“Women are outcasts in baseball.”

Like SNL’s Chico Escuela famously said, “baseball has been very good to me”  Not that I could hit a low inside slider very well, but I did grow up in New York to witness Mickey, Yogi and Casey in the Bronx, Willie at the Polo Grounds, Jackie at Ebbets and the Miracle Mets defy 300-1 odds to win it all in ’69.

This no doubt helped me write and develop MLB’s first national TV series This Week in Baseball with Mel Allen   In later years I worked as a writer, director and senior producer on baseball related  shows, most reflecting relative social and cultural themes. Jackie Robinson most obviously , but there were others, one of which would have never dawned on me had not my twin daughters both excelled at playing Little League Baseball, only to find no where else to play after the cut off age of 12.  Softball simply made no sense to them.   

Years later, my friend and MLB historian John Thorn mentioned how central girls were to the early development of baseball.  I thought I knew baseball history better than most, but -  WHAT?  

The result: a 7 year quest to help illuminate the obscured - or buried - history of baseball, while shining a light on some younger women trying to just play the game against significant social and cultural headwinds . A lot of progress has been made since we started filming, though even now when a girl says she plays baseball, the all too common refrain is  “oh, you mean softball?”

No, not softball, hardball - baseball.  It’s been very good to us guys and finally getting better to the gals too.