Guest Post: Celebrating Women in Baseball

I’m sorry I’ve been away for a while (I’ll explain later maybe). But enough about me – today I’d like to introduce Britt Skrabanek, a great friend who writes great novels about bold, sassy female characters through history. Please welcome her here for this guest post celebrating women in baseball in time for National Women in Baseball Day. If you have spring or baseball fever after reading this, remember to check out her novels, including Nola Fran Evie. Take it away Britt…

There’s something so classically American about baseball, isn’t there? This is the time of the year when we all get that urge to attend a game, smell the fresh grass, eat gooey popcorn, and cheer on our team with a bunch of sweaty strangers in the hot baseball stands.

With all of the technology distractions at our fingertips, perhaps more than ever we feel this urge for simplicity. We want to remember slower times, remember what it felt like to experience real life in front of us – rather than living life through a smartphone screen.

I still remember going to baseball games with my dad like they happened yesterday. Somehow those memories are more vivid than things that happened to me a week ago.

On May 30, 1943 the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) made history. For the first time, women played professional baseball together. Today, 76 years later, the AAGPBL celebrates these women with National Women in Baseball Day on May 30.

When the league began, it was considered a girly spectacle. Women playing sports was practically taboo. Many of the seats were empty and some people who attended laughed at the female ball players. The women played on and proved them all wrong. Women were, in fact, cut out for this. They could be sporty and strong, they could leave the kitchen and take on the roles of men.

Five years later by the league’s peak year of 1948, they had 910,000 paying fans. And though the AAGPBL disbanded in 1954, these women changed history, opening the door to strides in feminism that still hold today.

Like many people, both old and young, I became fascinated by the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League after seeing A League of Their Own. I had a fortunate upbringing as my dad encouraged me to be active. He used to race me to the car in the garage from our apartment or we would play catch in the doctor’s office with his keys.

Dad always told me I was just as good as the boys and he kept me enrolled in various sports and dance programs. When he took me to see A League of Their Own in the theater in 1992, I was enthralled. These women made such an impact on me, but I never knew they would continue to be influential as our lives became intertwined 20 years later.

Quite randomly, a vintage handbag I purchased in 2012 turned into a treasure trove of historical fiction inspiration. I discovered a pair of baseball tickets from 1954, along with a voting receipt that had a shopping list written in a woman’s handwriting on the back. The women’s league folded that same year, so it was a serendipitous discovery that led me to write my third novel, Nola Fran Evie.

In this novel, I share the stories of three women who played in the league together and what happened to their lives afterward during the 1950s. Because of their role during WWII, their life paths were permanently altered. These women didn’t all want to go quietly…they wanted more out of life.

There is still something to be in awe about 76 years later. And, it’s important for us to remember these women and celebrate their strength alongside the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, an organization which is still alive and well.

#WomeninBaseballDay is the perfect chance to show your support and it happens on May 30.

According to the AAGPBL’s Facebook page event:

“National Women in Baseball Day is a social media driven event that encourages MLB, MiLB, Women’s baseball organizations, softball teams, and anyone who supports women in baseball to get a group photo together forming a “V”. The “V” formation pays homage to the shape the AAGPBL teams would take during the pre-game National Anthem to stand together for “victory”.

If unable to form a group photo, participants are encouraged to share photos of themselves or female family members playing baseball, as well as sporting their favorite women’s baseball organization/team apparel. Women that have a role in a professional baseball organization are also encouraged to share their stories/photos.”

…if you want to show your support for women in baseball, I recommend joining in the social media festivities on May 30 by using or following #WomenInBaseballDay. These women did a lot for us and they should be celebrated.

Thank you Britt! Remember to check out her books and follow her through these links:

Amazon Nola Fran Evie:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1794684077/

Website / Social:

https://brittskrabanek.com/

https://brittskrabanek.com/blog/

https://twitter.com/BrittSkrabanek

https://www.instagram.com/bskrabanek/

https://www.facebook.com/BrittSkrabanek/

https://www.goodreads.com/brittskrabanek

Books Across the Miles

My mom, my brother, and I have been in a book club for a few years now. We live miles apart, but we still meet whenever we can to share our love of books.

My brother lives in Michigan and my mom lives about an hour away so we share our thoughts on each book through email. We take turns suggesting the next read. The only rule is that it should be a book that none of us have read yet. Because of this book club, I’ve read some pretty strange stories that I probably never would have read under normal conditions. To give you an idea of the strangeness, here are a few recent ones:

Mort: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

Breakthrough by Michael Grumley

Anansi Brothers by Neil Gaiman

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church

My brother loves science fiction and he’s introduced us to some great ones from that genre, but we might throw in a classic or historical fiction every once in a while.

We try to follow the same guidelines as a Goodreads book club by talking about each book as we’re reading it. To make sure there are no spoilers, the book title and the last chapter read are added to the email’s subject line. If the others haven’t gotten to that chapter yet, they don’t have to read that message until they do.

A bonus is that my mom and brother are funny. Here’s an example of a comment on one of the books we read:

“I struggled with it a bit at first. I think it was due to the excessive use of commas, with random thoughts interjected, which can make you wonder what the hell that sentence was about, like a stack of pancakes with butter dribbling down the side, or the way a stranger looks at you.”

With our electronic book club, we can meet and laugh at each other at any time. Then when we get to see each other in real life, we’ll talk some more about the books we’ve read together.

Happy World Book Day! The first person to figure out which book (from the list above) the quote is describing wins a copy of Ocean Echoes.

Are you in an electronic book club? Do you have any suggestions for our next book club read?

Snowbound Reading through the Decades

When the snow is up past your knees and you can’t open the door, then all you can do is stay in and read. That’s why I love the snow.

I’ve been wandering through the decades with a chronological short story collection and I’m stuck in the 1950s for now. The collection begins with a story published in 1915 and goes up to the end of the century. I’ve seen farming communities replaced by city life. Writing styles have become more rushed. Now I’m stuck in suburbia surrounded by themes of society’s expectations and restrictions. I’m looking forward to the 60s.

My favorite story from the 1930-50 era is “Resurrection of a Life” by William Saroyan, published in 1935. The character remembers being a newspaper boy in 1917, roaming the streets, shouting disastrous headlines. It beautifully shows what that might do to a young boy. Not only does he see the coldness of the city, but he repeats and sells stories of war.

“There he is suddenly in the street, running, and it is 1917, shouting the most recent crimes of man, extra, extra, ten thousand huns killed, himself alive, inhaling, exhaling, ten thousand, ten thousand, all the ugly buildings solid, all the streets solid, the city unmoved by the crime, ten thousand, windows opening, doors opening, and the people of the city smiling about it, good, good, ten thousand, ten thousand of them killed. Johnny, get your gun, and another trainload of boys in uniforms, going away, torn from home, from the roots of life, their tragic smiling, and the broken hearts, all things in the world broken.”

We see and feel the city, the people bustling by, and the boy there in the middle of it all. While others think of war as abstract, he breaks it down to individuals. He sees their faces caught up in something large and monstrous. Toward the end, he still manages to find beauty in it all:

“And all that I know is that we are somehow alive, all of us, in the light, making shadows, the sun overhead, space all around us, inhaling, exhaling, the face and form of man everywhere, pleasure and pain, sanity and madness, over and over again, war and no war, and peace and no peace, the earth solid and unaware of us, unaware of our cities, our dreams, unaware of this love I have for life.”

Sometimes I take a break to read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. It’s a great one so far.

Are you snowbound or enjoying the sunshine? What have you been reading lately?

A Century of Voices

I started the new year off with voices from the last century. I know, I’m weird.

The voices are contained within this volume of short stories. They’re in chronological order starting with the year 1915 so reading through them is like reading through history. Not the kind of history you read in textbooks, but the kind that’s filled with people’s thoughts and feelings. There have been stories about immigration and racial issues, farming communities and mobsters. Poverty. Cruelty. Injustice. And yes, hope.

Famous voices can be found through the pages, including the familiar ones of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner. But I’ve enjoyed hearing the others, the ones I hadn’t heard until now.

One of my favorites so far, “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, was published in 1917. It shows how often women were dismissed, even though they were always there farming, cooking, and cleaning. That attitude comes through as the normal way of things with passages like this:

“Oh well,” said Mrs. Hale’s husband, with good-natured superiority, “women are used to worrying over trifles.”

The two women moved a little closer together. Neither of them spoke.

“And yet,” said he, with the gallantry of a young politician, “for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?”

The women did not speak, did not unbend.

Reading through this volume has reminded me why I love short stories. They give the reader so much in only a few words. The best short stories could easily be novels. They’re packed full of emotion. In these times with so little time (really the way it’s always been), it’s surprising that more people don’t read short stories.

It’ll be interesting to see how writing styles have changed over the last century. I’ll keep reading through time and will let you know how it goes in future posts.

What do you think of short stories? Do you have a favorite short story writer?

History as Inspiration

History is more easily overlooked than crazy dogs or nature, but stories from long ago can also be a source of inspiration. It’s the everyday history that inspires and it’s all around us. Whether you’re writing historical fiction or an adventure novel, it’s always fun to sprinkle bits of the past through the pages.

Sometimes finding these stories is as easy as walking up to a plaque or statue, even if it might make you look like a tourist. I found this plaque practically covered in vines. It mentions Bartholomew Gosnold, who led the first recorded European expedition to Cape Cod before the Pilgrims. It brings to mind what this area would have looked like at that time, what life would have been like, the challenges people faced.

Widow’s walks or cupolas make me think of the days when women waited for years for a ship to appear on the horizon. Although we romanticize that kind of thing today, would it be all that romantic if you were really living it? Somehow, I don’t think so.

Shipbuilders, farmers, and fishermen once worked this land. Some may have spent their lives building ships bound for the Orient, hearing only tales and legends from the adventurers who came back.

Stone walls always make me think of borders that are now long gone and the people who placed each heavy stone, building and shaping their land and future.

Just imagine: ice was once cut and harvested from local ponds for refrigeration. Windmills were needed to grind grain into flour. A stone building that’s now a research center was used as a holding area for whales that were caught and hauled in from the ocean. And we think we work hard these days.

I like to imagine these people who came before us. Their stories are everywhere.

Have you found inspiration in local or everyday history? Do you think history has a place in all kinds of fiction or just historical fiction?