All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
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| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1943 |
| Founder | Philip K. Wrigley |
| Inaugural season | May 30, 1943 |
| Ceased | September 5, 1954 |
| Motto | Do or Die! |
| No. of teams | 15 |
| Last champion(s) |
Kalamazoo Lassies |
| Most titles | Rockford Peaches (4) |
| Official website | aagpbl.org |
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was a women's professional baseball league founded by Philip K. Wrigley which existed from 1943 to 1954. Over 600 women played in the league. In 1948, league attendance peaked over 900,000 spectators in attendance. The Rockford Peaches won a league-best four championships while playing in the AAGPBL. For most of the league's history, manager Bill Allington coached different teams and led the league in career wins as a manager. The 1992 motion picture A League of Their Own tells a fictionalized account of one of the league's teams.
Although the name All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, or AAGPBL, is commonly used today, it was official for only two seasons. The league was founded as the All-American Girls Softball League. In 1943, the name was changed to the All-American Girls Baseball League. In 1949 and 1950 the league was called the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and from 1951 to 1954 the league adopted American Girls' Baseball League.
The league went through three periods of ownership. The League was owned by chewing gum mogul Philip K. Wrigley from 1943 to 1945, Arthur Meyerhoff from 1945 to 1951, and the teams were individually owned from 1951 to 1954. In 1947 and 1948, spring training exhibition games were held at the Gran Stadium in Havana, Cuba.
The teams generally played in second-tier Midwestern cities. The South Bend Blue Sox and the Rockford Peaches were the only two teams that stayed in their home cities for the full 12-year period of the AAGPBL's existence.
With America's entry into World War II, several major league baseball executives started a new professional league with women players in order to maintain baseball in the public eye while the majority of able men were away. The founders included Wrigley, Branch Rickey and Paul V. Harper. They feared that Major League Baseball would cease, due to the war. Initial tryouts were held at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
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