Yes, there were women’s baseball teams way back in the early 1900s.
Shown here is the Ravensdale team coached by Allen James Stark standing in the back row.
Stark was born in the Oklahoma Indian territory in 1881 and moved with his family to King County several years later where his father took up coal mining.
He had three sisters (Mary, Maude, Annie) who may be in this photo. The younger girl in the middle of the front row was the mascot, according to her jersey, but perhaps simply the ball girl.
The ladies’ uniforms consisted of collared woolen shirts and short padded pants. Sports teams such as this one were often funded by the coal company – in this case the Northwestern Improvement Company which owned the Ravensdale mines.
The origins of baseball as a sport date to the mid-1800s when the modern version developed in the northeastern United States. In the small coal mining towns of Washington, baseball was far and away the favorite sport followed by soccer and boxing.
This photo comes courtesy of the Black Diamond Historical Society.
