Women’s Pro Baseball Is Coming to Sarasota’s Ed Smith Stadium Nov. 19-22
Despite being “America’s pastime,” women’s baseball faces an uphill battle toward widespread recognition in the United States. Englewood’s Sue Parsons Zipay, who began playing professional baseball in the 1950s, has been fighting that battle for nearly 70 years. Her latest effort in that long campaign is the All-American Women’s Baseball Classic Tournament, which will be played at Sarasota’s Ed Smith Stadium Nov. 19-22.
The organization behind the event, American Girls Baseball, was founded by Zipay in 2019 and is dedicated to the development of opportunities for girls and women in the sport. (Zipay has also championed now-stalled efforts to create a women’s sports museum in Sarasota.)
This month’s tournament will feature four teams of women from the highest levels of baseball throughout the U.S. and Canada, including 17 members of the USA Baseball women’s national team. Each team will be coached by a prominent female baseball coach alongside a former Major League Baseball player. The weekend’s events will also include a free girls’ development clinic.
Zipay joined the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) in the 1950s, playing two seasons for the Rockford Peaches. That league, and the Peaches especially, have received renewed fame in 2022 as the subject of Amazon’s A League of Their Own series, which was inspired by the classic 1992 Penny Marshall film of the same name.
Though the AAGPBL was founded in 1943 as, arguably, the first women’s professional sports league in the country, girls’ and women’s baseball teams have long been eliminated in favor of softball. (That sport’s governing body, the 90-year-old USA Softball organization, is an official partner of men’s Major League Baseball.)
