The women of the Negro Leagues Share this story Photo Reproduction by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images Recounting the history of the Negro Leagues is an incomplete exercise without also including the women who were part of the many stories. The Negro Leagues were the first place that a woman could own and run a baseball team and it was the first professional baseball league where a woman took the field alongside men. But as the Negro Leagues were the result of MLB’s exclusionary practice, so too did the Negro Leagues exclude and diminish the impact of the women who were a part of them.