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It's Virtually Impossible to Know What Kind of History Kelsie Whitmore Made

Kelsie Whitmore probably did not make history on Wednesday when she got a single in a Pacific Association of Professional Baseball Clubs game.

Here's a look at Kelsie Whitmore's first hit as a professional. #history #trailblazer pic.twitter.com/tMg9FhJ0ai
— Sonoma Stompers (@SonomaStompers) July 20, 2016

On Wednesday, 17-year-old female baseball player Kelsie Whitmore got her first hit in a professional game when she singled to right field against the San Rafael Pacifics. On June 29th, the Sonoma Stompers had signed Whitmore and 25-year-old Stacy Piagno, making them the first female position players to play professional baseball since Connie Morgan and Toni Stone played in the Negro Leagues in 1954.

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After Wednesday's hit, various publications posted the clip of her going the other way under some version of the following headline: "Kelsie Whitmore Makes History With First Hit." If you click through those headlines you'll see the clip and read about how she made history, but will be at a total loss as to what kind of history she made. The implication from the headlines, of course, is that the accomplishment — the single to right field — was a crowning moment for women in baseball, but in these stories you never see a sentence reading something like "Whitmore became the first woman to get a hit in professional baseball." That's obviously not the case because plenty of women got hits playing in All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II. But you don't even see a sentence like "Whitmore became the first woman to get a hit in a men's professional league."

That's not to diminish what Whitmore did and is doing—she's also a member of the United States Women's National Baseball Team—but it's a function of the way women's sports were covered until very recently. Things are different now in our Brave New World of Content, so this is a moment that can be easily packaged and shared—"makes history" sounds pretty good as far as items of note go—but there were women who played professional baseball before her, and we have next to no idea what they did because no one kept track, even if they were paying attention at the time.

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Not even the researchers at the Baseball Hall of Fame know what to make of it, because the documentation is just so scarce. In response to a question of who the first woman was to earn a hit in a men's professional league, a researcher wrote back:

The contemporary moment of Kelsie Whitmore, Justine Siegal, Jessica Mendoza, and others having increased visibility in baseball is certainly shaping the way women in baseball (and sport more broadly) are being discussed/covered, but any kind of definitive history is harder to pin down.

Generally, Elizabeth 'Lizzy' Murphy is credited with being the first female player to play with and against male professionals (see attached Boston Globe article), but her specific hitting stats/records were not been recorded, although many primary source accounts that describe her playing mention she struggled with hitting.

The documentation we do have mostly accounts for female pitchers playing alongside men, Including Lizzie Arlington in the minor leagues in 1898, and Alta Weiss beginning in 1907, and even as recently as Ila Borders in 1997. Needless to say, in the less recent clips there is no mention of how they batted, or if they batted. Most of the reports are anecdotal. Obviously statistics in the men's game were archaic back then, too, but at least they existed. We know that batting averages were being kept as early as 1871, and that Jim O'Rourke is credited with the first hit in the National League's first game on April 22, 1876, for instance. We even know who hit the first double and triple.

In contrast, we have virtually no idea of the historical significance of Whitmore's achievement, but we know that she is not the first woman to get a hit in a men's professional league. The Baseball Hall of Fame researcher added:

Later names include Kitty Burke who gained notoriety in 1935 for taking an at bat in a professional game, although the event was more of a publicity stunt than a serious event. Connie Morgan and Toni Stone played for Negro League teams as late as 1954. Both women were infielders and took at bats during their time with Negro League teams. Newspaper accounts for Stone's 1949 debut with the San Francisco Sea Lions mention her driving in two runs in her first at bat.

But Whitmore's hit is important, if not history-making, just not in the way you probably thought. Yes, she is the first woman to get a hit in men's professional league in over 50 years, but what's really significant is that now we are keeping track.