Major League Baseball is men-only. Little League isn’t. Here’s why.

In 1950, 11-year-old Tommy Johnston tried out for Little League in Corning, New York. His sister, Kathryn, wanted to try out, too—but girls were barred from Little League at the time. Undeterred, Kathryn had her mother cut off her long braids, wore some of her brother’s clothes, and told coaches her name was Tubby (taking the name from a character in Little Lulu comics).

“Tubby” Johnston made the Kings Dairy team. She was assigned to first base, and didn’t reveal her identity to her coach for a week. He didn’t throw her off—he thought she was good enough to play and her gender didn’t matter. Some parents got mad, but the news that a New York team had a forbidden girl playing first base didn’t reach Little League headquarters until after the end of the 1951 season, by which point Tubby Johnston was 13, which at the time aged her out of Little League play. Nevertheless, LL passed what became known as The Tubby Rule—it banned girls from Little League play.

But in 1972, the family of 12-year-old Maria Pepe of Hoboken, New Jersey, sued the league for the right for Maria to play, citing illegal gender discrimination. Publicly backed by the National Organization for Women and other progressive organizations, the state of New Jersey Supreme Court returned a verdict in 1974: girls could play ball.

The national Little League organization allowed girls in, although it’s never kept statistics on the gender breakdown of its teams. However, here are some notable Little League female firsts and facts.

• In 2009, Katie Reyes of the Hastings Little Leaguers (representing inner-city Vancouver, B.C.) hit a game-winning home run in the provincial championship. In pool play of that year’s Little League World Series, she hit a late-game single that drove in two runs. Those runs clinched a victory over the German representative—the first game-winning hit by a girl in L.L.W.S. history.

• We should all be so lucky to be able to “throw like a girl”: Mackenzie Brown of New Jersey threw a perfect game in 2009, including 12 strikeouts.

• The first girl to play in the Little League World Series: Victoria Roche of Belgium in 1984.