Baseball is a game of history. It's almost impossible to listen to a game on the radio without being reminded of a record set 37 years ago, or a player whose deeds have never been equaled, whose name is remembered long after he's gone.

Most of the names and deeds and records in baseball have been set by men. It's largely considered a man's game. But what if you take a closer look at that history?

The first team of professional baseball players, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, took the field in 1869. They were all male -- the first boys of summer. The first girls of summer, women who were paid to play baseball competed in their first game in 1875.

In the 1870s, an American woman could not vote. She could not own property in her own name after marriage. But she could play ball -- as well as it could be played in an outfit that weighed as much as 30 pounds and included a floor-length skirt, underskirts, a long-sleeved, high-necked blouse, and high button shoes.

Amelia Bloomer designed and wore the loose-fitting, Turkish-style trousers that carried her name, and made sports more practical for women athletes. In the 1890s, scores of "Bloomer Girls" baseball teams were formed all over the country. (Eventually, many of them would abandon bloomers in favor of standard baseball uniforms.)

There was no league. Bloomer Girls teams rarely played each other, but "barnstormed" across America, challenging local town, semi-pro, and minor league men's teams to an afternoon on the diamond. And Bloomer Girls frequently won, playing good, solid competitive hardball. The teams were integrated when it came to gender; although most of the players were women, each roster had at least one male player. Future St. Louis superstar Rogers Hornsby got his start on a Bloomer Girls team.

The Bloomer Girls era lasted from the 1890s until 1934. Hundreds of teams -- All Star Ranger Girls, Philadelphia Bobbies, New York Bloomer Girls, Baltimore Black Sox Colored Girls -- offered employment, travel, and adventure for young women who could hit, field, slide, or catch.

The Bloomer Girls teams dwindled as more and more minor league teams -- farm clubs -- were formed to provide experience for young men on their climb up to the majors. A few women like Jackie Mitchell were signed, briefly, to minor league contracts, but they were exceptions.

Although women had been playing pro ball on Bloomer Girls teams for more than forty years, in the 1930s public opinion was that they had inferior abilities when it came to sports. Women's professional baseball disappeared when the last of the Bloomer Girls teams disbanded in 1934.

There were professional softball teams for women, but that's a very different game -- shorter base paths, a larger ball, underhand pitching, no steals. In 1943, with many major league players off at war, Philip K. Wrigley organized the All-American Girls Softball League to entertain fans. The league's rules permitted stolen bases, but it was essentially softball.

For the first season anyway. In the twelve years that the league existed, it slowly evolved from softball to baseball-like softball, to baseball, eventually becoming the All-American Girls Baseball League (AAGBL). The base paths got longer from season to season, and the ball got smaller, so that by the last season, in 1954, the women were playing straight baseball. They played in skirts, but they played baseball.

Popularized in the movie, A League of Their Own, the AAGBL teams played for twelve seasons. Over six hundred women played for Midwestern teams like the Rockford Peaches, the Muskegon Lassies, and the Racine Belles. According to the book, Women at Play by Barbara Gregorich, "For those who actually saw them play, the women of the AAGBL changed forever the unquestioned concept that women cannot play baseball. For their managers, they played the national pastime as only professionals can . . . . They were equal to the game . . . more serious than the skirts they were required to wear, more intelligent than the various board directors who would not let them become managers."

The All-American Girls Baseball League played its last season in 1954. Television was bringing men's major league games into people's living rooms, and there just wasn't enough audience for the women's league to continue.

In June of 1952, shortstop Eleanor Engle signed a minor league contract with the AA Harrisburg Senators. George Trautman, head of the minor leagues, voided the contract two days later, declaring that "such travesties will not be tolerated." On June 23, 1952, organized baseball formally banned women from the minor leagues. It was a ban that would last more than forty years.

After the demise of the AAGBL, women who wanted to play professional ball had no choice but to play softball. There have been very few exceptions since.

Toni Stone, Connie Morgan, and Mamie "Peanuts" Johnson played on otherwise all-male teams in the Negro Leagues in the 1950s. A few plucky women showed up from year to year at tryouts for minor league teams, but were never offered contracts.

In 1994, exactly forty years after the AAGBL folded, the Colorado Silver Bullets opened the first of their four seasons. Again, there was no league, just a team of women who once again went barnstorming across the country, playing men's college, amateur, and semi-pro teams.

In 1998, Ila Borders, a pitcher for the Duluth Dukes, an independent minor league team, became the first woman to win a men's pro game, nailing down a 3-1 victory over the Sioux Falls Canaries. As of August 1998, she has been contacted by two major league organizations. She may turn out to be the first woman to break the gender barrier that has kept major league baseball diamonds the exclusive playgrounds for the boys of summer.