Agnes Allen was born on September 21, 1930, to Edward and Bernice (Martin) Allen. During her early years, she lived on a farm near Alvord, a tiny town in the northwest corner of Iowa, just a few miles from the South Dakota border.

Following her mother’s death, eleven-year-old Agnes and her family moved to nearby Larchwood, Iowa, to live with her grandmother. In Larchwood, Agnes attended the local Catholic school and played in occasional softball games on the weekends. But at home, her family focused on baseball.

“My dad was a ballplayer when he was young, and I had two brothers who were ballplayers,” said Agnes, who also had two sisters. “My one brother (Paul) was just a couple years older than I, and we played all the time.”

Agnes’ dad, a former pitcher, gave her plenty of instruction. “His most important thing was that you knew where you were throwing the ball,” she recollected in a 2008 interview. “And you had to be able to put it there. If he put his mitt up there, why you better hit it!”

When Agnes was 19, her dad read about the AAGPBL in the newspaper. “I said, ‘Oh, gosh, that’d be fun,’ and he said, ‘No, that’s not for you.’”

But his opinion changed. Tryouts were held in Rockford, Illinois, where Agnes’ aunt and uncle lived. “So Dad thought it would be all right,” said Agnes, who had completed one year of college by this time.

“I was nervous, very nervous,” she said, remembering the long car trip to Rockford in 1950. But her dad responded with common sense. “It’ll be a good experience for you,” he said. ‘This is just catchin’ the ball and hittin’ it. There’s nothin’ to be nervous about.”

This encouragement reflected her dad’s personality. “He wanted us to go forth and do what we loved to do,” Agnes explained. But her aunt and uncle had a different refrain: “If your mother was alive, you wouldn’t be doing this,” they often chided. Even so, they supported her.

Approximately 100 highly qualified girls from “all over the Midwest” joined Agnes at the three-day Rockford tryout. She impressed the scouts with her pitching. “I could throw a curveball and a fastball, so I think that’s what got me the job,” said the right-hander. “I don’t think it had anything to do with my hitting!”

After returning to Larchwood for the summer, her dad received the official letter that invited Agnes to Chicago for more tryouts. “Dad didn’t know if he wanted to let me go or not,” recollected Agnes, remembering how her father’s paternal instincts kicked in. “But he said, ‘If you can get on a team, that might help you get through college.’ That was still the most important thing.”

In Chicago, Agnes stayed in a hotel with all the other girls who were trying out. “It was very competitive,” said Agnes, speaking of the tryouts. “My dad called me at the end, and I said, ‘I don’t think I made it, Dad.’ He said, ‘Why not?!’

“I didn’t think I was lovely enough,” said Agnes, recalling the moment. “I was bashful. They [the other girls] would talk about where they played and who they played against, and [I] just played catch with Dad and Paul.”

Yet Agnes made the roster of the 1950 Springfield Sallies. The Sallies – along with the Chicago Colleens – were referred to as “traveling teams” or “rookie teams.” These teams played against each other in Illinois and throughout the South and the East. The purpose of these teams was threefold; to develop the talent of players who were on the cusp of being ready for the main league, to generate interest in the league, and to scout and recruit new talent.

The travel was constant, according to Agnes, who was often homesick and wrote home every week. “We’d play in one city, stay overnight, and travel to the next city,” she explained. To pass the time on the long bus rides, the players would sing, talk, and get along, for the most part. Her roommates were Bobbie Liebrich and Pat Barringer, the chaperone/managers for the two teams.

One experience stood out from the rest. On August 11, 1950, the Sallies and Colleens played a three-inning exhibition game at Yankee Stadium prior to the New York Yankee–Philadelphia Athletics game. The Sallies sat in the Yankee dugout. The Colleens were assigned to the visiting team’s dugout.

Agnes pitched.

“I was so nervous,” she said, remembering her first trip out to the mound. “But after awhile, it was just another game. We got some hisses and some boos and a lot of cheers if someone got a hit or you struck somebody out.”

Playing on a regulation major-league field was a change for Agnes. The distance from the mound to the plate was 60 feet, six inches, five-and-a-half feet longer than the distance that the AAGPBL players were used to. “I was a fastball pitcher, so I imagine that I walked a few,” she recalled.

Agnes also met several Yankees in the dugout. “They’d come up and shake your hand and ask you where you were from,” she said. Although she didn’t remember whom she met, her teammates remembered meeting Casey Stengel, Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, and Yogi Berra.

“Yankee Stadium was beautiful,” she said, despite the 3-0 loss to the Colleens. Later, her brother Paul had some words for her. “‘I should have been there pitching.’ he said. So I said, ‘Get to work!’”

Agnes’ summer season also included a game at Griffith Stadium in Washington, DC. Although the players enjoyed the variety of experiences that came with playing on the traveling teams, most of the girls aspired to join the league itself. “Everybody was fighting for a chance to play in the league,” she explained. “But we became friends. Everybody looked out for each other.”

Following the 1950 tour, Agnes signed with the Kalamazoo Lassies. However, she returned home for another year of college at Augustana College and Iowa State Teachers College. She returned to Kalamazoo for the 1951 season, roomed with Bobbie and Pat, and became one of the Lassie’s starting pitchers. “I had a good fastball and a good curve,” she said. “But I was a little wild.”

Agnes recalled that the 10” ball used in 1951 was “a little larger than a baseball.” Overhand pitching (which the league had established in 1948) was not a problem. “My dad taught me that when I was young,” she explained. But finding metal cleats in her size was a challenge. “I don’t wear very big shoes,” said Agnes, just 5-foot-3.

The Lassies usually drew a good crowd, thanks to a commitment to promotions (especially by owner Lee Elkins who took over the team in 1952). “The fans were always pleasant,” said Agnes. “But sometimes you’d run into some smart-head who said that you should be home scrubbing the floor.” Agnes said she usually just laughed at the hecklers. But she recalled the time when someone kept yelling at her to go home. “I finally said, ‘If you’re so good, why aren’t you playing?’” He walked away, and everyone clapped.

Agnes didn’t attend “charm school” as did many earlier members of the AAGPBL. However, she and her teammates followed the league’s dress code and the rules of behavior. “No slacks in public,” said Agnes. “You had to be in a dress or skirt.” Chaperones also were a part of their lives and enforced the rules. “You couldn’t go out and stay out all night. Or drink. But I wasn’t a drinker anyway, so it didn’t bother me.”

Agnes played for the Lassies from 1951-1953, except for a few games she played with the Battle Creek Belles in 1951. Her strongest season was in 1953, when she had a 10-9 record with a 3.70 ERA. Remembering her three seasons with the Lassies, she recalled teammates Doris Sams (“She was a home-run hitter and a nice gal”); Doris “Cookie” Cook (“Oh, she was funny!”); and two Cuban players (likely Ysora Castillo in 1951 and Isabel Alvarez in 1953).

The Lassie’s manager was Mitch Skupien, who led the 1950 tour and began coaching the Lassies in 1952. “He was a pretty nice guy,” said Agnes. “He’d get after you if he didn’t think you were trying hard. He’d [also] get after you as a team for this, that, and the other thing. He was very good.”

During the off-season, Agnes stayed in Kalamazoo to take classes at Western Michigan University where she obtained a secondary education degree to teach physical education. At this time, she was employed at a grocery store, working as a clerk, cleaning, and going in on Sundays to go over the books. “I needed the money,” she explained. “If I had a quarter in my pocket, I was lucky.”

Following the 1953 season, Agnes taught for a couple of years in Michigan, first in the Upper Peninsula and later in the southeastern part of the state, teaching general science and physical education at the junior high level. Later, she went to Physical Therapy school for two years at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. From there, she worked at McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She eventually worked at the Canton-Inwood Hospital (not far from Larchwood and Alvord), continuing as a physical therapist until she retired at age sixty-nine.

At age seventy-seven, Agnes articulated the importance of her years with the AAGPBL. “I think it gave me encouragement to try things I wanted to do that I perhaps would not have,” she explained. “Any time you try something new and can achieve it, it gives you another push to do something beyond that.”

Agnes Allen lived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, during her latter years. She died in Flandreau, South Dakota, on February 24, 2012, at the age of 81. She is buried at St. Mary Cemetery in Alvord, Iowa.

Agnes Allen Seasonal Pitching Records

Agnes Allen Seasonal Batting Record

(source: All-American Girls Professional Baseball League website, www.aagpbl.org)

Sources

This essay is based on a February 8, 2008, interview with Agnes Allen at her home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Other sources include A League of My Own, by Patricia I. Brown (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003); The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, by Merrie A. Fidler (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006); and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League website: www.aagpbl.org.

Born as Vivian Sheriffs in Milwaukee on April 21, 1921, she grew up in a middle-class, near-west side neighborhood, the only child of Milwaukee natives; her father, Emmett, was a finance manager at Uptown Lincoln-Mercury, while her mother, Gladys, was head of fur storage and alterations at Gimbel’s Department Store. Anderson attended grade school at 27th Street School and graduated from Milwaukee’s West Division High School. A self-described tomboy, she spent her childhood involved in neighborhood baseball, field hockey, basketball, and football. Her mother eventually put a halt to her gridiron career because of the risk of injury playing with boys. But otherwise Anderson’s parents were supportive of her sporting endeavors.

By the time she was in high school, Anderson was playing organized baseball in the Girls’ Athletic Association and also displaying her athleticism as a school cheerleader. At 14 her talents allowed her to also play in the very popular amateur fast-pitch leagues in West Allis, a western Milwaukee suburb. Here, the infielder played for teams sponsored by local businesses like Ziemer Sausages, Rohr Jewelers, and Madjecki Foods. Fans enjoyed watching Anderson and other future AAGPBL ballplayers including Marge Peters, who would soon be a Rockford Peach. Unbeknownst to her, Anderson was also being watched by AAGPBL scouts, and at 23, she received a letter asking her to fill out and return a personal information form. She did so, was contacted shortly thereafter, and was invited to the 1944 AAGPBL spring-training camp in Peru, Illinois. After successfully demonstrating her skills at the extensive tryouts, Anderson was placed on the Milwaukee roster, making Borchert Field her new second home. The 5-foot-2, 160-pound, strong-armed third baseman was later joined by right-handed starting pitcher Sylvia Wronski, making them the only two Milwaukee natives to play for their hometown Chicks. Anderson, proud of her success, recalled her parents reacting positively: “Oh, my mom was tickled pink, and I guess my dad was in a little way. I think my dad always wanted a boy. I was still a girl no matter which way it worked. But basically, he was quite supportive, I would say.” Even though Anderson was now a professional ballplayer, making money was not what motivated her: “It was pure and simple a sport for me. The money part of it didn’t faze me. I never had a lot of money, so why should I worry about it?”

Anderson started at third base and batted eighth in the Chicks’ inaugural game, a home contest. In front of 631 fans on May 27, 1944, she scored the first-ever Chicks’ run, after reaching base on an infield single, in a 5–4, 11-inning loss to the South Bend Blue Sox. 

The AAGPBL typically drew only several hundred fans to Borchert Field. Anderson found this very frustrating, as she believed her team worked hard to play an entertaining brand of ball. Several factors led to the low attendance. First, the Chicks competed for field space with the pennant-winning Brewers of 1944 (owned by Bill Veeck and managed by Casey Stengel), who often played before capacity crowds of 13,500. The Brewers retained the prime home dates at Borchert Field and played as many night games as possible, leaving the women with a less desirable, primarily daytime schedule. Second, local press coverage was minimal. Third, many Milwaukee fans considered the Chicks’ 95-cent grandstand ticket price too high. Chewing gum mogul Philip K. Wrigley, who owned the Chicks, believed the high-caliber ball in his league merited the same pricing as that of the Brewers, who played in the highest level of minor-league ball. Milwaukeeans never embraced the team as did their counterparts in smaller AAGPBL cities with lower-priced admission such as Kenosha and Racine. Anderson was most impressed with the fan support in her favorite AAGPBL city of Rockford. As she said, “Oh wow! We’re going there and those people will really like us.” Fourth, the absence of local ownership (unlike Wrigley’s shared ownership with resident proprietors in the other cities) meant that no prominent businessmen in Milwaukee had a vested interest in promoting the Chicks and making them an integral component of the community. Finally, as Anderson explained, “Of course, we had an awful lot more competition here (unlike Rockford and Kenosha) with the West Allis League, because that was a favorite.” This popularity cut into Milwaukee’s support of the Chicks as the ballplayers on the locally sponsored West Allis clubs were well-recognized in the area, while all of the Chicks, except Wronski and Anderson, were from out of town. Milwaukee’s business community and fans apparently were not interested in offering the Chicks emotional and financial support, because they had already embraced their own local men’s and women’s leagues. This differed from other league cities like Rockford and South Bend, where the AAGPBL team was the primary sports focus. 

Even the Chicks’ famous manager, Max Carey, a ten-time National League stolen-base leader, did not help to draw large crowds. However, the Chicks themselves firmly believed in Carey’s managerial and instructional skills. Anderson said of the Hall of Famer: “The man was solid heart. He loved the game and he tried to teach the fine points of it just as though he were out there playing. You probably realized he was one of the prime bunters and base stealers, which is probably the reason I can’t enjoy baseball today – sliding into first base or sliding into a base straight head-on to have your head bashed does not compute in my book. We were taught how to hook slide.” Anderson said Carey “never hollered or screamed at anybody, but he made his point by saying: ‘I do have something to say about this and I would prefer that you listen carefully or you may have a problem later.’ So it was all positive, things that he did—very positive man. I liked him, as you can plainly see. He always behaved absolutely as a gentleman.” 

At least one Chick, however, did not see eye-to-eye with her manager, rookie third baseman Judy Dusanko. Frustrated at being relegated to a backup role behind local favorite Anderson, Dusanko began writing letters on the bench during a game in June. Carey, who had never given the Canadian ballplayer even one at-bat or inning in the field, banished the shocked Dusanko from the Chicks in front of her teammates. 

Anderson was allowed to live at home with her parents during homestands. They were good about letting her live her own life as a professional ballplayer by simply inquiring if the Chicks won, asking if everything was going well, and attending as many games as their work schedules permitted. Even residing at home, Anderson was still accountable to the Chicks’ “well-groomed, well-spoken” chaperone, Dottie Hunter. Anderson considered the Canadian, who had played with the 1943 Racine Belles and Kenosha Comets, to be a mother figure who “hovered over” her ballplayers. One time during a homestand, some of the Chicks “were just having a good time, and we were eating and having a drink and dancing and doing things like this, and we look up and here stands Miss Hunter. Oh, oh, — and she just said ‘carry on’ and walked away – just a perfect lady. And the next morning, she said: ‘You know I could really hurt you girls,’ but she said, ‘I wouldn’t do that the first time.’ And believe me; we were very careful after that.” Anderson was also very impressed with how Carey and Hunter worked together via strong communication skills, comparable to a mom and dad, to keep the Chicks a cohesive team. 

Andy, as her teammates nicknamed Vivian, recalled that the Chicks enjoyed going out together while developing friendships that allowed them to support one another during low moments. The Chicks came from all over the United States and Canada. As a Milwaukeean, Anderson recalled saying, “I’ll introduce you to our type of culture here and you tell me about yours.” She enjoyed road trips with her teammates and found visiting new towns to be an exciting experience. She particularly enjoyed the enthusiastic acceptance of the AAGPBL in Rockford, a town where the locals did not have many other sports entertainment options. 

Philip Wrigley stressed femininity in a player’s appearance, both on and off the field. Certainly the uniforms were unlike the pants that were worn in the local women’s leagues. In addition, in the league’s early years, charm school was a requirement so that the players would “dress, act and carry themselves as befits the feminine sex.” Anderson, who said she had “four left feet,” broke her right big toe when posture-improving books tumbled off her head. She deemed the Ruth Tiffany charm school a “nightmare,” even though she understood the reasoning behind it. Anderson believed it really helped “farm girls” who had not grown up learning “proper things.” Wrigley wanted to avoid a tomboy image for the AAGPBL and his publicity emphasized graceful, feminine, 1944 role models who were not allowed to wear shorts or slacks in public. The women were willing to endure this, as they knew they were privileged to be among the athletes who survived the May training camp cuts. 

The Chicks wore one-piece short gray dresses with red trim and belts. Also included were knee-length black socks and a small black cap featuring a red bill and a black M inside a yellow circle. Anderson called the uniforms “attractive” but added, “I was a little bit perturbed when I saw the shorts and realized I was going to be sliding and – oow! I think I still have a few scars to prove that point. They were a little bit impractical; we were used to playing with the long pants, at least to protect a little part of us. But they were generally accepted as being quite neat looking.”

Anderson’s AAGPBL career ended abruptly because of two badly broken fingers suffered on June 4, 1944. As she explained, “The baseball, someone sliding into the base, and me – all at one time – hit these fingers. So, what good was I [to the Chicks]? I coached third base for a while. I had a big splint on my hand, and I could point.” A local doctor, the same physician who amputated two of Brewers outfielder Hal Peck’s toes in 1942, suggested that Anderson’s injured digits should also be removed. Anderson replied, “I guess not. Goodbye!” Medical opinions from a Chicago doctor prevailed, and her visit also exposed Anderson to future professional softball opportunities there. The right-handed-hitting and throwing third baseman played in only 11 early-season Chicks contests, and had five singles in 34 at-bats, with one strikeout and six walks. She was replaced in the Chicks’ lineup by newcomer Doris Tetzlaff of nearby Watertown, Wisconsin. Anderson’s injury (four breaks in her fingers), plus those to other Chicks, led to an infusion of talent by the league, allowing the Chicks to rebound from an average first-half of the season at 30 wins and 26 losses to a strong second half at 40-19. Milwaukee finished 1944 with a 4-games-to-3 championship playoff “World Series” victory over the Kenosha Comets. Anderson, always a team player who wanted to support her friends, accompanied the team to all seven of those games at Kenosha’s Lake Front Stadium, as Borchert Field was occupied by the Brewers for their American Association league playoffs. 

Anderson’s AAGPBL career was only slightly shorter than her team’s stay in Milwaukee. Because of the poor attendance in 1944, the Chicks moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1945, and remained there until the league’s demise at the end of the 1954 season. Anderson, however, was not close to being done as a ballplayer, even with her permanently crooked right index and middle fingers. After healing, she moved south later in the summer of 1944, to play pro fast-pitch for the Bluebirds of the Chicago National Girls Baseball League. There, team owner Charles Bidwell (owner of the Chicago Cardinals of the National Football League) helped secure jobs for his ballplayers. Anderson worked days doing clerical work for Keeshan Motor Express, played ball on nights and weekends, and roomed with teammates in an apartment near the Bluebirds’ South Side ballpark. After playing for the Bluebirds again in 1945, Anderson returned to her hometown, eventually landing with the semipro Milwaukee Jets, a team with future AAGPBL ballplayers such as Jackie Mattson Baumgart and Edna Scheer. Here, the realization finally came that it was time to hang up her spikes. Anderson was starting to feel the aches and pains of her injuries and her mother told her, “I think it’s time you grow up and realize you can’t last forever doing this.” She realized that her very physical, aggressive style of play was wearing her out.  

Shortly after Anderson’s professional ballplaying career ended, so did her four-year marriage to Daniel Anderson. After their 1942 wedding, the Andersons did not see much of each other, because Daniel, a staff sergeant in the Army, was overseas. However, they did share a love of baseball; they met when Vivian was playing in West Allis, where Daniel was serving as a coach before joining the military. Vivian recalled that her husband was very excited for her when she went pro in the AAGPBL.   

In subsequent years, Anderson worked in office management, the secretarial field, public relations, loan closing, dispatching, and credit/collections before concluding her work career in 2010 (at the age of 89!) after 17 years with Barrett Moving and Storage as the long-distance-driver log documenter. In her spare time, she continued her athletic exploits by bowling for decades and became a member of the local 600 club.

The former Chick never left her hometown area and continued to live in her own home as late as 2011. After the AAGPBL was brought to life in the 1992 feature film A League of Their Own, Anderson, like many other AAGPBL alumnae, participated in various events as a representative of the league. Noteworthy were her 2001 induction into the Milwaukee Brewers Walls of Honor at Miller Park (the inaugural induction) and her participation in an AAGPBL player panel discussion at the 2001 SABR Convention in Milwaukee. Anderson said she never ceased to be amazed at the number of fans who requested autographed baseball cards after the debut of A League of Their Own. 

Even though Vivian Anderson played for the Chicks for only a short time, she helped establish the indomitable, hard-nosed attitude necessary for Milwaukee’s first championship in any major-league sport. As of the summer of 2011, only the 1957 National League Braves and the 1970-71 NBA Bucks had won championships since. Anderson shared these feelings about her short stay in the AAGPBL: “I loved the game. I wanted to play!” Surely, this was the approach needed by the Chicks as they strove toward that 1944 title. 

October 6, 2011

Sources

“1944 Milwaukee Chicks.” Sunday Night with Mike Gousha. WTMJ (television), Milwaukee, September 3, 2000 

AAGPBL Baseball Card No. 87–Dorothy Hunter. Larry Fritsch Cards, Stevens Point, Wisconsin

AAGPBL Baseball Card number 236–Vivian Anderson. Larry Fritsch Cards, Stevens Point, Wisconsin

Anderson, Vivian Sheriffs. Numerous personal and telephone interviews from December 1994 to August 2011

“Arizona Cardinals Team History.” Official Site of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Pro Football Hall of Fame, 2010. Accessed October 29, 2010. http://www.profootballhof.com/history/team.aspx?franchise_id=1

Breitenbucher, Cathy. “Swingin’ Chicks.” M Magazine, May 2004, . 74-75

Fidler, Merrie A. Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2005), 38, 46, 68, 74, 169, 185, 305

Heaphy, Leslie A., and Mel Anthony May, ed. Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006), 21

Keenan, Marie. “All-American Girls Professional Ball League.” Major League Baseball: Facts, Figures and Official Rules. (Racine, Wisconsin: Whitman, 1945), 129, 138, 144

Kenosha Evening News, September 8, 1944

Lesko, Jeneane, Jean Cione, Sue Macy, and Merrie Fidler. “All-American Girls Professional Baseball League History.” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association, Inc., 2005. Accessed October 29, 2010. <http://www.aagpbl.org/league/history.cfm>

McMahon, William. “NGBL Questions.” E-mail message to the author, December 5, 2010

McMahon, William. The National Girls Baseball League. Research paper

Michaels, Chance. “Bill Veeck’s ‘Good Luck Charm.’” Web log post. Welcome to Borchert Field. Accessed November 20, 2010. <http://www.borchertfield.com/2010/02/bill-veecks-good-luck-charm.html>

Milwaukee Journal, May 13, 24, and 28, June 6, and September 8, 1944

Milwaukee Sentinel, May 24 and 28, 1944

Morgan, Thomas, and James Nitz. “Our Forgotten World Champions: The 1944 Milwaukee Chicks.” Milwaukee History: The Magazine of the Milwaukee County Historical Society, Summer 1995, 30-45

Morgan, Tom, and Jim Nitz. “A Team of Their Own.” Milwaukee Magazine, July 1994, 10-11

Morgan, Tom and Jim Nitz. “When the Chicks Were Champs, but Not Many Fans Cared.” Milwaukee Journal, July 31, 1994, 3

Oral History Interview with Vivian Sheriffs for “The Forgotten Champs: The Milwaukee Chicks of 1944 Oral History Project.” Interview by Michael E. Telzrow. Minds@UW. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives Dept., 11 Dec. 2009. Accessed August 21, 2010. http://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/38224

“Vivian Sheriffs, Betty Moczynski, Jackie Mattson Baumgart.” I Remember Milwaukee. WMVS (television), Milwaukee, February 7, 1996 

Born Jacqueline Mattson on November 16, 1928, in Waukegan, Illinois, Jackie was the youngest of eight children (five brothers and two sisters). Her father, Siebert, was a carpenter and her mother, Edith Adeline, was a homemaker who also worked as a maid. Jackie’s mother attained a fifth-grade education after coming to the United States from England at the age of 8. Jackie shared her childhood passion for the game of baseball with local writer Courtnay Brummer by stating, “I fell in love with the round ball when I was just able to walk. It is a gift, it was my salvation.” Her mom was not always supportive, however. Jackie recalled for author Patricia Brown her mother’s take on her ballplaying: “She didn’t like it at all. She could not understand why her ‘little girl’ found every moment she could to play baseball with the boys. I remember one time when my mother sent me to the store and on the way I went by some boys playing a scrub game. I joined them, and was two hours late getting back home. I was even late for supper, and as punishment, had to go without.”

As with many families of the Depression era, the Mattsons struggled through hard economic times. To help with her family’s finances, Jackie moved to Milwaukee in the spring of 1942. She lived in a flat with her sister Dorothy, 14 years older, and her husband, a truck driver, plus their five children. Even though Jackie had played sandlot ball with her brothers in Waukegan, it was in Milwaukee where she first played organized ball. Jackie had impressed her brothers with her strong arm and love of the game. She did the same with her teenage female peers and coaches during her years in the playground recreational leagues run by the city of Milwaukee. She was a fast learner and developed into a talented ballplayer. The teenaged Jackie also enjoyed other sports, including basketball and speed skating.

In 1944 Jackie learned catching skills by serving as a bullpen catcher for a men’s hardball team. The following winter she continued to catch in a Milwaukee recreation department indoor softball league, in which she focused on keeping her eyes open regardless of where the 11-inch outseam foul tips went. Her skills became solid enough that she was recruited to play fast-pitch softball in 1945 in the West Allis (a Milwaukee western suburb) fast-pitch league, a highly competitive and popular circuit that sent many ballplayers to the AAGPBL. Two former major leaguers, Bunny Brief and Jack Kloza, manager of the 1944 Rockford Peaches, worked for the Milwaukee rec program and moved the aspiring Jackie up to the West Allis league. Here she played on the state championship Majdecki Foods team that included past and future AAGPBL ballplayers including Eileen Burmeister, Marge Peters, and Edna Scheer. They won the championship in a 1-0 game in which the deciding run scored on an illegal pitch when the opposing pitcher stopped her motion. This was the only game that Jackie’s mother ever saw her play.

In September 1945 Jackie moved back to Waukegan; her sister had just delivered her sixth child and was out of space for any siblings. Jackie attended Waukegan High School as a senior but moved back to Milwaukee in the late spring of 1946 to earn a diploma from Milwaukee’s South Division High School by taking one summer history course. Of greater importance to Jackie was the chance to play competitive ball again. This time, she lived with friends and worked in the produce department for her team’s sponsor, Majdecki Foods. Lifting 100 pound sacks of potatoes was a work activity that helped Jackie gain strength as a ballplayer.

By 1947 Jackie was working as a draftsman and detailer for the National Enameling and Stamping Company, which originally made Nesco roasters, and then with Kearney and Trecker, a machinery and tool manufacturer. From 1947 through 1949, she and Edna Scheer, along with 1944 Milwaukee Chicks third baseman Vivian Sheriffs Anderson, played with the amateur Milwaukee Jets. This team rode in three cars to weekend tournaments as far away as Canada and Indiana (often playing men’s baseball teams with the Jets’ pitcher throwing against the Jets and the male pitcher facing the men’s team). The versatile Jets also competed against women’s teams in fast-pitch softball. An AAGPBL scout was impressed with Jackie’s ability to hit to all fields and her strong defense and arm behind the plate. Her competence in both softball and hardball certainly had a positive impact on the scout as the AAGPBL completed its conversion from fast-pitch to baseball in 1948. She was asked to try out for the AAGPBL in Newark, New Jersey, in 1949. After borrowing $50 from her other older sister, Connie, and her dentist husband, Jackie boarded a train for Newark.

Jackie performed well at the tryouts and was invited to spring training in 1950 with the South Bend Blue Sox. The 5-foot-5, 100-pound catcher was assigned to the 1950 Springfield Sallies, a rookie developmental team that traveled throughout the country, playing against their itinerant companions, the Chicago Colleens. The Colleens and Sallies were both managed by Mitch Skupien but each team had its own chaperone who also served as a coach. Barbara Liebrich worked with the Sallies and Pat Barringer supervised the Colleens. Even though Jackie and the Sallies did not play in the actual AAGPBL regular championship season that year, she participated in a summer tour that was unforgettable.

First, the barnstorming Sallies and Colleens played in 65 cities in 25 states in the South, East, and Canada, not only to improve their skills but to create publicity for recruiting new players to AAGPBL tryouts. As Jackie exclaimed to Courtnay Brummer, “The tour was just marvelous. I had never been anywhere.” Milwaukee-area writer Susan Treu uncovered this enthusiastic description by sportswriter Joe McLaughlin of Jackie’s catching skills with the Sallies: “What an arm the girl has. She pounced on a bunt in front of the plate the other night and whistled the ball to first base.”

However, Jackie encountered some downsides, including trying to fathom the enforcement of segregation laws in the South. In addition, the 90 games over the three-month road trip were grueling with sweltering ballparks and muggy buses in which Jackie had great difficulty sleeping. She played in 48 games, batting an even .200 with 4 doubles and 18 RBIs. Jackie fondly recalled playing in major-league ballparks like New York’s Yankee Stadium and Washington’s Griffith Stadium. Meeting a fellow catcher, future Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, was a memorable experience. He offered Jackie his bat, which she politely declined as it was so heavy.

Jackie impressed the AAGPBL in 1950 and was invited to spring training with the Kalamazoo Lassies in 1951. The right-handed hitter was placed on the Kenosha Comets, who needed another catcher because of late-arriving college students. Once all were back, Jackie saw limited playing time and hit .098 in 22 of the Comets’ 107 games as one of four catchers used over the course of the season. (The others were Eunice Taylor, Irene Hickson, and Jean Lovell Dowler.)

Rather than spend more time in a league she believed was declining, Jackie returned to Milwaukee in 1952. She played ball occasionally but mostly focused on her career in the product design/engineering field at companies including Nash Kelvinator and Black Hawk Manufacturing. She met her future husband, Bob Baumgart, at a group golf outing arranged by a mutual friend. (Bob, an Air Force veteran of World War II, worked as a mechanical engineer for the Heil Company.) with their first date at Marquette Stadium for a 1956 Green Bay Packers exhibition game. They married in January 1957, became the parents of three sons, and had three grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Bob encouraged Jackie to pursue a teaching career, which she did by going back to school in 1970 at Milwaukee’s Alverno College. She earned a bachelor’s degree in broad field social studies and her teaching license in secondary education. She taught middle school and homebound students in the suburban Franklin school district before retiring in 1981. Bob died in 2006.

Jackie said her love for broad field social studies and sociology (her major) came from the tremendous diversity of people she met in her time in the AAGPBL. Playing with ballplayers from Cuba, Canada, and all over the United States, and interacting with her rural and urban teammates, piqued her interest in learning more about their backgrounds. She is a United Methodist certified lay speaker. As of the summer of 2013, she still coached her church coed softball team.

The former Sallie and Comet never left the Milwaukee area and, as of 2013, lived about two miles directly south of Miller Park. After the AAGPBL became well-recognized due to the release of A League of Their Own in 1992, Jackie, like many other former players, began enthusiastically participating in various events as a representative of the league. She helped the Milwaukee Brewers research and design the permanent Walls of Honor display as the AAGPBL representative to the project, and she was inducted into the Walls of Honor in the 2001 inaugural ceremony. In 2002 she was inducted into the Old Time Ballplayers Association of Wisconsin Hall of Fame. Jackie also participated in AAGPBL player panel discussions in 2000 at the Milwaukee County Historical Society and at the 2001 SABR Convention in Milwaukee. In addition, Jackie served in leadership positions on the AAGPBL Milwaukee Reunion Committees of 2000 and 2009. She was greatly impressed by the Women in Baseball exhibit that opened at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in November 1988. The exhibit featured the AAGPBL. After seeing her name on the roster of AAGPBL players featured in the exhibit, she told Susan Treu, “It was a very emotional thing. It’s one of those times when you cannot put it into words, it just permeates the whole body. Very seldom in one’s lifetime does one feel that kind of emotion: Elation, coming to grips with the fact that one did all right.”

Jackie was thrilled to appear in several scenes of A League of Their Own, experiences that she happily shared when giving presentations on the AAGPBL throughout southeastern Wisconsin at churches, summer softball tournaments, Little League events, high-school athletic dinners, retirement homes, and school history programs, plus Midwest Athletes against Childhood Cancer, Cystic Fibrosis, and Special Olympic fundraising events. Wearing her AAGPBL shirt (inscribed with the famous line from the movie “There’s no crying in baseball!”) Jackie’s talk featured her original kangaroo leather spikes, catcher’s mitt, and 10-inch ball from 1950 as well as a stack of photos and/or baseball cards to sign. She would not sign a card until she got to know the recipient’s name and engaged the person in a conversation. Only then would she give her autograph, complete with a personalized message. Driving to talks in her car with Wisconsin car license plates stamped “AAGPBL,” she always wore her league ring.

Back in 1992 at my church, she rolled that ball on the floor in a circle with several toddlers, including my daughter, Beth. She played catch with some of our Little Leaguers, including my son, Jeff, and made some hands hurt with the speed of her throws. Not surprisingly, so many of those young people, including both of my children, inherited Jackie’s love for the game. As she said so emphatically to Beth, “I think I would have been a nothing if it wasn’t for baseball.” Graciously sharing her love of the game, her cherished time playing in the AAGPBL, her unique experiences participating in A League of Their Own, and her insistence that her audience grab the opportunity to do what they love to do, as she did in her life, she surely was a “somebody.”

Sources

Brown, Patricia I., A League of My Own: Memoir of a Pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, (Jefferson, North Caroloina: McFarland & Co., 2003), 172-74.

Fidler, Merrie A., Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006), 71, 72, 74, 105-111, 157, 169, 304, 305, 312, 333.

Heaphy, Leslie A., and Mel Anthony May, eds., Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006), 186-7, 273-4.

Madden, W.C., The Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: A Biographical Dictionary (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland &, 1997), 162.

Breitenbucher, Cathy, “Swingin’ Chicks,” M Magazine, May 2004, 74-75.

Brummer, Courtnay C., “Girl’s Baseball League Made History Decades Ago,” Brookfield News, June 16, 1994, 1, 14.

Nell, Allen, “Baumgart Describes Experiences in Women’s Professional Baseball League,” Waterloo Courier, August 4, 2005, 3.

Treu, Susan, “In a League of Her Own,” Germantown NOW, July 19, 2001, At Ease sec., 1, 4.

Boring, Frank, “Baumgart, Jacqueline Mattson (Interview Transcript and Video), 2009.” Grand Valley State University Special Collections, September 25, 2009. http://cdm16015.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15068coll11/id/23/rec/12. Accessed July 28, 2013.

Lesko, Jeneane, Jean Cione, Sue Macy, and Merrie Fidler. “All-American Girls Professional Baseball League History.” http://www.aagpbl.org. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association, n.d. Accessed July 28, 2013.

Nitz, Bethanee, The Power of the Human Spirit. November 11, 2008. Advanced Composition Research Paper, Menomonee Falls (Wisconsin) High School.

Perleberg, Stephanie, “There’s No Crying in Baseball: An Interview with Jackie Mattson Baumgart,” Iousports.org. Images of Us Sports, 2011. Accessed July 28, 2013.

“A League of Their Own,” IMDb.com, n.d. Accessed July 28, 2013.

“Jacqueline Baumgart (Mattson).” http://www.aagpbl.org. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association, n.d. Accessed July 28, 2013.

“League Records.” http://www.aagpbl.org. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association, n.d. Accessed July 28, 2013.

“1950 Springfield Sallies,” http://www.aagpbl.org. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association, accessed July 28, 2013.

“1951 Kenosha Comets,” http://www.aagpbl.org. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association, Accessed July 28, 2013.

AAGPBL Baseball Card No. 291 (Jacqueline Mattson), Larry Fritsch Cards, Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

“Vivian Sheriffs, Betty Moczynski, Jackie Mattson Baumgart,” I Remember Milwaukee (television) WMVS, Milwaukee, February 7, 1996.

Mattson, Jackie, Numerous personal and telephone interviews from September 1992 to August 2013.

To accomplish this, a few weeks before the game Bottazzi purchased a red rubber ball and from time to time tossed it against the wall of her apartment building. As she put it, her voice betraying no small amount of pride, “I practiced.” On her chosen night, the ball, thrown overhand by the 86-year-old Bottazzi, arrived airborne in the catcher’s mitt. The resounding thud was audible, at least to her family and friends attending the event. 

This was not the first time since her career with the Comets that Bottazzi used her home as a tool to improve baseball skills—whether her own or someone else’s. In the summer of 1961 she helped her 9-year-old son, Michael, learn to catch balls hit in the air. She described the process in an interview with the Allentown Morning Call: “He just couldn’t catch a fly ball. He’d drop it. So I would have him stand in the yard. I went upstairs and hung out the window. Then I dropped the ball to him.” From that she increased the degree of difficulty: “I used to throw the ball to him, too. He got hit a couple of times, but I told him not to let that stop him.” 

Despite the fact that Bottazzi’s time with the Comets was limited to half a season and three plate appearances (without a hit), there is no doubt that those who saw Jan Stocker Bottazzi throw that pitch at the Iron Pigs’ game were watching a “pro” in the true sense of the word.  

Born in Allentown on December 13, 1926, to Charles and Annie (Belford) Stocker, Jeanette had one older sister, two older brothers and one younger brother. Her daily routine when she wasn’t in school or helping with household chores involved playing ball with her brothers and the other boys on her block. Her modest self-appraisal was that she was “pretty fast and could hit.” When she was in the seventh grade she started playing softball in the Allentown Girls Softball League, organized by a local sports enthusiast and coach, Charles Schuler. Because of her speed Bottazzi started out as a center fielder, then was moved to second base, and eventually to catcher because of her throwing ability. 

Schuler was not only the organizer of the girls’ league, he was also a scout for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). After Bottazzi had an outstanding season catching for the Hooverettes in the Allentown league in 1945, Schuler encouraged her to try out for the AAGPBL. On his recommendation, she was signed to a tryout agreement with AAGPBL coach and scout Bill Wambsganss (he of the unassisted triple play for the Indians in the 1920 World Series).

Two months later, in April 1946, the 19-year-old Bottazzi traveled to Pascagoula, Mississippi, with three other women from her part of Pennsylvania: Jean Faut of East Greenville, Janet Brown of Copley, and Fern Shollenberger of Hamburg. (Faut and Shollenberger went on to have distinguished careers in the AAGPBL: Shollenberger was a five-time All-Star at third base; Faut earned All-Star status four times, pitched two perfect games in the league’s overhand era, and was one of only two players named the MVP twice).

The train trip to Pascagoula was Bottazzi’s first time away from Allentown or her family, so she welcomed the company of the other Pennsylvania women. The trip to the tryouts also meant that she would be separated from her fiancé, Aldo Bottazzi, to whom she had been engaged for about a year. Her future husband enjoyed watching her play in the City League and encouraged her playing in the AAGPBL, she said, recalling how he told her: “Go ahead and try, Jan. See if you like it.”

After the first night on the train trip, Bottazzi recalled in one of a number of interviews with the author, “We woke up for breakfast and found the train had hooked up to a train full of soldiers. They went through our car while we were eating. They thought it was really something that a few young women were there.” 

At Pascagoula, the 5-foot-4, 140-pound Bottazzi, who batted and threw right-handed, got down to business, though she recalled feeling “overwhelmed with the large number of women and a lot of girls there.”   For the next two weeks she went through drills and practice games and stayed in barracks built for shipbuilders during the recently concluded Second World War.    

Aside from the fact that she was tired from the rigorous daily routine, Bottazzi didn’t venture out much into Pascagoula. “We went maybe to the drugstore but didn’t get out away from the barracks very much,” she said. Her few times out into the small town resulted in some interesting cultural experiences. Once, she said, “Fern, Jean, Janet, and I were all talking together when two little boys came up, looked at each other, and one said, ‘They’re Yankees.’ “   Another time, in a movie house in town, “I saw how they made the blacks go upstairs. I had never seen anything like that in Allentown. One of my girlfriends was black and we used to sit together in the movies. I wasn’t used to that or colored and white water fountains.” 

Bottazzi was upset at the tryouts that the coaches tried to change her batting style. “I wasn’t happy with the way I was hitting after they tried to change me around,”she said. “I just didn’t hit like I usually did. I used to hit a lot of home runs, and after they changed my stance, that didn’t happen. They wanted me to hold the bat way up like a man—that’s not the way I usually swung. I usually would just get it back over my shoulder, and I hit fine that way.”  

Despite any problems resulting from the unwelcome adjustment in her stance, Bottazzi showed enough talent to be selected to play for the Kenosha team. The Comets shared a bus with the Rockford (Illinois) Peaches traveling through Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, playing exhibition games along the way. One of her most vivid memories from the trip was seeing a white line down the main street in Texarkana. “On one side it was Texas, and on the other side, it was Arkansas.” She also remembered visiting an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.

In Oklahoma City Bottazzi bought a first baseman’s glove to use instead of the catcher’s mitt she had brought from Allentown. The 11-inch ball used in the AAGPBL in 1946 was smaller than the official 12-inch ball used in softball, and Bottazzi found that the ball wouldn’t stick in the pocket of her catcher’s mitt. The first baseman’s mitt worked better for her, although she noted in an interview with the Morning Call, ”[W]hen that ball hit my glove, my thumb hurt!“ The new glove was no small sacrifice on Bottazzi’s part; it cost about $20 in 1946, and “That was a lot of money in those days.”  

The ball used in the AAGPBL would shrink to 10 inches, then eventually 9 inches by the time the league ended in 1954. The players “could really do tricks with a ball because they could really get their hands around it,” Bottazzi told the Morning Call. 

Fern Shollenberger, one of her traveling companions on the train trip from Allentown, was her teammate on the Comets, and was her roommate during the trip from Pascagoula to Kenosha (when the team got to sleep in hotels rather than on the bus). Though the hotels were preferable to sleeping on the bus, they were far from four star establishments, Bottazzi said. “One place we stayed in—I think it was in Louisiana—was a rickety old place where Fern and I had to share the bed. In the middle of the night it collapsed.”

In Kenosha Bottazzi shared an apartment with Shollenberger, until Shollenberger’s husband came to Kenosha.” Then Bottazzi shared an apartment with teammate Janet Anderson Perkin, from Saskatchewan, because her $85 weekly salary from the Comets dictated that it was more economically prudent to share living expenses.

In 1946 Kenosha was managed by Charles “Press” Cruthers, who played on the 1913 and 1914 Philadelphia A’s as second baseman Eddie Collins’s backup. Bottazzi liked Cruthers and described him as acting toward the team members “like somebody’s father or grandfather.” The 1946 Comets finished seventh of the eight teams in the league, going 42-70. 

Bottazzi played only half a season with the Comets, seeing only limited action behind first-string catcher Marge “Poncho” Villa Cryan. Team records indicate that Bottazzi appeared in only four games. “I used to hear, ‘You’re just a rookie’ more than once.” Villa also was a rookie, but was two years older than Bottazzi.  

Besides losing playing time because of her rookie status, Bottazzi was injured when she was spiked in the hand while sliding head-first into third base. Unable to grip or throw the ball, she was sidelined for more than a month. Asked why she slid head-first rather than feet first, Bottazzi responded with a complaint common to veteran AAGPBL players, “If you slid feet first [in a skirted uniform], you got brush burns—sliding pads didn’t help.” Besides, because of their bulk under the uniform skirts, most players didn’t wear sliding pads.

 “[W]e traveled just by bus,” Bottazzi told the Morning Call. “It wasn’t pleasant. There was no air-conditioning then. It was a little tough. We played almost every day, and doubleheaders on Sunday. When you traveled, you went into different time zones because of the different states. Then, you had to practice. There was no goofing off. Sometimes we prayed for rain.” Also, she remembered, the league was strict with players’ off-field dress: They had to wear skirts in public. But they weren’t required to wear makeup during games.

A month into the season, about the time her hand injury healed, the Comets told Bottazzi that she was going to be traded to the South Bend Blue Sox. She didn’t want to go for a number of reasons, not the least of which was her friendship with a number of her Comets teammates. Then her distress was eased when Aldo Bottazzi showed up unannounced in Kenosha to surprise his fiancé with a visit. She summed up the events that followed: “He came out to see me, and I went home with him. It was as much a relief as it was a surprise when he came out. I wasn’t having a very good time of it. I wanted to go home with him. He didn’t make me go.” She said she also was homesick, feeling the toll of never having been away from home before. Jan and Aldo were married on January 25, 1947.

Back in Allentown, Bottazzi went to work as a cutter for Penn State Mills, a garment factory, from which she retired in 1992. She played for the Phoenix Lassies of Allentown for about a year. Later, she coached for a year for the Crickets in Mountainville, Pennsylvania.   Ultimately, she gave up coaching. “I was working and raising a son. It was just too much,” she told the Morning Call. This, of course, didn’t stop her from working out of second-story windows to further her son’s development as a ballplayer. 

Jan and Aldo’s only child, Michael, was born in 1952. Michael used her glove from the Comets when he was on his high-school baseball team. Michael and his wife, Ellen, had two children and three grandchildren. Jan’s grandchildren and great grandchildren have been to a number of AAGPBL events and seen pictures of the league in which their grandmother played. Aldo Bottazzi died in 2005. He and Jan were married for 58 years.

Bottazzi said she didn’t talk much about her time playing in the AAGPBL other than to her family, until 1992, when the release of the movie A League of Their Own began to generate publicity for the league. Over the years, she had very little contact with the women from the AAGPBL, but she has made occasional appearances at local AAGPBL-sponsored events. 

Looking back, Bottazzi described her days in the women’s league as a “real thrill” and a “great experience.” “The traveling was great,” she said. “I never would have gotten outside of Allentown. We saw so many things—different cities all over the United States—along with other things I never would have seen if I hadn’t gone.”

With the release of A League of Their Own, Bottazzi began receiving letters from people   not only from all over the United States, but from other countries as well, including Taiwan and several from Australia. She related enthusiastically that “Just this week, I got a letter from Japan.”

Bottazzi said her “biggest thrill”  from her time with the Comets involved a high-school classmate, Sherwood Herring, a soldier who was stationed in the Philippines in 1946. Herring told the Morning Call, “We were sitting on a hill watching [a newsreel about the AAGPBL]. The catcher threw off her mask—revealing Bottazzi! I hollered, ‘Yo, Jeanette! I went to school with her!’ I guess the guys thought I was nuts.”    Bottazzi said, “When people who ask me for autographs ask me what was my best memory from the league, I tell them that as far as I’m concerned, it was a thrill to have that happen.”

November 3, 2011  

Sources

AAGPBL Interview, Jeanette Stocker, http://thediamondangle.com/archive/dec04/stocker.html.

Schaefer, Stan, “Women’s League Born In Wartime,” the Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania, August 22, 1996,   http://articles.mcall.com/1996-08-22/news/3104530_1_glove-first-baseman-s-mitt-geena-davis-and-madonna.

Author Interviews

Jeanette Stocker Bottazzi, May 31, 2008, June 15, 2011, and September 2, 2011.

Michael Bottazzi, September 3 and September 15, 2011 (correspondence)

In the spring of my first year on the faculty at Henderson State University, I went to an intramural softball game involving a couple of faculty teams. One of the teams was the one from “down the hill,” the Health, Physical Education and Recreation faculty. Not surprisingly, they had a pretty good team. But the thing I remember most was not the players, or even the game. One of the fans sticks out in my memory. As is common, there was one particularly vocal fan. What was not common, though, was the type of things said by this fan. Usually such vocal fans are using volume to hide the fact that they have no idea what they are talking about. This fan, a woman, was vocal but also knew exactly what she was talking about. This was my introduction to Dr. Dee White.

Dee White was born as Delores Brumfield on May 26, 1932 in Prichard, Alabama. She was the first child of Earl Henry Brumfield and his wife, Miriam McKay Turner Brumfield. She was followed by a brother and then a sister. Prichard is a suburb of Mobile, birthplace or home of many great baseball players including Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee and Satchel Paige. Mr. Brumfield was an auto mechanic. Mrs. Brumfield was a stay-at-home mom until World War II when she started as an office worker, eventually progressing to being an office manager for an insurance firm.

Brumfield was an athletic girl. Mobile was home to large ship construction and the shipyard workers would often get together to play baseball. Dee would join them. She was eventually able to hold her own in these sandlot games and began a lifelong fascination with baseball.

As is the case with many youngsters, Dee began to dream of being a baseball player. Such a dream was surely unrealistic but something happened in 1942 that made the dream less far-fetched. As World War II began to demand a greater commitment in manpower, many minor league teams went out of business due to a lack of able-bodied players. To fill the void, Phillip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, decided to form the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). His theory was that there were sufficiently many quality female players to satisfy the public’s desire to watch baseball. The league began play in 1943.

In 1946, the shipyard workers heard about tryouts for the AAGPBL and encouraged Dee to try out. They even volunteered to drive her to Pascagoula, Mississippi for the tryouts. Mrs. Brumfield was open to the idea of tryouts but was not open to the idea of the workers taking Dee. She said that if anyone was going to take Dee to Pascagoula, she would.

Dee impressed league officials at the tryouts. Afterwards she spoke to Max Carey, the league president and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. When Carey found out Dee was “almost 14” he told her she was too young. But he also encouraged her to continue working on her skills, encouraging her to join a local team. Returning to the Mobile area, Dee joined a softball team made up of woman from the area military base.

Not long after the end of the 1946 season, Carey contacted Dee, inviting her to join the AAGPBL. A few weeks later, a letter from Carey arrived, asking Dee to report to Havana, Cuba for spring training in 1947.

Mrs. Brumfield was not happy about the plan. One of the league’s players visited with the family. She assured them that the players were well taken care of and explained the role of the chaperones that traveled with each team. This conversation allayed Mrs. Brumfield’s fears and Dee was permitted to go.

Dee left but, as she got on a train for Miami, homesickness hit very strongly. However, once she arrived in Havana, the focus on baseball made everything easier for her. The players were always under the watchful eye of their chaperones, as well as armed military officials in Cuba. [White said that “A League of their Own,” the Penny Marshall movie purporting to chronicle life in the AAGPBL, accurately portrayed the scenes of spring training. She also said that not much else in the movie actually fit life in the league.

For the 1947 season, Dee Brumfield played for the South Bend Blue Sox, managed by Chet Grant, former Notre Dame assistant football coach. She speaks very highly of Grant, saying that he took tremendous amounts of time teaching and encouraging her. While South Bend finished fourth out of eight teams with a 57-54 record, Brumfield found the level of play a challenge as a rookie. Playing in 39 games, Brumfield had a .117 batting average. In spite of that, she began to show a very good eye at the plate, drawing 15 walks while having only 103 at bats. She also showed some speed, stealing 6 bases in her limited opportunities. It was around this time that teammate Daisy Junor gave her the nickname “Dolly.” The Blue Sox chaperone had paired Dolly with Daisy, who was older and married, as a mentor. Due to Dolly’s age, Daisy was inspired to give her the nickname.

In 1948, as the league expanded to 10 teams and split into two divisions, Brumfield, went to spring training with South Bend and its new manager, former big leaguer Marty McManus. Brumfield returned to Alabama for school for a little while before the start of the season. By the time she was ready to go back, she was involved in a trade that reunited her with manager Grant and teammate Ruby Stephens on the Kenosha Comets. Kenosha improved significantly under Grant’s leadership, going from 43-69 in 1947 to 61-64 in 1948. Brumfield appeared in 86 games, improving her average to .142 and stealing 18 bases. Her biggest trouble offensively was striking out. She struck out 60 times in only 261 at bats. However, considering that she was still only 16 years old and playing against some women who had been in the league for a number of years, there was hope for improvement.

In 1949, Brumfield saw considerable improvement. Playing for a new manager, Johnnie Gottselig, she dropped her strikeouts to only 26 in 274 at bats, a very respectable total. (Though in his fourth year managing in the AAGPBL, Gottselig’s main sports renown was in hockey.) Not surprisingly, the huge drop in strikeouts was accompanied by significant improvement in other areas as Brumfield saw her batting average rise to .212, slugging percentage go from .153 to .248 and her on base percentage go from .225 to .289. Brumfield’s improvement was surely reflected in the Comets’ improvement as they topped .500, finishing 56-55, good for fourth place in the eight team league.

Kenosha’s team progress continued in 1950 as did Brumfield’s. Dolly had one of her best all around seasons for the Comets, playing in 108 games, also marking career highs in at bats, runs, hits, doubles, triples, runs batted in, total bases and stolen bases. This season also saw her first career home run. Additionally, for the second consecutive year, she improved her batting average more than 50 points, hitting .264. Another continued improvement was her ability to put the bat on the ball. After having struck out once every 4.35 at bats in 1948, and improving to once every 10.54 at bats in 1949, Brumfield struck out only once every 17.78 at bats in 1950, another career best. Kenosha, still under Gottselig’s tutelage, recorded a fine 64-46 record, finishing third, a mere 2.5 games behind the league champion Rockford Peaches.

Brumfield’s fifth season, 1951, again saw her batting average go up. Playing in 66 games, Dolly hit a team high .273. In fact, her average and slugging percentage had each gone up every season she had played. This season her slugging percentage was .364 and she also had a career best 1 RBI per 8 at bats. The now 19 year old Alabaman had become a solid offensive force. Unfortunately Brumfield’s success did not carry over to the team. The AAGPBL went to a split season format for the first time since 1944. Kenosha struggled to a 21-36 record, finishing fifth out of eight teams in the first half. The second half was worse, with the Comets finishing 15-35, a bare one game out of last place.

Brumfield experienced a change in scenery for 1952, joining the Fort Wayne Daisies after Kenosha folded. One high point of Brumfield’s time in Fort Wayne was her chance to play for baseball Hall of Fame slugger Jimmie Foxx. She enjoyed Jimmie Foxx though she said he may have been too nice while managing the Daisies. Early in spring training, Foxx called Dolly to the dugout, saying “You’ll be second base.” Dolly’s shocked response was “I never played second base.” Foxx replied “that’s OK.”

The Daisies won the league championship with a 67-42 record, beating the South Bend Blue Sox by three games. Unfortunately, though, the Blue Sox won the playoffs over Fort Wayne. This season also saw a change in fortune for Brumfield. Though playing in 88 games, the second most of her career, Dolly’s offensive productivity fell off dramatically. Her batting average dropped to .218. She drew a lot of walks so she still contributed to Fort Wayne’s success but she did not perform to the level she had previously established. Brumfield missed out on the playoffs after suffering a broken ankle, colliding with a catcher’s shin guard on a play at the plate.

Throughout much of her career, Brumfield had been a utility player, playing many games at almost all positions. The only positions she never played were catcher and pitcher, even though pitcher was the position for which she tried out years earlier.

Brumfield’s last season in the AAGPBL was 1953, the next to last year of the league’s existence. She went out with a bang. Fort Wayne again won the league championship under new manager Bill Allington (whom she describes as the smartest baseball man she ever played for), sporting a 66-39 record to finish 4.5 games ahead of the Grand Rapids Chicks. Unfortunately, the previous year’s playoff loss was repeated. Brumfield only played in 66 games, mostly at first base, but regained her earlier form, raising her batting average 114 points (.332 to finish second in the league), her slugging percentage 170 points (.450), her on base percentage 134 points (.462) and, therefore, her OPS by 304 points (.912). She hit two home runs to run her career total to four. This was one of the few years Brumfield had a fixed position, spending most of her time at first base. This, her seventh year in the league, was the first in which she was legally considered an adult, turning 21 in May.

Brumfield had been attending college during the offseason and graduated from Alabama College for Women (now the University of Montevallo) in 1954 with a degree in Health, Physical Education and Recreation. She decided it was time to put her playing career behind her. She found a job as a physical education instructor in Shaw, Mississippi, teaching at both the junior high school and high school. To fill out her teaching schedule she also taught one year of penmanship and one year of junior high mathematics. One new program she introduced in the Shaw schools was dancing, with instruction in both square dancing and ballroom dancing. Additionally, she served as the parks and recreation director in town. She ran the swimming program and the playground programs.

Brumfield had one more chance at professional baseball. In 1955, she was offered the chance to play on a women’s team that would tour the nation barnstorming against men’s teams. The team did exist for a couple of years but she turned down the offer, saying she wanted to move on with her teaching career.

After working in Shaw for two years, Brumfield spent seven years teaching at Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Mississippi. She then attended the University of Southern Mississippi, receiving her master’s degree (1959) and doctorate (1969) in physical education.

After leaving Copiah-Lincoln, Brumfield took a position in the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, starting there in 1963. Her duties were varied. She taught standard physical education and recreation classes. She coached swimming from 1963-1982, helping to develop what is now one of the premier swimming programs in the state. She taught classes in square dancing. In that regard she also contributed to the community, starting the Arkie Stars Square Dancing Club, which is still active today. She served as director of the Reddie Ripples synchronized swimming club, and coordinated the recreation degree program.

During her time at Henderson, Brumfield made another significant change in her life. In 1977, she married Joe White, from Gurdon, Arkansas, becoming known as Dr. Delores “Dee” White. Mr. White was one of the early participants in the Arkie Stars. His early life mirrored Dee’s life in that both of them got started in professional life unusually early. He got someone to help him enlist in the navy during World War II despite being only 15 years old. He saw action in the Pacific. Seasickness kept him from staying in the navy though he did make a career out of military service, serving in the army in the Korean War and seeing two tours of duty in Viet Nam.

In addition to her work at Henderson, White was active in encouraging physical education for all children, though particularly for girls since opportunities for athletic activity for girls was very limited in Arkadelphia in the 1960s.

White fashioned a long, distinguished career at Henderson, reaching the rank of professor. In 1994, she retired and was honored with the title professor emeritus.

Retirement did not end White’s affiliation and activity with Henderson. In the mid- to late 1990s, there was a decision to add a women’s softball team to the Reddie athletic program. White was a natural to participate in the groundwork for the fledgling program. She helped organize the “Diamond Reddies,” the softball team’s booster club which helped raise funds for the new softball field that was used beginning in 1999.

Dr. White’s activities were not limited to Henderson State University. She served the city of Arkadelphia as a consultant to its Parks and Recreation Department, helping to encourage the community to expand and improve its recreation facilities and programs. She also served as the president of the association of former AAGPBL players. This role would find her traveling throughout the year, attending reunions of the players as well as handling the business aspect of the organization. She appeared, via videoconferencing equipment, to four school districts in New York as a featured speaker for Women’s History Month, discussing her AAGPBL experiences.

White continued to work to encourage girls to be active in sports and worked to see that there are opportunities for those girls who want to participate. In an interview with The Oracle, Henderson’s campus paper, she said, “I think that we as young women baseball players all those years ago sort of forged the way for girls today to be able to do the things they do. It makes me really proud to know that I had a part in making it easier for women to be involved in sports. I’m so proud.”

White’s work and legacy have been recognized by a number of people, groups and organizations. She was inducted into Henderson’s Reddie Hall of Honor in 1998. In 2003, she was invited to the White House by President George W. Bush to serve as a first base coach for one of the South Lawn tee ball games hosted by the president. In 2004, she was recognized by the University of Montevallo with one of its Distinguished Alumni Award.

Then, on October 13, 2007, White was honored by seeing the Henderson State University softball field renamed as the “Dr. Delores ‘Dolly’ Brumfield-White Softball Field,” in a dedication ceremony that can be viewed on youtube.com. White has been recognized by the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame for her participation in the AAGPBL and women’s baseball history, and is the past president of the AAGPBL Players’ Association. She has even been honored with a painting of her adorning a traffic control box in North Little Rock, Arkansas, just a short distance from Dickey-Stephens Park, the home of the Texas League’s Arkansas Travelers.

On April 21, 2011, White was inducted into the Mobile (Alabama) Sports Hall of Fame. Writing about her induction, Tommy Hicks of the Mobile Press-Register wrote, “Walking down the street to a local playground and ballpark led White places she never dreamed of visiting. … It was, she says, simply meant to be.”

Hicks also related the story of how White ended up at Henderson State University.

She went to Arkansas looking for a job. She was heading to Monroe, Louisiana, for another interview, accompanied by a friend, when they stopped in Arkadelphia for gas. The city had two colleges and she picked the state school, Henderson State, and decided to make a phone call.

“I told my friend, ‘I kind of like the looks of this place. I’ll see if they’ve got a job,’” White said. “So my friend dared me to call. I went to the telephone booth on the corner and looked up Henderson State. I told them who I was, and that I was passing through, and that I was looking for a job in my field and asked if they had a job. The secretary said, ‘Yes, we do.’ She invited me up and said the president would be in any time and to come on up. I met with the president, talked with him, and he took me to the P.E. department and showed me around. He said, ‘If you’re interested in the position, send us your paperwork.’ I got home, sent in the paperwork and within a week got a call offering me the job.”

After a long illness, White died on May 29, 2020 in Prescott, Arkansas. Her life may have ended, but her legacy has not. As her obituary began, “Not everyone gets the chance to pave the way for others, but Delores ‘Dolly’ Brumfield White was one of those who was given that wonderful opportunity. Because of women like her, sports for girls would never be the same. … Dolly’s life was anything but ordinary.”

Video of the softball field dedication ceremony can be viewed (in three parts) at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeVxcJ7bExY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmtROPLySCI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk8jRRIXB8Q

Sources

AAGPBL website: www.aagpbl.org

University of Montevallo website: www.montevallo.edu

Henderson State University website: www.hsu.edu

The Oracle, the student newspaper of Henderson State University

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6251/

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Author’s interview with Dr. Dee White

Nelson, Rex, “League of Her Own,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 10, 2020.

Margaret “Marge” and Helen “Kelly” Callaghan, who were born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, made the wartime All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and became regulars in 1944. The Vancouver girls, the first two sisters to play in the new women’s professional circuit, were not the fictional siblings featured in Penny Marshall’s famous 1992 movie, A League of Their Own, but both enjoyed good careers in the historic All-American league. The two were the fourth and fifth of the six children of Albert and Hazel Callaghan, and their names, with the eldest first, were Kay, Pearl, Lewis, Margaret, Helen, and Patrick. Their mother died early, Albert remarried, and he and his wife Anne had three children, Wayne, Elaine (Lani), and Dan.

All of the Callaghans were athletic, but Marge, born on December 23, 1921, and her sister Helen, almost 15 months younger, grew up playing sports like softball, soccer, lacrosse, and roller hockey in the streets with neighborhood kids, mostly boys. The Irish Catholic sisters went to the same elementary and junior high schools, and both attended King Edward High. Sharing the same interests, they played on the same teams, including basketball in the winter and track and field in the chilly spring. Marge left school in 1939 and Helen in 1940, and they were teammates on the fast-pitch Young Liberals, later renamed (due to a different sponsor) the Western Mutuals, a traveling team made up of local players from Vancouver’s city league. During World War II the pretty Callaghan girls worked for Boeing Aircraft and played for the Mutuals. The team competed in the World Championship Tournament in Detroit in 1943, and the sisters were scouted by the All-American League.

As a result, Helen was invited to the All-American League’s spring training at Peru-LaSalle, Illinois, in May 1944. The left-handed hitting Vancouver outfielder made the second-year circuit and was allocated to one of the loop’s two expansion teams, the Minneapolis Millerettes. In mid-summer Marge, after their father encouraged her to go, obtained special permission to leave her wartime position with Boeing, where she was a squad leader on the assembly line. She joined the Millerettes, who started the season playing games at Nicollet Park, home of the American Association’s Minneapolis Millers. However, the Millerettes didn’t draw well with a Double-A men’s team in town, and due to declining attendance, the girls’ nine became an “orphan” team in mid-season.

Marge, who was interviewed in 2011, remembered the difference between playing for the Mutuals in Canada compared to the Millerettes in the USA wasn’t great. During the war years the All-American League was playing a hybrid of baseball and softball, and the league used underhand pitching until the middle of the 1946 season. However, by the time Marge joined the Minneapolis team, the girls were playing all road games, living out of suitcases, and she needed a bigger glove. The sisters performed well as rookies, with Marge, a right-handed hitter who loved to bunt and hit-and-run, batting .182, while Helen hit .287, the second-best mark in the league after South Bend’s Betsy Jochum, who averaged .296.

Marge, a 5’3” right-handed thrower and batter, and Helen, who was two inches shorter and threw and batted left-handed, moved with the franchise in 1945 to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where the girls played together for three seasons (Helen didn’t play in 1947). Both were fast, but Helen was faster. “My reflexes were faster than hers,” recalled Marge, “and I got started faster, but she always beat me. She finished faster by about a step.”

Helen, who was interviewed by People Magazine in 1987, observed, “We were supposed to play like men and look like women.” She talked about the charm school offered by the league again in 1944. The players, many of whom grew up on farms, learned how to walk, sit, talk, wear their hair, and do their makeup properly. “That was an important to us as our playing,” Helen recalled. “And we weren’t supposed to drink or smoke in public since we were supposed to be ladies at all times.”

The AAGPBL, launched with four teams, developed from a hardball game using men’s baseball rules and underhand pitching in 1943 to a 10-team expanded league in 1948 that adopted overhand pitching, and the Callaghans lived through most of the changes. In 1943 the All-American League played games with a 12-inch circumference ball, the same as used in men and women’s fast-pitch softball. The ball was reduced in increments, starting with an 11 ½ ball in mid-1944, moving to an 11-inch ball in 1946, and through a 10 3/8 inch ball in 1948 to a 10-inch red-seamed livelier ball in mid-1949. As the league decreased the size of the ball, the distance from the pitcher’s mound to home plate and the length of the base paths were increased, also in increments, because the batters could hit the smaller ball harder. The ball and diamond size continued to evolve, since the league’s founders and managers always envisioned the girls playing baseball.

For example, the original pitching distance was 40 feet, compared to 35 feet in softball, and the first base paths were 65 feet, compared to softball’s 60 feet. However, All-American runners could lead off and steal from the beginning, making the game faster-paced. In mid-1944, when the ball was reduced to 11 1/2 inches, the base paths were lengthened from 65 to 68 feet. In 1945 the pitching distance was moved to 42 feet in mid-season to help the hitters, but no other dimensions were altered. In 1946, when the ball’s size was reduced to 11 inches, the base paths were reset at 70 feet. Sidearm pitching was introduced in mid-1946, and the sidearm style was fully adopted in 1947. In 1948, when the 10 3/8 inch ball was introduced, the mound was moved to 50 feet and the base paths to 72 feet. In mid-1949, when the livelier ball came into play, the pitching distance was 55 feet. In 1953 the pitching distance was moved to 56 feet and the bases paths to 75 feet. Finally, the league, facing demise in mid-1954, introduced a regulation baseball and made the pitching distance 60 feet and the base paths 85 feet. Thus, the AAGPBL evolved almost by the season, and the players kept adjusting. In that era many grew up as tomboys, playing baseball with boys on diamonds in the country, in small towns, and in cities.

During World War II and the immediate postwar years, the AAGPBL, a circuit that recruited, signed, and allocated the girls to teams, played mainly “small ball,” and the sisters thrived on that style of play. Marge and Helen enjoyed their golden summers, including living in homes of local families and sporting the Daisies’ pink uniforms with burgundy trim. A graceful fielder with quick hands, Marge played mostly third base, where her strong arm made her a fixture. She also played second base, but seldom shortstop. The Vancouver speedster batted second, following Helen, who was usually the Daisies’ leadoff hitter. Marge loved to bunt, and though her average always ranked below Helen’s, they worked well together. Marge bunted to advance her sister to the next base, or if Helen stole second and maybe third base, Marge sacrificed to score the run. Besides other Canadians, the sisters’ best friend with the Daisies was Dottie Collins, the circuit’s great underhand pitcher who was known as the “Strikeout Queen.”

The Callaghans, quiet but quick to smile, were first-rate athletes who understood the game and became exceptional baseball players, even though they came out of a softball background. Marge, bright, spirited, and likeable, with her long brown hair and dark brown eyes, always gave the game her best effort. Helen, whose flowing brown hair was a bit darker and whose hazel eyes flashed liked Marge’s, was the better hitter, but both loved every day they spent on the field.

The 1944 season proved difficult for the Millerettes, since the 16-player team lost its home base on July 22. Staffed largely with rookies such as the Callaghans, pitcher Dottie Wiltse, hurler Audrey Haine, and first baseman Vivian Kellogg, the Millerettes finished sixth (last) in both halves of the season (the league introduced a single-season format in 1945). For the season’s first half, when other teams made the six-hour train trip from Chicago to play at Nicollet Park, the Millerettes finished 23-36. In the second half as a road team, the Minneapolis entry posted a 22-36 record.

Dottie Wiltse, a curveballer who led the league with 205 strikeouts in 38 games, produced the team’s only winning record, 20-16. Annabelle “Lefty” Lee fashioned an 11-14 ledger, but Audrey Haine, the team’s number-three pitcher, finished with an 8-20 mark. In a loop dominated by fast pitchers, notably during the underhand years, Helen Callaghan, who had pop in her bat, topped the Millerettes’ hitters with her .287 mark. The fleet Vancouver star stole 112 bases, connected for five doubles, four triples, and three home runs (all inside-the-park shots), and contributed 17 RBIs from the leadoff spot. Margaret Wigiser, traded to the Rockford (Illinois) Peaches partway through the season, ranked second with her .212 average, Elizabeth “Lib” Mahon, traded to the Kenosha Comets after a few weeks, hit .211, and cleanup batter Viv Kellogg, never a speedster, batted .202 and paced her team with 46 RBIs.

Despite the hardships from traveling and living on the road, the Millerettes, in the words of Dottie (Wiltse) Collins (she married to Harvey Collins, a Fort Wayne native and Navy veteran, before the 1946 season), were being paid to play baseball, and they had a great time. Dottie, interviewed in 1997, recalled, “We were young, we were having a good time, and we had money in our pockets. I mean, what more could you ask for?”

The Callaghans echoed that sentiment. Further, the sisters liked having several Canadian teammates, making the league seem more like home. Marge said, “In 1945, after we moved to Fort Wayne, we had half a dozen Canadians on the team. Besides me and Helen, we had Penny O’Brian [later Cooke], and we had Yolande Teillet and Audrey Haine [later Daniels], and Arleene Johnson, but I don’t remember all the names.”

The Minneapolis franchise moved to Fort Wayne in 1945, and the expansion Milwaukee Chicks, who won the Shaughnessy Championship in 1944 over the Kenosha Comets, moved to Grand Rapids. In Fort Wayne the team held a contest, and a fan picked the new name, the Daisies. Fort Wayne, full of rookies who grew into professionals in 1944, ranked second in the six-team circuit with a 62-47 ledger, right behind the Rockford Peaches and their loop-best 67-43 mark. The Peaches won the Shaughnessy Championship (first place versus third place, second place versus fourth place, and winner versus winner) in the league’s last wartime postseason.

The Fort Wayne team, managed in 1945 and 1946 by former major leaguer Bill Wambsganss, or Wamby, was led by Canadians and Californians, many of whom were fun-loving girls. Helen Callaghan, who played all 111 games, led the circuit in 1945 with her .299 average. Enjoying a standout season, the speedy Helen contributed 17 doubles, four triples, and three homers, stole 92 bases, and produced 29 RBIs. She was followed in hitting on her team by Canadians such as catcher Yolande Teillet, who averaged .231 in 10 games. Third sacker Arleene Johnson batted .222 in 15 games. Outfielder Penny O’Brian hit .216 in 83 games. Viv Kellogg, who played the full 111 games, averaged .214 with 10 doubles, six triples, and one home run (she lost speed after injuring her knee), leading led her team in RBIs with 38. Marge Callaghan, a lifetime .196 batter, hit that exact mark in 1945. She played 99 games, mostly at third base, and her .912 fielding mark at the position was second only to Kenosha’s Ann Harnett at .922.

The top pitcher, also voted the league’s first Player of the Year, was Grand Rapids’ Connie Wisniewski, a tireless right-handed windmiller who fashioned a 32-11 record, and she was followed by Dottie Wiltse and her 29-10 mark. Dottie also hurled a pair of no-hitters against Rockford, achieving the feats on June 29 and July 15, 1945. The Daisies’ next best hurler was Annabelle Lee with a 13-16 record and a 1.63 ERA, and Lee no-hit Grand Rapids on July 7, 1945. Winnipeg’s Audrey Haine improved to 16-10 with a 2.46 ERA, and on August 26, 1944, she won a seven-inning no-hitter against Kenosha. On June 15, 1945, Haine participated in the league’s only double no-hit contest, a six-inning tilt against the Comets at Kenosha’s Lakefront Stadium.

Following the 1945 season, Helen married Bobby Candaele, also from Vancouver, but she returned to the league and played under her maiden name. The Callaghans enjoyed the first postwar season with Fort Wayne, but Helen’s hitting tailed off in 1946, and she didn’t play in 1947. The 5’1” 115-pound brunette, short of stature but long on spirit and determination, played all 112 games, but she averaged only .213. She still hit 10 doubles, three triples, and one home run, and she swiped 114 bases and contributed 26 RBIs. Marge, enjoying another stellar season at third base, hit .188 with two doubles, three triples, and a single home run, her second career home run.

The expanded eight-team league, featuring the Muskegon Lassies and Peoria Redwings in 1946, used a new 11-inch ball and allowed sidearm hurling at mid-season. Dottie Collins, a natural sidearmer, produced a 22-20 record, and strong-armed outfielder Faye Dancer, trying the mound after sidearming was allowed, posted a 10-9 ledger, but the Daisies, hitting just .184 as a team (seventh in the league), finished in fifth place with a 52-60 record. In 1947, when the league adopted sidearm hurling and held spring training in Havana, Cuba, the Daisies finished seventh with a 45-67 record. Marge averaged .201 with a pair of doubles, one triple, and one home run, a long blast at South Bend (she also homered in an exhibition game in Havana), stealing 57 bases and adding 23 RBIs. Helen, pregnant, stayed home. The Candaeles’ first son Richard was born before the 1948 campaign began with spring training at Opa-Locka, Florida.

Fort Wayne limped through another losing season in 1948, suffering a major blow when Dottie Collins, almost five months pregnant, left the team on August 1 in order to have her first child. Also, the Callaghan sisters played their final All-American season together. In 1948 the league expanded again, adding the Springfield (Illinois) Sallies and the Chicago Colleens, but both teams were staffed largely with rookies and players not among the protected top ten on the rosters of the eight established teams. Predictably, the Sallies and the Colleens finished last in the loop’s Western and Eastern Divisions, respectively. Fort Wayne ranked fourth (53-72), but the Daisies lacked the hitting and pitching to become a successful playoff team. Helen played 54 games in the first of the season, hitting .191, her lowest mark to date, but she suffered a ruptured tubal pregnancy, needed emergency surgery, and returned home in late July. Marge, who played all 112 games at second base, averaged .187 and helped anchor the Daisies’ infield.

Marge returned for the 1949 season and was swapped to South Bend, and Helen also returned, but she was traded to Kenosha. In mid-July the league adopted a livelier 10-inch ball, and most of the players saw their hitting improve. Helen Candaele, playing under her married name, finished her career with the Comets and made a comeback at the plate, averaging .251, the seventh-best mark in the league, and Marge, playing third base for most of the second half of the season in South Bend, hit .169. In the end, Helen left the game she loved to raise her family and help with her husband’s taxi business in Vancouver.

The Blue Sox traded Marge to the Peoria Redwings before the 1950 season. She played just 30 games as an infielder. She broke her ankle in a game on June 19, and her average for the season fell to .157. At one point, after manager Leo Murphy resigned in an economy move to help the financially strapped Redwings, the savvy Marge was considered for the post of interim manager, but the job went to Mary Reynolds. Marge returned to Peoria in 1951, but after an argument with the manager, she was traded to the Battle Creek Belles for the remainder of a season, hitting a combined .236 in 107 games.

“You wouldn’t believe how I got traded from Peoria to Battle Creek in the last part of the 1951 season,” Marge later explained. “In one game I was playing third base, and I picked up a grounder, and I turned around to throw to second, and the runner was there, but not the second baseman. So I turned and threw the ball to first base, and I got the runner going down to first. I was always taught, ‘If you can’t get two, get one.’ After the inning was over, the manager, Johnny Rawlings, came screaming out of the dugout, and he said, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

“I got my Irish temper up, and I screamed right back, ‘What the hell do you think I was doing?’ All the people in the stands stood up and yelled, ‘Atta girl, Marge – You tell him!’ And I guess that made him mad.

“I said to Johnny Rawlings, ‘I was always taught if I couldn’t get two outs, get one.’ He said, ‘You should have thrown to second base.’ I said, ‘It would have gone out between center field and right field, and the run would have scored.’ He said, ‘You should have thrown it anyway.’

“I couldn’t believe it! That just doesn’t make sense. I didn’t say any more, and I went over and sat down on the bench. Three weeks later, I got traded to Battle Creek. After Johnny Rawlings traded me, he got fired. He made everyone mad in Peoria, and he got fired. All those years and I never talked back to the coaches. I did what they told me, but I couldn’t see any sense to what the manager said on that play. He would have blasted me if I hadn’t thrown it to first. And I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t wait until I got into the dugout to say something to me.”

Marge added that the trade didn’t matter because she already had decided 1951 would be her final season. She met her future husband, Merv Maxwell, before leaving for the renamed American Girls Baseball League, and she was married after returning home to Vancouver. The Callaghan sisters were both finished as active professional players. They did team up again on local fast-pitch teams, until Helen and her family moved to California in 1956.

Both sisters had good memories from playing baseball in the AAGPBL. In her 1987 interview, recorded in part because her youngest son Casey Candaele was playing for the Montreal Expos, Helen explained that she grew up excelling at sports, notably softball. After she and Marge were scouted at the World Tournament in Detroit in 1943, she tried out with the second-year AAGPBL, made the league, signed a contract for $75 a week, and spent the season with the Millerettes. They played men’s rules but dressed in different uniforms: “We wore short, one-piece skirts, with shorts underneath, and knee socks, hats, and spikes.” The fans loved their uniforms: “This was the 1940s, and the team chaperones had skirts down to their ankles. But here we were in these little short skirts, thinking we were very feminine.”

Helen thrived in the All-American League. “I was a quiet and very intense gal,” she said. “I just went out every day and did what I could to earn a starting position.” She ranked second in the loop in hitting, earning her a raise to the highest possible salary, $125 a week for 1945.

“We were supposed to play like men and look like women,” Helen explained. The girls were supposed to behave like ladies at all times, and not to drink or smoke in public. “That didn’t always happen,” she reminisced, because sometimes the girls sneaked out after bed checks (the curfew was two hours after a road game ended). “Once during spring training we went to an Army camp, but the chaperones caught us there and gave us a slap on the wrist.” She indicated that boys followed the teams and wanted to date the girls. “And wherever we were, guys used to hang outside our hotel, hollering up to us, and we’d throw our bras down at them.” The players also played tricks on the managers, the chaperones, and rookies, maybe short-sheeting their beds.

“Fun times,” Helen remembered, “but we played tough, even when we were hurt.” The girls would have “strawberries” (bruises) on their legs from sliding in the skirted uniforms, but chaperones taped them up and they’d play again. The season lasted four months and ended with playoffs after Labor Day. “After a double-header,” Helen observed, “we’d shower, get dressed, travel all night on the bus, get to our hotel at 8 or 9 in the morning, shower, play two games of baseball in 110 degrees of heat, then do it all over again the next day.”

In 1987, when Helen’s middle son Kelly Candaele (she had five) and his friend Kim Wilson were producing a filmed documentary entitled A League of Their Own (Penny Marshall’s more famous movie took the same title in 1992), the experiences of Helen and Marge evidently motivated Kelly to envision a pair of sisters as central to the success of a fictional film about the league. Both sisters were modest, and as Helen later observed, “I seldom talked about it [the league] to my boys while they were growing up, but now I think the memories are great.”

Helen later contracted breast cancer. After a long battle against the disease, she died in Santa Barbara on December 8, 1992, at age 69.

Marge, however, pointed out that the film was not about the Callaghans, or any family. “The movie was written about the league,” Marge explained in 2011. “When anybody asks me, I always say the movie was about the league. My nephew, Kelly Candaele, took the idea of the movie to Penny Marshall in the first place. He produced a documentary, called A League of Their Own, about our league. Kelly took the story to Penny Marshall, but he did not have the rights to the title, so Penny Marshall and the producers called the movie A League of Their Own. But as I said, the story was not about anybody in particular – it was about the league.”

Marge had many favorite memories. Asked if the league made a big impact on her life, she agreed, saying, “Playing in the league was what I call a tremendous time in my life. There’s a lot of good things to remember. I really met some wonderful people, and I made a lot of friends. Penny O’Brian, who played the 1945 season, later moved out here from Edmonton, and we kept in touch over the years, until Penny passed away last year [2010]. We kept in touch and visited back and forth a lot. I kept in touch with Colleen (Smith) McCulloch. She played the one year for Grand Rapids [in 1949], and she was from Vancouver too.”

Asked if she and Helen were alike in personality, Marge laughed, recalling, “Helen was more forward than I was. She was more of a flamboyant type of ballplayer. We had a few ballplayers on our Daisies team that were like that. I was a little more reserved. I wasn’t going to go down and play in the league at first, but Dad wanted me to go because of Helen. He wanted me to keep an eye on her. That’s what he told me anyway!”

Helen always hit for a higher average and with more power than Marge, but the oldest sister still slugged three career home runs. “I did hit a few long balls,” Marge said. “I recall one game at South Bend where they recorded a home run I hit as the longest hit ball at that point in the league. The article in the paper said, ‘Marge Callaghan, who is one hundred and some odd pounds soaking wet, hit the longest ball of the season, and Betsy Jochum is still chasing it!’ I thought it was hilarious. I only hit two or three home runs all the time I played in the league, but I really hit that one!”

On July 25, 1947, reported the South Bend Tribune, Marge hit a long two-run home run in the ninth inning off right-hander Ruth Williams in Fort Wayne’s 7-0 victory over the Blue Sox at South Bend’s Playland Park. The ball carried over Betsy Jochum’s head in left field and bounced into Playland’s bleachers. Jim Costin, sports editor of the Tribune, compared Marge to a “feminine Ted Williams.” Costin called Callaghan’s home run “the longest ball ever hit in a girls’ pro game here, and probably as long as any other ever hit in any other park in the league, too.” Marge (Callaghan) Maxwell’s long ago blast left the kind of indelible memory that endures for ballplayers, women and men alike, as well as fans of the national pastime.

Marge Maxwell, who was divorced many years ago, retired and lived near her sister Lani in Delta, a city of 100,000 located 25 miles south of Vancouver, where the family lived during the league years. Marge valued her league memories as well as the friends she made playing baseball. She died at the age of 97 on January 11, 2019.

Photo credit

Photos courtesy of AAPGBL.com

Sources

Statistics for the “All American Girls Baseball League” were compiled from local newspapers by the Howe News Bureau, then located in Chicago. Copies of the annual figures are held in the AAGPBL Archives at the Center for History, South Bend, Indiana.

Files for individual players such as Marge (Callaghan) Maxwell and Helen (Callaghan) Candaele St. Aubin are held in AAGPBL Collection at the Library of the National Baseball Hall of Fame (BB HOF), Cooperstown, New York.

Interviews: Marge (Callaghan) Maxwell, October 3, 2011; Dottie (Wiltse) Collins, May 31, 1997; Audrey (Haine) Daniels, June 24, 2011. These were published as part of 42 AAGPBL interviews in my book, We Were the All-American Girls: Interviews with Players of the AAGPBL, 1943-1954 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013).

Website: A great deal of information about the AAGPBL, including rules, changes in ball size and diamond dimensions, players’ data, and more, can be found on the Players’ Association site: http://www.aagpbl.org/.

Articles

St. Aubin, Helen, as told to Todd Gold. “This Mother Could Hit: A Woman’s League Baseball Star Recalls Her Days with the Girls of Summer,” People Magazine, vol. 28, no. 7, August 17, 1987, pp. 77-79, copy in file of Helen (Callaghan) St. Aubin, BB HOF.

Candaele, Kelly. “Mom Was in a League of Her Own,” New York Times, June 7, 1992, copy in St. Aubin File, BB HOF.

Costin, Jim. “Daisies Hit Hard to Overcome Blue Sox, 7-0: Callaghan’s Homer Sets Park Record,” South Bend Tribune, July 26, 1947.

Helmer, Diana. “Mom Was a Major Leaguer,” Sports Collectors Digest, September 2, 1988, copy in St. Aubin File, BB HOF.

“Leo Murphy Quits as Redwing Pilot,” n.d. [1950], clipping in Marge (Callaghan) Maxwell File, BB HOF.

Books

The best book on the AAGPBL and its structure is Merrie Fidler’s The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006). Other interesting and useful books include:

Brown, Patricia L. A League of My Own: Memoir of a Pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), is the memoir of a former players, and Brown includes interviews with seven players and one chaperone.

Browne, Lois. Girls of Summer: The Real Story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), covers the league, particularly during the 1940s.

Gregorich, Barbara. Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993), has several chapters on the league years.

Heaphy, Leslie A., and Mel Anthony May, editors. Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), contains useful bio information on the league’s players.

Johnson, Susan E. When Women Played Hardball (Seattle: Seal Press, 1994), details the players and the 1950 playoffs between Johnson’s hometown Rockford Peaches and the Fort Wayne Daisies.

Macy, Sue. A Whole New Ball Game: The Story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1993), provides excellent highlights of the league from the origins through the AAGPBL Reunions.

Sargent, Jim, and Robert M. Gorman. The South Bend Blue Sox: A History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Team and Its Players (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), covers the history of the Blue Sox and the players made that team successful for 12 years.

Trombe, Carolyn. Dottie Wiltse Collins: Strikeout Queen of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), is the first biography of an All-American.

She may also have been the best clutch hitter the league ever saw. Among the five sluggers with at least 400 career RBIs, nobody drove in runs at a faster rate than Callow.3 As the run-producing engine of the Rockford Peaches, Callow helped the team win three consecutive league championships from 1948 to 1950. Not surprisingly, she was one of the most popular players in Peaches franchise history.

Callow was named to an all-star team in seven of her eight professional seasons.4 But she was at her best in the postseason, hitting at a .322 clip and setting playoff records for most career RBIs, doubles, and triples. Callow would have put up even better career numbers had the league not ceased operations shortly after her 27th birthday.

A natural athlete, Callow was also an outstanding ice-hockey player and an accomplished amateur golfer and bowler.

Eleanor Margaret Knudsen (later Callow, and subsequently Litterick) was born on August 8, 1927, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.5 Eleanor was the youngest of 10 children born to Danish immigrants, Knud and Johanna (née Jessen) Knudsen. The Knudsens came to Canada in May 1904 on the steamship SS Lake Manitoba with an infant and toddler in tow, settling in the booming city of Winnipeg.6 Knud Knudsen (pronounced “Kah-nude Kah-nude-sen”) had been a farmer in Denmark,7 although he went on to own and operate a tailor shop in Winnipeg until his retirement in 1951.8 The family of five boys and five girls, raised on the modest earnings of a tailor, was far from wealthy.9

Eleanor excelled as a softball pitcher at General Wolfe High School before making the leap to the highly competitive Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League (formerly the Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Softball League) in 1943 at the tender age of 15.10 Eleanor played infield on a dynamic young St. Vital Tigerettes squad that featured four future AAGPBL players, including Dorothy “Dottie” Ferguson (later Key), Audrey Haine (later Daniels), and Yolande “Yo-Yo” Teillet (later Schick).11 St. Vital surprised onlookers by winning the league championship, and Eleanor sealed the title with a two-run homer in Game Seven of the championship series.12 “Although the baby of the league, Eleanor Knudsen played good infield ball,” wrote the Winnipeg Tribune in summarizing her rookie year.13

Not only could Eleanor hit from both sides of the plate,14 but her ambidextrous abilities extended beyond the diamond. She was also a skilled artist who could accurately sketch popular cartoon characters with either hand.15

It appears that Eleanor may have left school not long after turning 16, because her occupation in the 1944 telephone directory is listed as a clerk at Macleod’s Limited, a chain of retail stores that operated in Western Canada.16

Eleanor spent the 1944 season patrolling the St. Vital outfield. But when the team’s regular catcher, Teillet, left for the AAGPBL in 1945, Eleanor took over as the Tigerettes’ new backstop.17

On April 7, 1945, with the end of World War II in Europe approaching, Knud and Johanna Knudsen announced Eleanor’s engagement to Frank Leonard Callow, a private in the Canadian military.18 Eleanor and Frank were married on June 17, 1945, at Ansgar Lutheran Church in Winnipeg.19

Four days after her wedding, the 17-year-old bride “interrupted her honeymoon,” strapped on the catcher’s gear, and led St. Vital to a lopsided victory over the league-leading St. Boniface Athletics.20 Callow slammed a pair of home runs and drove in five runs to the delight of the 1,500 fans in attendance. The crowd “gave the newly wedded Eleanor a big hand as she crashed out her first home run with one on. They went wild when she duplicated this feat a few innings later,” reported the Winnipeg Tribune.21

The Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League was proving to be the perfect training ground for the AAGPBL. On top of the stiff competition, players became accustomed to performing in front of large crowds at Osborne Stadium.22 The Winnipeg circuit’s best-of-seven finals easily outdrew the AAGPBL championship series in 1945, with over 4,500 fans witnessing St. Boniface’s Game Seven victory over St. Vital.23

Callow finished fifth in the batting race with a .382 average.24 Evelyn Wawryshyn (later Moroz, and subsequently Litwin), an infielder for the Canadian Ukrainian Athletic Club (CUAC), hit .390 and was signed to an AAGPBL contract.25 Wawryshyn turned out to be an above-average hitter with the Kenosha Comets in 1946,26 so Callow would have been good enough to turn pro at the same time. Given Callow’s prominence in the league, it is likely that she too was scouted in the summer of 1945.

Callow remained in Winnipeg in 1946, catching and playing the corner-infield positions for St. Vital.27 In late June, Johnny Gottselig came to Winnipeg on a scouting trip for the AAGPBL. “Gottselig, who stated that the glamour league is on the lookout for a number of young rookies, preferably not married, likes the playing of the Tigerettes catcher Eleanor Callow,” wrote the Winnipeg Free Press.28

Callow went on to win the batting title, duplicating her .382 average from the previous year and finishing a whopping 59 percentage points ahead of the runner-up.29

St. Vital gained a measure of revenge on St. Boniface by defeating them four games to one in the 1946 championship series.30 The victory earned the Tigerettes the right to represent Manitoba in the Western Canada championship in Edmonton, Alberta, which began on September 2.31

The Tigerettes, along with 15 team administrators and fans, traveled more than 800 miles for the tournament.32 Frank Callow was not one of those fans. According to Eleanor’s subsequent petition for divorce, Frank “deserted” her on or about September 1.33

St. Vital performed well in the four-team tournament before getting swept in the best-of-three finals by the Saskatoon Ramblers. Former AAGPBL pitcher Muriel Coben tossed a four-hitter for Saskatoon in the clinching game, with Callow recording three of the four St. Vital hits.34

Less than two weeks later, a report surfaced that the AAGPBL was attempting to sign Callow even though she had rejected previous offers.35 On October 8 – less than six weeks after separating from her husband – Eleanor “Squirt” Callow announced that she had signed her first professional contract with the AAGPBL.36

On the evening of April 18, 1947, Callow boarded a train at Winnipeg’s iconic Union Station for an epic journey.37 Accompanying her were five AAGPBL veterans, all of whom were former Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League players.38 They rode the rails for over 2,200 miles before flying the final 230 miles from Miami to Havana, the spring-training site for all eight AAGPBL teams.39

Callow made an immediate splash in Cuba. “One that impresses us especially was Eleanor Callow, a catcher who swings from the port side,” noted the Kenosha Evening News. “On Tuesday at the University Stadium she was belting them far and wide in batting practice. [Rockford pitcher] Millie Deegan, who watched her work at close hand, says the gal is going to be terrific.”40

The workouts culminated with a round-robin tournament that attracted close to 55,000 enthusiastic Cuban baseball fans.41 Esther Williams, the former competitive swimmer who had become a major Hollywood star, presented the Racine Belles with a trophy for winning the event.

As was the case with the AAGPBL, Callow did not go into spring training tied to a team, but she was assigned to the Peoria Redwings at the conclusion of the preseason. After taking the short flight back to Miami on May 2,42 the Redwings and the Fort Wayne Daisies barnstormed their way north for the start of the regular season.43

With two more experienced catchers on the Peoria roster, Callow spent the first 12 games of the regular season on the bench.44 She finally made her professional debut on June 5 in a pinch-hitting appearance against the Daisies.45 Callow eventually got more playing time as a right fielder, and she recorded the first two hits of her AAGPBL career on June 11 in Grand Rapids.46

In her rookie season, most of which she spent as a teenager, Callow hit .245 in 143 at-bats – an especially promising start considering the league batting average was a feeble .197.

In late November Callow took care of some unfinished business in Winnipeg, filing a court petition for a divorce.47 In January 1948 a judge issued a decree absolute, and six months later the dissolution of her marriage was official.48

The AAGPBL reached its peak during the 1948 season when it expanded from eight to 10 teams, drawing nearly a million fans to its games. The league also transitioned from sidearm to overhand pitching that season, which added a bit more offense.49

Callow attended spring training in Miami and was assigned to the expansion Chicago Colleens.50 The team broke camp on April 28 and barnstormed their way back to the Windy City, playing a series of exhibition games against the Grand Rapids Chicks along the way.51

Callow opened the regular season as one of the Colleens’ starting outfielders.52 Chicago’s third game of the season, a May 14 home game against the Kenosha Comets, was broadcast on WBKB – the first time that women’s baseball had been televised.53 Callow drove in three of Chicago’s four runs in the game against Jean “Cy” Cione, a tough, side-arming lefty.54

When the Colleens stumbled to a 1–13 start, the league responded by bolstering their roster with eight experienced players, including the popular Rita Briggs from the Rockford Peaches.55 The unheralded Callow was sent to Rockford as compensation for losing Briggs, and Peaches fans were not pleased – at least initially.56 Little did they know that Callow would become a potent cleanup hitter, helping Rockford win the next three playoff championships.

After spending her first two weeks with Rockford as a pinch-hitter and backup catcher, she was shifted to the outfield. Callow soon became the team’s starting left fielder, a role she retained for the rest of her career.

Callow had a breakout season, leading the Peaches with six home runs and coming in second in batting average (.251) and RBIs (52). She also set a league record by slamming 15 triples.57 It was the first of four consecutive seasons in which she led the league in three-baggers.

Rockford steamrolled the opposition in the 1948 playoffs, going 10–1 in its three postseason series. Callow knocked in 10 runs, and in three consecutive playoff games she recorded the game-winning RBI.58 No other Peaches hitter had more than four RBIs.

With offense still at a premium, the AAGPBL introduced a livelier ball and moved the mound back another five feet in the middle of the 1949 season.59 Callow, who swung one of the heaviest bats in the league, was getting along just fine before the changes. Two weeks earlier, the 5-foot-7 slugger launched a monster home run in front of a large crowd at the Peach Orchard.60 Dick Day, sports editor of the Rockford Register-Republic, was still raving about the homer two days later.61

In the playoffs, Callow hit .310 and the Peaches won seven of eight games to repeat as champions, needing only two series wins after a first-round bye. Game Four of Rockford’s opening-round series against the South Bend Blue Sox was vintage Callow. Early in the game, she made a “perfect peg” from the outfield to nail a runner at the plate and keep the game scoreless. Callow drove in the game’s only run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, giving Rockford a thrilling walk-off victory and the series sweep.62

On December 10, 1949, tragedy struck the Knudsen family when Eleanor’s mother died after a lengthy illness.63 After the funeral, a grieving Eleanor returned to Rockford and spent the Christmas holidays with a local family, likely her hosts during the previous season(s).64

Eleanor began living in the offseason with her sister Nora and brother-in-law Harry Brown in Winnipeg.65 When the Browns moved to Saskatoon in 1951, she followed.66

Callow became actively involved in the Rockford community, as shown by her participation in an Awards Night at the Booker T. Washington Center in April 1950. She joined the evening’s headliner, legendary Olympian Jesse Owens, in handing out athletic awards to local boys and girls.67

Callow reached new heights during the 1950 season. In a July 1 game against the Racine Belles, speedster Sophie Kurys hit a ball over Callow’s head in left field; Callow retrieved the ball and threw out Kurys at the plate, preventing an inside-the-park homer.68 The play had a significant impact on the home-run race, as both Kurys and Callow ended the season with a league-leading seven round-trippers.69

On July 17 Callow became the first woman to hit a ball over the fence at the Peach Orchard.70 It was also the first time Rockford fans had seen an AAGPBL player break into a home-run trot.71

The Peaches won their third consecutive championship in 1950 (again in a two-round playoff structure), this time by the skin of their teeth. Helen Nicol Fox, who tossed a shutout in Game Seven of the championship series, was Rockford’s playoff hero.72

In the winter of 1951 Callow played in the Winnipeg Senior Girls’ Hockey League. Her team made it all the way to the provincial finals before falling to the powerful Winnipeg Canadienettes.73

Callow must have been one of the best players in the league, because the Canadienettes added her to their roster for the Western Canada championship against the Moose Jaw (Saskatchewan) Wildcats.74 One thousand fans braved a Moose Jaw blizzard to watch Game One of the series, which was decided in overtime. Callow, playing forward on the Canadienettes’ second line, notched a goal and an assist in a losing cause.75 A few days later in Winnipeg, the Wildcats registered another one-goal victory to sweep the best-of-three series.76 Moose Jaw went on to easily defeat the Ontario champions and claim the national title.77

Callow had a career year in 1951, leading the AAGPBL in RBIs (84) and triples (10). She tied for the league lead in homers (4), finished fourth in the batting race with a .326 average, and stole a career-high 40 bases.

After winning the first two games of the best-of-five championship series against South Bend, Rockford seemed headed for its fourth consecutive title. But a flu bug went through the Peaches’ locker room,78 and the Blue Sox roared back to win the final three games, ending the Rockford dynasty.

By 1952 the once dominant Rockford pitching staff had been depleted by the retirement of key hurlers.79 With Nicol Fox pitching in only home games that season,80 manager Bill Allington found his team short of pitching on the road. In mid-July he took advantage of Callow’s strong arm and versatility by bringing her in to pitch a scoreless eighth inning in Battle Creek.81 A few days later, she got the start in Fort Wayne against the best-hitting team in the league. Callow took a 5–4 lead into the eighth inning before she ran out of gas, surrendering a game-winning homer to Dorothy “Dottie” Schroeder.82

Callow led the Peaches with eight home runs in the regular season, most of which were game-winners.83 Perhaps her biggest homer of the year came on August 21 against the Daisies when her three-run blast in the 13th inning gave Rose Gacioch her 20th and final win of the season.84

The Peaches and Blue Sox met again in the 1952 championship series. Rockford jumped out to a two-games-to-one lead in the best-of-five series, but for the second year in a row South Bend came charging back to claim the title.85 Callow hit two homers and stole eight bases in Rockford’s eight playoff contests.86

Despite injuring her back on July 1, Callow played in every game in the 1953 season until her back stiffened up on August 11, and the team medic ordered her to take a few days off.87

Callow had another phenomenal season, leading the Peaches in almost every offensive category and setting career highs with 35 extra-base hits and a league-leading 23 doubles. In late August, the Rockford fans voted her Queen of the Peaches, an honor that 21st-century teams would call the Fans’ Choice Award.88

Rockford squared off against the pennant-winning Grand Rapids Chicks in the first round of the 1953 playoffs. With the Peaches trailing 2–0 in the sixth inning of the winner-take-all Game Three, Callow launched a clutch three-run homer, one of the longest blasts at South Field that season.89 The Rockford lead was short lived though, as Grand Rapids scored two unearned runs in the bottom of the inning and won, 4–3. It was the last playoff contest ever played by the Peaches.

The league took its final step toward playing regulation baseball on July 1, 1954, hoping to boost offense and sagging attendance. The pitching distance was increased to 60 feet, the basepaths were lengthened to 85 feet, and the baseball was reduced to nine inches in circumference, the same as in men’s professional baseball.90

Just four days before the rule changes went into effect, Callow went 5-for-9 with a grand slam in a doubleheader split with Fort Wayne.91 Although she was already hitting over .300,92 the regulation baseball helped boost her power numbers significantly.93

In a July 16 game against South Bend, Callow fell backward over the outfield fence attempting to catch a ball that went for a home run.94 The hard-nosed outfielder injured her wrist on the play, missing just over a week of action.95

Callow put on an impressive hitting display for the remainder of 1954, and she finished with a career-high 20 home runs. Coupled with her 23 steals, she became one of only two AAGPBL players to record a 20–20 season.

Rockford finished in last place, posting the worst record in franchise history. For the first time since Callow joined the team, the Peaches missed the playoffs.

The AAGPBL had been in a slow decline since 1948, and by 1954 its per-game attendance may have been half of what it was at its peak.96 Reasons for the precipitous drop in attendance included the “return to normalcy following the war, the spread of television, advances in the travel industry (including personal travel), and the rise of the nuclear family.”97

Faced with a large operating deficit, the league voted on January 30, 1955, to cease operations.98 Five months after her 27th birthday, Eleanor Callow’s professional baseball career came to an abrupt halt.

Callow finished her abbreviated career as the AAGPBL’s all-time leader in home runs (55) and triples (60), and her 407 career RBIs ranks third despite having only 2,765 career at-bats.99 Although the league batting average was below .200 during her first three years, Callow still compiled an outstanding .273 career batting average. She also stole 217 bases and played stellar defense.

Callow was even better in the postseason, hitting .322 with 32 RBIs in 171 career at-bats. She holds the AAGPBL playoff records for most career RBIs, doubles (9), and triples (3).

During her eight-year career, the league (usually) named three outfielders to one or more All-Star teams at the end of every season. Callow was selected to the first All-Star team four times (1948, 1951-52, 1954), the second All-Star team once (1949), and in 1950 she was named to the third team.100

An annual midseason All-Star Game pitting the current first-place team against the league’s best remaining players was held between 1952 and 1954.101 Callow, who had three RBIs in the 1954 All-Star Game, was one of only nine players to appear in all three games.102

With her professional baseball career over, Callow returned to competitive fastball as the catcher of the Saskatoon Ramblers – the same team that had defeated her St. Vital squad in the finals of the 1946 Western Canada championship. As luck would have it, Winnipeg hosted the 1955 Western Canada tournament and Callow led the Ramblers to the title.103

Although Callow played with the Ramblers for only one season, she continued to participate in other competitive sports for the remainder of her life. Callow was an avid golfer at the Saskatoon Golf and Country Club,104 and in 1962 and 1964 she played in the qualifying round of the Canadian Open tournament.105 She also became an accomplished amateur bowler, participating in the Western Canada five-pin roll-offs in 1966.106

Callow held a variety of jobs in Saskatoon, including one driving a Red Cross mobile blood bank in the offseason of 1952-53.107 After her pro career ended, Callow worked as a salesclerk at Eaton’s department store, a position she held until approximately 1964.

According to a March 1962 article in the Rockford Morning Star, Callow had been diagnosed with cancer.108 Carl Glans, former business manager of the Peaches, urged her friends and fans in Rockford to help cheer her up with a card or letter.109

Callow moved to Melfort, Saskatchewan, late in 1964 before spending approximately two years in Regina.110 She was employed in Regina as a clerk at Macleod’s, the same chain of retail stores that she had worked for in Winnipeg as a teenager.111 Callow returned to Saskatoon early in 1968, working as a salesclerk at Macleod’s and living at the same address as the Browns.112

In the summer of 1971, Eleanor married James Glendenning Litterick, an electrician with the Canadian National Railway.113 The couple relocated to the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona. According to the 1974 federal voters list, James continued to work as an electrician and Eleanor was a housewife.

Eleanor golfed competitively after her return to Winnipeg, and in July 1974 she took part in the Manitoba Senior Ladies Championship.114

Eleanor Litterick died on October 28, 1974, at the age of 47.115 Her modest obituary, which requested donations to the Canadian Cancer Society, made only a passing reference to her illustrious AAGPBL career. “For a time, she also played professional baseball in Rockford, Ill.,” it noted.116

By the time of Eleanor’s death – and for the next two decades − few sports fans were even aware of the existence of the AAGPBL. That changed in 1992 with the release of A League of Their Own, a hit Hollywood movie based on the league and its pioneering women ballplayers.

“If it had not been for that movie, we would all be dead and buried and nobody would have known about us,” said Terry Donahue, who played in the league for four seasons and was Callow’s teammate on the 1947 Peoria Redwings. “I worked at my job for 38 years, and I never told anyone about playing professional baseball. They probably wouldn’t have believed me. People found it hard to believe that girls played baseball when the movie came out.”117 Donahue’s experience was not out of the ordinary for former AAGPBL players.

After the movie’s release, there was a flood of media coverage and suddenly AAGPBL veterans were sought out for interviews, shedding light on their achievements. Since Eleanor died in 1974, no media interviews of her could be found.

She also never had an opportunity to reconnect with former teammates at AAGPBL reunions, which began in 1982.118

Recognition of Callow’s accomplishments on the diamond has come slowly.119 She was one of 12 Manitoba women to play in the AAGPBL, and in 1998 they were inducted as a group into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame.120 That same year the 68 AAGPBL players from Canada collectively entered the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.121 In 2016 the Manitoba Softball Hall of Fame became the first organization to induct Callow as an individual, 42 years after her death. She was inducted into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame in 2024.

Author’s note

Surprisingly, little information about Eleanor Callow was available when I began the research for this biography. Basic facts like her maiden name, married name(s), and the date and place she died were not widely known. To make the initial research even more difficult, her birthdate on Ancestry.com was off by 11 years. Special thanks to Bonnie Dahl and Ken Dahl at the City of Saskatoon Archives for going above and beyond to help me solve these mysteries.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following individuals for assisting with his research: Bonnie Dahl and Ken Dahl at the City of Saskatoon Archives, Pascale Hutton at the Archives of Manitoba, Andrea Keyes at the Peoria Public Library, Lorne Lee at the Regina Public Library, Jean H. Lythgoe at the Rockford Public Library, Harriet Minuk at the Winnipeg Public Library, Jeff O’Brien at the City of Saskatoon Archives, Carol Sheldon from the AAGPBL Players Association, and Rick Walker at the Manitoba Genealogical Society.

Thanks also to Eleanor Callow’s nieces, Carole Pettypiece and Joanne Knudsen, for answering my questions via phone and email, and Cassidy Lent of the Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown for providing a copy of Callow’s Hall of Fame file.

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Howard Rosenberg and fact-checked by Steve Ferenchick.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted AAGPBL.org, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book, Ancestry.com, and the Henderson telephone directories for Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Regina.

Notes

1 Callow hit a career-high 20 homers and stole 23 bases in 1954. Her career high for stolen bases was 40 in 1951. Joanne Weaver of the Fort Wayne Daisies was the other AAGPBL player to record a 20–20 season. She slammed 29 home runs, stole 79 bases, and hit .429, earning the 1954 Player of the Year Award.

2 Branch Rickey coined the term five-tool player in his 1965 book The American Diamond. He defined the five tools as hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning skills/speed, throwing, and fielding.

3 Callow had 407 RBIs in 2,765 career at-bats. The four other women who drove in at least 400 runs in their career were Dorothy “Dottie” Schroeder (431 RBIs in 4,129 at-bats), Inez “Lefty” Voyce (422 RBIs in 3,047 at-bats), Elizabeth “Lib” Mahon (400 RBIs in 2,903 at-bats), and Lavonne “Pepper” Paire (later Davis, 400 RBIs in 3,164 at-bats).

4 At various points in its 12-year history (1943-54), the AAGPBL named All-Star team(s) in the middle and/or the end of the season. No All-Star teams were named in 1944 or 1945. Details on Callow’s All-Star selections are described near the end of this biography.

5 As of May 2022, Ancestry.com incorrectly showed Eleanor Margaret Knudsen’s birth year as 1916. According to the Manitoba Vital Statistics Branch, Johanna Knudsen gave birth to a daughter, Eleanora Kirstine Knudsen, on April 4, 1916. Eleanora was only five months old when she died on September 15, 1916. The Knudsens later used a variation of Eleanora when they named their daughters Nora (born in 1918) and Eleanor (born in 1927). The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League website and Eleanor’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame both list her birthdate as August 8, 1927.

6 The Knudsen family at the time of the voyage to Canada included two sons, Christian (1 year, 11 months old) and Ejnar (three months old). A flood of immigration boosted Winnipeg’s population from 20,000 in 1886 to 150,000 in 1911. Erica Gagnon, “Settling the West: Immigration to the Prairies from 1867 to 1914,” Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/settling-west-immigration-to-prairies, accessed May 9, 2022.

7 Knud Knudsen’s occupation in Denmark is shown on the passenger list of the SS Lake Manitoba. Prior to 1945, immigration to Canada for those who were not either British subjects or United States citizens was restricted to “agriculturalists with sufficient means to farm in Canada.” Knud and other family members were proud of their heritage; they were not shy about correcting Winnipegers on the proper pronunciation of the family name. Halena Jauca, “From Denmark to Canada in 1955: A Story of Immigration,” The Seed: UBC Canadian Studies Undergraduate Journal, Volume 13: 4; Joanne Knudsen (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 20, 2022.

8 “Knud Knudsen,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 1, 1964: 19.

9 For instance, to improve the household’s finances, Eleanor’s two eldest brothers, Christian and Ejnar, were taken out of school as teenagers and sent to work on a farm near Beausejour, Manitoba. Joanne Knudsen (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 20, 2022; Carole Pettypiece (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 5, 2022.

10 Winnipeg newspapers began referring to the league as the Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League in 1945. Previously it had been called the Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Softball League. Based on the ages of the players, a more accurate name would have been the Greater Winnipeg Womens’ Senior Fastball League. “Pro League for Eleanor Callow,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 9, 1946: 18.

11 St. Vital was established as a rural municipality before it became part of the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg in 1960, later becoming a ward and neighborhood in the city of Winnipeg. Eleanor went on to play next to Ferguson in the Rockford Peaches outfield from 1948 until 1954. Haine compiled a record of 72–70 as an AAGPBL pitcher between 1944 and 1951. Teillet was a catcher and outfielder in the AAGPBL from 1945 to 1947. “Rally in Sixth Beats St. Vital,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 27, 1943: 12; “St. Vital Takes Series, Win 3-2,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 30, 1943: 14.

12 “St. Vital Girls Win Softball Championship,” Winnipeg Tribune, September 27, 1943: 14.

13 Grace Todd, “Women in Sport,” Winnipeg Tribune, October 2, 1943: 17.

14 Callow’s profile on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League website lists her as a switch-hitter, although the author found no evidence in newspaper reports that she ever batted from the right side in an AAGPBL (or Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League) game. Her file from the Baseball Hall of Fame lists her as both a left-handed hitter and a switch hitter. The AAGPBL website and her Baseball Hall of Fame file indicate that she only threw from the right side.

15 Joanne Knudsen (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 20, 2022; Carole Pettypiece (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 5, 2022.

16 Macleod’s Limited was a retail chain of farm supply, hardware and building supply stores in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. “Macleod’s Limited,” Archives of Manitoba, http://pam.minisisinc.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/PAM_AUTHORITY/AUTH_DESC_DET_REP/SISN 2990?sessionsearch, accessed May 10, 2022.

17 “Pro League for Eleanor Callow.”

18 “Engagement Notices,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 7, 1945: 10.

19 Divorce petition filed with the King’s Bench for the Province of Manitoba by Eleanor Margaret Callow on November 28, 1947, courtesy the Archives of Manitoba.

20 “Eleanor Callow Too Much for A’s,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 22, 1945: 19.

21 “Eleanor Callow Too Much for A’s.”

22 Osborne Stadium was the home of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League and the future home of Winnipeg’s entry in the Manitoba-Dakota (Mandak) League. According to author Barry Swanton, the Mandak League was a haven for former Negro League ballplayers from 1950 to 1957. “The First Time Satchel Paige Pitched in Winnipeg,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 4, 2015, https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/our-communities/column/The-day-Satchel-Paige-pitched-in-Winnipeg-320674652.html, accessed May 10, 2022; Jeff Hamilton, “Thrill of a Lifetime,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 21, 2015: 28.

23 In the 1945 championship series between St. Vital and St. Boniface, attendance at two of the seven games was greater than 4,000 fans. Four games in the series drew at least 3,300 fans, and six games had attendance of at least 2,500 fans. Game Three, which was played in threatening weather, still drew 1,700 fans. Game stories for all seven contests are available in the Winnipeg Free Press and Winnipeg Tribune between August 21, 1945, and August 31, 1945.

24 An article providing details on the Greater Winnipeg Girls’ Senior Fastball League batting race was found in the August 9, 1945, edition of the Winnipeg Tribune on Newspapers.com in April 2022. As of May 10, 2022, that article had been removed from that website. Both NewspaperArchive.com and the Winnipeg Public Library are missing the August 9, 1945, edition of the Winnipeg Tribune and the author was unable to track down the article title or page number.

25 Wawryshyn was single when she signed her first AAGPBL contract. She played in the league from 1946 until 1951 when she left the league and got married. She was named to the first All-Star team in 1950 and the second All-Star team in 1949 and 1951. “Evelyn Litwin Moroz,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/profiles/evelyn-wawryshyn-litwin-moroz-evie/197, accessed May 10, 2022; “Writers Place Shollenberger, Petras on Second Selections,” Kenosha Evening News, October 26, 1949: 16; “Shollenberger Rates All-League Team,” Kenosha Evening News, September 21, 1950: 34; “Jean Faut of Blue Sox Named Girls’ Loop ‘Most Valuable’,” South Bend Tribune, November 15, 1951: 30.

26 Wawryshyn hit .217 in 1946 for the Kenosha Comets. The league batting average that season was only .203.

27 “Callow Wins Batting Title,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 12, 1946: 14.

28 Gottselig, a former star player in the National Hockey League, had managed the Racine Belles in 1943 and 1944. Roughly two weeks after he scouted Callow in Winnipeg, he was recalled by the league to take over the managerial duties for the expansion Peoria Redwings. The floundering Redwings had been managed by former major-leaguer Bill Rodgers; Thelma “Tiby” Eisen managed the team for several games until Gottselig took over. Callow was managed by Gottselig in Peoria in 1947. “Johnny Likes ’Em,” Winnipeg Free Press, June 26, 1946: 17; “Peaches Back Home Thursday; Morris Wins 12th Game of Year,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 10, 1946: 16; “Back in League,” Racine Journal-Times, July 12, 1946: 14.

29 “Callow Wins Batting Title.”

30 Johnny Buss, “St. Vital Annexes Girls’ Senior Fastball Title,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 30, 1946: 12.

31 Jimmy Coo, “St. Vital Girls Play Today,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 2, 1946: 12.

32 Coo, “St. Vital Girls Play Today.”

33 Divorce petition filed with the King’s Bench for the Province of Manitoba by Eleanor Margaret Callow on November 28, 1947, courtesy the Archives of Manitoba.

34 “Ramblers Beat Winnipeg 2-0 for Title,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 10, 1946: 7.

35 Jimmy Coo, “Cherchez La Femme,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 19, 1946: 17.

36 Callow got the nickname “Squirt” before she turned pro, although it stuck with her for the duration of her AAGPBL career. The term “squirt” was commonly used to refer to a small or young person, so it is possible that she picked up the nickname not long after joining the St. Vital Tigerettes as a 15-year-old in 1943. “Pro League for Eleanor Callow.”

37 Union Station in Winnipeg and Grand Central Station in New York were both designed by architects Warren and Wetmore. Peter Morrell, “Winnipeg – City of Iconic Buildings,” Huffington Post, June 5, 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-morrell/the-museum-for-human-righ_b_4787627.html, accessed May 11, 2022.

38 The five players traveling with Callow were Ferguson, Wawryshyn, Haine, Teillet, and Doris “Dodie” Barr. They were accompanied by AAGPBL scout Joe Mathewson. “Girl Stars Head South,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 21, 1947: 14.

39 “Off to Havana,” Winnipeg Tribune, April 22, 1947: 26.

40 “Training Camp Notes from Girls Loop at Havana, Cuba,” Kenosha Evening News, April 29, 1947: 8.

41 W.C. Madden, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2000), 38.

42 According to the flight manifest on Ancestry.com, Callow and her new Peoria Redwings teammates flew back to Miami together on May 2.

43 The barnstorming tour included stops in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Gadsden, Alabama. Callow homered in the May 6 game in Gadsden. “Ft. Wayne and Peoria Playing Speedy Ball,” Bristol (Tennessee) Herald Courier, May 9, 1947: 13.

44 The two experienced catchers on Peoria’s Opening Day roster were Joyce Hill (later Westerman) and Saskatchewan native Terry Donahue. The author reviewed the box scores for the first 12 Peoria games in various newspapers to confirm that Callow did not appear in those games. “AAGL Team Rosters for 1947,” Racine Journal-Times, May 7, 1947: 16.

45 “Daisies Score Another Win Over Wings by 10-4,” Fort Wayne News Sentinel, June 6, 1947.

46 Callow recorded two singles, one of which was a bunt single. It is unclear if her first career hit was the bunt single. “Redwings Lose 5–3 to Grand Rapids,” Peoria Star, June 12, 1947: 23, 34.

47 Divorce petition filed with the King’s Bench for the Province of Manitoba by Eleanor Margaret Callow on November 28, 1947, courtesy the Archives of Manitoba.

48 She continued to play under the Callow name for the duration of her AAGPBL career. Court decree issued by the King’s Bench for the Province of Manitoba on July 29, 1948, courtesy the Archives of Manitoba.

49 The new pitching style was not the only major rule change adopted by the AAGPBL in 1948. The mound was also moved from 43 to 50 feet from home plate and the basepaths were increased from 70 to 72 feet. A slightly smaller ball was also used: 10⅜ inches in circumference instead of 11. “Rules of Play,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/history/rules-of-play, accessed May 17, 2022.

50 Canadian Press, “Girl Softballers Hitting for Camp,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, April 8, 1948: 16; “Allocation Not Rawlings’ Fret,” Grand Rapids Press, April 17, 1948: 26.

51 “Colleens to Arrive in City Today,” Daily Calumet (Chicago), May 7, 1948: 6.

52 “Peaches Triumph Over Colleens, Temperature,” Rockford Register-Republic, May 12, 1948: 2.

53 WBKB also televised Chicago Cubs baseball in 1948. Carolyn M. Trombe, Dottie Wiltse Collins: Strikeout Queen of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2005), 134; “Colleens Games to be Televised, Broadcast,” Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1948: 40; “Listeners’ Choice,” Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1948: 36.

54 The game was called because of rain with the score tied, 4–4, after 10 innings. “Comets – Colleens Play 4 to 4 Tie in 10,” Kenosha Evening News, May 15, 1948: 6.

55 The AAGPBL reserved the right to reassign players from one team to another whenever it was in the league’s best interests. “Peaches Lose Rita Briggs,” Rockford Morning Star, May 30, 1948: 37.

56 Rockford also received rookie infielder Barbara “Bobbie” Liebrich from the Kenosha Comets as compensation for losing Briggs. Liebrich finished with only four at-bats in her AAGPBL career. She became a team chaperone for five seasons. “Peaches Lose Rita Briggs”; “Peaches Need One More Win as Play-off Switches to Racine,” Rockford Register-Republic, September 14, 1948: 14.

57 Callow’s single-season record for three-baggers was broken when Betty Weaver Foss slammed 17 triples in 1952.

58 Callow recorded the game-winning RBI in the final game of the Peaches’ first-round sweep of the Kenosha Comets and the first two games of their second-round sweep of the Racine Belles. Both series were best-of-five affairs. “Rockford Blanks Comets to Take Series, 4–0,” Kenosha Evening News, September 13, 1948: 8; “Peaches Shut Out the Belles, 2 to 0,” Racine Journal-Times, September 13, 1948: 13; “Belles Bow to Peaches, 3-1; Play 3d Game Here Tonight,” Racine Journal-Times, September 14, 1948: 11.

59 On July 16, 1949, to boost offense, the league introduced a ball with a circumference of 10 inches and moved the mound from 50 to 55 feet from home plate. The ball had previously been 10⅜ inches in circumference. Men’s professional baseball used a 9-inch ball. “Sox vs. Chicks at Playland with New Ball,” South Bend Tribune, July 22, 1949: 29; “Girls’ Loop Starts New Ball Saturday,” South Bend Tribune, July 12, 1949: 16.

60 The Peach Orchard was the commonly used nickname for Rockford’s Beyer Stadium. Callow hit the long home run in a June 30 game against South Bend in front of 3,260 fans. The majestic blast was the first home run of the season at Beyer Stadium. The homer earned Callow $45 from the Peaches fan club ($25), management ($10), and another friend of the team ($10). The $45 prize was worth over $500 in 2022 (US) dollars. “Callow Hits 4-Base Blow,” Rockford Morning Star, July 1, 1949: 25.

61 Dick Day, “Taking Time Out with Dick Day,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 2, 1949: 10.

62 “Peaches Win, 1–0, Sweep 4-Game Set,” Rockford Morning Star, September 11, 1949: 51; “Faut Drops Fourth Tilt 1–0 in Ninth,” South Bend Tribune, September 11, 1949: 41.

63 “Mrs. K. T. Knudson (sic),” Winnipeg Tribune, December 12, 1949: 23; Dick Day, “Taking Time Out with Dick Day,” Rockford Register-Republic, December 27, 1949: 11.

64 Callow stayed with “the Elmer Burkes at 2222 Jackson Street.” Day, “Taking Time Out with Dick Day.”

65 Nora was almost nine years older than Eleanor. It is unclear exactly when Eleanor began to live at the same address as Nora and Harry Brown. Eleanor was listed in the Winnipeg phone directory for the first time in her AAGPBL career in 1951 (her mother died in December 1949). Her 1951 address was the same as the Browns’ address.

66 Nora and Harry Brown were listed in the Winnipeg telephone directory in 1951 and the Saskatoon directory in 1952. According to the 1951 Winnipeg directory, Callow was living at the same address as the Browns. A Rockford Morning Star article reported that Callow was living in Saskatoon in the 1952-53 offseason. Callow appeared in the Saskatoon telephone directory for the first time in 1955, the year after the AAGPBL ceased operations. “Deaths (Nora L. Brown),” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, July 17, 1973: 8; Oliver L. Cremer, “The Sports Coop,” Rockford Morning Star, December 21, 1952: 49.

67 In an article in the Rockford Register-Republic, Callow was second on the list of celebrities who took part in the sports banquet, behind only Jesse Owens. Others in attendance included sports promoter Tommy Cancelose, WROK broadcaster Morey Owens (no relation to Jesse Owens), and former boxer Elwood McReynolds. As of 2022, Booker Washington Community Center in Rockford was Illinois’ oldest African American Community Center. “Jesse Owens Speaks at Booker Sports Banquet,” Rockford Register-Republic, April 25, 1950: 17; “Owens to Talk Here April 24,” Rockford Morning Star, April 16, 1950: 49; “AARC at Booker Washington Community Center,” Rockford Area Convention & Visitors Bureau website, https://www.gorockford.com/listings/aarc-at-booker-washington-community-center/666/, accessed May 12, 2022.

68 “Scheer Hurls, Peaches Beat Racine Belles,” Rockford Morning Star, July 2, 1950: 37.

69 Callow finished in a tie for the home-run crown in both 1950 and 1951. In 1951 her four homers tied her for the league lead with Betty Weaver Foss and Alice Pollitt (later Deschaine).

70 Callow also tripled off the scoreboard in the July 17, 1950, game. That blast was hit almost as far as the earlier home run that cleared the right-field fence.

71 International News Service, “Blue Sox Lose Doubleheader to Rockford,” South Bend Tribune, July 18, 1950: 12; “Peaches Win Moose Night Double Bill,” Rockford Morning Star, July 18, 1950: 13.

72 Callow went 3-for-5 with 2 doubles and 2 RBIs in Game Seven of the 1950 championship series, won 11–0 by Rockford over Fort Wayne.

73 Callow played on the Winnipeg Doodlebugs alongside another AAGPBL player, Doris “Dodie” Barr. Both Callow and Barr were added to the Winnipeg Canadienettes roster for the 1951 Western Canada championship. The Canadienettes had won the national championship in 1950. “Canadienettes Rule Puck Roost; Eliminate Doodlebugs Three Straight,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 1, 1951: 22; “Girls’ Hockey Test Friday,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 21, 1951: 24.

74 Canadian Press, “Wildcats Nip Winnipeg 5-4,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 19, 1951: 20.

75 “Canadienettes Are Beaten at Moose Jaw,” Winnipeg Tribune, March 19, 1951: 26; “Girls’ Hockey Test Friday.”

76 “Moose Jaw Gals Cop Hockey Title,” Winnipeg Tribune, March 24, 1951: 20.

77 Moose Jaw defeated the Port Arthur (Ontario) Bear Cats by a combined 12–1 score in their two-game total-goal series. “Wildcats Cop Title,” Regina Leader-Post, April 2, 1951: 15.

78 Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek played the final game of the series with a temperature of 101 Fahrenheit. Madden, 152; “Blue Sox Nine Evens Series with 6–3 Win,” South Bend Tribune, September 13, 1951: 31.

79 Rockford lost two of its top three hurlers when Lois “Flash” Florreich and Louise “Lou” Erickson (later Sauer) retired after the 1950 season.

80 Nicol Fox retired after the 1952 season. “Fans Get First Glimpse of 1952 Peaches Here Tonight,” Rockford Morning Star, May 11, 1952: 46.

81 “Peaches Head for Ft. Wayne,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 12, 1952: 9.

82 “Peaches Bang 12 Hits, Lose; Callow Drops First Start on Mound, 7–5,” Rockford Register Republic, July 15, 1952: 15.

83 Although the author found a newspaper account or box score for only seven of her eight home runs in 1952, Callow hit at least five game-winning homers that season: July 4 (first game of doubleheader, 10th inning), July 26 (9th inning), August 4 (second game of doubleheader, 8th inning), August 8 (10th inning), and August 21 (13th inning). Because of a discrepancy in the game stories, it is unclear if her homer on July 25 was a game-winner. Of the seven home runs found by the author, her homer on August 1 was the only one that was clearly not a game-winner. “Peaches Split, Slip to Fourth,” Rockford Register Republic, July 5, 1952: 13; “Peaches Win; Callow Stars,” Rockford Morning Star, July 27, 1952: 48; “Gacioch Wins 17th; Peaches Take Twin Bill,” Rockford Morning Star, August 5, 1952: 13; “Loop Playoffs Start Sept. 2,” Rockford Register Republic, August 9, 1952: 9; “Gacioch Gets 20th victory; Callow’s 3-Run Homer Wins in 13th,” Rockford Register Republic, August 22, 1952: 39.

84 “Gacioch Gets 20th victory; Callow’s 3-Run Homer Wins in 13th.”

85 The Peaches also held a two-games-to-none lead in the series before a successful protest erased Rockford’s victory in (the first) Game Two.

86 Callow scored the winning run with Rockford facing elimination in Game Two of its first-round series against Fort Wayne. She went 3-for-4 with an RBI and two stolen bases in the game. The Peaches went on to upset the Daisies in the best-of-three series. Callow stole six more bases in the championship series against South Bend. “Peaches Nip Daisies to Even Series,” Rockford Morning Star, September 5, 1952: 15.

87 “Jittery Peaches Open Road Card,” Rockford Register-Republic, August 12, 1953: 28.

88 “Crown Peaches Queen Tonight,” Rockford Register-Republic, August 26, 1953: 21; “Callow Queen of ’53 Peaches,” Rockford Morning Star, August 27, 1953: 18.

89 “Local Girls Semi-Finals Victors Over Rockford,” Grand Rapids Press, September 11, 1953: 40.

90 In a July 1, 1954, article, the South Bend Tribune reported that the mound was being moved back to 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. Most sources list the distance at 60 feet. The same South Bend Tribune article also listed the previous ball as being 9¾ inches in circumference, although most sources list it at 10 inches. “Blue Sox Shift to Small Ball,” South Bend Tribune, July 1, 1954: 27; Ralph S. Hart, “As We See It,” Streator (Illinois) Daily Times-Press, June 22, 1954: 10; “Rules of Play,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/history/rules-of-play, accessed May 17, 2022.

91 “Peaches Split with Daisies; Callow’s Grand Slam Leads 12-8 Win,” Rockford Register-Republic, June 28, 1954: 19.

92 “Big Day Helps as Callow, Three Others Pace Peaches,” Rockford Register-Republic, June 29, 1954: 14.

93 The Peaches played 34 games with a 10-inch baseball and 58 games with a 9-inch ball in 1954, and Callow appeared in 86 of Rockford’s 92 games. She hit 4 home runs with the 10-inch baseball and 16 homers after the transition. Callow’s home-run pace with the 9-inch ball is the equivalent of hitting 42 round-trippers in a 154-game schedule. “Peaches Split Final 2 Games with Old Ball,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 1, 1954: 23; “Russo Rips New Ball, Hikes Average 53 Points to .320,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 6, 1954: 15.

94 “Peaches Open Home Stand Tonight; Take 7–6 Win but Two Key Players Hurt,” Rockford Register-Republic, July 17, 1954: 11.

95 “Russo Regains Batting Lead on Rampage of Home Runs,” Rockford Register-Republic, August 3, 1954: 15.

96 Reliable attendance figures for 1954 are not available. AAGPBL board meeting minutes from February 29, 1954, indicated that each team needed to draw 45,000 fans to break even that season. The league had a combined operating loss in 1954, but even if they drew fans at that rate, league attendance would have been only 225,000 or 957 fans per game (235 regular-season games were played). Average attendance in 1948 was approximately 1,444 per game (910,000 divided by 630 games). Fiddler, 137.

97 Leslie A. Heaphy and Mel Anthony May, Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2006), 237.

98 The AAGPBL suffered an operating deficit of $22,500 in 1954, which is over $240,000 in 2022 dollars. “Girls’ Baseball League Suspends 1955 Operations,” South Bend Tribune, January 31, 1955: 17.

99 Some have referred to Eleanor Callow as the Babe Ruth of the AAGPBL. But given her speed, defensive abilities, and her penchant for triples, Tris Speaker would be a better comparison.

100 Second and third All-Star teams were not named every season. In 1948 the league also named two utility infielders and two utility outfielders to the first All-Star team, and Callow finished in a five-way tie for the second utility outfielder spot. The author could not find any newspaper reports on the end-of-season All-Star teams from 1952 to 1954. Callow (.303 BA, 8 HRs, 58 RBIs, 37 SBs) had the statistics to easily justify a spot on the second All-Star team in 1953. “Wagner Tops All-Star Team With 105 Out of 110 Votes,” Kenosha Evening News, September 30, 1948: 16; “Writers Place Shollenberger, Petras on Second Selections”; “Shollenberger Rates All-League Team”; “Jean Faut of Blue Sox Named Girls’ Loop ‘Most Valuable’”; Madden, 6.

101 The league also held a mid-season All-Star Game in 1943, which was the first night game played at Wrigley Field. Merrie A. Fiddler, The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2006), 139.

102 The nine players to appear in all three All-Star Games between 1952 and 1954 were Rita “Maude” Briggs, Eleanor “Squirt” Callow, Betty Weaver Foss, Rose Gacioch, Maxine Kline (later Randall), Ruth Richard, Dorothy “Dottie” Schroeder, Fern Shollenberger, and Joanne “Jo” Weaver. Jane “Jeep” Stoll would have played in all three games had she not been severely injured just before the 1954 game. “Blue Sox Bow to All-Stars in Ninth, 7-6,” South Bend Tribune, July 8, 1952: 16; “Homer in 11th Wins All-Star Game for Ft. Wayne,” South Bend Tribune, July 15, 1953: 37; “Daisies Whip All-Star Nine,” South Bend Tribune, July 10, 1954: 16; “Rumsey Only South Bend Player on Girls’ Star Team,” South Bend Tribune, July 7, 1954: 33.

103 “Saskatoon Girls Western Winners,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, September 12, 1955: 16.

104 “Women’s Section of SGCC Reports Successful Season,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, October 22, 1964: 8.

105 The 1962 Canadian Open was in Winnipeg, while the 1964 tournament was in Calgary. Saskatoon is a lengthy, yet reasonable drive from both cities. Callow may not have participated in the 1963 Canadian Open because it was held in Ottawa, which is over 1,800 miles from Saskatoon. “Ladies Open Draw,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 13, 1962: 46; “Ladies’ Golf Draw,” Calgary Albertan, August 3, 1964: 12.

106 Five-pin bowling is a Canadian version of ten-pin bowling. A smaller, lighter ball without any finger holes is used. Each pin is approximately 25 percent smaller than those in ten-pin bowling. “Regina Representatives,” Regina Leader-Post, April 4, 1966: 26.

107 Cremer, “The Sports Coop.”

108 Callow was battling breast cancer. Carole Pettypiece (niece of Eleanor Callow and daughter of Ejnar Knudsen), telephone interview with author, May 5, 2022.

109 Bill Walsh, “Two Former Peaches Ill with Cancer,” Rockford Morning Star, March 8, 1962: 5.

110 Callow appeared to move to Melfort, Saskatchewan, sometime between October 22, 1964, and December 1964. She spent Christmas 1964 with Nora and Harry Brown in Saskatoon. “Women’s Section of SGCC Reports Successful Season”; “Social and Personal,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, January 4, 1965: 9; Ned Powers, “Bowlers Keep Pins Flying,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, April 24, 1968: 29.

111 According to Lorne Lee, a Reference Assistant at the Regina Library, Callow’s occupation is listed in the Regina telephone directory as a clerk at Macleod’s during this period.

112 Eleanor’s occupation was taken from the 1970 and 1971 Saskatoon telephone directories. Her surname in the 1971 directory was Litterick. Powers, “Bowlers Keep Pins Flying.”

113 A wedding photo of James and Eleanor on Ancestry.com is dated July 17, 1971. The author was unable to locate an official marriage record.

114 “Ladies’ Team Spots on Line,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 5, 1974: 53.

115 Her sister Nora had died in July 1973 in a Saskatoon hospital at the age of 55. The obituary of both sisters requested donations to the Canadian Cancer Society. Eleanor had lived at the same address as Nora and Harry Brown for close to 20 years. “Deaths (Nora L. Brown).”

116 “Eleanor Margaret Litterick,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 30, 1974: 51.

117 Jim Sargent, We Were the All-American Girls: Interviews with Players of the AAGPBL, 1943-1954 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2013), 161.

118 Fiddler, 8.

119 As of 2022, the National Women’s Baseball Hall of Fame, which did not include Callow, was no longer active. As of 2022, no female baseball players had been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (but one female executive was, Effa Manley). However, a permanent AAGPBL exhibit was added to its museum in 1988.

120 The other 11 Manitoba women to play in the AAGPBL were: Doris Barr, Dorothy Ferguson (later Key), Audrey Haine (later Daniels), Dorothy Hunter, Olive Little (née Bend), Ruth Middleton (later Gentry), Joan Schatz, Mary Shastal (later Kustra), Doris Shero (later Witiuk), Yolande Teillet (later Schick), and Evelyn Wawryshyn (later Moroz, and subsequently Litwin). “Inductee Spotlight: MB All American Girls,” Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame, https://mbhof.ca/2021/08/03/inductee-spotlight-mb-all-american-girls/, accessed September 12, 2022.

121 The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame began inducting former AAGPBL players individually in 2021. Helen Callaghan Candaele (later St. Aubin), mother of Casey Candaele, was the first of the group to be inducted on her own.

For Ann Cindric and the other talented women who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), springtime meant oiling the glove and returning to the field to play the game they loved. Cindric was a right-handed pitcher who was active in the AAGPBL from 1948-1950, years that marked the height of popularity for the league.

Ann B. Cindric was born on September 5, 1922, in Muse, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.2 She was the third of John and Catherine (Yuric) Cindric’s five children.3 John and Catherine spoke Croatian and had married before emigrating from their homeland to the United States, in 1911 and 1914, respectively. Initially they settled in the coal mining town of Jere, West Virginia, which some sources list as Ann’s birthplace.4 After operations closed in Jere during the early 1930s, the remaining miners and their families fell into poverty.5 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the area several times to draw attention to the harsh living conditions.6

The Cindric family, however, had already become part of the Croatian community that settled in and around Pittsburgh to work in the mines.7 Muse was a company town for the H. C. Frick Coke Company owned by U.S. Steel. The Coke Company constructed the miners’ homes, owned the company store, and built schools for the children. Mining operations in the National Number 3 Mine at Muse began in 1922 and continued until 1954, when the mine was closed, and the last 500 miners were out of jobs.8

Life in Muse centered around the mine, the church, and sports, particularly baseball and soccer. “Smack in the middle of town was a large baseball field which was always well maintained by the coal mining company. … In the summer, the baseball games were the big event in town, and in the fall, it was soccer. All the small mining towns in that part of Western Pennsylvania had their own baseball and soccer teams, and the competition was very intense.”9

Cindric grew up playing ball in the neighborhood and watching games in the town. As she became a young woman, she was likely expected to follow a domestic path in life, according to the norms in the day. But when World War II began and men like her younger brother Nick were drafted into the service, the lives of women at home changed dramatically. They worked in the factories, planted the fields,10 and yes, played on the baseball diamond.

Women’s entry to professional baseball came about as the minor leagues began losing their players to the war draft and teams were disbanding. Baseball owners started looking for ways to maintain the public’s interest in the game and fill the local teams’ stands. Leading the movement, Philip K. Wrigley, chewing-gum king and owner of the Chicago Cubs, along with a group of Midwestern businessmen, established a new baseball league for women in 1943. The league came to be known as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).11

Baseball scouts traveled around the United States and Canada to find the best female talent. Final tryouts were held in Chicago and 60 were chosen to be the first women professional baseball players. Fifteen players were assigned to each of the four inaugural teams: Racine (Wisconsin) Belles, South Bend (Indiana) Blue Sox, Kenosha (Wisconsin) Comets, and Rockford (Illinois) Peaches.12 Former major-leaguers like Bert Niehoff and Josh Billings were recruited to manage the teams, and to heighten interest among the fan base.13

After some initial resistance to women playing a “man’s game,” the teams were generally well-received in their host towns. Over time, the league grew in popularity and expanded to 10 teams. By the end of World War II in 1945, game attendance reached 450,000 for the season. But the end of the war didn’t mark the end of the AAGPBL. On March 29, 1948, Cindric was one of eight players signed from a tryout camp operated by former major-league infielder John Rawlings in Allentown, Pennsylvania.14 That year, AAGPBL attendance reached an all-time high of 910,000 fans.15

At age 26, Cindric was one of the older players to join the league, which recruited girls as young as 15 years old.16 Chaperones were assigned to each team to help guide the younger players and to ensure that all the women upheld the high moral and personal appearance standards expected by the league. Cindric and the other players had to follow strict rules of conduct that dictated their style of dress (never wear shorts or pants), hair length (long was preferable), cosmetics (always wear lipstick), and social engagements (no liquor drinking or swearing).17 Femininity always came first, even to the point of enduring painful “strawberry” scrapes when sliding into base in their short playing skirts.18

However, the benefits of playing in the league helped to offset the challenges. AAGPBL pay was considered good for the day, ranging from $65 to $125 a week.19 The income was important for young women helping to support family members back home, or to pay for college after their playing days were over.20 The AAGPBL also provided the players the opportunity to travel, build self-confidence, and develop lifelong friendships while playing professional baseball.21

After spring training in Florida, Cindric was assigned to the Muskegon (Michigan) Lassies in 1948. She was a right-handed pitcher who stood 5-foot-6 and weighed 135 pounds. She was nicknamed “Cindy” by her teammates and wore uniform number 13.22 About 600 women played in the AAGPBL during its 11 years in existence.23 Cindric became one of the 44 AAGPBL players from Pennsylvania.24

During Cindric’s rookie season, overhand pitching became the standard, opening up the pitcher’s repertoire to the curveball, drop pitch, and change of speeds fastball. Also in 1948, the pitching rubber was moved back to 50 feet from home plate, rather than the previous 43 feet. The ball was also made smaller, to 10 3/8 inches in circumference.25 (By 1954, the size of the baseball in the AAGPBL was the same as in the men’s game at nine inches around. The distance of the pitching rubber to home was also the same at 60 feet. But the distance between the bases remained shorter for the women, at 85 feet vs. 90 feet for the men.)26

In her first season, Cindric struck out 24 batters but did not record any wins or losses.27 After three appearances, she injured her finger and did not play again for Muskegon.28 The Lassies, however, earned a spot in the postseason after finishing in second place in the Eastern Division with a 67-58 record under manager Bill Wambsganss.29 In the first round of the playoffs, the Lassies lost to the Fort Wayne Daisies30, three games to one.31

In 1949, Cindric was assigned to the Springfield Sallies traveling team32 to continue her development. The Sallies, along with the Chicago Colleens,33 were “rookie” teams in the Eastern Division that traveled throughout states in the Central, Southeast, and Northeast to play exhibition games against each other.34 The league developed the teams to raise the AAGPBL’s visibility and recruit new players. But the 75-game schedule was grueling, with teams moving on to the next town every one to two days, sometimes at a long distance.35

No statistics are available to current researchers for Cindric from 1949. In 1950, Cindric was one of seven pitchers listed on the 20-player roster released by the Peoria (Illinois) Redwings ten days before their AAGPBL season opener.36 She wound up back with the Sallies, however, and appeared in five games with a 3-2 record. She also batted .231 (3-for-13).37 But a recurrence of her finger injury ended her season and her professional baseball career.38

After leaving the AAGPBL, Cindric played softball in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.39 On August 28, 1961, at the mother house of the Dominican Missionary Sisters in Chicago, she received her white habit and took on the religious name “Sister Mary Catherine.”40 Later, she entered the Dominican Order in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Cindric led a simple, contemplative life in the convent for five years.41 She chose not to renew her vows. Cindric then worked in a nursing home for 25 years until her retirement.42

Cindric enjoyed playing the button accordion and was a member of the International Button Box Club. She was also a member of the Slovenian National Benefit Society (SNPJ) Lodge 138. Ann Cindric was 88 when she died on December 18, 2010, in Pittsburgh.43

Cindric’s legacy, along with her league mates, lives on through the AAGPBL Player’s Association 44 and the National Baseball Hall of Fame exhibit, “Diamond Dreams: Women in Baseball.” The exhibit, expanded from the original 1988 display, includes the history of the AAGPBL from its beginnings in 1943 to its disbandment in 1954.45

Although their window of opportunity was short, the impact of these players’ dedication, talent, and professionalism is starting to become better appreciated. The popular 1992 movie A League of Their Own, with its famous line “There’s no crying in baseball,” introduced the AAGPBL to many people who had not heard about the league before.46 The movie was added to the National Film Registry in 2012 because it not only “illuminates this fascinating, under-reported aspect of American sports history, but also effectively examines women’s changing roles during wartime.”47 The 2022 Amazon Prime series, A League of Their Own, further explores the players’ stories on and off the field, and addresses societal issues of equality and acceptance that are still relevant today.48

But to many women of the AAGPBL, inclusion in the Hall of Fame is the highest honor. As commented on in the 1998 AAGPBL Newsletter: “If we never do anymore, we have gotten our display there for all America to see. Every man, woman, boy and especially the girls that travel through their hallowed halls will now see the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. They will see action shots, individuals, lots of league memorabilia and above all they will see the names, hometowns, and years played by our players. For this we should all be very, very proud.”49

Cindric’s teammate on the 1950s Springfield Sallies, Shirley Burkovich, also noted the importance of the Hall of Fame recognition to the players. “We didn’t know we were pioneers. We were just doing something we loved, and that was playing baseball. We realize now that we were doing something special, and it’s very gratifying.”50

Ann Cindric was one of those pioneers. To live her dream she moved from her familiar Croatian community in Muse, first to play in Muskegon, Michigan and then to be on a traveling team based in Springfield, Illinois. Today Cindric is part of the permanent exhibit in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Very few men and fewer women can say they’ve reached that achievement. As they would say back home, “Dobro napravljeno, Ann.”51

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Malcolm Allen and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Tim Herlich.

Sources

In addition to sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted http://www.ancestry.com.

Notes

1 George Will, “In spring, a young man’s fancy turns to baseball,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 29, 2014, https://www.ajc.com/news/opinion/spring-young-man-fancy-turns-baseball/0mygI34bjTNItvd0QLiyrK/. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

2 “Muse, Pennsylvania,” City-Data.com, http://www.city-data.com/city/Muse-Pennsylvania.html. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

3 Ann Cindric’s siblings were Mildred (b. 1917), Mitchel (b.1918), Nick (b.1924), and George (b.1927), according to information gleaned from the 1930, 1940, and 1950 censuses and ancestry.com. Mildred’s, Ann’s, and Nick’s obituaries all mention a sixth sibling, Mike.

4 The 1950 Census records Ann Cindric’s birthplace as West Virginia although the 1940 and 1930 editions record Pennsylvania as the state of her birth. In the three censuses, all of Ann Cindric’s siblings have Pennsylvania birthplaces listed with one exception – Mitchel has West Virginia in the 1940 census.

5 Jane Metters LaBarbara, “The Scott’s Run Memory Project,” WVU Humanities Center, April 29th, 2019, https://news.lib.wvu.edu/2019/04/29/the-scotts-run-memory-project/. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

6 Dan Whetzel, “Eleanor’s Little Village,” Mountain Discoveries, http://www.mountaindiscoveries.com/images/ss2016/eleanorvillage.pdf. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

7 Franjo Bertović, “200 Years of the City of Pittsburgh,” Croatian Heritage Foundation, https://matis.hr/en/news/200-years-of-the-city-of-pittsburgh/. (Date accessed September 6, 2022.)

8 “Muse, PA,” Appalachian Coalfields, https://www.coalcampusa.com/westpa/pittsburgh/muse/muse.htm. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

9 “Muse, PA.”

10 Madison Horne, “Women of the WWII Workforce: Photos Show the Real-Life Rosie the Riveters,” May 11, 2021, History.com, https://tinyurl.com/2s4fjrvw. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

11 “AAGPBL League History,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, http://www.aagpbl.org/history/league-history. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

12 “Season Timeline,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/seasons. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

13 “AAGPBL League History.”

14 Future AAGPBL players Esther Hershey, Jean Marlow, Helen Waddell, and Betty Warfel were also signed that day. “Baseball Gals Perform Here,” Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), March 30, 1948: 20.

15 “AAGPBL League History.”

16 “Dorothy Schroeder,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Obituary, https://www.aagpbl.org/profiles/dorothy-schroeder-dottie/559. (Date accessed September 20, 2022.)

17 Caitlin Schneider, “Read the 1943 Rules of Conduct for Women’s Baseball,” Mental Floss, June 15, 2015, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65094/read-1943-rules-conduct-womens-baseball. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

18 “The AAGPBL Uniform – ‘Oh Those Skirts,’” AAGPBL Players Association, YouTube, Aug 6, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO8VFPZSjR0. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

19 Jack Fincher, “AAGPBL History: The “Belles of the Ball Game” Were a Hit With Their Fans,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/articles/show/39. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

20 Jameson Cohen, “The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: Frontiers and Femininity in America’s Favorite Pastime,” SABR Spring 2022 Baseball Research Journal, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-all-american-girls-professional-baseball-league-frontiers-and-femininity-in-americas-favorite-pastime/#calibre_link-551. (Date accessed September 6, 2022.)

21 Kat D. Williams, The All-American Girls After the AAGPBL: How Playing Pro Ball Shaped Their Lives. E-book ed., (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008.)

22 “Ann Cindric,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/profiles/ann-cindric-cindy/246. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

23 “AAGPBL League History.”

24 “Profile Search,” https://www.aagpbl.org/profiles/search. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

25 W.C. Madden, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008): 45.

26 “Rules of Play,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/history/rules-of-play.

(Date accessed October 7, 2022.)

27 Madden, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book: 244.

28 Leslie A. Heaphy and Mel Anthony May, The Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2006): 70.

29 W.C. Madden, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008): 45.

30 “About the Fort Wayne Daisies,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/teams/fort-wayne-daisies. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

31 “Muskegon Lassies,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Muskegon_Lassies. (Date accessed October 7, 2022.)

“1948 Muskegon Lassies Statistics,” Stats Crew, https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/stats/t-ml13112/y-1948. (Date accessed September 6, 2022.)

32 “About the Springfield Sallies,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/teams/springfield-sallies. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

33 “About the Chicago Colleens,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/teams/chicago-colleens. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

34 “About the 1949 Springfield Sallies,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League,

https://www.aagpbl.org/teams/springfield-sallies/1949. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

35 Madden, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book: 285.

36 “Girls from 12 States, Canada on Peoria Squad,” Daily Times-Press (Streator, Illinois), May 1, 1950: 8.

37 W.C. Madden, W.C The Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: A Biographical Dictionary, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2005): 49, https://archive.org/details/womenofallameric0000madd/page/48/mode/2up?q=cindric&view=theater. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

38 Heaphy and May, The Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball: 70.

39 “Ann Cindric,” All American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association, Facebook, https://ne-np.facebook.com/AAGPBL/posts/4123534871028649. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

40 “Resident Receives Dominican Habit,” Daily Notes (Canonsburg, Pennsylvania), August 28, 1961: 3.

41 Bagan, Fr. Vincent Ferrer, O.P., “Contemplating God in Pennsylvania,” Dominica, https://www.dominicanajournal.org/contemplating-god-in-pennsylvania/. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

42 Heaphy and May, The Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball: 70.

43 “The Obit for Ann B. Cindric,” Observer-Reporter.com, December 20, 2010, http://www.thedeadballera.com/Obits/AAGPBL/Cindric.Ann.Obit.html. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

44 “The AAGPBL Player’s Association,” https://www.aagpbl.org/. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

45 “Diamond Dreams: Women In Baseball,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/discover/museum/diamond-dreams-women-in-baseball. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

46 Roger Ebert, “A League of Their Own,” July 01, 1992, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-league-of-their-own-1992. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

47 “2012 National Film Registry Picks in A League of Their Own,” Library of Congress, December 19, 2012, https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-12-226/cinematic-firsts-enshrined-in-2012-film-registry/2012-12-19/. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

48 Shannon Carlin, “How Amazon’s A League of Their Own Differs From the Movie—But Stays True to History,” August 12, 2022, https://time.com/6205531/a-league-of-their-own-true-story-amazon/. (Date accessed September 2, 2022.)

49 Matt Rothenberg, “30 Years Ago, The AAGPBL Came to Cooperstown,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/discover/women-in-baseball-exhibit-made-history-in-cooperstown. (Date accessed September 1, 2022.)

50 Rothenberg, “30 Years Ago, The AAGPBL Came to Cooperstown.”

51 Google Translate, https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=hr&text=well%20done%0A&op=translate. (Date accessed September 20, 2022.)

Jean Shirley Cione was born on June 23, 1928 in Rockford, Illinois, about 90 miles northwest of Chicago. She was the eldest of two daughters born to John Cione, a machinist, and Viola (née Hasselquist), who worked in a beauty shop.

Cione grew up the consummate tomboy, earning a letter at Rock River School playing boys softball as an eighth-grader. Although a talented athlete, she didn’t have the chance to play varsity sports since her high school had no girls teams. Instead, she played for industrial league women’s softball teams in Rockford.

Cione was thrilled to learn in 1943 that Rockford would have a team in the newly formed All-American Girls Professional Softball League (the league evolved in various ways over time, including its name, the size of the ball, pitching distance, and pitching style). She and her father attended many Peaches home games. In the spring of 1945, prior to its third season, the league held tryouts – conducted by Hall of Famer Max Carey, who was also president of the circuit. Cione couldn’t wait to hit the diamond. The league invited her to spring training in Chicago; she made the cut and was assigned to Rockford. At age 17, the high school junior became a professional athlete.

“From that moment on, I was learning from and playing with the most talented women softball players in the United States, Canada, and Cuba,” Cione wrote in the foreword to the book The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. “For two years, the Peaches had been my idols, now I was one of them. … Just think, in 1945, a young woman athlete was not only able to dream of competing at a very high level of athletics, but she was able to live her dream. It was unbelievable.”

Cione, who threw left-handed but batted from the right side, was listed at 5-feet-8 and 143 pounds. After playing first base with Rockford in 1945 and the Peoria Red Wings in 1946, Cione returned to Rockford in 1947 and established herself as one of the league’s elite pitchers with a 19-14 record and 1.30 ERA. Despite her performance, the Peaches finished in sixth place at 48-63.

From 1948 through 1951, Cione played for the Kenosha Comets. She had another strong year in 1950 with an 18-10 record and 2.96 ERA. Since 1948, the league’s pitchers had been allowed to throw overhand – but her sidearm southpaw delivery frequently baffled batters.

“I was primarily a power pitcher,” Cione said in a 2009 interview. “I developed a cross fire where I stepped to first base and brought it in right under your ribs. I was not afraid to work the inside of the plate. I had a changeup and later in years, I developed a two-fingered knuckle curve … that’s a ball that’s thrown with a spin on it and when it loses enough momentum, it falls off … I was left-handed and that was good for pitching against some of the very, very good left handed hitters.”

Among Cione’s career highlights were three no-hitters – a league record. She fired two of them in the same month with Kenosha in August 1950. She also completed a rare unassisted triple play while playing first base. She was named a league All-Star in 1952.

“Jean was our star pitcher and one of the best I had ever seen,” said Delores “Dolly” Brumfield White, who played with Cione on the Comets from 1948-1951. “She was very serious about her pitching and was all business on the field. I played first base and hated it when Jean fielded a bunt. It was difficult to catch her hard sidearm throw.”

The Kenosha franchise folded after the 1951 season. Cione joined the Battle Creek Belles in 1952; that team moved to Muskegon, Michigan in 1953. She returned to Rockford in 1954 for the AAGPBL’s final season. Cione ended her 10-year baseball career with a 76-65 record, 2.33 ERA, 86 stolen bases and a .224 average.

During the baseball off-seasons, Cione took classes at Eastern Michigan University (EMU), where she earned a bachelor’s degree in education in 1953. She then taught high school physical education in Trenton, Michigan and Rockford, and earned a master’s in education from the University of Illinois in 1962. Later, she conducted post-master’s work at the University of Michigan.

Cione returned to EMU in 1963 as a professor of Sports Medicine. She spent the next 29 years teaching anatomy, physiology, kinesiology and other classes in the School of Health Promotion and Human Performance. She also coached women’s track and basketball and became the university’s first director of women’s athletics in 1973.

Although Cione didn’t talk much about her baseball career with her students or colleagues, the subject came up occasionally during her classroom lectures.

“One day in kinesiology class, we were discussing the aerodynamics of a baseball pitch,” said Eric Durak, who took undergraduate courses at EMU in the early 1980s. “She mentioned she had played professional baseball as a young girl, but most of the players weren’t strong enough or didn’t know how to throw a curveball. I thought her reference to playing baseball was a little odd at the time. But the reality of what she had done hit me later when the movie A League of Their Own was released. Now I watch the movie with admiration knowing who inspired it.”

Durak also said that Cione carried her no-nonsense attitude from the baseball diamond to the classroom.

“If you asked a question the textbook covered, she’d tell you to look it up and give you the page number,” he said. “She didn’t yell at people, but she didn’t mess around – you were expected to know your stuff.”

Cione mentored generations of students like Durak, who worked with her for two years as an undergraduate teaching assistant in her anatomy and physiology lab.

“She was a lot more than just an anatomy teacher,” said Durak, who became a wellness specialist at the University of California-Santa Barbara. “Cione was a great mentor who encouraged me to pursue graduate work. We stayed in touch through the years. I still occasionally refer to notes I took in her class.”

The impact that Cione and the AAGPBL had on the development of women’s sports went far beyond the diamond. Lucy Parker, retired EMU associate athletic director, says that Cione was instrumental in helping women’s sports at EMU evolve from club teams in the physical education department to a full-fledged athletic program.

“In the 1960s, there was no women’s athletic program at Eastern, just club sports,” Parker said. “Jean ran the club sports program, coached the softball team and did some fundraising. During that time, she created a model for the women’s athletic program in advance of Title IX. She firmly believed in equality in athletics, but she didn’t stand on a soapbox. Once the women’s athletic program was created, she devoted herself to academics. She loved teaching and knew that many of her students were the first in their family to go to college. She was really invested in their success.”

After retiring from EMU in 1992 and moving to Bozeman, Montana, Cione became vice president of the AAGPBL Players Association. A League of Their Own revived interest in the league, and Cione and the other surviving players became celebrities. In addition to granting interviews about her days in baseball, Cione contributed to a video presentation about the league for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s permanent exhibit about women in baseball. She was inducted in EMU’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1986 and the National Italian-American Hall of Fame in 2007.

Cione spent her final years traveling, golfing, volunteering at the Museum of the Rockies, and following her beloved Chicago Cubs. She died on November 22, 2010 in Bozeman at age 82. She was survived by her partner, Ginny Hunt.

“We never did, and still do not, envision ourselves as pioneers,” Cione said in a 2005 interview with the Bozeman Chronicle about the AAGPBL. “[A League of Their Own] made us pioneers. For us, it was an opportunity to play a sport we dearly love at the highest level. We would have done it for nothing.”

A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Eastern Magazine.

Sources

Jean Cione player file. National Baseball Hall of Fame; Cooperstown, New York.

Books and newspapers

Cione, Jean. “Foreword.” Published in Fidler, Merrie A. The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006.

Welsch, Jeff. “Bozeman Resident an Original Member of the Rockford Peaches,” Bozeman Daily Chronicle, June 26, 2005.

Interviews with the author

Durak, Eric; April 12, 2011.

Parker, Lucy; April 25, 2011.

White, Delores; April 14, 2011.

Internet resources

AAGPBL.org, Jean Cione player profile.

EMUEagles.com, E-Club Athletic Hall of Fame, Jean S. Cione.

Legacy.com, Jean Cione obituary from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Olson, Gordon. Interview with Jean Cione, September 27, 2009. Grand Valley State University, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Veterans History Project. http://cdm16015.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15068coll11/id/18

United States Census, 1930; FamilySearch.org (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X39D-26K : 8 December 2015), John Cione, 1930.

Dancer grew up excelling in sports, particularly softball, playing on semi-professional softball teams along with LaVonne “Pepper” Paire Davis, with whom she was recruited by Bill Allington for the AAGPBL in early 1944.

The five-foot, six-inch freckled blonde, who batted and threw right-handed, was assigned to the Minneapolis Millerettes in 1944. As an 19-year-old rookie, she batted a career-high .274 (third in the league), with two home runs—both grand slams—a career high 48 RBI, and 63 stolen bases. “She was that rare breed of ballplayer who could lay down a perfect bunt, and then steal second base,” recalled “Pepper,” “Then, the next time up, she could hit the long ball.”

The Millerettes moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana for the 1945 season, and were renamed the Daisies. Dancer played in 108 games, leading the league with three home runs. The Daisies finished in second place in the six-team league, but won their first round playoff series against the Racine Belles, with Dancer hitting .308, with two homers and 8 RBI in the 4-game series. The Rockford Peaches took the championship round, though Dancer kept up her torrid pace, hitting .286 in that series.

Outfielder-first baseman Dancer continued to star for the Daisies in 1946, playing in 110 games and racking up a career high 116 total bases. But Dancer also debuted a new facet of her game, going 10-9 with a 1.93 e.r.a. as a pitcher. Early in the 1947 season, she was traded to the Peoria Redwings along with Alice DeCambra for Thelma “Tiby” Eisen and Kay Blumetta, in the largest trade in league history up to that point. 

After a so-so season in 1947, Dancer returned to form in 1948, leading the Peoria Redwings into the playoffs. She recorded career highs in six offensive categories: 122 games, 89 runs scored, 109 hits, 6 home runs, 55 walks, and 102 stolen bases, second only to baserunning wizard Sophie Kurys. Her home run and runs scored totals were also second in the league. A headline from that season reads: “Dancer is High Test Fuel That Makes Wings Explosive.” Despite three hits in three games by Dancer, the Redwings were swept in the first round by the Racine Belles.

She did not play in 1949, perhaps due to lingering injuries caused by her all-out style of play. Dancer would slide headfirst—although she was particularly adept at hook slides as well, crash into outfield fences, and dive for balls. One sportswriter dubbed her a “fly catching genius,” and “Pepper” recalled that she could fire strikes to the plate from centerfield after catching balls over her shoulder. On the bases, she was aggressive and fearless. “I loved to slide,” she once remarked, rejecting the notion that skirted play might cause players to be conservative about hitting the dirt.

She returned to the Redwings in 1950, retiring after the season due to a ruptured disc, caused by sliding. She returned to California and worked as an electronics technician for many years.

The free-spirited Dancer didn’t just entertain fans with baseball heroics, however. She also turned cartwheels and caught fireflies on the field, and once called an official timeout to get a drink of water. “I was forever having fun, raising my skirt up for the fans, doing the splits and handstands when the games got quiet,” she recalled. “Faye had her share of admirers, but her nickname really came from her all-out style of play,” remembered “Pepper.” “On the ball field, there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do to win.”

Indeed, June Peppas recalled a game where she came to bat with two runners on base and down by two runs in the eighth. Peppas belted a home run over the center field wall, to put the Racine Belles up by a run. Or did she? Dancer managed to convince the umpire that the ball had bounced over the fence, and Peppas returned to second with a double and one RBI. Peoria won the game, and later that night at a restaurant, Dancer approached Peppas to apologize for the trick play.

Off the field, Dancer was a merry prankster, who enjoyed initiating new chaperones. She recalled replacing the filling in their Oreos with toothpaste, spreading limburger cheese all over their light bulbs, or smearing peanut butter on their toilet seats. She also kept chaperones and managers busy worrying over her whereabouts, as she liked to go out and drink beer, often enlisting more well-behaved teammates in capers like drinking beer in cemeteries, where no one would come looking for them. She also enjoyed stealing the ubiquitous blowfish which often hung from the ceilings in taverns. Her exits from hotels via fire escapes, and returns via staff elevators were legendary. In the off season, she traveled with Jim Thorpe’s all female barnstorming team, the Thunderbirds, members of the National Softball Congress.

Dancer was superstitious, always closing her door three times before a ballgame, and collecting glass eyes from stuffed animals and carousel horses, which she then passed around for good luck. She enjoyed a good rapport with fans, and spoke to them on her way on and off the field. One fan in Peoria, who happened to be a mafia kingpin, took a shine to her and tried to ply her and her family with meals and gifts. “One time he even asked me if I wanted anyone killed,” she recalled. “I told him ‘Maybe the umpire.’” She added that she made sure he knew she was kidding.

Dancer never married, as the love of her life was killed during World War Two, according to “Pepper.” She did settle down, however, and quit drinking almost thirty years before her death. “At some point you make a promise to yourself,” she commented. She became a board member of the AAGPBL Player’s Association, and served as an advisor for the filming of the movie “A League of Their Own.” It was widely reported that she was the inspiration for the character played by Madonna.

In 2000, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she died at the age of 77 on May 22, 2002, of complications related to cancer surgery.

In her six-year career, she recorded 488 hits in 591 games. She drove in 193 runs, hitting 53 doubles, 14 triples, and 16 home runs. She tallied 617 total bases along with 352 steals, and her career batting average was .236. As a pitcher in two seasons, she was 11-11 with an e.r.a. of 2.28. “I’ll probably be remembered as a crowd favorite, a little crazy,” she once said. “I always had fun.”

Sources

In preparing this biography, the author relied on Dancer’s clipping by at the National Baseball Hall of Fame library in Cooperstown, New York.