While baseball is traditionally perceived as a game to be played, enjoyed, and reported from a masculine perspective, it has long been beloved among women--more so than any other spectator sport. Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime upends baseball's accepted history to at last reveal just how involved women are, and have always been, in the American game.

Through provocative interviews and deft research, Jean Hastings Ardell devotes a detailed chapter to each of the seven ways women participate in the game--from the stands as fans, on the field as...