"Here We are ... 120 Games Later"

Reprint from Sportswoman Magazine

By Sally Ride and Nancy Ditz

John Bruno, owner of the San Jose Sunbirds, in a wrinkled Sunbirds’ sweatshirt and a wide brim straw hat, came out to the microphone set up behind home plate looking like the weight of the first season had just been lifted from his shoulders. “Here we are,” he sighed, “120 games later.” Women’s professional softball had survived its first season.

The Women’s Professional Softball League (WPS) is the result of the combined efforts of Dennis Murphy, founder of the American Basketball Association (ABA), World Hockey League (WHL) and World Team Tennis (WTT); Jim Jorgensen, a co-founder of WTT and the Women’s Superstars; Joan Joyce, softball’s resident legend; and Billie Jean King, who needs no introduction. The league sprang from the fertile brains of Joyce and King, and drew its players from the Amateur Softball Association (ASA), an organization that regulates the play of over 17 million softball enthusiasts in America. When the top amateurs heard that a professional league was being formed, they must have had fleeting visions of 50,000 seat stadiums, chartered planes, interviews with Howard Cosell, beautifully manicured fields, and thousands of fans – each holding a full-color softball yearbook, waving a WPS pennant, and wolfing down foot-long hotdogs. Although these dreams will not be fulfilled in the immediate future, they are much more tangible now than they were one year ago.

Many amateurs, for who softball had long been an unprofitable labor of love, desperately believed that there should be a professional softball league. Although the salaries they were offered were low (between $1000 and $4000), something was better than nothing besides, after years of devotion to the sport, they were finally given the opportunity to bear the title “professional athlete.” “We jumped in,” said Sunbird pitcher Charlotte Graham, “with our hearts, not our minds.”

The league tried to keep everyone’s head out of the clouds, and feet on the playing field. “They told us it would not be easy the first few years,” said Bonnie Johnson, also a pitcher for San Jose. “We knew we we’d all have to work very hard together and make some sacrifices to make this thing go.”

Not all the top players were willing to take the risk. Afraid that the league would go the way of the World Football League and other ill-fated professional sports ventures, they decided to stick with the security of their amateur standing.

“That sort of hurt the league,” said Brenda Gamblin, the Sunbirds’ all-star third baseman. “There were good players who could have improved the competition. But they were hesitant – like me.” Gamblin admitted that at one time she was a little skeptical about the league’s future. “In the beginning I had my doubts,” she said. So much so that, like many players, she did not quit her job. “I pulled a job – eight hours a day – and dropped 25 pounds while doing it,” she laughed. “That’s the choice I made.”

“I really didn’t think the fans would support us,” she continued. But Gamblin and the Sunbirds did get support, averaging over 1200 fans per game. “There were people up in the stands who had never even heard of us, let alone seen us play, as amateurs. It’s a nice feeling. My doubts about the league are gone.”

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