Has a female ever been scouted for a major league ball club?
Have females shown up for major league try outs, and been successful? That is, sent to an instructional league or ‘A’ ball?
I think that would be “no ball”.
I think there was some serious talk about finding a slot for AIAW or women’s NCAA basketball players somewhere in the NBA (this was well before the WNBA). I believe one of them played on the team that tours as opponents to the Harlem Globetrotters, but that that’s all that came of it.
Lynette Woodard become the first female Globetrotter in 1985. http://www.harlemglobetrotters.com/history/tl_1985.html
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Not that anyone knows of.
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Not in the organized major leagues. Ila Borders, a lefthanded pitcher who had played men’s ball in NCAA play, did pitch in the independent Pioneer League in 1997, which is roughly equal to Class A ball.
I think the closest to anything like that was a goalie in the NHL, who played for the Sharks. I think she did quite poorly and was dropped.
RickJay:
The Pioneer League isn’t independent, it’s a member of the National Association, and most of its teams have major league affiliations. And it’s Rookie class (lowest level), not “roughly equal to Class A” (one step above that).
Right, however Borders pitched in the Northern league, which was and is independent. Some players have gone on to the big leagues, but none of the Northern League teams are affiliated with Major League teams.
I know that Manon Rhéaume (a goaltender) played one exhibition game for the TB Lightning. This was in their first season in the NHL, so I assume that they only made her play to get some extra publicity. However, I think she also played regular season games for a QMJHL team, and that at some point they pulled Jocelyn Thibault (now with the Chicago Blackhawks) during a game and replaced him with her.
However, I’m not entirely sure of that last part.
Nancy Leiberman was once given a tryout by the Indiana Pacers on, IIRC, an allegedly non-PR basis.
She did a stint here in Atlanta for a few years:
“The Atlanta Knights were impressed enough with the female netminder to offer her a 3 year contract paying the minor league minimum, but with intricacies surpassed by no other minor league contract. Her first action in a regular season professional hockey game came against the Salt Lake Golden Eagles where she allowed only a goal by Todd Gillingham while facing 4 total shots in 5:49 of the second period.”
She was a big draw for the (now defunct) Knights. Go Thrashers!
cite for quote above: http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~shipengr/Rheaume/rheaume.html
Actually, the Pacers drafted Anne Meyers (later Mrs. Don Drysdale), probably as a publicity stunbt, and let her work out with the men for a few days before cutting her.
As far as I know, there is still, officially, a ban on signing a female player to a contract in organized baseball. The ban was implemented in 1952, under Commissioner Ford Frick, in response to the signing of Eleanor Engle to a minor league contract by the Harrisburg Senators. Earlier, in 1931, Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis had voided the contract of Jackie Mitchell, a 17-year-old girl who was signed by the Chattanooga Lookouts during spring training, and who pitched in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, striking out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig (she walked Tony Lazzeri).
The gender line was official broken back in 1898 when Lizzie Arrington pitched an inning for Reading against Allentown.
I seriously doubt whether MLB would try to enforce the ban, even though it’s never been rescinded – it’d be a disaster from both a legal and public relations standpoint. (Hmm. I guess as long as Selig is commissioner, that doesn’t make it any less likely – cf. baseball’s labor relations and contraction). But despite the pioneering efforts of a number of girls and women over the last few decades, there just haven’t been enough of them playing regularly against male competition to start producing major-league-caliber players. In any event, there’d be no need to hold a “tryout” – any female player who’s even close to having major league talent will have attracted plenty of attention along the way as she moves through the Little League/Pony League/American Legion/college ranks – witness the attention paid to Katie Brownell, the female Little Leaguer who earlier this year pitched a perfect game, striking out every batter she faced – she ended up on Good Morning America, met President Bush, and had her jersey donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Fifty years ago, there might have been girls who had a shot at it playing in obscure, out-of-the-way parts of the country where they’d never be heard of by anyone but locals, but not today.
As for tryouts in general, they’re pretty much completely a community relations effort these days – less than half the teams conduct them, and the schedules usually end up consisting almost entirely of communities in or near the team’s home market and the towns that host their minor league teams. The Major League Scouting Bureau, a scouting service funded by Major League Baseball and providing reports to most of the MLB teams, also conducts open public tryouts, but very few players get signed from open tryouts, and even fewer make it to the major leagues.
More info: The Girls of Summer: a very nicely done introductory history of women in baseball
Annotated Timeline of Women in Baseball
'Best answer award goes to
rackensack . Thanx!