Post #6: Brief Update

I spent two days in Williamsport, PA, the headquarters of Little League Baseball (LLB), over spring break. I was able to gather a fair amount of information, but it was not the gold mine for which I was hoping. I spoke with the director of the Peter J. McGovern Little League museum, Mrs. Janice Ogurcek, who said she herself is in the process of digging up material on Little League's integration of the sexes. She mentioned that this, naturally, is not exactly a part of Little League's past that it wants to highlight. Thus, much of the relevant documents are buried deep in dusty file cabinets, often in a not too terribly organized fashion, and not likely to come out for display. There were two moderate displays, however, focused on girls and Little League. A good portion of this was concerning the softball end of Little League which is not the focus of my research. I did, however, return home with much more information than when I had left. As an additional bonus, I got Mr. Van Auken, who works at LLB headquarters, and is the author of Play Ball!: The Story of Little League Baseball (which I first came across during the LOC trip), to sign a copy of his book which I purchased at the musuem.

Before I begin writing the paper, I would like to find a copy of the federal charter granted to LLB by Congress in 1964 as well as a few of the legal documents from the many sexual discrimination lawsuits brought against LLB from all across the country. I have been able to get a significant amount of information on the legal battles by means of newspaper articles. The case which ultimately broke the sex barrier occurred in Hoboken, N.J., so the New York Times covered that case quite extensively and followed some of the other cases to a lesser extent.