BASEBALL WATCH : Dream Team

For Gina Satriano it’s a long way from Malibu to Charlotte, N.C., but there she will be on Sunday with her 23 teammates in their debut as the Colorado Silver Bullets, the first women’s professional baseball team since the 1950s. They will be the first women to play against men’s semipro and minor league teams.

Some may dismiss women in baseball as a mere marketing gimmick by the team’s sponsor, Coors Brewing, which is putting up $3 million to promote the Bullets. But the team--11 of whose members are from California, nine from Southern California--is about women leaving jobs and security to pursue their dreams on the field .

Others have preceded them. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which lasted from 1943 through 1954, was virtually forgotten until 1988 when the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., recognized the 545 women who played. Then there was the movie “A League of Their Own.”

In World War II chewing gum magnate P. K. Wrigley, the Chicago Cubs’ owner, came up with the league as a diversion for war-weary Americans and as insurance for club owners in the event the draft wiped out the rosters of the male baseball clubs.

There were marketing considerations then, too. Teams were named the Daisies, Peaches, Belles, Lassies and even Chicks. The players wore skirts and makeup--and went to charm school. Today’s Bullets need learn only how to autograph baseballs. If Satriano and her teammates are as successful as we think they’ll be, baseball may never be the same.