Girls and women have played baseball (hardball: the real thing) from the beginning. Soon after professional baseball started up in 1869, women formed "base ball clubs" and - wearing heavy stockings and striped, shortened dresses - challenged men's teams across the country. One star pitcher, Maud Nelson, often struck out four or five men in the first few innings of a game. After World War I, these "Bloomer Girl" teams, such as the Philadelphia Bobbies...