On October 3, 1907, seventeen-year-old ALTA WEISS steps on the mound in Cleveland League Park, home of the Cleveland Naps professional baseball team. She’s ditched her corset, but her wool skirt, petticoat, and bloomers add another fifteen pounds. She leans in for the pitch.

The “girl wonder” strikes out 15 batters that day, all men, and earns $100 for the win. From 1907-1910, Alta pitches five nights a week and travels all over the Midwest. Until 1922, Alta remains the ace for her professional baseball team, the Vermillion Independents, feeder team for the Cleveland Naps, one of the earliest American League baseball teams that went on to be the Cleveland Indians. 

But no one wants her on the field. Owners and newspapers fabricate the history of baseball to make it a man’s game, even though women have played the game for centuries. Abner Doubleday didn’t invent it. He was nowhere near Cooperstown, New York. Yet Alta faces unbelievable challenges when baseball becomes the greatest story ever sold.

Work in progress