It’s a warm July afternoon, and the stands at The Stadium in north suburban Rosemont are filled with excited fans. It’s the bottom of the eighth inning of a tie game between the Blaze and the Bandits. First baseman Delanie Wisz steps up to bat. Blaze pitcher Emma Lemely winds up, delivers the pitch — and with a crack of the bat, Wisz sends a looping walk-off single to left field.
This is the inaugural season of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League. Currently, the league is made up of four teams, with plans to expand to six city-based teams in 2026. Commissioner Kim Ng envisions an even bigger future for the league, one similar to Major League Baseball, with teams playing at sold-out stadiums across the country.
“When you see [young fans] in the stands, cheering their heads off and getting so into it, seeing themselves out there is what we all hope for the most,” Ng said.
The AUSL is far from the first women’s pro softball league to captivate audiences. Before the current women’s sports boom, before Title IX, women stepped up to the plate in the 1940s and ‘50s. You may be thinking of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, celebrated in the 1992 film “A League of Their Own.”
But there was a lesser-known professional league based in the Chicago area called the National Girls Baseball League. The name was misleading in that the teams were all local, not national; the players were mostly women, not girls; and they played softball, not baseball.
But it was a pro league that gave the All-American league a run for its money. The two didn’t regularly play against each other, but they did have a heated rivalry. And the NGBL left behind its own storied legacy.
There was the game, and then there was the money
Before the NGBL launched, Chicago had a robust softball culture. Women played in the Metropolitan League, an amateur women’s softball league in the area.
Oak Park roofing business-owner Emery Parichy sponsored the Parichy’s Bloomer Girls team and built the Parichy Memorial Stadium in suburban Forest Park.
Parichy’s Bloomer Girls pose for a team photo at Parichy Memorial Stadium in Forest Park in 1946. (Top – Paulina Pirok, Dorothy McKaige, Wilda Mae Turner, Ann Pallo, Winnie Reed, Tosh Vaugn, Lena Gernic. Bottom – Ricki Caito, Jean Sample, Kay Shinon, Ann Hartnet, Lil Hackson, Irene Chromcik, Mary O’Connor)
Courtesy of the Historical Society of Forest Park
So, when Chicago chewing-gum magnate Philip Wrigley created the All-American league in 1943, “it kind of caused a little animosity,” said documentarian Adam Chu, who’s working on a documentary about the NGBL.
Wrigley recruited players across the country, including Chicago. But he didn’t consult with any Chicago team owners, like Parichy.
In response, Parichy and Charles Bidwell (then-owner of the Chicago Cardinals team, now the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals) created the National Girls Baseball League. The 1944 season opened with four teams: Parichy’s Bloomer Girls, the Chicago Bluebirds, Brach’s Kandy Kids and the Chicks. Since the All-American league didn’t have any Chicago-based teams until 1948 with the Chicago Colleens, Parichy’s league took over the softball industry in the city.
Like today’s world of sports and entertainment, the business and branding were just as important as the game itself.
“You look at the programs and it’s like, giant one-page ads for Parichy’s roofing company in Forest Park,” said Peter Alter, historian at the Chicago History Museum.
Branding was evident in the team names. The Kandy Kids were owned by Brach’s candy company. The Music Maids were owned by jukebox manufacturer Rock-Ola. Perhaps most on the nose, the Checashers were owned by Thillens Inc. Check Cashing Service (which also owned Thillens Stadium in Chicago, now The Stadium at Devon and Kedzie avenues).
Sponsoring a pro team proved to be a smart business move, as the NGBL drew crowds in droves. By 1948, the league had an annual attendance of nearly 600,000, according to the History Society of Forest Park.
Courting the players
The NGBL didn’t play regular games against the All-American league, but the owners were certainly in fierce competition to sign each other’s players.
“They hated each other,” said Chu. “They raided each other’s talent. So, you’d see a lot of players going back and forth between the All-American League and the National League.”
When it came to payment, NGBL came out on top. Because it was a local league that didn’t have the cost of touring the country, the players were afforded higher salaries ranging from $40 to $125 a week.
“Because it was in and around Chicago, those women could actually hold down a job during the day and then play ball at night,” said Carol Sheldon, vice president of the AAGPBL board. “They were making double salary, basically.”
There was also the technicality of the game itself. The All-American league started off as a softball league, pitching underhand, but then transitioned to baseball, pitching overhand. This forced some players to choose a league based on skill.
The switching between leagues became so rampant, the owners had to draw up an agreement banning the constant poaching.
There were also smaller differences between leagues. The All-American league required players to wear skirts and attend charm school.
“From the All-American standpoint, the old saying is that they wanted them to play like [Lou] Gehrig but look like [Greta] Garbo,” said Sheldon.
The NGBL had no such rules, but that didn’t stop gender norms from being forced onto players. Freda Savona, an infielder for the NGBL’s Chicago Queens, was “the most feared hitter in the league, and any team that she ever played for she won a championship with,” Chu said.
However, she was bullied by some fans for her more masculine appearance. “They would say all these negative things about her, call her a man. It was like, ‘Oh, what are you doing playing with women?’” he said.
Savona kept a stiff upper lip on the field, but back in the locker room, Chu said, “she was crying her eyes out.”
In other cases, players had no choice in which league to sign with: The All-American League only allowed white women, while two teams in the NGBL integrated. In 1947, Gwen Wong was the first Chinese American player; she was a left-handed pitcher for the Bloomer Girls. In 1951, outfielder Betty Chapman was the first African American woman to play in the league for the Music Maids. In 1953, Nancy Ito, shortstop for the Bloomer Girls, became the first Japanese American player.
‘Spotty track record of professional softball’
Back on the diamond in Rosemont, Delanie Wisz’s teammates mob her by first base. Her game-winning single gave the Bandits a 5-4 win over the Blaze, keeping them on track to make the playoffs.
The Bandits brand is not new. Ahead of this season, the AUSL said it was reintroducing the brand formerly known as the Chicago Bandits, a professional softball team that played in Rosemont from 2005 to 2019 as part of the now-defunct National Pro Fastpitch, which itself was formerly called the Women’s Pro Softball League. That league and many others are part of pro softball’s long up-and-down history since the NGBL disbanded 80 years ago.
“A little bit spotty track record of professional softball, it’s one that is inconsistent,” said AUSL Commissioner Ng.
Ng isn’t Pollyanaish about the league’s prospects and the uphill climb to her vision. She pointed to the recent success of the WNBA, which played its inaugural season in 1997 and is now enjoying record attendance and viewership.
“It took [the WNBA] a long time,” Ng said. “For us at AUSL, we have to remember that it was a lot of hard work, a lot of years, and it was a slow go. So, I think as we make business decisions, we will need to be methodical and thoughtful in how we go about that.”
With Olympic talent, sold-out stadiums and backing from Major League Baseball, she thinks the league is here to stay.
“Between the sellouts, the attendance in general, viewership of the games across ESPN as well as MLB and all of our other networks, and the 110 million social impressions from Opening Day … absolutely incredible,” Ng said. “I’m not sure we could have scripted it any better.”