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{{Use American English|date=March 2021}}
{{Infobox sports league
| title =
| sport = [[Women's baseball]]
| founded = [[1943 All-American Girls Professional Baseball League season]] ({{start date and age|1943}})
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[[File: AAGSBL logo.jpg|thumb|100px|Logo of the All-American Girls Softball League, 1943]]The league went through a series of name changes during its history. It was founded as the '''All-American Girls Softball League''',<ref name="Cullen-DuPont2000"/> but, midway through its first season of 1943, the name was changed to the '''All-American Girls Baseball League''' (AAGBBL).<ref name="leaguehistory"/> After the 1943 season, the official League name was again changed, to the '''All-American Girls Professional Ball League''' (AAGPBL), reflecting that players were paid from the start and further separating it from existing amateur leagues.<ref name=WDL1>{{cite web|title=All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Player Marg Callaghan Sliding into Home Plate as Umpire Norris Ward Watches|url=http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4025/|work=[[World Digital Library]]|date=April 22, 1948|publisher=[[Library of Congress]]|access-date=December 31, 2013}}</ref> This name was used until the end of the 1945 season, when the league reverted to '''All-American Girls Baseball League''' (AAGBBL), which it would use through 1950. When teams were sold to independent owners at the end of the 1950 season, the official League name was changed to the '''American Girls Baseball League''' (AGBL), although it continued to be popularly identified as the '''All-American League''' or the '''All-American Girls Baseball League''' (AAGBBL). When the Players' Association was organized in 1986 and gained recognition from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988, it was again, and finally, named ''All-American Girls Professional Baseball League'' (AAGPBL).<ref name="leaguehistory"/>
In 2019, the Players' Association established ''American Girls Baseball,'' which promotes women's baseball for the [[World Baseball Softball Confederation]] [[Women's Baseball World Cup]].<ref>{{cite web |title=AAGPBL to increase support for women and girls playing baseball |url=https://www.aagpbl.org/articles/show/67 |website=AAGPBL Players Union |access-date=2024-05-24 |ref=AGB}}</ref> The organisation, headed by Sue Parsons (Rockford, 1953-54) with support from Misdee Miller, granddaughter of AAGPBL founder Phillip Wrigley, organises the All-American Woman’s Baseball Classic at [[Ed Smith Stadium]], the spring training home of the [[Baltimore Orioles]], in [[Sarasota, Florida]] during November in a tournament that began in 2022.<ref>{{cite web |title=All-American Woman's Baseball Classic |date=November 2022 |url=https://americangirlsbaseball.org/inaugural-all-american-womans-baseball-classic-to-take-place-at-ed-smith-stadium/ |publisher=American Girls Baseball |access-date=2024-05-24 |ref=AGBOSST}}</ref> The AGB tournament features four teams named as tributes for the original AAGPBL teams, with all teams using a progressive fade to white jersey based on the colours of the squad-- Rockford (peach with red numerals), South Bend (light blue with dark blue numerals), Racine (gold with brown numerals), and Kenosha (light green with green numerals) and white trousers. Games are played to modern WBSC Women's Baseball rules, with all games seven innings long.
==Rules of play==
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==AAGPBL Players Association==
When the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was unable to continue in 1955, its history and its significance were forgotten by baseball historians. Many people in the 1950s thought that women were not supposed to play baseball, so most female athletes competed on other fields of endeavor. Finally, in 1980, former pitcher [[June Peppas]] launched a newsletter project to get in touch with friends, teammates, and opponents that resulted in the league's first reunion in [[Chicago|Chicago, Illinois]] in 1982. The Players Association was formed after a 1986 Reunion held in Fort Wayne as part of Run, Jane, Run, a local Women's Bureau event. Historian and Baseball card publisher Sharon Roepke (author of ''Diamond Gals'') who was circulating a petition to get the Baseball Hall of Fame to recognize the All American Girls Baseball League asked the players at the Reunion to organize to help the effort. A meeting was held at the South Bend home of Fran Janssen, and the Player's Association was born. June Peppas was nominated President.<ref>Minutes of AAGPBL origin meeting; personal recollection of participant Sharon Roepke</ref>
The current AAGPBL Players Association President is Richard Chapman, son of [[Dorothy Maguire]]. In 2017, he told ''[[Baseball America]]'' after his mother's death in 1981, he attended the first reunion as her descendant, "When I went to the reunion in 1982 to represent her, I learned more about her playing than she had ever said. There is a lot of history getting lost<ref>{{cite web |last1=Newcomb |first1=Tim |title=Working to Keep Girls Professional Baseball League History Alive |url=https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/working-to-keep-girls-professional-baseball-league-history-alive/ |website=Baseball Americaq |date=November 3, 2017 |access-date=2024-05-23 |ref=Chapman}}</ref>."
Membership is now offered to players, staff members, and descendants, in addition to associate memberships for baseball fans and historians.
65 original AAGPBL members appeared in the 1992 film ''[[A League of Their Own]]'' in scenes recreating the induction of the league into the [[National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum|Baseball Hall of Fame]] in 1988.<ref>{{Cite web |date=July 1, 2022 |title=A League of Their Own (1992) – AFI Catalog Spotlight |url=https://www.afi.com/news/a-league-of-their-own-1992-afi-catalog-spotlight/ |access-date=2022-08-27 |website=American Film Institute |language=en}}</ref>
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