A women’s competition began in Auckland in the early months of the year.
Bill (Pop) Wilson, a Canadian production manager at the new Ford Motor Company assembly plant at Seaview, near Petone, introduced factory workers to ‘baseball’ {softball). He organised lunchtime games and imported softball gear from Canada, secreted in car cases.
September 24: Pop Wilson was invited to speak at a meeting called by Wellington rugby league clubs to consider forming ‘baseball’ teams.
October 2: Wilson organised two softball teams from Ford to play an exhibition game as a curtain-raiser to a rugby league fixture at Wellington’s Winter Show Grounds. (Tony Walz set the scene in Fifty Years of Wellington Softball, published by the Wellington Softball Association in 1987). “One of the Ford teams, dressed in purple and gold, came onto the pitch. Four white lines had been marked in the shape of a large diamond. One of the angles was enhanced with extra markings fixing it as the dominant point. Clearly, this was where the other team would bat. Behind this area a player paced back and forth, awaiting the start of the game. He was the only player wearing a protective mask. At the remaining three points of the diamond, small, square canvas bags had been lain flat on the ground. Each of these was being guarded by a single player stood silently facing their masked teammate. In the dead centre of the diamond stood a fifth player. As he waited, he handled a large white ball, checking it for its firmness and tossing it from hand to hand. Five other players – all facing the batter's area – were spread out behind the canvas bags on two sides of the diamond. Two men [the shortstop and a rover] moved about near the edge of the white lines, but the remaining three stood far back in the field. Some spectators wondered if they actually were players. Just as the wait seemed unbearable, the voice of Bill Wilson addressed the crowd over the loud speakers. “Good evening, ladies and gentleman, welcome to this, the first public game of softball played in New Zealand.''
October 12: A Wellington “baseball’’ competition was formed at a meeting in rugby league official Charles Bristow’s joinery shop in King St, Newtown.
Wellington Baseball (Softball) Association was formed later in October.
November: Following another exhibition game by two Ford teams on October 25, sixteen men’s teams contested the first Wellington association competition.
Two Ford factory teams held another exhibition game at the Winter Show Stadium on October 25.
To keep the new code in lights, an exhibition game was played between a Wellington representative and a team comprising American Mormon missionaries. 2000 people attended. Mormon missionaries played a major part in establishing softball in several New Zealand centres.
The Auckland women’s competition had a full season in 1937-38.
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