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WORK TITLE: Fastpitch
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://ericawestly.com/
CITY: Tucson
STATE: AZ
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Holds M.S., M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Slate, Wired, Smart Set, Self, Esquire, Popular Science, and New York Times.
SIDELIGHTS
Based in Tucson, Arizona, Erica Westly is a journalist and author who holds one master’s degree in neuroscience and another in journalism. Her articles have appeared in Slate, Wired, Smart Set, Self, Esquire, Popular Science, and New York Times. Her debut novel is 2016’s Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game.
With fastpitch softball one of the most widely played sports in the world, Westly reveals the largely forgotten history of the game, beginning with the origins of softball in 1887. She covers the fastpitch version becoming a spectator sport in 1933 at the Chicago World’s Fair, the game’s popularity in post–World War II American society, Title IX becoming law in 1972, and softball as largely a women’s sport today. Over time the game evolved, producing professional level teams that toured the country and becoming one of the only team sports that many women were allowed to play competitively.
Westly describes the game’s invention, satin skirts evolving into more practical sporting attire, sexism in the game, and charity events. Both female and male fastpitch athletes became prominent, including Eddie Feigner, who struck out batters while blindfolded, and influential female players like Bertha Ragan Tickey, who taught actress Lana Turner to play, and Joan Joyce, who helped found a professional softball league with Billie Jean King. Despite its popularity for more than a century, softball was eliminated from the 2012 Olympics; athletes and fans have since tried to get it reinstated.
Westly veered from her usual territory writing about science to write the sports book, having become interested in the history of softball, the gender disparity, and misconceptions. She commented in an interview with Patrick Sauer online at Excelle Sports: “The more I dug in, the more fascinated I became. Softball has such a robust history and yet there wasn’t a lot out there about it. So why not be the first to write a book?” With regard to discovering the Brakettes softball team of Stratford, Connecticut, who played their seventieth season in 2016, she related: “I saw an opportunity to write about the sport’s neglected past and the role it played in helping grow women’s sports across the board.”
Calling the book well researched, a writer in Publishers Weekly said that Fastpitch “underscores the fact that present-day women’s sports face all the same hurdles they did a century ago.” In School Library Journal, April Sanders called the book “a fascinating exploration of a sport that has helped women work through issues of sexism while playing the game they love.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2016, Alan Moores, review of Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game, p. 20.
Library Journal, June 1, 2016, Heidi Uphoff, review of Fastpitch, p. 99.
Publishers Weekly, April 11, 2016, review of Fastpitch, p. 51.
School Library Journal, October, 2016, April Sanders, review of Fastpitch, p. 122.
ONLINE
Erica Westly Home Page, http://ericawestly.com (March 1, 2017).
Excelle Sports, http://www.excellesports.com/ (June 19, 2016), Patrick Sauer, “Screen and Read: Q&A with Fastpitch author Erica Westly.”
About
I’m a journalist and author currently based in Tucson, Arizona. I have a MS in neuroscience and a MA in journalism. I’ve written articles for Popular Science, Slate, the New York Times, among other publications. My latest project is Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game, published by Touchstone Books in June 2016. I can be reached at erica@ericawestly.com.
Screen and Read: Q&A with Fastpitch author Erica Westly
By Patrick Sauer JUN 19, 2016
On June 4, on their home diamond, the Brakettes of Stratford, Conn. will open their 70th season with a doubleheader against the Spirit of Lyons, Penn. Manager John Stratton returns for his 24th campaign, skippering one of the most successful teams in American sports history, amateur or not. Since 1947, the Brakettes are 3,756-393 with 34 national championships, many anchored by the amazing duo of lights-out pitchers Bertha Ragan Tickey—she of 162 no-hitters—and Joan Joyce, who went 753-42 and was the toughest hurler Ted Williams ever faced. He said so himself.
So why are the (formerly) Raybestos Brakettes best known, if known at all, for being sponsored by a generous company that was simultaneously poisoning the local citizenry? Why aren’t Bertha and Joan mentioned as athletic trailblazers along with Althea Gibson, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Billie Jean King? Where’s the 30 For 30 featuring the Takashimaya Department Store team from Osaka, Japan that prepared for the 1962 national women’s softball championships by spending two months eating bread instead of rice to get used to the American diet?
Freelance writer Erica Westly decided to find out. Although just a recent convert to writing about sports, Westly has already written the definitive history of a neglected, but vital, era of women’s athletics. Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Played the Game is a rollicking in-depth look at a time when fastpitch softball was much bigger than the NCAA’s are now, and how the game mirrored post-World War II American society, from overt sexism to outright feminism, from satin skirts to an Olympic snub.
Fastpitch is filled with wonderful tidbits—players on the Fresno Rockets used to throw boxes of raisins to opposing fans to win them over; the New Orleans Jax were named for the town’s favorite suds and all players worked at the brewery—and the big picture sense of what softball meant in this country and what’s been lost. Westly spoke to Excelle Sports about her new book, out just in time for Father’s Day.
But first, let Harry Reasoner introduce you to the Brakettes…
As it turns out, I knew almost nothing about women’s softball, how well-versed were you in the history when you began Fastpitch?
I had very little background in the sport as well. Other than a brief stint on my high school soccer team, I wasn’t a jock. I was into ballet growing up. I never played softball. My Dad is a huge baseball fan and I grew up being forced to watch games with him in Asheville {N.C.}, mostly the Braves. I absorbed the rules of baseball whether I wanted to or not. One year, I happened upon the NCAA Softball Tournament and became a fan of the sport just from watching it on TV. Softball was different, something I got into on my own, but obviously close enough to baseball that I could follow it.
Had you written about other sports prior to Fastpitch?
No. I’m not a sportswriter at all. My background is science. I was on the academic path before I got into journalism. I started out primarily as a science writer and then became more of a generalist. I certainly wasn’t expecting to write a book about softball at any point. I held some of the same misconceptions as the general public—that the field is smaller and the games are shorter because of gender disparity—and upon doing some initial research, realized I was completely wrong. My curiosity grew from there. The more I dug in, the more fascinated I became. Softball has such a robust history and yet there wasn’t a lot out there about it.
So why not be the first to write a book?
Exactly. There are endless books about baseball, but softball has only generated a few titles, mainly within the community itself. I used quotes at the beginning of each chapter from a couple of Amateur Softball Association books from the 1940s-50s, but they weren’t written for a general audience. I’d look through the sports section at bookstores and there was nothing on the history of the sport. Few books about women’s athletics at all really.
Was there something in the sport’s annals that jumped out at you early on?
When I discovered the Brakettes, I saw an opportunity to write about the sport’s neglected past and the role it played in helping grow women’s sports across the board. I also wanted to highlight specific players like Bertha Ragan Tickey and Joan Joyce who were big stars not that long ago, important athletes who’ve been mostly forgotten today.
I was surprised to learn how big a following softball had in the 1940s-60s. In a sports media world where everything is recycled, how is the era so overlooked?
There was a time when local softball games were covered on the front pages of newspapers alongside Major League Baseball. It just disappeared. One problems was that even though there were hundreds of teams and thousands of players, it never broke through nationally like baseball did. It wasn’t big enough to have that staying power like professional men’s leagues. When it became primarily a collegiate sport, it took on a different life. It kept the sport alive, but wasn’t the same as when all these women were playing for company-owned local teams.
It feels like fast pitch peaked too early, before major television coverage, like the sport’s popularity was just ahead of the sports-industrial-complex as it were…
I think that’s true. Because softball was such a small-town or local community sport, it relied on people coming to the games. It didn’t translate to when sports become a television event. Softball didn’t make that jump and started slowly fading away after the 1960s. By the time Billie Jean King started her professional league in the mid-70s, there was less familiarity with fastpitch among the general public and sportswriters.
Bertha Ragan Tickey was basically there from the beginning through the 2009 field dedication at her former high school in Dinuba California. Did you know right away that she would be your main character?
I knew she was important, one of the few players who people still talked about. Bertha had been in the game for such a long time, I knew she’d play a prominent role in Fastpitch. I first came across her as a member of the Brakettes, but became fascinated by her backstory. Here’s a woman who moved from California to Connecticut, without her husband, in 1956 to play the sport she loved. She was a celebrity on every team she played for and her long career totally intrigued me. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that many young softball players today necessarily know much about Bertha.
At one point, a mandatory chaperone says to a player, ‘You don’t have your lipstick on!’ It’s not surprising many of the teams played up the sex appeal, but it is interesting that it provided cover for serious athletes to just play ball…
Bertha is a great example. She had a feminine look, liked wearing satin uniforms, and fit the cultural norm. For players who didn’t, it was much tougher. Looking back throughout softball history, there was always a mix of women with different personalities, from various walks-of-life, but it wasn’t really until the 1970s that the standards started to shift.
It seems in the Mad Men era, women’s sports were less politicized than the gender battle of the 60s-70s, or even today…
Softball was a community sport. A lot of the women came from large families, and they got into the game because they grew up playing baseball with their brothers. Women playing sports wasn’t as controversial for that time as one might think. The games had more of family feel, less than a step forward for equality, even though they were.
In direct contrast, during the 1970s, when players were expected to be spokespeople for women’s lib, when many just wanted to play softball…
Once the feminist movement was in the news, and particularly after it became associated with Billie Jean King, it led the media in that direction. One player I spoke to who played for the Connecticut Falcons remembered a reporter asking her what it felt like to throw like a man. She had gone to graduate school and felt comfortable responding that she wouldn’t know, she was a woman. Other players didn’t want to talk about cultural changes at all, but were kind of expected to. There was an assumption that by playing sports you were making a political statement, which wasn’t a consideration in the 1950s.
And curious what you think of modern players—Jennie Finch for example—who’ve brought back, or fallen back on, 1950s-style glamour?
It’s not everyone, of course, but there a lot of college players with long hair, make-up, and colorful ribbons. The notion still exists that playing sports is a masculine, so I think they’re trying to counteract the stereotype, not adhere to a standard.
In your research, did you come across much of an underground gay subculture?
I didn’t hear much from any of the players I spoke to, but I did learn about it from those who study and write about Queer History and Theory as a separate field. Softball played a role in the lesbian community, for women interested in meeting other women, without calling attention to themselves or getting in trouble with the police. Being gay was illegal and bars were raided all the time. A lot of women didn’t necessarily want to hang out in bars, they wanted to go the park and play a sport they enjoyed with like-minded athletes. In the 1970s, as the feminist and gay rights movements grew, it became more of a public statement. Players weren’t hiding their sexuality as much.
Pardon my ignorance, but it never dawned on me that of course, African-American women faced discrimination like men in the Negro Leagues. What was it like for black players in the early years?
I didn’t initially think of that separate level of discrimination either, but it became clear when I realized most of the bigger teams were owned by companies who weren’t hiring minorities in the first place. There wasn’t an explicit rule saying no minorities, but in the early years, there were hardly any. If they weren’t working for the companies, they wouldn’t be on the softball team. There’s an entire book to be written about it.
Smaller community teams had minorities, but their games weren’t written about as much, and way less of that history remains. It’s difficult to get a complete picture, but there were more minorities playing in the 1950s, although still a small percentages. There were historical exceptions, the Southern California teams at least had Asian-Americans and Mexican-Americans as early as the 1930s, but it was undoubtedly harder for black players.
Fastpitch tracks various progressive movements through the lens of softball, and an unexpected one was environmentalism. What exactly happened to the Raybestos Brakettes?
Well it is a team named after car brakes. The Brakettes were a company-funded team that reflected the post-Word War II economy. They did dovetail with the industrial history of the U.S. The companies were polluting as they were operating. Raybestos dumped asbestos onto the team’s diamond. The company was highly-regarded for so long, but that shifted in the 1990s when the EPA revelations came out and it the area became a Superfund.
What happened with women’s softball as an Olympic event?
It debuted in the 1996, eliminated after 2008. The conventional wisdom is the United States was so overwhelming that other countries couldn’t compete, so it wasn’t worth it. It’s what was reported at the time, and it’s what a lot of softball players and fans believe still today even though it isn’t really the case. America was dominant in winning the gold in ’96 and ’04, they struggled to win in ’00, and in ’08 they took silver. A lot of new Olympic sports are dominated by one country, so it wasn’t surprising. Table tennis, fencing, not too mention basketball—this will be six in a row if the American women win. The IOC would never considered getting rid of basketball.
People don’t realize how unprecedented it was that a sport was targeted for elimination.The single biggest reason for elimination is that softball is tied to baseball and MLB won’t send its best players to the Olympics. There’s some talk that will change, but there aren’t a lot of signs MLB is moving in that direction. Regardless, I think there’s a strong chance that softball will return to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, so at least college players can have that goal in mind. The 2020 decision comes in August, I hope softball is back because the Olympics are huge for the sport beyond the games. After watching the ’96 team win gold, so many young girls started playing softball, which in turn helped the NCAA Tournament become such a big event.
The college tournament is bigger than ever, but after that options are limited, was it better for players in Bertha’s day?
Back then, they weren’t exactly professional athletes, but yet they were. Players would work for the company as say a secretary in the morning, but softball was their main activity. The season was a lot longer and the wealthier teams like the Brakettes traveled in style. For women who loved softball, it was a good life and there were many more playing options than today.
Where is fast pitch softball at in 2016?
There is the National Pro Fastpitch league, but it’s small. There’s only six teams and it doesn’t have the backing from MLB that the WNBA gets from the NBA. Teams aren’t in a partnership with the city’s baseball team. There might be some promotional assistance from MLB—showing some games on their network—but I don’t believe there is any financial support.
Is Japan still the best option for post-collegiate players?
The nice thing is players can play in Japan in spring and fall, and spend summers in the NPF. It’s a grueling schedule to keep up year-after-year, and a lot of players don’t want to live overseas, especially when they’re trying to plan out an adult future, but it can be done. Monica Abbott has been going back-and-forth for almost a decade.
Speaking of Abbott, is her $1-million contract the beginning of a lucrative era, or is it an anomaly?
The Scrap Yard Dawgs are an expansion team in Houston and they own their own stadium, which keeps costs down. Paying to use facilities is often a big financial hurdle for teams in small leagues, so the owner had money to spend and felt the team needed Abbott to make the team competitive. She’s a NPF veteran and the league’s dominant pitcher. She played for the Chicago Bandits; They basically traded titles with the USSSA Florida Pride the last few years.
Abbott’s splashy contract is an encouraging development, but it’s also over six years and the majority of the money is based on bonuses. Still, it gave the league a shot in the arm of preseason publicity. They need it. A lot of people don’t even know the NPF exists.
Let’s round the bases back to the beginning, why do softball games only last seven innings?
It goes back to the game’s original growth during the Great Depression. People wanted something they could do quickly. They played or watched after work. I don’t know why it became seven innings specifically, but my guess it ensured games were under two hours.
Lastly, as Father’s Day approaches, will you and dad sit down together and watch the sport you’ve made your own?
I now prefer watching women’s fastpitch, but dad is still a baseball guy. Like a lot of people, he’s dismissive of softball. I hope he will read Fastpitch and change his mind.
At least a little bit.
Westly, Erica. Fastpitch: The Untold History of
Softball and the Women who Played the Game
Heidi Uphoff
Library Journal.
141.10 (June 1, 2016): p99.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Westly, Erica. Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women who Played the Game. Touchstone. Jun.
2016.304p. photos, notes. ISBN 9781501118593. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781501118616. SPORTS
Since its invention in 1887 as an indoor version of baseball, softball has played a unique and defining role in American
culture and history, as it was one of the first sports to take women's teams seriously. This is what journalist Westly aims
to illustrate in this debut as she traces the rise of women's softball during the 1900s. Most interestingly, she documents
the emergence of women leaving home in the 1940s; not for marriage, but to join top softball teams across the United
States. Female players endured sexist media coverage and ridiculous rules ranging from how to conduct their personal
life to what makeup and clothes they were allowed to wear off the field. The author details the compelling development
of the sport, including companysponsored teams and changing politics, while centering on the personal and
professional lives of honored players such as National Softball Hall of Famer Bertha Ragan Tickey. VERDICT A fastpaced
journey through an original American sport, this welldocumented history will give all readers a sense of
nostalgia.Heidi Uphoff, Sandia National Laboratories, NM
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Uphoff, Heidi. "Westly, Erica. Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women who Played the Game."
Library Journal, 1 June 2016, p. 99. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453919928&it=r&asid=432b42ffb1fa11634518671737cb7451.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
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Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the
Women Who Played the Game
Alan Moores
Booklist.
112.1920 (June 1, 2016): p20.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Played the Game. By Erica Westly. June 2016. 304p.
Touchstone. $26 (9781501118593); ebook, $13.99 (9781501118616). 796.357.
It's probably asking too much that this history of women's fastpitch softball be utterly compellingunfortunately, the
untangling of competing associations alone takes some of the steam out of the narrativebut it does fill a yawning gap
in the literature. It's especially strong at conveying how popular, at times, the game has been as a spectator sport; for
example, the 1938 Southern California championship game drew more than 20,000 spectators. And the author draws
fine profiles of some of the sport's legendary figures, like pitcher Bertha Ragan (162 nohitters, 11 national tides); its
great teams, like the Orange (California) Lionettes and the Stratford (Connecticut) Brakettes, a team that thrives today;
and, especially, a cultural climate that has often been unsupportive of, if not antagonistic toward, those gifted, dedicated
athletes who work to get better. Westly doesn't really address the college game, which is treated elsewhere, but does
track the sport's presence, and now absence, at the Summer Olympics.Alan Moores
YA: For teen softball players, this history will connect them to their sport's rich history. AM.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Moores, Alan. "Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Played the Game." Booklist, 1 June
2016, p. 20. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456093992&it=r&asid=443ce868bc760e6cb876f7662ba46eb6.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A456093992
2/5/2017 General OneFile Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486334259938 3/4
Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the
Women Who Made the Game
Publishers Weekly.
263.15 (Apr. 11, 2016): p51.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game
Erica Westly. S&S/Touchstone, $26 (304p) ISBN 9781501118593
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This wellresearched book on softball history underscores the fact that presentday 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 wellattended,
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 fivecountry 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. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game." Publishers Weekly, 11 Apr. 2016, p.
51+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449663006&it=r&asid=09b4d7e563101bd34d729196c0d94a91.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449663006
2/5/2017 General OneFile Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486334259938 4/4
Westly, Erica. Fastpitch: The Untold History of
Softball and the Women Who Made the Game
April Sanders
School Library Journal.
62.10 (Oct. 2016): p122.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
WESTLY, Erica. Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game. 304p. ebook
available, notes, photos. Touchstone. Jun. 2016. Tr $26. ISBN 9781501118593.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Taking readers to a time when women had few choices to play competitive team sports, this title provides great insight
into the history of this fastpaced game that evolved from a sport with two basic constants (large ball and underhand
pitch) to a game with all the complexity of its parent sport, baseball. We meet a cast of players spanning decades in the
pastime. Women such as Nina Korgan and Bertha Ragan Tickeyand the nation as a wholefound the game to be a
muchneeded distraction during World War II. Westly also details a shutout at a charity event when a legendary Boston
Red Sox player could not get a hit off pitcher Joan Joyce. The evolution of the sport has been influenced by the
important legislation of the Title IX amendment, which made schools provide the same opportunities to women as men,
and as a result, softball programs began to grow owing to more funding. The author explores interesting details such as
how the uniforms changed from the shiny satin short shorts to more modern and useful designs. Women athletes have
always had to make difficult decisions regarding their sport and personal life, and decisions regarding marriage,
children, and work outside of softball are all discussed with honesty and clarity. VERDICT A fascinating exploration of
a sport that has helped women work through issues of sexism while playing the game they love. Nonfiction shelves of
libraries in middle and high schools will benefit from including this book.April Sanders, Spring Hill College, Mobile,
AL
KEY: * Excellent in relation to other titles on the same subject or in the same genre | Tr Hardcover trade binding | lib.
ed. Publisher's library binding Board Board book | pap. Paperback | e eBook original | BL Bilingual | POP Popular Picks
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Sanders, April. "Westly, Erica. Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game." School
Library Journal, Oct. 2016, p. 122. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466167007&it=r&asid=7de0064953cc22aa16fa790d523834f4.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466167007