[photo credit: Pasadena Seniore Center]
The presentation, titled “When Baseball Players Wore Skirts: The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League,” is part of the center’s Masters Series Lifelong Learning program and its Women’s History Month programming. It shares its title with a chapter Andi Stein published in the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, a scholarly collection tied to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Most people know the league through the 1992 film “A League of Their Own.” The real story is more complicated. Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley founded the league in 1943, fearing that wartime military drafts would empty major league ballparks. More than 600 women played across 10 Midwest teams over 12 seasons. By 1948, the league drew nearly a million fans.
But the players navigated expectations that went far beyond the diamond. They attended mandatory charm school sessions at Helena Rubinstein’s salon. They wore short skirts as uniforms — skirts that made sliding into bases a painful proposition. They were forbidden from wearing pants or cutting their hair short, and required to wear lipstick at all times.
The league folded in 1954, squeezed by the return of men’s baseball, the rise of televised games, and declining attendance. Its history was largely forgotten until former players organized reunions in the 1980s. In 1988, the National Baseball Hall of Fame opened a permanent “Women in Baseball” exhibit honoring the league — an event that drew roughly 150 former players and 300 family members to Cooperstown.
Four years later, the film brought the story to a mass audience. But the Hollywood version, while popular, was a fictionalized account. Stein’s research focuses on how the league was promoted and marketed — and what those promotional strategies reveal about the cultural expectations placed on women athletes in mid-century America.
Stein, a professor emerita in Cal State Fullerton’s Department of Communications, is a former journalist and public relations practitioner. She also authored “Why We Love Disney: The Power of the Disney Brand” and was featured in the History Channel’s 2024 docuseries “How Disney Built America.”
The presentation comes as women’s professional baseball is experiencing a revival. The Women’s Pro Baseball League announced plans to launch with six franchises in the summer of 2026 — more than 70 years after the AAGPBL disbanded.
The Pasadena Senior Center, an independent, donor-supported nonprofit at 85 E. Holly St., serves more than 10,000 adults age 50 and older each year. Most of its members come from Pasadena and Altadena. Admission to the talk is $15 for members and $18 for non-members. Registration is suggested, but tickets will also be available at the door. The program is in-person and will not be recorded. To register online, visit the center’s website. For more information, contact Annie Laskey at (626) 685-6702.
“When we were playing, we didn’t realize what we had,” former AAGPBL pitcher Dottie Collins once said. “We were just a bunch of young kids doing what we liked best. But most of us recognize now that those were the most meaningful days of our lives.”
