Nearly one hundred years from the time the first bloomer teams strode onto
the ball fields and into public notice, a young woman named
Julie Croteau
made headlines by playing college ball on an otherwise-male team. As an
eighteen-year-old freshman in the spring of 1989, Croteau played first base
for the Seahawks of St. Mary's College in Maryland, and her debut was covered
by eleven news organizations. Three years later the first baseman made
headlines again, this time because she quit the team and took a leave of
absence from college. For this ballplayer, the treatment of women in baseball
was part of a larger question - the gender division of sports during the
formative years.
Born December 4, 1970, Julie Croteau grew up in Prince William County,
Virginia, and begun playing T-ball at the age of six, two years after girls
had won the right to play in Little League. At age eight she entered Little
League, where she batted .300 and her coach said of her, "as a first baseman,
from a defensive point of view she was one of our best." Although neither Ray
nor Nancy Croteau were baseball fans, they were pleased that their daughter
loved the sport so much. From Little League Julie progressed to Major League
(ages 13-15) and also played in a fall baseball league for fourteen-year-olds.
She began to attend baseball clinics at thirteen and at sixteen entered the
Babe Ruth League (ages 16-18), playing there until she was seventeen and a
senior in high school. During those years, says her father, she "had teeth
cracked and her nose busted, all kinds of bumps, bruises, twisted ankles,
just like anybody else. She's a good ballplayer, just like the guys."
At Osbourn Park high school, the five-foot-seven, 122 pound lefty tried out
for the junior varsity baseball team. The JV coach phoned Julie's parents
and suggested that their daughter take up softball. Nancy and Ray Croteau
were angered. "The coached didn't call the boys and suggest that they change
sports," says Nancy Croteau. "They didn't tell them to go play golf." When
it became clear that Julie wasn't going to take up softball, the coach
accepted her on the JV team. She had hoped to play first base, at least part
of the time, but the coach moved an outfielder to that bag and benched
Croteau. "I felt like the coach was embarrassed to have me on his team," she
says. "It was if having a girl on the team was bad enough, but having a girl
who could start would be a putdown on the school."
During her junior year Croteau tried out for the JV team again, but wasn't
accepted. As a senior she tried out for the varsity baseball team, the
Osbourn Park Yellow Jackets. After the coach cut Julie from the team, Nancy
and Ray Croteau, both lawyers, filed a lawsuit asking that she be
reinstated.
That was when Julie Croteau first made national headlines, and soon reporters
were interviewing everybody connected with her career. "She's a young lady
with a lot of heart and fortitude and the skills to go along with it," said
the coach of her Big League team. "I think she's just as capable of playing
first base as many of the boys." Ross Natolli, the baseball coach at
Catholic University, where Julie had taken a series of clinics, believed
that "She has average high school ability for boys. She's a line drive
hitter, and she makes good contact. I'm seeing seventy to eighty high school
games a year, and she has enough ability to make most high school teams."
Twelve of the seventeen members of the Yellow Jackets appeared in federal
court to support their coach, while the remaining five delivered a letter to
the press, proclaiming, "We don't in any way back the plaintiff. Not because
she is female, but because we feel this suit has no grounds at all. . . . Our
job is to win baseball games utilizing the best seventeen athletes. We feel
we have the best seventeen, bar none." In publishing the letter, most
newspapers duly recorded the 4-13-1 record of the Yellow Jackets, casting
some doubt on the young men's claim to have "the best seventeen, bar none."
Ultimately the U.S. district court judge handling the case ruled against
Croteau. In his opinion Title IX, the federal statute that prohibits sex
discrimination in school programs receiving federal funds, did not apply to
the case. Mike Zitz, a reporter covering the trial, remembers how terrible
he felt watching the proceedings, and how when the judge announced that there
was no constitutional right to get to first base, "the entire Osbourn team
jumped up and down like they were in the World Series."
In addition to being a reporter, Zitz was manager of the Fredericksburg Giants
of the Virginia Baseball League. He recalls that when the verdict was read,
Julie Croteau "was crushed. I could see how much she loved baseball and I
couldn't live with myself if I didn't give her a chance to . . . see what she
could do." So he invited Croteau to try out for the Giants.
Elated with the opportunity to be evaluated as just a ballplayer, Croteau
tried out for and made the Fredericksburg Giants in the summer of 1988 and
has continued to play with the semipro team every season but one since then.
The team ranks consist of those who have played minor league ball and those
who are going to play minor league ball, as well as college and sometimes
high school students.
Around the same time that Julie lost her court case and earned a spot on the
Giants, St. Mary's College of Maryland accepted her as a student with the
understanding that if she could make the school's NCAA Division III baseball
team, the administration and coach would do nothing to stop her. That fall,
Croteau practiced with the Seahawks and in the spring she made the team.
The Seahawks knew that their opening game, in March 1989, would be covered by
national news cameras because a woman was playing in an NCAA game. Players
were tense, Julie Croteau included. The game was rained out, delaying the
dreaded event and making everybody tenser still. Finally the team played its
season opener against Spring Garden College of Philadelphia, losing 4-1. The
Seahawks' leading pitcher of the previous season was so nervous that his
first fifteen pitches were balls. Croteau went 0 for 3 but didn't strike out,
and she fielded six chances flawlessly. "I kept thinking about the fifteen
cameras," she said. Jack Bilbee, coach of the opposing team, told reporters:
"I thought she was one of their better players. Especially with two strikes
on her. She really hung in there." Charley Bolen, Seahawks third baseman
and team captain, admitted, "There was a lot of pressure, but we pulled
together. If a girl is as good as Julie, she deserves to be on the team. I
think everyone feels she's a good addition to our team. She has good
character, and she's a good person."
At first Croteau felt that fans came to judge her as a player with intention
of judging all women by her performance alone. After several weeks, she felt
less pressure to represent all womankind. Even from the time she was in high
school, however, she always recognized that her actions would affect other
girls and women who wanted to play baseball. Her playing college baseball
"sends a message to high schools," she told reporters. "If it's all right at
college, it should be all right at high schools and middle schools." As the
Seahawks' second-string first baseman, Croteau batted .222. Under long-time
coach Hal Willard, the team struggled to a 1-20-1 record.
Looking back on her first season, Julie Croteau reflects that "what happened
is that for some reason I was this hero and everyone accepted it and the
media covered it and the media and school were telling everyone it was a
great thing, let's not destroy it. So everyone believed it." At the end of
the first year, the coverage stopped: this particular baseball player was no
longer news. "When the media went away, so did the message."
Instead of receiving feedback on how good it was to have a woman playing
baseball, the school and team received no feedback and things went back to
normal. And Julie began to think about what she saw all around her: that
sports in general are considered a male privilege and birthright, and that
women who want to participate in mainstream sports - "We'd have to call them
men's sports," says Croteau - are dissuaded, derailed, and thwarted every step
of the way. Thinking about the big questions of women and sports and society
disturbed her: she felt she needed time to get away and think. She thought
of quitting the team and school her junior year, but didn't do so because
she felt it would be unfair to her teammates. When the 1991 season ended,
she quit.
Newspapers carrying the story reported that Croteau quit baseball because her
teammates read aloud articles from Penthouse magazine and used obscene slang
referring to female genitalia as standard baseball lingo. "What I said and
what the media covered were two different things," maintains Croteau. "I was
talking about a problem with all sports, and I used my experiences as a
example. But they wrote it as if I was criticizing my team and my school and
baseball, not the general situation of all sports." Croteau says she has
heard far worse than Penthouse articles outside of baseball, and no words
she heard on the field would make her quit.
For the next fourteen months, Julie took her leave of absence, working three
months as an intern for the Women's Sports Foundation and appearing as an
extra in the film A League of Their Own. She considers meeting the AAGBL
players and learning about their league one of the highlights of working on
the film.
In the summer of 1992, Croteau was playing baseball with the Fredericksburg
Giants once again, and that fall she began her senior year at St. Mary's
College. No longer on the Seahawks, she is still passionate about baseball,
as she is about social justice. At one time she wanted to be a civil right
attorney, but today she's wondering whether there might be a better way for
her to help break down the gender barriers in sports, possibly by working in
sports administration. As a high school senior, Julie Croteau believed there
would some day be a woman in the major leagues. Asked whether she still
thinks so, she responds immediately. "I do believe it. I really do."
Starting out as a ballplayer, Croteau became interested in more than
professional baseball. It's the nationwide school system she's most
concerned with. "Most people don't go on to play professional sports,"
she points out. "They play high school sports, and there shouldn't be
gender divisions in high school sports. Let students play according to
their abilities, not their sex." It's true that today girls can play in
Little League, but what about afterward? "They usually cut you off [in
high school]. And when they cut you off in high school, they cut you off
for college."
At one time major league teams signed players directly from high school and
sent them into the minors. A few exceptions, such as Bob Feller and Robin
Yount, came directly from high school into the bigs. Since the 1960's,
however, college ball has become a training ground nearly equivalent to the
minors. Today most top high school prospects go to college and play baseball.
Some of them, such as Jim Abbott, play major league ball immediately after
graduation. Most college players, such as Frank Thomas of the White Sox,
spend a year or so in the high minors.
Today women who want to play baseball will seek to do so in high school and
college, where, unlike in the minor leagues, there is no formal directive
against them. Julie Croteau knows of three high school women who have
applied to play baseball in college next year and haven't been turned down.
She hopes her experience will help these women. "I'll do everything I can to
keep them there," she promises.
From Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball by Barbara
Gregorich (Harcourt Brace, 1993). Copyright 1993 by Barbara Gregorich.
Reprinted with permssion. All rights reserved.
To order a copy of Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball
by Barbara Gregorich, call Harcourt Brace & Company at 1-800-543-1918 and
refer to ISBN# 0-15-698297-8 or visit the Harcourt & Company website at
http://www.harcourtbrace.com.
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