Take Me Back To The Ballgame

It's time to salute another trailblazer! Maria Pepe made the mistake of being born too early (1960). Foolishness and masculine egos ruled American in those days (does anyone care to argue that they don't to this day?) and that stopped Maria from playing Little League Baseball, a game she loved to play, and a game she played well.

Before anyone even thought to holler that the presence of a female on the pitchers' mound was going to cause the sky to fall down, Maria pitched in three games for the Young Democrats team in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1972, and did well. Her friends from the neighborhood had joined, and the coach, Jim Farina, did not see it as a cataclysmic event, so he had invited Maria to join up.  

The Big Head Cheeses of Little League asked Maria to quit, threatening to revoke the charter for the Hoboken league. Maria made the decision to step aside, when not doing so would have ruined the season for the entire league. I think that was noble of her.

Maria's official Young Democrats cap.

As you would hope and expect, the National Organization for Women (NOW) stepped in and said, in a landmark legal brief, "Uh, hello? Little League is for kids. She is a kid. Shut up!"

(I paraphrased, but that was the gist of their filing.)

NOW supported the court case and eventually, the New Jersey Superior Court ruled that the Little League had to allow girls to try out, and in 1974, the first steps toward allowing females to play was introduced.

Maria was quite the celebrity for a spell! The New York Yankees, a professional baseball club based in The Bronx, made her an honorary "Yankee for a day."

Her glove and hat were later enshrined in the Peter J. McGovern Little League Museum in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. And on August 20, 2004, she threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the 2004 Little League World Series.

Maria's courage and the wisdom of the court were harbingers of the days of star pitchers Kathleen Brownell, who pitched a perfect game, and Mo’ne Davis, who starred for a LL team out of Philadelphia, became the first Little Leaguer of either gender on the cover of "Sports Illustrated," and now plays softball for Hampton University.

Maria Pepe now works for the City of Hoboken, along with her former coach,  James Farina, the Hoboken City Clerk.

Imagine! A girl playing a game! Horrors!