Little League Baseball

Little League baseball has been available for American youth since 1939. Little League Baseball, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that holds a federal charter by a 1964 Act of Congress. In the mid-1970s, Little League bent to intense outside pressures and expanded its organization to include girls. Little League has taken pride in its long history of relative absence of racial discrimination. In the mid-1980s, a California court ordered Little League to allow boys to play in the softball league with the girls. Softball and baseball are two different games, and just as there are some girls who prefer baseball, there are also some boys who prefer softball. The National Organization for Women (NOW) sought the admittance of girls to the all-boys Little League program in that state. The New Jersey court found in favor of NOW and mandated that all Little League programs within New Jersey be open to girls as well as boys.