What does the future hold for women in pro baseball?
Bill Ballou  Special to the News  Baseball has been slow to achieve gender equity, but at long last the sport seems to have made its way into the 20th century. Kim Ng is the general manager of the Miami Marlins. Janet Marie Smith helped revolutionize the design of ballparks. Julie Creedon-Linton is an owner of the Worcester Bravehearts and Nashua Silver Knights of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League. And so forth. Creedon-Linton was one of the featured guests in a Zoom presentation by the Worcester Historical Society last Wednesday night. Called "Women in Baseball: A League of Their Own, the panel also included Maybelle Blair, who played in the All American Girl Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL); Kim Miner, the vice-president and general counsel for the Worcester Red Sox; and Patty Provost, longtime coach and athletic director at Notre Dame Academy. Kate Myshrall, vice president of advancement for the Seven Hills Foundation and a former producer for televised sports, was the moderator. Blair, 94, is a native of Texas who played for Peoria in the AAGPBL. That is the circuit that inspired the movie A League of Their Own, and there would be a sea of hands in support of that film as the best baseball movie ever made. Her memories of playing for Peoria made Blair a proponent, not of having women and men on the same team, but going back to the AAGPBL days. We will never be able to compete with men, she said, just like in the WNBA they would never be able to play on an NBA team because were not built like men. Our best WNBA ballplayer couldnt even sit on a bench of an NBA club. What we need is a league of our own to show our skills.  A girl pitcher might make AAA (baseball), but (what) we need is a league of our own just like we had before because weve got to compete against women.  Creedon-Linton is on board with that. Why not? she said. I think anythings possible. Maybe Im looking at it through rose-colored glasses but women have been surprising people for generations. Look at it  we have our first woman vice president, we have women coaching in the NBA, reffing in the NFL, there are women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies ... these powerful women are turning a mans world into a best-person-for-the-job world.  Miner played varsity softball at Tufts and began her career in sports working for the Boston Red Sox. It was just in my family, a love for sports, she said of her career path, and mostly on my moms side of the family ... they were avid sports fans. My mom would have every sports event on and I distinctly remember my dad asking if we could watch a TV show and my mom would say, No, the Red Sox are playing. '  After college, Miner knew she wanted to be a lawyer and knew there was a future in sports. It dawned on me that I could be a lawyer working for a sports team, she said. Thats what I wanted to do.  She made the move from Rhode Island to Worcester with the Pawtucket Red Sox and was a major player in the negotiations and in getting Polar Park built. Provost is well known for the field hockey teams she produced at Notre Dame, but her softball teams have been successful too, and thats how she got going in sports. It certainly did start with baseball, Provost recalled. We had five children out in the backyard with dad, playing catch, using trees for bases and there were numerous hours when wed just catch and throw, catch and throw  just play catch. That was the beginning of me dreaming of athletics, dreaming of sports  thats how my career came to be, loving sports, loving baseball. I had that dream in the backyard to pursue some kind of game and it started with baseball.  While Blair wants female ballplayers to have their own league, Miner thinks baseball rosters may evolve into a mix of male and female. I think were getting fairly close, she said. I think things are happening pretty quickly on this front. Miner added that there are more female coaches, more women in the dugouts, more women in front offices. Playing, thats the next frontier, and thats so important ... women can play; thats not really the question. Having women play might change the way the game is played a little bit, the art of the game, and I would love to see that.  When that frontier is finally crossed, it will look different than the one Blair encountered in some ways, but similar in at least one  money. She recalled how she had been scouted for the AAGPBL but assumed her parents wanted no part of her leaving home. No matter, a scout followed her home to ask her parents if she could sign. They essentially told the scout to beat it but before he took one more shot. 'Mrs. Blair, you dont quite understand,' the scout said. 'Were gonna pay her $55 a week.' My mother looked at my father and said, You go crank up that car and Im gonna go in and pack her suitcase and shes on the next train out of here. Home sweet home plate.