Saucer Caps

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: The only spring training held for the Women's Baseball League was held in Chicago, Illinois at Wrigley Field. I think Philip Wrigley was surprised. There must have been hundreds of women from across the country who converged on Chicago with nothing more than train tickets, a cardboard suitcase and a dream.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: I took the trip from New Orleans to Chicago. The other Jax Maids were with me, and we get to Wrigley Field. First time I had ever been to Chicago. We start looking for the street - is it Waverly? I don't remember. But as we're walking down the street, we're bumping into other women wearing athletic gear, satin jackets, caps, carrying bags with bags and gloves, and I realize that it's going to be a convention.

[b]"Lucky" Linda Spolsino[/b]: Wrigley Field. Mary Mother of Mercy. It was a cathedral, and I was standing on holy ground. I just stood there for about five minutes thinking, "wow, I've finally made it to the big time."

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: I think the major league scouts in the stands realized that they had underestimated the number of attendees. The players were quickly broken up into groups. The schedule was stretched out from dawn to dusk. Wrigley was going to be in full use until the Cubs returned from Spring Training.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: We called it the Sally Rand Training Camp. You might not remember, but there was a stripper called Sally Rand. She was a fan dancer; she had these big fans and she'd flutter them around. When we broke up for games, do you think anyone was going to [b]bunt[/b]? We were trying to make the cut. Everyone swung for the fences. Swoosh! Swoosh!

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: The various teams had come up with the names of their sister clubs - usually with "Lady" affixed to the name. The Brooklyn Lady Dodgers. The New York Lady Yankees. Both the Braves and the Indians named their clubs the "Squaws".

The Red Sox and White Sox had a problem. Both clubs felt that Lady Red Sox or Lady White Sox was too cumbersome a name. Both clubs considered "Red Stockings" and "White Stockings" but these names could be confused with the original names of each club.

I think Boston and Chicago actually discussed this together. In the end, they settled on "Laces" as feminine enough. The Red Laces and the White Laces.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: Babe Ruth showed up in Chicago. He had been asked to take part in the WBL as a manager by the Dodgers, but he declined. However, at the end of the training camp, he met with the women who had been gathered to form the Lady Yankees. He gave this rousing speech about the greatness of the Yankee tradition. He finished his speech, "You might be a broad...but despite that, you're still a [b]Yankee[/b]."

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: Babe Ruth took a few swings at some of our pitching. He must have hit a couple out of Wrigley Field. Boy, he could hit!

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: Lonnie Plotner and his wife were trying to determine what kind of uniform the players should wear. They wanted to emphasize the feminity of the players and finally came up with what could be called a modified dress that buttoned-up in front like a hotel clerk's uniform. At chest level was a patch with the logo of the team - for example, the Lady Yankees had the locked N-Y symbol from the parent club.

All uniforms were monotone colors, except the Lady Yankees which of course wore a pinstriped dress. There were no home and away versions of the uniforms - the monotone color was usually bold enough to tell teams apart. Boston's teams went to pink.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: A great uniform, unless you had to squat. Then you could see London and France.

[b]Tulla Zimmerman[/b]: The younger girls thought, "Let's see. Let's bring these hemlines up about an inch."

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: The ensemble was completed with a knee-length skirt, long socks and and a precarious-looking cap. Great if you wanted to be a model, not so great if you wanted to play baseball.

[b]"Lucky" Linda Spolsino[/b]: We called it the Saucer Cap. It sat on your head like a saucer and all it needed was a cup of tea. Some of the ladies had an updo going on. So they compromised by bobby-pinning the cap to their hair. If they were catchers, then the mask was going to destroy their dos anyway.

So the players would come out of the dugout for the National Anthem and that hat would just [i]float[/i] on the top of their hair. But bobby pins will never let you down. That cap stayed on, rain or shine.



[b]WBL Notice, March 1, 2009[/b]:

[b]DRESS CODE FOR LADIES[/b].

1. The following colors have been accepted for uniforms.

[b]American League[/b]

Boston - Pink
Cleveland - Red
Chicago - White
Detroit - Blue
New York - Pinstriped
Philadelphia - Gold
Washington - Gray
St. Louis - Brown

[b]National League[/b]

Boston - Pink
Brooklyn - Blue
Chicago - White
Cincinnati - Red
Philadelphia - Black
Pittsburgh - Gold
New York - Orange
St. Louis - Gray

In the event that the uniforms have to be maintained, thread color should match uniform color in all circumstances.

2. Caps may be affixed to hair with pins, but should not be worn at a rakish or ludicrous angle.
3. Hair should reach the shoulder line. For players whose hair does not currently reach their shoulder line, this standard should be met by the end of the 1943 season.
4. Hair length should not fall beneath the shoulder blades.
5. Only moderate makeup should be worn. If makeup is to be worn, it is not to be the previous day's makeup. If makeup is not worn, the face should be neatly scrubbed.
6. Any accessories, with the exception of wedding bands, should be plain and simple. It is recommended that players do not wear jewelry onto the field of play.
7. Any clothing worn off the field for the durations of the contracts should be well-fitted and in simple and tasteful colors.
8. All hemlines should be even. Pants of any length are prohibited.
9. Slips should not show.
10. There should be no visible leg hair.
11. All stocking seams should be made straight. Stockings with runs are not to be worn.
12. Cleats are to be cleaned before entering the field of play.
13. Shoes off the field of play shall be cleaned and polished.
14. Runover heels are forbidden.

Humps and He-Shes

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: Judge Landis's office had to find someone who could be the "president" of the WBL, which would of course be supervised by the Commissioner's Office. The backlash from the owners was very strong, and he didn't want to put someone in who would let the league languish. Landis had no plan to support this league forever, but it needed to be propped up like a Potempkin village and he needed someone to do the job.

A friend recommended a corporate litigation lawyer named Lonnie Plotner. Plotner wasn't exactly the smartest tool in the shed - he was 57 and his legal skills were sub-par. However, he was probably the greatest schmoozer of all time. He could talk a nun out of her corset. That was how he had kept his job.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Plotner would have done anything for Judge Landis. Plotner loved baseball so much he probably would have paid to be involved with it, regardless if his involvement was strictly peripheral. Plotner loved working a room.

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: Plotner's hiring either sent a signal to the owners deliberately or inadvertantly - but the message was clear. Plotner had no pull, he had no baseball pedigree, he was a complete unknown. The message was that if you needed to clear some of the deadwood out of your office but for political reasons couldn't afford to directly fire someone, you assigned them to your WBL operation. The franchises would go bust and a plausible reason could be given to take someone off your staff.

"Drunkards and failures," was how Branch Rickey described it. In spite of that, there were a handful of young - and old - men with real talent that simply wouldn't be recognized in established baseball.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: The league - as it was - really started to come together in January of 1943. Each of the sixteen franchises of major league baseball managed to secure some sort of grounds for the women to play. A rudimentary schedule was designed, budgets were allotted and the questions of day-to-day management of the league were the only ones left to be answered.

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: Teams couldn't exactly afford to be picky in who they hired as coaches. A lot of the coaches were washed-up former players, some were drunks, some were incompetents. However, there was always a Class C or Class D type of organization in financial disarray somewhere in the country, and some coaches figured they could park themselves in the women's league until jobs in real baseball came up.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: As launch day lurched closer, the wives of the owners began asking questions about this WBL. How would the players dress, and what kind of women would they be? Would they be the "right kind" of women?

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: I don't think they called them "lesbians" back then, that wasn't a term in common use. I remember reading an old letter from someone that asked, "how many 'he-shes' do we have?" You know, [b]he[/b] and [b]she[/b].

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: Many women played softball because it provided the opportunity to break gender norms. I'm not going to cast any aspersions on anyone's appearance. I'm just going to say that some of the players were not conventional-looking women and leave it at that.

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: If it had been a four-team league, you might have been able to find a lot of conventionally attractive women to play baseball. However, with sixteen teams you needed anyone you could get.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: There was a story of a guy who went scouting up in Texas. This woman comes up to him with a short haircut, says, "Hiya, Mac!" and spits a big wad of tobacco to the side. The fella says, "I looked at her and I thought she was the manager." She could hit, though.

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: It wasn't an all-lesbian league, despite what you might read from period letters. Certainly, there were more lesbians in the league than would be represented in a random sample of the population, but I believe the league was majority heterosexual.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: To the players, it was no big thing. If you were any good at softball at all - if you played for a renouned industrial-league team, you were going to meet "mannish" women. Players either got used to it, or left. And the players that got used to it figured out that these women weren't out to "convert" them. The gay players simply wanted the chance to play sports like anyone else. There probably wasn't a lot of social mixing between the two groups but they generally respected each other. They definitely respected each other's talent.

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: Locker room clashes were never between heterosexual players and gay players. They were between fundamentalist players and gay players.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: Cliques? Yeah, there were cliques, but there were no more cliques than in any other clubhouse I've been in. They were just along some different lines.

Out on the Chicago Circut

[b]Midge Ryan[/b]: I was playing softball in Chicago. I loved it. I was born in Chicago, raised in Chicago. There wasn't much for girls to do in the way of sports, and I guess I was sort of a tomboy. I ran track because it was something that girls could do without much of a bother.

I think I was 13 when I heard about softball for the first time, and I think I must have played as much as I could get. About a year later, I found out there was a local tire company that was called Flesch's Tires that started a women's softball team. Now I told Flesch's that I was 16 and they let me try out. I didn't make the team but Henry Flesch said that I should keep playing. I think it was the first time that someone didn't look down their noses at a girl playing ball.

By 1942, I was playing softball for the Chicago Rockolas. I tried college for a year, didn't like it. Rockola made jukeboxes, and as far as I was concerned the eight hours on the assembly line were just something to do until ball practice.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: I was in New Orleans, playing for the Jax Maids. I think it was August when we read in The Sporting News that major league baseball was going to have women playing baseball. Not softball, mind you, but the real thing - baseball.

I think that every pitcher in Louisana softball began practicing overhand pitching. You'd see them, they'd be warming up overhanded and then they'd switch to that underhand throw when they hit the mounds. If you liked hitting, and I liked hitting, it made for some great games. Those girls would throw overhand and it would either wear down their arms or break their rhythm. I figured I had it easy. I just had to hit.

[b]SPORTING NEWS, 1942[/b]

The National and American Leagues are looking for girls and women of all ages to participate in baseball for women on an experimental basis during the 1943 season. Sixteen teams of honest baseball. No Bloomer Girls. Players will be chaperoned, but must be willing to travel. 140 game schedule. Players must have real skill. Contact Women's Baseball League, P. O. Box 900, Chicago Illinois.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: The secretaries at the Commissioner's Office expected a trickle, and they got a flood. They had to send back printed replies after a while - the office would send back a form and the applicants would fill out the particulars.

[b]Madeline Tucker Lacy[/b]: My mother, Michelle Tucker, said that she cut the ad out of The Sporting News and when she sent the answer back - she was about 34 - she wrote across the top of the form, "you said [b]all[/b] ages".

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: Most softball in the 1940s was industrial league softball. Chicago of course, but Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland. Any big city in the Northeast. There was also a lot of Canadian softball, but it wasn't as well scouted.

Pay was going to be a big issue. The plan was that the WBL would mirror major league baseball, making the same train trips and a very grueling schedule of games. The schools of thought were that the women had to be brought up to speed quickly and if they failed, it would be an argument that they couldn't handle the rigors of sports.

Some major league representatives went to the national softball championships in Detroit. They found out that a lot of these women were not going to play for peanuts. They probably didn't put their best foot forward as major league baseball's league-building wasn't very well thought out.

[b]Madeline Tucker Lacy[/b]: They offered my mother $1,000 a season. Now that was a lot of money back then just to play baseball. But you couldn't really live well on $1000. My mother said "no dice" and the word was getting around to the teams that the majors weren't really serious about letting women play.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: Someone asked me if I'd play for $1000. I told the man, "I'd like to see the money first, and I don't think you have it. I don't think you have any of that money you're talking about. That's just a starting amount."

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: One thousand dollars a year would be the equivalent of a part-time minimum wage job today. These women were being asked to do a lot. They would be moving away from their homes, away from their husbands - many of whom were overseas - some had children. Most of them would have jumped at the chance of playing baseball for money under ordinary circumstances, but the rumor spread that it was really a joke and that they wouldn't be paid anything.

[b]"Lucky" Linda Spolsino[/b]: We leave Detroit, we go back home, and we get a postcard in the mail. "The standard contract will be $1500. - Women's Baseball League." (Smiling.) After I got that, I went to go pick out curtains. I figured I was going to be moving in 1943.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: We had it good for those industrial league teams. We got free meals! We got traveling expenses. If something was calling itself a major league, it better match. We were getting perks!

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: The $1500 contract absolutely destroyed the industrial leagues. Just wiped them out. I believe that every single player on the Jax Maids told the brewery in New Orleans that if they made the WLB squads, then the players wouldn't be back next year.

[b]Tulla Zimmerman[/b]: I talked about this with my mother and father. My father wasn't happy, but my mother was impressed with the fliers that were being sent, and that we'd be chaperoned. I think she called the league office, paid for the call herself to find out if it was on the up-and-up. My suitcase was already packed and the only thing on my mind was "when is spring going to get here?"

By Default

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: A meeting had already been called for the owners on February 3rd. It was to discuss wartime restrictions but it had been expanded to see how this new problem could be handled.

This was a dead skunk in the middle of the room. Landis knew that baseball had to put up a women's league that met minimum standards, whatever they were. He wanted to pull something together out of baseball's general fund. However, the owners were against it - they wanted control of their own money. Poor clubs like Connie Mack's club tried to stop it, but to no avail. If there were going to be any women's teams, they woudl be run by each of the individual clubs. That predicated a 16-team organization.

Each team would have a "ladies auxilary" team, so to speak. It was informally agreed that baseball would run the league until either Landis was dead, or Roosevelt was out as president, or the war was over. Landis would be dead soon but there was no foretelling how long it would take for those other two conditions to be met.

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: They decided one thing - unanimously - that getting a league up in three months was too soon. This time, Landis wrote a letter, signed by all of the league owners, which begged the President for more time.

Roosevelt agreed that a league in 1943 was acceptable. Then, of course, once the league had gotten their "green light" from the President, they forgot all about it.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: There were only two owners who gave a rat's ass about a women's baseball league. One of them was Branch Rickey. He wasn't really an owner, but he was with the Cardinals org and might as well have been an owner.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: Rickey was a peculiar specimen. Men tended to either denigrate women in the 1940s or put them "up on a pedestal, and out of the reach of power" as my old thesis supervisor put it. Rickey was probably the most moralistic of baseball's minds with a streak of contrarian idealism. He liked baseball. He didn't like baseball players all that much.

So he idealized women as baseball players. He thought he would have sweet, docile girls - he was a traditional man - who could hit home runs and run the bases like Ty Cobb. He wanted players who hit like men and thought like women.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: The other person who liked the idea was Philip Wrigley. Wrigley was very pessimistic about the war. He once told a friend that it would be a major leap when the United States military could get to the level of "not running away". He figured the war could run at least 10 years. He was as patriotic as any man, but he figured that it would take the US military a longer time to get to speed.

So he didn't know what the future would bring, and he thought it was a dumb idea to put all of your eggs in one basket. Players could get drafted, but they would never draft women into the military. Furthermore, any idea that he could try out in this new league would be tried. The new league would be a testing ground for all of his theories about baseball.

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: Wrigley hated the reserve clause. He hated it with a burning passion. You have to remember that the Cubs weren't very good and I think in 1942 they finished in the cellar. He didn't think it was fair that the Yanks could have a DiMaggio in perpetuity. So he pushed hard for an abandonment of the reserve clause in the new Women's Baseball League.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: There was no grand league name. It was just the Women's Baseball League, because that was how the owners talked about it. "What are we going to do about this women's baseball league?" After a while, some owners and secretaries began to capitalize the name - "Women's Baseball League" and the name was accepted by default.

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: A lot of things were accepted by default. No one really cared in any of the club offices. Any meme that caught on had a chance of becoming part and parcel of the WBL.

You Don't Need Two Balls: Notes for a Dynasty

Max Granillo: Baseball historian, author.

Dr. Tameka Hadjupp: Professor of History at Virginia Tech.

Dr. Erik Knupp: Professor of History at University of Texas El-Paso, author of "Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis: A Life in Two Worlds"


(* * *)

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: I guess you could say that the whole thing was Judge Landis's idea.

I have to set the scene for you. It's January 1942. Only one month after the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. America is going to war. It's three months till baseball season.

Judge Landis, the commissioner of baseball, is thinking about the 1918 season. He wasn't baseball commissioner then, he was still serving on the U. S. District bench. But he was a baseball fan, certainly. America had gone to war one year earlier in 1917, and in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson asked the owners to close the season early due to World War I, which caused baseball a great amount of inconvenience. Landis was thinking about 1942 and he didn't want a repeat of circumstances.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Landis hoped to appeal to President Roosevelt directly. The only question was how he would appeal to the president.

Landis wasn't a well man - he was having cardiac pain at the time which he ignored. Landis would be dead in a year. Even so, he was a very powerful man, and in many respects he had more power than Roosevelt, at least in the world of baseball. He didn't want to lower his status, and he wanted Roosevelt to respect his accomplishments. So his first decision was to write a letter to Roosevelt, asking about baseball.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: If baseball was going to shut down in 1942, Landis wanted to be able to act quickly. Landis knew he had to preserve the sport foremost.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: But then again, Landis felt that a letter would be begging. He didn't want to beg Roosevelt. So he decided that he'd travel to Washington and meet Roosevelt in person and ask him about the 1942 baseball season.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: This is how Landis felt. He was the most powerful man in baseball; Roosevelt was the most powerful man in the United States - it was going to be a summit meeting, like a meeting between two heads of state.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Once again, I have to paint a picture. This is January 1942, and there's probably no busier person in the United States that Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He has to build a war machine essentially out of scratch. If Roosevelt turned down Landis, this would be acceptable given the circumstances: "Sorry, I'd like to meet but I'm too busy." Roosevelt, however, made time for Landis because I think Roosevelt wanted to give the impression that he was interested in sports and vigorous activity.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: My understanding was that President Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were scheduled for a joint appearance for an appeal to the Washington Red Cross. Something had to be moved off the schedule for Roosevelt to speak with Landis, and the decision was made to send the First Lady alone.

This wouldn't prove any difficulty for the First Lady, who was an experienced speaker and could make light work of these social functions. I believe, however, that it must have inconvenienced her, or that she must have felt inconvenienced by it.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: So my understanding is that Landis and Roosevelt shoot the shit in Roosevelt's office for about three hours, and they're having a high old time of it. Roosevelt was calling Landis "Kennie" which only Landis's close friends called him that. And Landis and Roosevelt are sharing some really salty language.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: One always gets the impression that Landis was this upright figure, this old man with a white shock of hair waving a moralistic finger at bad behavior - that impression comes from the Black Sox scandal. However, Landis liked dirty jokes as much as the next man of his era, probably more so. He could be a peculiarly foul-mouthed man. Hard core baseball men would wilt under a stream of verbal abuse from Landis if he wanted to make a point.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: Mrs. Roosevelt returns to the White House, and Landis and Roosevelt are sitting out on the veranda. The First Lady is already put out with the President for canceling his part of the joint appearance, and she almost makes it to the veranda when she, as she wrote in a private letter later, hears "a cascade of calumnities degrading the fairer sex".

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: I don't know what they talked about. All we know comes from the Roosevelt letter. Judge Landis didn't mention it. He only mentioned the results.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Boys will be boys, even presidents and commissioners. That was 1942.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: I believe that the First Lady simply retired for the afternoon. Her daughter, Anna Roosevelt, was at the White House and she didn't see any point in spending much time with the President. Who knows what happened? However, she was definitely in Anna's room at the White House and found some unknown evidence that revealed to Eleanor that her daughter was facilitating an affair between Anna's father - her husband - and Lucy Mercer, a woman with whom Franklin had had an affair over twenty years earlier.

In 1918, both Eleanor, as Franklin's wife, and Sara Delano Roosevelt, Franklin's mother, each offered Franklin dire consequences because of this affair. Eleanor wanted to divorce Franklin, and Sara warned her son that if he [i]did[/i] divorce Eleanor, she'd have him disinherited. A compromise was reached. Franklin would stop seeing Lucy Mercer, and they'd stay married.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: My understanding is that that stopped neither Franklin nor Eleanor from having affairs of their own. However, Lucy Mercer was a sore spot. It was simply the culmination of a bad day for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Judge Landis is staying at a hotel in Washington. He's going to meet with the President the next day before returning home. He had no clue of what was in store for him.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: I think I'd give anything to have been there during that breakfast. I think both sides had enough ammunition by this point to plead a case to the public...but I always felt that Franklin underestimated Eleanor. It was as if a room was full of explosives, and someone had just lit a match.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: So Landis gets to the President. Just for a goodbye. He's got what he wants. He has assurance that baseball would continue. It would be good for the war effort.

So there's the President waiting for him. But he's not as friendly anymore. He's all business. He says, "Mr. Commissioner...baseball will help the men, but what are you going to do for the [i]women[/i]?"

Landis is blindsided. Landis says something banal and then Roosevelt hits him again. "The war effort is very important, Mr. Commissioner. Even baseball must take a back seat to the war effort, and I believe that it will take several years before this war is over."

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Landis asks Roosevelt what he wants. "I want a league for women," says Roosevelt. "I want a real baseball league for women."

Landis does the usual shuffle - it would be hard to do, no one would attend the games, travel, et cetera. He's listing every practical barrier he can think of in an attempt to dissuade Roosevelt. He looks at Roosevelt, and Roosevelt clearly isn't having any of it.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: Roosevelt cuts the meeting short. Just cuts Landis cold, leaving him hanging. "Good day, Mr. Commissioner," and they wheel Roosevelt out of the room.

Landis gets back to his car, and his chauffeur said that Landis was sweating - and this was winter. The car pulls away from the White House, and Landis just rolls the window down and throws his hat out the window.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: A hundred things had to be going through Landis's mind. Now he has to come up with a league for women. How is going to sell this to the owners? How could he create a league out of nothing in three months? What could Roosevelt do to him and to baseball if Roosevelt wanted to?

Players were already being booed. DiMaggio was booed by the fans because they wanted to know why he wasn't in the Army. Roosevelt could have waved his hands, said, "baseball is canceled for the duration" and Landis would have been known as the man who killed baseball. No one but the most hard core of baseball fans would have complained.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: This was clearly Eleanor's idea. There have been a few books that claim that Eleanor Roosevelt was the "Mother of Women's Baseball". I don't think she had planned to have a women's baseball league before she confronted Roosevelt with the evidence. I simply think it was a way for her to get back at both Roosevelt and Landis. And then she thought, "Well, if I'm striking back, why should I only strike back on behalf of myself? Is there someone else I can help?"

Eleanor Roosevelt never attended a women's game. I don't think she even had an interest in baseball. Yet, inexplicably, she did more for women's sport than just about anyone.

Marginal Wins

There is a statistic called "Marginal Payroll/Marginal Wins" which determines how much teams pay for each of their wins. The formula for any team is

(total payroll - (28 x (league minimum payroll)))/((win percentage - 0.300)*162)

The numerator is the "marginal payroll" -- the payroll amount above the absolute minimum payroll, the cost of a team filled entirely with AAA replacement players, "pure substitutes" without any particular elan.

The denominator is "marginal wins" -- the number of wins above a .300 winning percentage. The big assumption is that a team filled entirely with average AAA players would have a win percentage of about .300, or about 48 wins.

For any season...or for any period of time...you can grade teams based on a) how many wins they had, and b) what the marginal cost/marginal win was.

If a team has a high win percentage and a low MW/MC ratio, it is an efficient team. It spends its money wisely.
If a team has a high win percentage and a high MW/MC ratio, it has spent its way to the top.
If a team has a low win percentage and a low MW/MC ratio, it is not spending enough to be competitive.
If a team has a low win percentage and a high MW/MC ratio, it is a poorly run team.

I went ahead and calculated those ratios for all the 2007 teams. Teams in the top ten in any ranking -- wins or MW/MC -- were given a "high" designation; teams in the bottom ten were given a "low" designation.

The 2007 results:

Efficient teams: Indians, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Padres, Phillies.
Not spending enough: Nationals, Marlins, Pirates, Devil Rays.
Spent their way to the top: Red Sox, Yankees
Poorly run teams: Astros, White Sox, Giants, Royals, Orioles

The funny thing is that the list sort of matches up with most people's perceptions. There are a lot of people who believe the Marlins, Pirates, and Devil Rays need to spend their way to the top. There have been years of complaints that the Yanks and Red Sox just open their pocketbooks to buy championships. The White Sox have taken the hit for questionable acquisitions and the Orioles haven't been the image of a well-run team for years.

This stat might be of use for people who are playing in on-line leagues, at least in that it might give a sign as to who is tanking.

(P. S. Sorry I haven't posted in a week. Three words: in. laws. visting.

The Best Dynasty Resource...Ever?!?

I've just discovered a brand new dynasty resource that might be invaluable to those looking for historical versimillitude in creating a baseball dynasty. It's called http://www.paperofrecord.com.

The idea behind paperofrecord.com is to create a searchable database of newspapers spanning from the 19th century to today. The database includes newspapers from the United States, the UK, Canada, Mexico, and other countries. Some papers extend back to the mid-19th century.

Yes, you will have to register, but since I don't have a phone (wink) I put a placeholder phone number of the "555" type. But what's really great about this site is that THE ENTIRE ARCHIVE OF "THE SPORTING NEWS" is on the site.

If you noticed the picture, this was obtained from the paperofrecord.com website and a version of the image composition software I use known as "The Gimp". This is the masthead for the very first "The Sporting News" ever, printed in 1886.

And the important part is that this is a searchable database. Want to read articles about the 1897 baseball season as it takes place? Or the 1917 season? Or the 1937 season? Or the 1978 season? It's all here!

And if you're running a Canadian dynasty, hey, just go to one of the Canadian newspapers, search for "baseball" and enjoy the power of paperofrecord.com! I'll be adding this as a "side link" under the "history" section.