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The World Fair

In 1933 the city of Chicago decided to host the World’s Fair, to celebrate "one century of progress" (Chicago was founded in August 1833). After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, the unemployment rate had grown to around 40%.

In conjunction with the Fair, Major League Baseball (MLB) organized the first-ever All Star Game. The World Fair decided to add a softball tournament to the programme and issued an invitation to Leo Fischer and M.J. Pauley, who were at the time running a successful softball tournament in the Chicago area.

The two were given a 500-dollar budget. Fischer, an assistant sports editor with the Chicago American, gave publicity to the tournament. After touring the US by car, Fischer and Pauley attracted 55 teams (two thirds were men's) from 16 States. William Randolph Hearst, the Chicago American published, provided extra funding to buy the trophies.

The tournament was played in early September and the most difficult thing for Fischer and Pauley was to have teams agree on rules. As Fischer puts it in his book Winning Softball: "We wrote an arbitrary set of rules". This included the use of a 14-inch ball (35.56 centimetres).

The World Fair
The World Fair