Top of page

Exhibition Baseball Americana

Baseball Americana

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

Uniform of Dorothy Ferguson Key (1923–2003), Rockford Peaches, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, 1945–1954. Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (033.00.00)
Enlarge

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

According to the player manual, “When you become a player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, you have reached the highest position that a girl can attain in this sport.” The distinctive uniforms, designed to emphasize femininity, were problematic—players accumulated “strawberries on top of strawberries,” painful abrasions from bare-legged sliding. Infielder Dorothy “Dot” Ferguson, who wore this uniform as a Rockford Peach, was a constant threat on the base paths, with 461 stolen bases over her ten-year career.