First woman MLB player - when?

[Iowanic]

Did she spell in really big letters, too?

[H.Franco]

Mary Elizabeth Murphy (April 13, 1894 - July 27, 1964), known as the "Baseball Queen", was the first woman to play professional baseball in 1922, competing with male athletes.

[toomanyhatz]

My feelings are that a) it will not require men and women to compete equally (which is an impossibility) for one outstanding woman to be given a chance - especially in light of the fact that an AL Pitcher only has to excel in one aspect of the game to succeed well enough. They wouldn't have to be a superstar - they'd only have to be good enough to be given a chance; and b) I really can't see the #metoo movement pushing for it. Why would they? Other than falling under the vague heading of "feminist," what would the two have in common? Their agenda has nothing whatsoever to do with physical equality.

[SABR Steve]

Q: First woman MLB player - when?

A: Never.

It's a preposterous notion. Women and men cannot compete equally on a sports field. It's called anatomy & biology.
Females are not males. Females cannot compete athletically with males. End of story.

The Me-Too movement will push for it, maybe. I can see some team signing a woman for the interest it would cause. It reminds me of the Eddie Gaedel ploy back in 1951.

[SaltyParker]

Q: First woman MLB player - when?

A: Never.

It's a preposterous notion. Women and men cannot compete equally on a sports field. It's called anatomy & biology.
Females are not males. Females cannot compete athletically with males. End of story.

[wes_kahn]

Before Herb Washington, Allan Lewis was a little better at this position. He was super fast and maybe if he had been signed at a younger age, he might have been what Finley really wanted. However, if you take the fastest female American sprinter of the time, Finley would have been the only owner to try this. I don't know if you ever heard of the name Penny Early. She was a really good jockey that had a lot of races at Churchill Downs and Keeneland. She was about five foot three.

The Kentucky Colonels were having a tough time selling tickets to their ABA games at the old Louisville Gardens. Kentucky had Dan Issel and Mike Pratt. Louisville had Wes Unseld. The Colonels signed Early, and she actually played in a regular season game for the Colonels. She didn't do much, maybe just inbounded the ball, and then they called timeout and removed her, but because there were rumors she would play, the Louisville Gardens had a lot more fans.

Finley owned an ABA franchise, and I am sure he took note of the fact that this ploy worked in Louisville for the Colonels. I could have seen him do this with a female track star in September some year, maybe in the late 1970's, like when he had just 250 in attendance at a game.

[dominik]

Teams also don't carry pinch runners/hitters anymore because they prefer to use that spot for an extra bullpen pitcher. In these days as a bench player you have to be able to play at least two, better 3 positions unless you are a catcher.

teams used to have 15 hitters and 10 pitchers, now it is 13 hitters and sometimes even only 12.

[JettSixty]

Every boys high school state champion won't draw one extra person to an Oakland Coliseum that only has a couple thousand in attendance.

Neither would Joyner. People aren’t going to attend a baseball to see if my chance she might pinch run. But it wouldn’t help the A’s win. She woukd t be fast enough. She wouldn’t have base running skills. As it was Herb Washington was a terrible base runner. He lacked instincts. He was only successful on 64%of his steal attempts.

[wes_kahn]

Why sign Florence Griffith Joyner? Her 10.49 100 meter is still the women’s record. Every boys high school state champion could beat her.

Every boys high school state champion won't draw one extra person to an Oakland Coliseum that only has a couple thousand in attendance.

[JettSixty]

This might have already happened had Charlie Finley ever met a female olympic sprinter to be his next Allan Lewis or Herb Washington. As a pinch runner, somebody like Florence Griffith Joyner might have had a chance to play in September in a past season.

Why sign Florence Griffith Joyner? Her 10.49 100 meter is still the women’s record. Every boys high school state champion could beat her.

[wes_kahn]

This might have already happened had Charlie Finley ever met a female olympic sprinter to be his next Allan Lewis or Herb Washington. As a pinch runner, somebody like Florence Griffith Joyner might have had a chance to play in September in a past season.

[angelinajohn9182]

brilliant!

[pedrosrotatorcuff]

I have seen people in this thread citing the WNBA as a "success". Has that league not lost money in every year of its existence? The only reason the WNBA exists is due to charity from the NBA for PR reaaons. If the WNBA had to subsist on its own merits, the league would fold tomorrow. It is unwatchable.

And only like 3 players have ever dunked iirc. That's really lame.

[GiambiJuice]

I have seen people in this thread citing the WNBA as a "success". Has that league not lost money in every year of its existence? The only reason the WNBA exists is due to charity from the NBA for PR reaaons. If the WNBA had to subsist on its own merits, the league would fold tomorrow. It is unwatchable.

[Al Oliver]

Since the current sports lineup for girls / women in the developmental years is massively tilted to softball, the best potential baseball prospects among females almost always concentrate on softball.

Baseball and softball are obviously similar sports evolved from common ancestors, and some skills would transfer over, but others would not. At some point any female wishing to try out for professional baseball would have to quit softball and concentrate strictly on baseball.

Strictly on a basis of personal satisfaction, few women would want to quit softball, where presumably they would be outstanding to dominant, to play baseball in which they would struggle to even be average.

Theyd have to be willing to do this for several years, PLUS deal with discrimination/ resistance within baseball, and in the end their best case scenario would probably be to be a replacement-level utility player.

And unlike the entry of African-American, Latino or Asian players, the “first female” wouldn’t really be opening the gates for anybody— given the differences in physiology, it would still be astronomically unlikely there would ever be more than a couple female players in organized baseball.

And there isn't any good reason for girls to deviate from softball to baseball, the interest just isn't there. Softball has been extremely successful for girls, helping them with the same valuable life lessens as other team sports, along with scholarship possibilities after high school. Just don't see it at the MLB level, the skill level is a bigger problem than resistance, in my view.