessary to keep the game in Miami, and 36,284 paid the price of admission to seal the deal.

At some point, however, a coach or player was bound to deviate from the party line when it came to the battle of also-rans, and that coach was none other than Vince Lombardi.

His Packers played in the consolation game at the close of the 1963 and 1964 seasons.

As you can imagine, the legend-in-the-making who had led his club to two consecutive NFL crowns wasn’t a fan.

Green Bay beat Cleveland 40-23 in the fourth Playoff Bowl, but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 24-17, in the fifth installment.

Following Lombardi’s death in 1970, it was revealed what he really thought about the game.

“There is no room for second place here,” he said. “There’s only one place here and that’s first place. I’ve finished second twice in my time here and I don’t ever want to finish second again.

“There’s a second-place bowl game and it’s a hinky-dink football game, held in a hinky-dink town, played by hinky-dink football players. That’s all second place is – hinky dink.”

Cowboys coach Tim Landry – after his team earned a spot opposite Green Bay in the 1967 championship game – allegedly said to a friend, “Lord, I don’t know what makes me happier, playing Green Bay for the championship or not having to go to Miami for the Playoff Bowl.”

The “hinky-dink” game last 10 consecutive years, often with impressive attendance. Four of the five games had crowds in excess of 50,000, with the largest coming in the January 9, 1966, contest when the Baltimore Colts dismantled the Dallas Cowboys, 35-3. There were 65,569 in the stands that day.

And TV ratings were always excellent. Super Bowl III and the 1969 Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl were the only games to draw more TV viewers than that season’s Playoff Bowl (Dallas beat Minnesota, 17-13).

Still, the third-place game had outlived its usefulness.

“It was sort of a fluff game,” Cleveland quarterback Frank Ryan told the New York Times in 2011. “That ridiculous game shows how ridiculous the league was in those days.”

Once the NFL went to four divisions of four teams each in 1967, an extra round of playoffs was added. More importantly, a year earlier the NFL announced a merger with the American Football League that would go into effect in 1970.

That would create a 26-team league with eight of them making the playoffs.

With so many meaningful postseason games, it was time to do away with the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl.

The final clash saw the Los Angeles Rams blank the Cowboys, 31-0, and this is how Associated Press led its game story:

“Pro football’s most famous stepchild is dead. Roman Gabriel gave the 10-year-old NFL Playoff Bowl a four-bomb salute and the Cowboys stood around as pallbearers.

“If there was any reason for the National Football League’s backdoor classic it was the $1.25 million funneled into the players’ pension fund during the 1960s. But, after a decade as a haven for championship playoff losers, the misnamed event is no more.”

PLAYOFF BOWL RESULTS

Detroit Lions 17, Cleveland Browns 16 (1-7-61)
Detroit Lions 38, Philadelphia 10 (1-6-62)
Detroit Lions 17, Pittsburgh Steelers 10 (1-6-63)
Green Bay Packers 40, Cleveland Browns 23 (1-5-64)
St. Louis Cardinals 24, Green Bay Packers 17 (1-3-65)
Baltimore Colts 35, Dallas Cowboys 3 (1-9-66)
Baltimore Colts 20, Philadelphia Eagles 14 (1-8-67)
Los Angeles Rams 30, Cleveland Browns 6 (1-7-68)
Dallas Cowboys 17, Minnesota Vikings 13 (1-5-69)
Los Angeles Rams 31, Dallas Cowboys 0 (1-3-70)

When discussing integration of the National Football League, much is made of pro football’s “reintegration,” when the NFL –in 1946 – opted to end a ban on black players it instituted in 1933.

But years before the circuit decided to incorporate segregation into its business model, Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard was already breaking down barriers.

And he never stopped.

Pollard – along with Bobby Marshall – was one of the first two African-American players to earn roster spots in the American Professional Football Association, the forerunner of the NFL.

Pollard was also the first black coach in NFL history, and after his playing/coaching days were done, he became a successful business leader and entertainment manager.

Pollard was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.

Charles Follis is believed to be the first African-American professional football player, starring for the Shelby (Ohio) Blues from 1904 to 1911.

And before Pollard, there was also Doc Baker (Akron Indians, 1906-08 and 1911); Henry McDonald (1911-17, Rochester Jeffersons); and Gideon Smith, who suited up one game for the Canton Bulldogs in 1915.

In fact, Marshall played pro ball in Minnesota from 1913-17 and again in 1919, and technically was the first African-American athlete to participate in an APFA game when he suited up for Rock Island on September 26, 1920. Although the contest came against a non-league opponent – the independent St. Paul Ideals – it ultimately counted in the final APFA standings and thus considered an “NFL game.”

Pollard, however, built on the accomplishments of those who came before him and carved out his own legacy.

A 5-9, 165-pound halfback who played for Brown University and helped the team to a 1916 Rose Bowl appearance, he was the first black player to earn Walter Camp All-America Team honors.

After coaching college ball and serving in World War I, he was signed to a pro contract on November 5, 1919. (The Akron Indians were in the process of upgrading from semi-pro to APFA membership, and would change their nickname to the Akron Pros in 1920).

The headline on the front page of the Akron Evening Times on November 6, 1919, read, “Fritz Pollard, Greatest Of Present Day Grid Stars, To Play With Indians Sunday.”

A day later in a preview of the game with the Massillon Tigers, the paper described Pollard this way: “Weighing only 145 pounds, Pollard is the fastest man in moleskins today. He is not only fast, but is a wonder on picking his holes in the line and the greatest open field runner the game has ever known.”

Akron fell to Massillon, 13-6, with Pollard getting the losing team’s lone touchdown. Still, he was considered the star of the game.

“Fritz Pollard, playing for the first time with the Indians, did remarkable work,” according to a piece in The Akron Beacon on November 10. “His efforts were the bright features of the afternoon’s entertainment. In running back punts, he was sensational. While from the backfield position he carried the ball many times for long gains.

“ … Pollard made his gains without any protection whatever. He was either too fast for interference or the formations were loosely ran. Had Pollard been given a cleared way to his end runs he would have likely turned the tide of victory.”

As you might imagine, Pollard had issues to deal with off the field.

“When I got to Akron, the town was filled with thousands of Southerners who had come up to work in the factories during World War I,” Pollard told the Staten Island Advance for an April 11, 1978 story. “They told me I couldn’t even change in the locker room. The guy who owned the club also owned a cigar store. That’s where I changed my clothes. I couldn’t even stay in a decent hotel.”

But thanks to his exploits on the field, Pollard was hard to ignore.

“I went out and beat Canton for them,” Pollard said. “Canton was the big rival – they had Jim Thorpe. By the end of the year, I was in that locker room. The next season, I was coaching the team.”

In 1920 the Pros won the league title with an 8-0-3 record, and Pollard led the charge with 24 points – second in the league. In 1921 he was named co-coach and also managed to score seven touchdowns and amass an APFA-best 42 points.

“Elgie Tobin was listed as the coach, but when I came, they were still using some old plays,” Pollard said in an interview with The New York Times in 1978. “So, I said why don’t we try some of the stuff we had been doing at Brown. The owner, Frank Neid, told everybody if they didn’t want to listen to me, they could leave right then.”

Mixing in playing and coaching, Pollard worked with the Pros as well as the Milwaukee Badgers, Hammond Pros and Providence Steam Roller.

After exiting the NFL in 1926, Pollard formed the Chicago Black Hawks, an all-African American team that played exhibition games against Midwest teams and, during the winter, West Coast clubs.

When he finally hung up his whistle and pads, he did everything from tax consulting to film and music production. He also published the New York Independent News from 1935-42; it was the first black-owned tabloid in the city’s history.

So, while Pollard ultimately left his footprints everywhere, his cleat marks also made an indelible mark.

“When the Pros offered me a contract to play in Akron, there were only a few other blacks in the league. But they paid me $500, because that was my price.

“I know people had no right to judge me by anything but my character, and that’s the way I judged them. Look, the people who made it toughest when I got to Akron were the ones who were sorriest when I finally decided to leave.”