Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game

This well-researched book on softball history underscores the fact that present-day women’s sports face all the same hurdles they did a century ago. Though softball was invented in 1887, the fastpitch version only became a spectator sport in 1933 at the Chicago World Fair. In the 1930s, softball was one of the few sports women were allowed to play. The sport mainly grew via amateur leagues where companies sponsored teams. Though games were well-attended, teams were not profitable because tickets were cheap; the teams with the richest sponsors won most of the championships because their players could live on their softball salaries and focus on sports. The late 1960s saw the first push to get softball into the Olympics after Australia hosted a five-country international tournament. Still, women in sports continued to be treated as a novelty. Title IX became law in 1972 and created new opportunities in college sports for female athletes and coaches. An unexpected result was the fall of the adult leagues; as Westly explains, by the early 1980s, “fastpitch was now primarily a college sport.” At present, “to actually make a living playing softball, most players have to go overseas.” This, along with other ongoing battles for equity, shows the importance of Westly’s historical account. [em](June) [/em]