baseman (baseball)

base player, baser; first/second/third baser; first-base/second-base/third-base player; first, second, third; first-base/second-base/third-base position; 1B, 2B, 3B (baseball notation); first/second/third sacker. There is good traditional support for the alternatives. According to Stuart Berg Flexner (Listening to America), "first base, second base, and third base" have referred to both the positions and the players since the 1840s, while "first," "second," "third," and "base player" were already being used in the 1860s. Other baseball terms use the common -er ending: outfielder, infielder, pitcher, catcher, batter. Base players may be girls/women or boys/men; Marcenia Lyle Alberga, or "Toni Stone," the first woman to play professional baseball (not softball) on all-male teams, got a hit off pitcher Satchel Paige; in 1974, nine-year-old Maria Pepe integrated Little League baseball; in 1989, Victoria Brucker competed in a Little League World Series, the first girl to do so.