Avenger of the Week | Dorothy Seymour Mills, Baseball Writer and Historian

It’s supposed to be opening weekend for Major League Baseball, and a few of us here at GenderAvenger are sad that we won’t be able to go to the ballpark or watch our favorite teams from home. Luckily, there is Dorothy Seymour Mills’ (1928–2019) Baseball three-volume book series to fill the gap.

The Baseball series was a joint effort between Mills and her first husband Dr. Harold Seymour — its first volume, Baseball: The Early Years, was published in 1960 and its third 30 years later — but all three volumes were published under Harold Seymour’s name only, which was not an uncommon practice at the beginning of the series.  Mills did all of the research, created the framework for the book, and did some of the writing, essentially writing the third volume by herself. She was also a published author of children’s books and even quit her teaching job to help produce the first two volumes of the Baseball series, and yet, despite all her work and prior credentials, it was not until Harold Seymour’s death in 1992 that her work on the books became known.

Thankfully, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) has corrected this injustice, not only revealing Dorothy Seymour Mills’ part in the Baseball volumes and her contributions to baseball history in general, but also creating two awards in her honor, the Seymour Medal and the Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award for women in baseball.

As the opening weekend of @MLB comes and goes without games, it feels like the appropriate time to highlight Dorothy Seymour Mills, baseball historian, as the @GenderAvenger #AvengerOfTheWeek. https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-dorothy-seymour-mills