The Little League Of The Baseball Cap - 1599 Words

From a young age, girls and boys are separated in all walks of life; none is truer than in sports, especially baseball. In 1939 Little League Baseball was founded for anyone between the ages of 5 and 18; leading with their motto Courage, Character, and Loyalty. This idea of courage was especially true in the year 1950, when Kathryn Johnston tucker her hair under her baseball cap, took on the nickname â€Å"Tubby† and posed as a boy for her local teams tryouts. It was not until after she made the team that Kathryn revealed her true identity, leaving the local league no choice but to allow her play. In just one year after that incident, the Little League regulations were changed (as too should have their motto). Their new document read out â€Å"Girls†¦show more content†¦In 2009, Jennifer Ring, wrote an article titled â€Å"Baseball Is War†; in this article she references how this law, no matter how old it is, will never really be accepted socially. She states that â€Å"girls playing baseball is still news. Parents who arrive at a youth baseball game and unfold their portable chairs are still, in 2009, surprised by the presence of a ponytail†(Ring, 12). It is not until something as simple as a girl on a baseball field is ‘old news’, that we will be able to say, we are equal. Perhaps Ring is right on the second page of her article where she states that, â€Å"The battle is cultural, not legal†. It has been a females’ legal right since 1973 to play baseball, yet we see it less and less as the years go on. During the 19th century, women’s teams at six different colleges as well as other outside sources began playing baseball. Baseball was a chance for these women to step out side of their comfort zone almost and gain a freedom that they otherwise did not have before. Martha Brady states it best with her quote from article â€Å"Creating Safe Spaces and Building Social Assets for Young Women in the D eveloping World† When she says, â€Å"To a degree, being involved in sports appears to work against the repressive effects of conformity and femininity and allows girls access to the more action-oriented realm of adolescence that is typically enjoyed by boys (Brady, 42). During this time a couple women stood out and began to