For American women, playing baseball is almost an underground experience. Girls who may start off playing Little League are soon steered into softball. This book, however, chronicles the mostly invisible history of women in baseball and pays special attention to the experiences of 11 members of Team USA, which competed in the fourth Women鈥檚 Baseball World Cup in 2010.
Here鈥檚 an excerpt from 鈥淎 Game of Their Own鈥�:
鈥淢ost of the women interviewed in this book would prefer sex-segregated baseball: they would rather play with women, if women鈥檚 baseball teams and leagues were competitive. But the virtual nonexistence of women鈥檚 baseball keeps them banging at the door of men鈥檚 baseball, not because they prefer to play with men, but because there is so little competitive women鈥檚 baseball available. Nobody鈥檚 baseball dream is to be a solitary, marginalized girl playing on a boys鈥� team. For most, Team USA is the first elite women鈥檚 team they have played on, and although most enjoy it more than any other baseball they have played, the tournaments are not frequent enough to satisfy the need to play regularly. With that desire to play as the common denominator, opinions differ among the players about the benefits of playing baseball with men and softball with women.鈥�
