1905 Star Bloomer Girls Champions Advertising Poster

1905 Bloomer Girls Champions Advertising Poster Extremely graphic and colorful 1905 stone litho poster (20.5 x 33 inches) advertises the "Star Bloomer Girls, Lady Champion Baseball Club of the World." We have dated the poster to 1905 with certainty, as July 19th fell on a Wednesday of that year. We do not know the exact meaning of the phrase "Sure Mike" which our Bloomer Girls baseball game host is credited with saying, but this was a popular expression of the day, and probably has a meaning loosely translated to "A OK." In the 1890s, scores of "Bloomer Girls" baseball teams were formed all over the country. Eventually, many of them would abandon "bloomers" in favor of standard baseball uniforms. There was no organized Bloomer Girls league. Bloomer Girls teams rarely played each other, but "barnstormed" across America, challenging local town, semi-pro, and minor league men's teams to an afternoon on the diamond. The teams were integrated when it came to gender; although most of the players were women, each roster had at least one male player. Future St. Louis superstar Rogers Hornsby got his start on a Bloomer Girls team. The Bloomer Girls era lasted from the 1890s until 1934, slowly coming to a close as more minor league teams and farm clubs were formed across the country, providing additional options both for the public to watch baseball, and for young ballplayers desiring to play organized ball. Women's professional baseball disappeared when the last of the Bloomer Girls teams disbanded in 1934.