Jennifer Ring, author of the new book Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball, was interviewed by Baseball Digest.

BBD: Why do you think Ken Burns gave women’s baseball very little coverage in the Baseball documentary series?

JR: For the same reason that most people don’t think that excluding women from baseball is an issue. We tend to just assume that baseball is for boys… because it was intentionally presented, or marketed, as a “maker of men” throughout the twentieth century. As Zane Grey wrote, “All boys love baseball. If they don’t, they’re not boys.” I don’t think Ken Burns was particularly interested in documenting the history of women in baseball… it didn’t occur to him, or he didn’t know the history existed, and didn’t go looking for it. Bottom line: he didn’t put it in the documentary because he didn’t care about women’s baseball.