The Hidden Queer History Behind 'A League of Their Own'

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League did everything it could to keep lesbians off the diamond. Seventy-five years later, its gay stars are finally opening up.

This story is one of the most influential and important pieces I’ve ever reported in my career. Since this Narratively Classic was published in 2018, it was honored as a Notable Story in the 2018 edition of The Best American Sports Writing. It was also used as research and inspiration for the Amazon Prime series, A League of Their Own, which addressed the queer story of The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel, who are featured in this story, were the subjects of the Netflix documentary, A Secret Love. And Maybelle Blair, who declined to speak with me for this story in 2017 when I approached her, came out publicly in 2022 at the age of 95. The history I called “hidden” seven years ago no longer is, and this story played a huge role in bringing that narrative to light.

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Frankie de la Cretaz

Photo courtesy of State Archives of Florida

Josephine “JoJo” D’Angelo was in a hotel lobby in 1944. An outfielder for the South Bend Blue Sox — a team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (A.A.G.P.B.L.), founded the year prior — she had dark, curly hair. Even if you didn’t know her last name, her looks hinted at her Italian heritage.

The hotel was likely decorated with muted colors in the modernist style of the previous decade. Thanks to World War II, there were supply shortages and rations, which put a hold on new design in the early ’40s. All available supplies needed to go toward the war effort.

The story was similar in baseball. With most of the Major League Baseball players deployed, executives decided to fill the gap with female players, paving the way for the A.A.G.P.B.L.

But in the hotel that day, D’Angelo was approached by one league executive and told that she was being released from her contract. This was devastating for the right-hander who’d batted .200 in her two seasons with the Blue Sox. She’d been playing since she was a little girl, and had spent her days working in a steel mill in her hometown of Chicago while devoting evenings to playing ball, before attending a tryout for the league at Wrigley Field. That scene was made famous by the film “A League of Their Own,” with hundreds of women traveling from around the country to the brick ballpark with the ivy-covered outfield wall.