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Abstract

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.

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GROUPIES AND AMERICAN BASEBALL

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