ABSTRACT
Women's relationship to baseball illustrates the kind of game those who most controlled baseball's future sought to achieve: an elevated, even purified sport that would make for better Americans. After the Civil War, baseball's popularity in America blossomed dramatically. Of course, most of those playing the game were men. But if we want to understand the baseball world of men in the second half of the nineteenth century, then we might well begin by turning to the women of the time. In New York, they beat the Mutuals twice, 4-2 and 17-8, with the latter game being played on November 6-which shows how late into fall the game was actively played. Thanks in part to the role played by women in elevating the game, baseball came to embody some of the major images of American society-even if they are not all true.
