PATRICIA MARY SAN ANTONIO’s research while affiliated with University of Maryland, Baltimore County and other places

This article focuses on how the structure and constraints of the occupation of professional baseball shapes the lives of the players' wives. The major constraints on the role of baseball wives include high geographical mobility, the husband's frequent absence, lack of a social support network, and the precariousness of baseball careers. Baseball wives are expected to fulfill a traditional role of support for their husbands and families. Baseball wives play a backstage supporting role but in so doing become far more independent and resourceful than many American women, managing families and households on their own.

Widespread public awareness of “groupies”—women who seek relationships with male celebrities—in American professional baseball dates to the 1970s, particularly to the release of popular films such as Bull Durham and the publication of several insider accounts of the lives of ballplayers. This article, based on interviews with groupies and with major and minor league ballplayers, first examines the motivations of the women who pursue such relationships with ballplayers and the strategies they use to get attention. It then turns to the players' attitudes toward groupies and their relationships with them. The groupie phenomenon plays out on a small stage the larger gender roles played by women and men in American society, with desirability for women defined largely in terms of physical attractiveness and for men defined largely in terms of achieved skills as measured by money and fame.