Girls’ Softball in Dallas, Hugely Popular

by Paula Bosse

Softball in the park…

by Paula Bosse

Around 1938, softball suddenly became very, very popular in Dallas. Absolutely everyone seemed to be playing it: boys, girls, moms, dads, kids, businessmen, college students, and senior citizens. By 1939, The Dallas Morning News was calling the sport “the newest Dallas crazy custom.” There were more than 18,000 players playing on more than 300 organized teams, which meant that most of the roughly 100 softball diamonds in the city were constantly in use. It was estimated that more than 700,000 spectators had filled softball bleachers in 1938. These were all, of course, non-professional teams and players, but there was some concern that this new-found softball enthusiasm might be cutting into attendance for the professional baseball games.

…[B]ut the fact remains that softball is cutting into the gate receipts of professional baseball. When more than 100 softball teams play almost every night in Dallas and hundreds of fans watch the games there certainly must be vacant seats at the stadium where professionals are doing their stuff for the Texas League. (Dallas Morning News, June 16, 1939)

Most interesting about this “fad” is that girls’ softball league games became extremely popular. These teams were often affiliated with local companies (Metzger’s Milk, Dunlap-Swain, etc.), and their sponsored games drew very large crowds, usually more than the men’s games did. The Dallas Morning News reported that attendance at the regular Friday night games in 1939 was something like five or six thousand. Some of the girls even became minor local celebrities.

Fort Wort at bat (via Portal to Texas History)

Coverage of the women’s games by the local press was solid, but coverage of the women themselves seemed more like a good excuse to run photos of the “girls” in skimpy uniforms rather than focus on their athletic ability. But I’m sure the girls shrugged it off and were just happy to be playing a sport they loved.

Below, the 1943 Dallas Girls’ Softball League champions, the Metzer Dairy Maids. I love their names so much I want to type them out:

Tinker Tarker
Mutt McFanning
Aubrey Ray
Thelma Lowe
Pat Bell
Faustine Riley
Beatrice Draper
Flo Dyer
Opal Ritter
Annie Jo Floyd
Alma Floyd
Genevieve Dobbins
Pud Adams

DMN, July 18, 1943

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Sources & Notes

Top photo from the WPA Dallas Guide and History.

Second photo by Dallas photographer William Langley, from the collection of the Birdville Historical Society, via the Portal to Texas History.

Even though these company-sponsored teams were often in city- and state-wide leagues, they were all comprised of amateur players. That’s not to say money wasn’t being made. A lot of tickets were being sold, and companies got a lot of publicity for their winning teams. In fact, companies often scouted for players and hired them solely based on their athletic prowess — this is exactly how Babe Didrikson, generally considered one of the greatest all-round athletes in history, ended up working for an insurance company in the Interurban Building in downtown Dallas. (Read all about that in my previous post, “Babe Didrikson, Oak Cliff Typist.”)