Gimmick? Women’s Baseball League Was Serious Stuff : Entertainment: The movie, “A League of Their Own,” sticks fairly close to the real story. It takes place during the league’s first season.

It was supposed to be a gimmick, another way for women to keep the country going while the men were off fighting the war.

Late in 1942, a baseball executive feared next year’s season would be canceled and announced he was forming a women’s softball league instead. While stars of local teams got out their bats and gloves, press coverage recalled Ricky Ricardo’s bemused expression whenever Lucy vowed she was going to get a job.

“Ladies of Little Diamond” was how Time magazine headlined its article on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the brainchild of Chicago Cubs owner and chewing gum king Phil Wrigley and now the basis for the film “A League of Their Own.”

“On softball’s miniature diamond . . . and aided by softball’s underhanded pitching,” Time said, “girls can pitch, bat, field grounders and otherwise perform like reasonable facsimiles of the male.”

They were better than reasonable. Those “girls,” some married with children, kept the league going for 12 seasons and entertained millions of fans. A few players were considered good enough to hold their own against the men. The league itself was good enough to earn a special exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Some of the press may have looked down on us when they first heard about the league, but they changed their minds in a big hurry,” said Dottie Collins, a pitcher for six seasons. “We weren’t on a lark.

“There was a playoff game in the later years of the league and (team manager and former major leaguer) Max Carey said as far as he was concerned it was the greatest game he had seen in his life, the playing ability and the pitching ability.”

The men did play baseball in 1943, but Wrigley still went ahead with his plans. He dispatched Cubs scouts all over the country, with some players eventually earning a then-generous $125 a week. There were four teams at first and 12 at the league’s peak. Each season lasted at least 100 games and ended with a round of playoffs.

“We had people coming from all sections of life,” Collins said. “We had farm girls, the glamour girls, the rich girls who had all kinds of money. We had the gals who had never been away from home, gals who didn’t know how to dress in public. You had them from everywhere.”

The managers were men, many of them former major-league stars. There were Hall of Famers Carey, Jimmie Foxx and Dave Bancroft, as well as Guy Bush, Woody English and Bill Wambsganss, who as a second baseman for the Cleveland Indians pulled off the World Series’ only unassisted triple play.

Wrigley made his fortune through baseball and candy, but he built the new league like a Hollywood mogul.

Image counted: He wanted good, clean, family entertainment.

Not for him were the suggestive team names used in local softball leagues--Slapsie Maxie’s Curvaceous Cuties or the Num Num Pretzel Girls. Instead, there were the Kenosha (Wis.) Comets, the South Bend (Ind.) Blue Sox and the Racine (Wis.) Belles.

Slacks and tight skirts were forbidden. Players considered too uncouth or too masculine were kept out. Before the first season began, Wrigley sent recruits to Helena Rubenstein’s Gold Coast beauty salon, where, Time reported, they would learn “make-up, posture, and other whatnots usually neglected by lady athletes.”

“I don’t think they selected us on the basis of our looks, but they were strict on our being feminine,” said Gloria Elliott, a pitcher for Kalamazoo, Mich. “They wanted you to wear feminine attire and to act like a lady.”

“You know what rules were, don’t you?” Dottie Schroeder, a shortstop who played in every season of the league, said with a laugh. “Rules were made to be broken. You were supposed to be in two hours after the evening game, but sometimes it extended later. It was never malicious, but we enjoyed bending the rules a little.”

And whatever “whatnots” in which the players were supposedly groomed, their manners on the field could be as bad as the guys’. Smoking and drinking were forbidden, but you couldn’t stop anyone from indulging in baseball’s most incurable vice: arguing with the umpires.

“Some can swear as well,” Time noted. “Henpecked Harry Wilson, the dean of girl-softball umpires, maintains that the female Lippy Durochers, with their special brand of umpire-baiting, draw larger crowds than softball’s DiMaggios.”

“Umpires of girls’ softball games, almost always men,” added The New York Times, with unintentional humor, “have their hands full, too.”

The league wasn’t softball for long. It evolved from underhand pitching to sidearm to overhand. By the time it folded in 1954, the women were using a regulation, major-league baseball and playing under standard baseball rules.

“A League of Their Own” sticks fairly close to the real story. It takes place during the league’s first season, with Geena Davis and Madonna among the stars of the Rockford (Ill.) Peaches.

Tom Hanks is featured as an alcoholic, ex-major league star who becomes the team’s manager. (His character was inspired by Foxx). Penny Marshall, whose previous films include “Big” and “Awakenings,” directed.

“I really enjoyed the movie, and I was kind of skeptical,” Elliott said.

“The movie was funny and very entertaining and they showed how the women could play ball. The manager played by Tom Hanks was kind of far out, nothing like we had, but it was funny.”

Collins also praised the film, but didn’t care for some of the players’ showboating.

She referred to a game in which Madonna, the center fielder, catches a ball with her hat, and Davis, the catcher, does a split as she nabs a pop fly.

“Nobody would think of catching a fly ball with their hat, that is a little bit stupid and nobody would do a split as they catch a ball,” Collins said. “We were very serious in what we did. We think of ourselves as a third major league.”

While historians believe the AAGPBL was the only women’s professional baseball league, professional softball leagues have been around at one time or another throughout the century.

Baseball great George Sisler helped put one together in the 1930s. Another was tried in the 1970s, with Billie Jean King among the organizers.

Softball becomes an Olympic medal sport in 1996 and “A League of Their Own” comes out at a time when more women than ever are playing. Amateur Softball Assn. spokesman Bill Plummer says there are more than 50,000 Junior Olympic teams in the United States right now and estimates some 16 million women are playing overall.

Television and the post-war boom helped put an end to the league, but the establishment eventually paid its respects.

In 1988, The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., opened a “Women in Baseball” exhibit, featuring uniforms, bats, baseballs, gloves, shoes, trophies, posters, scorecards and tickets.

Collins was among many former players attending.

“That was the biggest thrill for all of us,” she said. “The movie is second place as far we are concerned. Being accepted by Cooperstown was the greatest thing that happened to any of us.”