Dolly Vardens was a recurring name used for a number of

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

teams throughout the United States in the early decades of base ball (1860s-1880s). Most were white, male squads, though there was an all-female, African-American team from Chester PA, assembled by barber-turned-sports entrepreneur John Lang in the 1880s. However, the latter team was considered a novelty, rather than a competitive organization, who played for the entertainment of spectators. (MLB official historian

John Thorn John A. Thorn (born April 17, 1947) is a German-born sports historian, author, publisher, and cultural commentator. Since March 1, 2011, he has been the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball. Personal profile Thorn was born in ...

notes, "Lang’s Dolly Vardens, created in the 1880s, are sometimes confused with several

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

-area all-male clubs bearing that name as early as 1867.")Thorn, ''ibid.'' The name was taken from a character in the 1841 novel ''Barnaby Rudge'', by

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

References

{{Authority control Baseball in Philadelphia Defunct baseball teams in Pennsylvania Baseball teams established in 1867 Baseball teams disestablished in 1887 Women's baseball teams in the United States Women's sports in Pennsylvania

See also

References