No Joy in Mudville
By Molly Tyson
A year ago last August, Billie Jean King, softball pitcher Joan Joyce and sports entrepreneur Dennis Murphy announced the formation of the Women’s Professional Softball league. At first the amateurs were skeptical about the league’s chances for survival in a country already glutted with pro sports ventures, but when the Raybestos Brakettes, six times national amateur champions, took the pro plunge, most of the other players followed suit. “What have we got to lose?” they reasoned. One year later, they knew.
If, as professionals, they expected five-figure contracts, feature coverage in the daily news, and celebrity status, they were in for a surprise. If they expected laundry service for their game uniforms, for that matter, they were in for a surprise. Contracts, ranging between $1,000 and $3.000, were barely four-figure, news coverage was very local, and as for celebrity status, do the names Snooki Mulder, Brenda Gamblin, and Cindy Breski ring a bell?
Most of the players signed up rather naively. They didn’t expect fame and fortune, but they did expect to be treated as “professionals” (though they weren’t quite sure what that meant).
“I walked in with big eyes,” Sunbird pitcher Charlotte Graham admitted. “I thought it would be a step up-and it is from the standpoint of competition-but I thought it would be a bit more glamorous, a bit more professional. It’s not. The only real difference between amateur and pro is that this year we won’t have to pay to play. Most of us are going to break even.”
“I don’t know what the players are complaining about,” said league president Dennis Murphy. “They got paid, didn’t they? They got World Series rings and nice plaques, didn’t they?”
They also got a few broken promises. Preseason press releases announced that players on the top two teams would receive 60 percent of the gross gate receipts from the first four games of the World Series. But the promise was not written into the players’ contracts, and when attendance did not meet preseason expectations, Murphy reneged on this “gentleman’s agreement.”
When one disgruntled player complained about this to league cofounder Billie Jean King, she received a less sympathetic response than she had anticipated. “King told us we should be happy with plaques!” exclaimed the incredulous player. “They’ve got to be realistic,” King countered. “I played pro tennis for two years before I made any money. They have a right to be mad if Murphy made promises he couldn’t keep, but they’ve also got to realize that if it weren’t for Murphy, there wouldn’t be a pro league to complain about.”
As evidenced by such scenes, enthusiasm was at a low ebb by the time the World Series rolled around. A grueling 120-gam schedule squeezed into a 90-day season (most of the games were doubleheaders) had left the players emotionally and physically drained. So it was not surprising that when the Connecticut Falcons (comprised of the former Brakettes) met the San Jose Sunbirds (a pro version of the amateur Laurels) in the World Series last September, the excitement that had characterized their meeting in the amateur tournament just one year before was missing. The outcome was the same–the Connecticut team beat the California team (3-0, 4-2, 2-1, 3-0)-but the atmosphere was vastly different. Things were too quiet in the Sunbird dugout. The old razzle-dazzle was gone. And the Falcons, always reserved, were more so.
“I thought it was less dramatic than the amateur tournament,” Falcon third baseman Irene Shea volunteered. “Mentally I was ready to do well, but as for emotional excitement, there really wasn’t any. The season had been very long and we’d already played the Sunbirds eight times in the regular season.”
As amateurs the top teams only met once a year-at the national championship. As pros they were able to travel cross-country and met on a more regular basis. While this significantly raised the level of competition during the regular season, it may have detracted from the excitement of the World Series.
Many players felt they were trading away some of their old camaraderie and enthusiasm for a travel budget and per diem expenses. “I like the feelings I get out of softball. I like the game. It really makes me higher than a kite-even wehn I'm exploding into tears, it's a feeling I like. But now we're getting so businesslike. I can see I'm going to have to change my style. I'll have to treat it like a job.”
No Joy in Mudville.pdf