Ladies of the Little Diamond

Millionaire Philip Knight Wrigley has had many radical ideas since he inherited his father's gum and baseball empire in 1932. He popularized Ladies' Day at big-league ball parks. He introduced sticks of gum to U.S. Army combat rations. For $185,000 he bought Dizzy Dean after his best pitching days were over. Last week P. K. Wrigley unwrapped his latest idea: a professional softball league for women.

Women softballers are nothing new. Scattered throughout the U.S. are some 40,000 semi-pro teams sponsored by breweries, taverns, bakeries, big industries and little individuals with a yen to see their names sprawled across the satin backs or sweatered fronts of cavorting U.S. tomboys. On Softball's miniature diamond (bases are 60 ft. apart instead of 90) and aided by Softball's underhand pitching, girls can pitch, bat, field grounders, otherwise perform like a reasonable facsimile of the male.

Some can also swear as well. Henpecked Harry Wilson, dean of girl-softball umpires, maintains that the female Lippy Durochers, with their special brand of umpire-baiting, draw larger crowds than Softball's Di Maggios. No one knows how many casual customers became confirmed the day Umpire Wilson was thus bawled out by an exasperated lady catcher: "Listen, big boy, if you'd take your lamps off the batter's knees long enough to look around, maybe you'd see more of these pitches coming over as strikes."

No Slacks, No Cuties. Such hoydenish antics have long irked Phil Wrigley, a pioneer softball patron who can remember when the game was known as kittenball among Chicago's early devotees. Other things that Patron Wrigley objected to were the unladylike costumes affected by the players and the undignified names their sponsors tagged on them -- such as Slapsie. Maxie's Curvaceous Cuties, the Num Num Pretzel Girls, Barney Ross's Adorables and the Dr. Pepper Girls of Miami Beach.

Last winter when P. K. Wrigley decided to organize a nonprofit professional softball league for the entertainment of war workers, he was adamant about three things: 1) his players would be girls; 2) they would be forbidden to wear slacks or skintight shorts; 3) they would have good old-fashioned baseball names. U.S.

sportswriters laughed at Wrigley's latest notion. Dignified P. K., they said, would have to hark back to his father's circus stunts to get a crowd to the Cubs' ball park.

Wrigley got the moral support of two sound friends: Cub Attorney Paul V. Harper and Dodger Boss Branch Rickey.

Together they formed a trusteeship for their newborn enterprise, christened it the All-American Girls Softball League. To run its affairs, Wrigley hired the Cubs' former assistant general manager, curly-haired, canny Ken Sells. To round up talent, he released Jimmy Hamilton from his job as Cub scout. The design of a suit able uniform he put into the capable hands of famed Poster Artist Otis Shepard, who is responsible for famed Wrigley pixies, car cards, and glamorizing of Catalina Island.

Appleblossom Beauties. The uniform Artist Shepard designed was entirely satis factory to Boss Wrigley. As dignified as the field hockey costume of New Eng land's fashionable boarding schools, it still had the provocativeness of a Sonja Henie skating skirt. Scout Hamilton's job was satisfactory too. He had turned down several outstanding players because they were either too uncouth, too hardboiled, or too masculine.

When his chosen few -- several of them plucked from Bible Institute and Sunday School teams -- arrived at Chicago's Wrig ley Field fortnight ago for their "spring training," they discovered another of Mr. Wrigley's novel ideas. Part of their train ing was a compulsory course at Helena Rubinstein's Gold Coast beauty salon -- to learn about makeup, posture and other whatnots usually neglected by lady athletes.

Wrigley is starting out with only four teams, playing a circuit of war-busy towns within some 100 miles of one another: the Rockford (Ill.) Teachers, South Bend (Ind.) Blue Sox, Racine (Wis.) Belles, Kenosha (Wis.) Shamrocks. They will play 108 games this summer, with a post season play-off for the championship.

Last week, in the season's opening double-header at South Bend's Bendix Stadium, the Blue Sox got off in front with two orderly victories over the Rockford Teachers. Next night, in the second doubleheader, some of the polish wore thin. Despite Helena Rubinstein and Mr. Wrigley, two of the ladies got into a fish wife argument that nearly ended in a fist fight.

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