The year is 1943 and the war is underway. With all the able-bodied youth shipped far from U.S. borders, baseball lacks a steady stream of potential players to entertain the masses. At the dawn of this crisis, Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley proposed an idea so radical it could shake the foundations of American sports: a women's baseball league! Despite significant risk, the All-American Girl's Professional Baseball League beat the odds and lasted an extraordinary eleven years, from 1943 to 1954. When many of these young women began playing, they were simply looking for a stable source of income and a way to express their love for the game. However, through their perseverance and incredible skill on the field, these players revolutionized baseball and sparked a change in how Americans viewed women's place in society. When the league formed, it wasn't entirely unheard of for women to play baseball. The Dolly Vardens were a team of African American women who were paid as players, two years ahead of any men's team! (Pickles 2012) As Cathy Pickles, a staff member at the National Women's History Museum, points out: "After Amelia Bloomer designed her famous Turkish-style pants, women wore them and took to the field as 'Bloomer Girls' who traveled the country competing against men teams. They made a living playing ball from the 1890s until the early 1930s.” However, the AAGPBL broke barriers by becoming the first recorded women's league and eventually expanded to to include ten teams across the Midwest, this was the first time they could play in an organized manner and get paid for it. For both owners and players, the league was a mutually beneficial solution to the lack of... middle of paper ......story. (King 2012) When they picked up their clubs and stepped to the plate, these women didn't think they had started a feminist revolution. They simply loved the game and they knew that they could have made a lot of money doing it. However, their skill and courage have proven to transcend gender boundaries in their time and inspire others to follow suit in the future. As described in Kerry Candaele's article on the history of women in baseball: "they weren't behind the scenes, they were the scene." (Candaele 2012) Despite the impractical uniforms, make-up kits and invisible thumbs of their male supervisors, these women changed the face of the sport and paved the way for other pioneers in the fight for equality on all fronts . Ultimately, as former player Dotty Kamenshek noted, “At first the girls came to watch. But we won them over with good baseball. (Kamenshek 1993)