Skyline English professor and poet, Katharine Harer, Known to many as “Miss H,” has completed a manuscript for a book entitled, “Comets, Blue Sox, Peaches, Chicks: Voices of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, 1943-1954.” The book, an oral history of the only successful Women’s Baseball League started by Phillip Wrigley, gives first-hand accounts from the players themselves, who are now in their 70s and 80s. Inspired by oral historian Studs Terkel, Harer attended three annual reunions of the league-in the last, the women were honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame-and even traveled to Southern California to speak in person to women living there. Softball to BaseballWhen the Women’s Baseball League was started in 1943, softball was considered the women’s ballgame. Although many young women played baseball in their neighborhoods, it was assumed that women were incapable of the strength required to hit regular baseballs successfully. As a result, the League actually started with softball. However, when William Wrigley Jr., owner of Wrigley field, saw the players had no problem with hardballs in practice, he quickly switched the game to baseball. Scouts would find talent at games, held by factories whose female employees were working in lieu of males who had gone to war. After the scouts brought them to spring training, the best players were chosen.According to Harer, the women of the WBL were different from other women in their day. Many did not marry or have children, or they had them later in life. They loved baseball and other sports and they participated in them; that made them different. “They were not trying to stand out and be different; playing sports made them different,” Harer said, making the distinction that the women did not otherwise seem different. Playing in War and DepressionThe ten teams of the Women’s Baseball League were comprised of young women who had grown up playing baseball with boys in the streets of their communities as a pastime. Most players came from poor families that could not afford typical feminine activities like ballet, so they spent time playing sports in neighborhood areas that were available. Playing on teams not only provided those who made the cut with the excitement of travel and playing ball, they were also paid two to three times the typical male worker in those days. Many were able to pay for college educations with the money they made.While the WBL wasn’t necessarily created to replace male baseball teams, nonetheless, there was a void. Mr. Wrigley had a field that stood empty, and, as people generally could not afford much, baseball games provided much needed entertainment in the states in which they were held.The players chosen were all white. Besides being good at playing baseball, the women who made it to the League had to be reasonably attractive. They had to wear dresses and dress-suits in public and never wear pants. They were sent to charm school. Their uniforms comprised of skirts above the knee, which meant their knees were scraped and bruised a lot. However, the players in the League were OK with the extra focus on their appearance and charm because they knew it brought more crowds to the games. They also simply accepted it because they had to.Tough Before Feminism”When I say they’re tough, I’m not saying they were mean. They were, and are, courageous and strong,” Harer said about the women When asked what was the single most intriguing thing from the interviews. “They had no identification with it as feministsgained later on. They were strong because they had to be.” According to Harer, the women put up with a lot and did not question it. As women who had grown up in the Depression and World War II, they had to be tough to survive and not because anyone told them it was good to be so. When they went back to ordinary life, they did not return as celebrities. They usually didn’t even talk about their experiences playing baseball because many felt as though no one would believe them.When the league folded, it was credited to dwindling interest and, as some players claim, to mismanagement by new people in charge. Thirty years later, the players re-connected and formed an organization to help keep in touch, have reunions and support each other whenever assistance is needed. One of their most enjoyable activities is visiting schools to tell their stories to kids, especially loving to inspire the girls. They also continue to search for team members they call the “lost girls.”Harer is currently searching for a publisher for her book. Many of her five published books of poetry can be found in the Skyline College Library.