Callie Maddox, Miami University For most baseball fans, hope springs eternal on Opening Day. Many of those fans – more than you might think – are women. A 2024 survey found that women made up 39% of those who attended or watched Major League Baseball games, and franchises have taken notice. The Philadelphia Phillies offer behind-the-scenes tours and clinics for their female fans, while the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees offer fantasy camps that are geared to women. The number of women working professionally in baseball has also grown. Kim Ng made history in 2020 when she became the first woman general manager of an MLB team, the Miami Marlins. As of 2023, women made up 30% of central office professional staff and 27% of team senior administration jobs. In addition, 43 women held coaching and managerial jobs across the major and minor league levels – a 95% increase in just two years. As a fan and scholar of the game, I’m happy to see more women watching baseball and working in the industry. But it still nags at me that the girls and women who play baseball don’t get much recognition, particularly in the U.S.
Women take the field
In the U.S., baseball is seen as a sport for boys and men. Girls and women, on the other hand, are supposed to play softball, which uses a bigger ball and has a smaller field. It wasn’t always this way. Women have been playing baseball in the U.S. since at least the 1860s. At women’s colleges such as Smith and Vassar, students organized baseball teams as early as 1866. The first professional women’s baseball team was known as the Dolly Vardens, a team of Black players formed in Philadelphia in 1867. Barnstorming teams, known as Bloomer Girls, traveled across the country to play against men’s teams from the 1890s to the 1930s, providing the players with independence and the means to make a living.American women have been playing baseball since at least the 1860s.Ullstein Bild/Getty Images The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, founded by Philip K. Wrigley in 1943, also offered women the chance to play professionally. The league, which inspired the 1992 film “A League of Their Own,” enforced rigid norms of femininity expected at the time. Players were required to wear skirts and makeup while playing and were fined if they engaged in any behavior deemed “unladylike.” Teams were open only to white women and light-skinned Latinas. Black women were not allowed to play, a policy that reflected the segregation of the Jim Crow era. Three Black women – Connie Morgan, Mamie “Peanut” Johnson and Toni Stone – did play in the otherwise male Negro Leagues in the early 1950s. However, their skills were often downplayed by claims that they’d been signed to generate ticket sales and boost interest in the struggling league. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League folded in 1954, and by the late-1950s women’s participation in baseball had dwindled.
Girls funneled into softball
Softball was invented in Chicago in 1887 as an indoor alternative to baseball. Originally aimed at both men and women, it eventually became the accepted sport for girls and women due to its smaller field, larger ball and underhand pitching style – aspects deemed suitable for the supposedly weaker and more delicate female body. The passage of Title IX in 1972 further pushed the popularization of fast-pitch softball, as participation in high school and college increased markedly. In 1974, the National Organization for Women filed a lawsuit against Little League Baseball because the league’s charter excluded girls from playing. The lawsuit was successful, and girls were permitted to join teams. In response, Little League created Little League Softball as a way to funnel girls into softball instead of baseball. As political scientist Jennifer Ring has pointed out, this decision reinforced the gendered division of each sport and “cemented the post-Title IX segregated masculinity of baseball.” Girls can still play baseball, but most are encouraged to eventually switch to softball if they want to pursue college scholarships. If they want to keep playing baseball, they have to constantly confront stubborn cultural beliefs and assumptions that they should be playing softball instead.Instead of encouraging girls to play baseball, Little League launched Little League Softball to direct girls away from the sport.Chris Ryan/Corbis via Getty Images
A global game
You might be surprised to learn that the U.S. fields a national women’s baseball team that competes in the Women’s Baseball World Cup. But they receive scant media attention and remain unknown to most baseball fans. In a 2019 article published in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, I argued that the U.S. has experienced inconsistent success on the global stage because of a lack of infrastructure, limited resources and persistent gendered assumptions that hamper the development of women’s baseball. Other countries such as Japan, Canada and Australia have established solid pathways that allow girls and women to pursue baseball from the youth level through high school and beyond. That being said, opportunities for girls to play baseball are increasing in the U.S. thanks to the efforts of organizations such as Baseball for All and DC Girls Baseball. Approximately 1,300 girls play high school baseball, and a handful of young women play on men’s college baseball teams each year. In recent years, numerous women’s collegiate club baseball teams have been established; there’s even an annual tournament to crown a national champion.Japanese pitcher Yukari Isozaki competes during the 2010 Women’s Baseball World Cup in Venezuela.AP Photo/Fernando Llano
Pro league in the works
Momentum continues to build. MLB recently appointed Veronica Alvarez as its first girls baseball ambassador, who will oversee development programs such as the Trailblazers Series and the Elite Development Invitational. A new documentary film, “See Her Be Her,” is touring the country to celebrate the growth of women’s baseball and raise awareness of the challenges these athletes face. Perhaps most significantly, the Women’s Pro Baseball League announced that it is planning to start play in summer 2026 with six teams located in the northeastern U.S. Over 500 players from 11 countries have registered with the league, with a scouting camp and player draft scheduled for later this year. Should the league have success, it will mark a revitalization of women’s professional baseball in the U.S., a nod to the rich history of the women’s game and a commitment to securing opportunities for the girls and women who continue to defy cultural norms to play the game they love.Callie Maddox, Associate Professor of Sport Leadership and Management, Miami University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
How the explosion of prop betting threatens the integrity of pro sports
Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was among 34 individuals arrested in connection with federal investigations into illegal gambling, highlighting a growing concern in sports. Prop bets, which allow wagering on specific game outcomes, have become prevalent, increasing the risk of corruption and match-fixing. The global sports betting market is expanding rapidly, raising alarms about integrity in sports.
When I first heard about the arrests of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones in connection to federal investigations involving illegal gambling, I couldn’t help but think of a recent moment in my sports writing class.
I was showing my students a clip from an NFL game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Kansas City Chiefs. Near the end of play, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw a perfect pass to receiver Brian Jones Jr. to secure a critical first down. Out of the blue, a student groaned and said that he’d lost US$50 on that throw.
I thought of that moment because it revealed how ubiquitous sports betting has become, how much the types of bets have changed over time, and – given these trends – how it’s naive to think players won’t continue to be tempted to game the system.
The prop bet hits it big
I’ve been following the evolution of sports gambling for about a decade in my position as chair of Penn State’s sports journalism program.
Back when legal American sports betting was mostly confined to Las Vegas, the standard bets tended to be tied to picking a winner or which team would cover a point spread.
But ahead of the 1986 Super Bowl between the Chicago Bears and the overmatched New England Patriots, casinos offered bets on whether Bears defensive lineman – and occasional running back – William “Refrigerator” Perry would score a touchdown. The excitement around that sideshow kept fan interest going during a 46-10 blowout.
Perry did end up scoring, and the prop bet took off from there.
Prop bets are wagers that depend on an outcome within a game but not its final result. They can often involve an athlete’s individual performance in some statistical category – for instance, how many yards a running back will rush for, how many rebounds a basketball center will secure, or how many strikeouts a pitcher will have. They’ve become routine offerings on sports betting menus.
For example: As I write this, I am looking at a FanDuel account I opened years ago, seeing that, for the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers game currently in progress, I can place a wager on which player will score a touchdown, how many yards each quarterback will throw for and much, much more. As the game progresses, the odds constantly shift – allowing for what are called “live bets.”
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Returning to my student who lost the bet on Lawrence’s pass completion: It’s possible he’d placed a bet on Lawrence to throw fewer than a set number of yards. Or he could have been part of a fantasy league, which is also dependent on individual player performances.
Either way, a problem with prop bets, from an anti-corruption perspective, is that an individual can often control the outcome. You don’t need a group of players to be in on it – which is what happened during the infamous Black Sox Scandal, when eight players on the Chicago White Sox were accused of conspiring with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series.
In the indictment against him, Rozier is accused of telling a co-defendant to pass along information to particular bettors that he planned to leave a March 2023 game early – a move everyone involved knew meant he would not reach his statistical benchmarks for the game. They could then place bets that he wouldn’t hit those marks.
In baseball, meanwhile, Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians was placed on leave during the 2025 season and is under investigation for possibly illegally wagering on the outcome of two pitches he threw. MLB authorities are essentially trying to determine if he deliberately threw balls as opposed to strikes in two instances. (Yes, prop bets have become so granular that you can even bet on whether a pitcher will throw a ball or a strike on an individual pitch.)
An exploding market with no end in sight
The popularity of prop bets feeds into a worldwide sports gambling industry that has experienced explosive growth and shows no sign of slowing.
The leagues and media are more than just bystanders. FanDuel and DraftKings are official sports betting partners of the NBAand the NFL.
In the days after the Supreme Court ruling, I wondered whether journalists would embrace sports betting. These days, ESPN not only has a betting show, but it also has a betting app.
But those figures don’t begin to touch the worldwide sports betting market, especially the illegal one. The United Nations, in a 2021 report, reported that up to $1.7 trillion is wagered annually in illegal betting markets.
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The U.N. report warned that it had found a “staggering scale, manifestation, and complexity of corruption and organized crime in sport at the global, regional, and national levels.”
Who’s the boss?
In early October 2025, I attended a conference of Play the Game, a Denmark-based organization that promotes “democratic values in world sports.” Its occasional gatherings attract experts from around the world who are interested in keeping sports fair and safe for everyone.
One of the most sobering topics was illegal, online sportsbooks that feature wagering on all levels of sport, from the lowest levels of European soccer on up.
It sounded somewhat familiar. This summer at the Little League World Series, which my students covered for The Associated Press, managers complained about offshore sportsbooks offering lines on the tournament, which is played by 12-year-old amateurs.
And with so much illegal wagering in the world, the issue of match fixing was bound to come up.
One session screened a recent German documentary on match fixing. Meanwhile, Anca-Maria Gherghel, a Ph.D. candidate at Sheffield Hallam University and senior researcher for EPIC Global Solutions, both in northern England, told me how she had interviewed a professional female soccer player for a team in Cyprus. The player described how she and her teammates were routinely approached with lucrative offers to throw matches.
Put it all together – the vast sums of money at play and the relative ease of fixing a prop bet, let alone a match – and you cannot be surprised at the NBA scandal.
I used to think that gambling was just a segment of the larger sports industry. Now, I wonder whether I had it exactly backward.
Has sports just become a segment of the larger gambling industry?
From FIFA to the LA Clippers, carbon offset scandals are exposing the gap between sports teams’ green promises and reality
Under Steve Ballmer’s ownership, the LA Clippers have made strides in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, yet concerns arise over the efficacy of their carbon offsets, especially following issues with their partner, Aspiration. Many sports organizations face scrutiny for their offset claims, highlighting a need for transparent, verified carbon reduction strategies and a reassessment of sustainability practices in the industry.
Under team owner Steve Ballmer, in the checkered shirt, the LA Clippers have cut their greenhouse gas emissions, but their carbon offsets raise questions. Ric Tapia/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
If you go to a pro sports event today, there’s a good chance the stadium or arena will be powered at least in part by renewable energy. The team likely takes steps to reduce energy and waste. Some even claim to have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, meaning any emissions they still do produce they offset by paying for projects, such as tree-planting, that reduce greenhouse gases elsewhere.
The venue upgrades have been impressive – Seattle’s hockey and basketball arena runs on 100% renewable energy, makes its rink ice from captured rainwater, and offers free public transit for ticket holders.
It’s an important question, in part because fans may ultimately pay for those offsets.Lionel Messi of Argentina controls the ball during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 final match. FIFA drew criticism for claiming the games were carbon neutral while relying heavily on sometimes questionable carbon offsets. Julian Finney/Getty Images
The cost of carbon offsetting in sports varies by organization, with no industry standard for who pays. Some teams and leagues absorb costs through their operational budgets, treating carbon neutrality as a core responsibility. Others pass costs to consumers: Some teams add sustainability fees to ticket prices to offset each attendee’s carbon footprint. The payment model ultimately reflects whether an organization views offsetting as an institutional obligation or a shared responsibility with fans.
The vast majority of a sports team’s climate footprint comes from team’s and fans’ travel, which they have little control over. Leagues can reduce teams’ travel somewhat with creative scheduling, but unlike other industries, sports teams have few ways to reduce the bulk of their emissions.
What many of them do instead is offset those travel emissions by buying carbon credits.
Carbon credits are generated by projects that reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or prevent greenhouse gas emissions. Many of those projects involve planting trees to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; others expand clean energy to reduce fossil fuel use. Each carbon credit is supposed to represent the reduction or prevention of one metric ton of carbon dioxide.
Unfortunately, several teams, perhaps unknowingly, have been purchasing fraudulent or low-quality credits.
Reputations at risk
FIFA brought the sports world’s carbon offset problem into the spotlight during the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
FIFA claimed the event would be carbon neutral, but that claim relied on creative accounting that understated the event’s construction and travel emissions. Organizers also used low-quality offsets. Many of those offsets were renewable energy projects with a high likelihood of being built anyway.
A year after the tournament, FIFA had completed offset purchases for less than a third of the World Cup’s estimated emissions, the nonprofit Carbon Market Watch found. And Switzerland’s advertising regulator ordered FIFA to stop claiming the World Cup had been “carbon neutral.”In 2022, the Boston Red Sox announced a plan to route a portion of the proceeds from every ticket purchased at Fenway Park to a carbon offset project run by Aspiration. Aspiration later went bankrupt, and a ProPublica investigation found it had planted far fewer trees to store that carbon than promised. Werner Kunz/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The Clippers and baseball’s Boston Red Sox ran into problems when they publicly partnered with Aspiration, a now-bankrupt finance technology company and carbon credit broker, to meet their “carbon neutral” claims.
However, Aspiration officials claimed to have supported millions more tree-plantings than what had actually happened, a ProPublica investigation found. Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanberg pleaded guilty in 2025 to wire fraud involving false statements about financing to secure loans and attract investors, who lost at least $248 million.
The Aspiration partnership is also under investigation by the NBA over an endorsement deal the company made with Clippers all-star Kawhi Leonard at about the same time and questions about whether it was used to violate the league’s salary cap. Team owner Steve Ballmer, who personally invested at least $50 million in Aspiration, told ESPN he and the team did nothing wrong. “They conned me,” he said.
While the scandal focused on financial fraud and the salary cap, it also raised questions about the team’s sustainability claim.
Without verification, who knows?
In some cases, the value of offset projects is difficult to verify, even when trees are being planted nearby.
While the effort positioned the club as a sustainability leader, the offsets lacked what’s known as third-party verification. Similar to how organic food must be certified by reputable agencies, third-party validation of carbon credits ensures credits truly represent the removal of carbon from the atmosphere or avoided emissions.
Without verification, it’s unclear whether claimed emission reductions are permanent, accurately tracked and transparently reported.
Potential legal consequences
Even the most prominent venues are susceptible to issues with unreliable credits.
Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle has been celebrated as the world’s first “zero-carbon” certified arena, with electric Zambonis, recycled materials, renewable energy and free public transit. It represents one of the most ambitious pushes to develop sustainable sport infrastructure globally.Hockey rinks need energy to keep the ice frozen. Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena has lowered its emissions with solar power from a local array and has even electried its Zambonis. But reports have raised questions about the quality of carbon offsets it purchased. AP Photo/Maddy Grassy
To offset unavoidable construction emissions, the arena’s owner relied on carbon credits tied to projects meant to reduce rainforest loss in Colombia. However, an analysis by the carbon rating company Calyx Global found that while the arena’s credits may prevent some deforestation, the numbers likely overstate the benefits.
Delta Air Lines, for example, is facing a lawsuit over its carbon neutrality claim. The suit alleges that Delta misled passengers by describing itself as a “carbon-neutral airline” while relying on carbon offset projects that were ineffective or “junk.”
To provide meaningful sustainability commitments, sports organizations and facilities can start at home by lowering their fossil fuel use and increasing their energy efficiency. Many arenas do this.
Where offsets will still play a role, teams can ensure that they partner with verified carbon credit providers that deliver measurable, transparent carbon reductions.
In a field where public trust and reputation matter as much as performance, the sports industry cannot afford foul play on climate. We believe a shift toward strategies that cut emissions first, and then use only the most credible offsets, will be the difference between striking out and leading the sustainability game.
George Plimpton’s ‘Paper Lion’ Exposed the Brutal Reality of NFL Training Camp in 1966
How writer George Plimpton went undercover as a Detroit Lions quarterback in 1963 and created the sports journalism classic ‘Paper Lion.’ Discover the bruising truths he revealed about NFL training camp and what separates fans from players.
Green Bay Packers wide receiver Romeo Doubs (87) and Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold (6) show off their athleticism on Sept. 7, 2025. AP Photo/Matt Ludtke
George Plimpton’s 1966 nonfiction classic ‘Paper Lion’ revealed the bruising truths of Detroit Lions training camp
Stephen Siff, Miami University As the Detroit Lions barrel toward a Thanksgiving Day game with the Green Bay Packers, some die-hard fans may be fantasizing about what it would be like to be on the field themselves: calling plays from the Lions huddle, accepting the snap from between a crouching center’s thighs, and spinning to hand off the football before the defensive linemen come crashing down. In 1963, Lions head coach George Wilson allowed writer and Paris Review editor George Plimpton to enact that fantasy. With a Sports Illustrated contract in hand, Plimpton convinced Lions management to allow him to enter preseason training camp at Cranbrook, the private boys school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. His plan was to go undercover as a rookie quarterback for a magazine article that would reach dramatic culmination when he called a series of plays in a game of professional football. No one expected the amateur athlete to survive for long on a field with real-life Lions. But in writing about the experience, Plimpton turned off-field fandom and on-field bumbling into literary gold.Little, Brown reissued Paper Lion in 2016.Little, Brown His resulting 1966 book, “Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback,” became a bestseller that was praised by The New York Times as “one of the greatest books written on sports, and the most thoroughly engaging book on any subject in recent memory.” A 1968 movie based on the book starred Alan Alda as Plimpton and members of the 1967 Lions team as themselves. Decades before I became a journalism professor at Miami University of Ohio, I discovered Plimpton’s sportswriting from reading the paperback versions I found on my parents’ bookshelves. Plimpton was a leading member of a mid-20th-century class of literary journalists, including Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Gay Talese and Norman Mailer, who were becoming known for applying novelistic techniques and sometimes personal, subjective perspectives to nonfiction. While the other literati tackled heavy topics, Plimpton’s engaging, conversational prose goofed around on the fringes of pro sports. Many of his books followed the same “participatory journalism” formula. He wrote about pitching against MLB all-stars, traveling with the PGA tour, boxing a bout against Archie Moore and playing with the Boston Bruins. Those were just the full-length books. Other television and magazine projects had Plimpton competing in tennis and bridge; performing stand-up comedy; acting in a Western; playing with the New York Philharmonic; and attempting to be an aerialist with the circus. However, he is best known for trying his hand quarterbacking for the Lions.
Posh writer meets the gridiron
In some ways, Plimpton seemed exactly the wrong person for this job. The possessor of a distinctively old money accent and patrician wealth and manners, he was founding editor of The Paris Review and in 1967 a mainstay of literary salons in Paris and New York. “Author, critic, interviewer, party-giver … friend of everybody, gifted, personable, energetic, bright, with-it, rich, a legend in his own time,” The New York Times gushed. Just the kind of person whom your average football fan might enjoy seeing knocked flat.American journalist and literary critic George Plimpton was no fan of pain, and that limited his ability on the football field.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Plimpton joined a team he described as recovering from scandal. After ending the 1962 season with an 11-3 record and a Playoff Bowl victory for third place in the NFL, the NFL commissioner’s office fined six Lions for gambling on the championship game between Green Bay and New York. More significant on field, the commissioner suspended Lions great defensive tackle and future Pro Football Hall of Famer Alex Karras for one year. Without him, the Lions would end the 1963 season 5-8-1. Plimpton wrote his way onto the team by promising to “just hang around on the periphery of things and not bother anyone, just try to participate enough to get the feel of things.” Wilson agreed, and Plimpton arrived at training camp a few months later with his own football, purchased from an army-navy store in Times Square, and a “mild fiction” about having played quarterback at Harvard and for the nonexistent Newfoundland Newfs. Plimpton’s attempt at deception might raise ethical questions; however, the joke is always on him. The coaching staff seemed to have thought it would be hilarious if anyone on the team actually took the gangly 36-year-old with the nasal accent as a professional football player. It seems unlikely that anyone did. “I never had the temerity to pretend I was something that I wasn’t,” Plimpton wrote. “The team caught on quickly enough.” At camp, Plimpton hung around the dining hall and sat in the back of team meetings. A master of small talk, he lets the reader eavesdrop on conversations with Hall of Famers Karras, Dick “Night Train” Lane and Joe Schmidt. Plimpton takes us with him one night to a bar frequented by coaches, where we listen in rounds of liars’ poker with Wilson, Scooter McLean and Les Bingaman. We tag along as he chats with Karras at Lindell’s A.C., the bar the player owned in downtown Detroit at the time.
Lessons in grit
At training camp, Plimpton faced the teasing of players but earned respect by facing the brutality of sport and by persisting despite the inevitability of pain. He never played football in school, beyond a beery game between Harvard Crimson and Harvard Lampoon, and did not know the basics of playing quarterback. Several days into camp, he was allowed to participate in a play where, as quarterback, he was supposed to quickly hand off the ball to another player. “At ‘two’ the snap back came,” Plimpton wrote. “I began to turn without the proper grip on the ball, moving too nervously, and I fumbled the ball, gaping at it, mouth ajar, as it fell and bounced twice, once away from me, then back, and rocked back and forth gaily at my feet. I flung myself on it (…) and I heard the sharp strange whack of gear, the grunts, and then a quick sudden weight whooshed the air out of me.” The same thing happened when Plimpton was allowed to take the field in an annual intra-squad game played in Pontiac. Over his first three plays he lost 20 yards by falling down, getting knocked over by his own teammates and being literally picked from the ground by a zealous defender. On the bus ride home, Plimpton admitted to Wilson that he didn’t like being hit. The coach gently explained that “love of physical contact” was necessary to make it in pro football. “When kids, out in a park, chose of sides for tackle rather than touch, the guys that want to be ends and go out for the passes, or even quarterback, because they think subconsciously they can get rid of the ball before being hit, those guys don’t end up as football players,” Wilson mused. “They become great tennis players, or skiers, or high jumpers. It doesn’t mean they lack courage or competitiveness.” “But the guys who put up their hands to be tackles or guards, or fullbacks who run not for daylight but for trouble – those are the ones who will make it as football players.” This quality of great football players – an irrational enthusiasm for bruising physical contact – is celebrated by Plimpton in the veteran Lions who take him into their orbit. He becomes friends with Karras and offensive lineman John Gordy, in particular, and shoots the breeze on topics ranging from the NFL commissioner to Adolf Hitler. In a subsequent book, Plimpton goes with the pair to a madcap golf tournament and starts a ridiculous business venture, suggesting the on-field madness necessary to succeed in football bleeds into off-field life as well. But it is not Plimpton’s way to delve into the psychology of his idols. Rather, he listens as they spin tales that show how reckless the grown men who run toward trouble really are.Stephen Siff, Associate Professor of Journalism, Miami University
George Plimpton’s 1966 nonfiction classic ‘Paper Lion’ revealed the bruising truths of Detroit Lions training camp
The Sports section of STM Daily News is your ultimate destination for all things sports, catering to everyday fans and dedicated enthusiasts alike. We cover a wide range of topics, from the thrill of amateur competitions to the excitement of semi-professional and professional leagues. Our content delves into physical and mental fitness, providing insights and tips that help individuals elevate their performance, whether on the field or in their personal wellness journeys. Stay informed and inspired as we explore the dynamic world of sports, celebrating both the passion of the players and the joy of the fans.
Callie Maddox, Associate Professor of Sport Leadership and Management, Miami University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
