693 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dd7f30f3e8a50eb357cabd7d0983f09c.m4v dbc517c5f8ec935ef3ecc22abc9e8fe4 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/027a6f526baba095d20d2302fac1a1e9.pdf 3ed43232ca0e9464b5090a7c988bb4e8 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans History Project Interviewee’s Name: Grace Piskula Length of Interview: (00:38:20) Interviewed by: Gordon Olson, September 26, 2009 in Milwaukee, WI at the alumni annual reunion of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, April 14, 2010 Interviewer: “Grace, I think the easiest way to start these interviews is to just talk a little bit about you and your family and your experience with sports before you got involved with professional baseball. Where were you born and tell me a little bit about your background.” Well, I was born on February 26, 1926 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the south side of Milwaukee and the neighborhood was primarily Polish and German. I had a younger brother and an older brother in my lifetime. All of my experience with sports came from the neighborhood because my neighborhood was full of boys and there was only one other girl. 1:16 Gladys and I were the only two and she didn’t like any sports, but I always played and had a lot of fun. I even played tackle football in a lot of open lots and wherever we could get equipment. We had a big yard and the man upstairs would buy a ball and we would play ball in the back yard. There was a big barn that we surrounded and it must have been an old country area because if you got a home run it would go over the barn and land in the alley in the next block there, but my brothers were not interested in sports. One was very interested in reading, that’s my oldest brother, and in theater, and my youngest brother was a runner. He ran when he was in high school. 2:10 There was a social center near our home and you could go to the social center and play volleyball, basketball or take classes and it was run by the Milwaukee Recreation Department, which was terrific, so I got interested in sports. I was playing all over the city, volleyball, basketball, and softball and eventually played softball in West Allis, they had a league there and many of the girls who made this league are from that area. Interviewer: “They started as softball players.” It started with underhand softball and we played at night, and of course when I was playing it was during the war years and the men weren’t around, so they had big crowds, five thousand people would come and watch and I was offered a job at Heil Company if I would play volleyball, basketball and softball for them. 3:10 I wasn’t interested because of my family. My mom never went beyond the sixth grade and my father never beyond the tenth and both of them were terrific believers in education. However, they couldn’t afford to send us to college, but we certainly were checked on during our grade school and high school time and that’s all that mattered, doing well in school. 3:34 1 �Interviewer: “Now, in the neighborhood when you were playing, this was what would be called today, disorganized recreation. There were not teams as such, it was just whoever showed up in the morning to start playing ball?” Yes, all the boys were—I think I was the only girl and all the boys would get together and somebody would bring a bat and they would bring a ball and we would play in an open field. 3:59 Interviewer: “Did you choose up sides?” Yes, you would toss the bat and choose up sides. Interviewer: “As the only girl, were you the last one chosen?” No, I was not and my brother never liked the fact that he wouldn’t be picked before me. Interviewer: “You were the better ball player in the family?” Yes, but he was a better runner. 4:21 I had these trophies in the kitchen, my mother had them up and his friends would come over and they would say, “What did you get the trophy for?” My brother would say, “they’re my sister’s”. Interviewer: “That’s great—now, what position in softball?” I played—actually I played almost all of them except pitching and catching, but my main positions were short, first base, third base and left field. 4:50 Interviewer: “That pretty well covers it.” I played second base once, but I never played right field or pitched and I was a good hitter that was the other thing. Interviewer: “That would explain why you got chosen quickly. How did you hear about the all American Girls League and how did you get involved with that?” Well, I didn’t hear about it frankly, it was news to me. I didn’t know they had tryouts, I didn’t know anything about that. I was working at Schuster’s in the candy department to get money for school. 5:28 Interviewer: “Schuster’s was a department store in Milwaukee?” Yes, a department store and they had a cafeteria and all these other things and I played softball on their team and I got a telegram from Jack Lossa. Jack Lossa was a former Milwaukee Brewer who had a softball team on the north side and Buddy Greif was my coach and he had a softball team on the playgrounds on the south side and he got to be a manager and he needed a player in left field immediately and he remembered me playing against his team and he just sent a wire and said, “Have job for you on Rockford Peaches. Report to Racine”, and my mother said, “You’re not going anywhere.” 6:14 Interviewer: “How old were you at this point?” I was about eighteen, and my mother said, “you’re not going”. I was a senior in high school, trying to earn money for school, so I called Buddy Greif and asked him to come 2 �over and he said to my mother, “where could she earn fifty dollars a week plus two fifty a day for spending money?” My mother couldn’t answer that and I wasn’t earning that kind of money even at Schuster’s or even in the defense plants soldering canteens, so they did let me go. 6:46 I went to Rockford and lived in a rooming house. Interviewer: “I have to ask you, when you went to Rockford, was that one of the first times that you had left home essentially?” Yes, I never was on a train until I went to college because it was kind of a protective neighborhood. We had certain hours at night and you had to stay home and talk as a family. We had a night where we had to stay home so we could talk together as a family, so we could talk together and play together and stuff. A different kind of family than we have today. 7:32 Interviewer: “That’s a good family practice. Your family must have been rather excited when you decided to go off and play baseball?” I’m not sure they were excited at all. Actually my mother knew very little about sports. She came to an all city game we had one time when I was playing left field and my father told me that when the ball came out and I caught it, she turned to him and said, “now what’s she going to do with it?” That’s how much she knew about the game. 8:02 Interviewer: “Fortunately you knew what to do with the ball when you caught it.” I knew where to throw it, right. Interviewer: “Somebody told me that at one point Mr. Wrigley took an active interest in your career.” Actually when I went to college, I went to LaCrosse State University, my first college experience and while there I got a phone call from Mr. Wrigley, I wasn’t the only person, there were a few girls that he must have somehow got names of who were from different areas not just Milwaukee, but from others, and he asked me to come and tryout in Chicago with the Chicago Chicks. 8:46 Interviewer: “A different league.” I really think the Chicago Chicks were the work up league for the other one. Interviewer: “Their teams played all around Chicago.” They played at night and we wore shorts, we wore satin shorts and tops and then satin leggings and I still have the contract in my scrapbook from that experience and we lived in rooming houses in groups. In fact, I will try to remember the name of the gal who— her husband use to come and she was married and had children and he use to come and watch her play on weekends. 9:21 She also got on one of the teams in our league, so that was like, what do you call that, the minor leagues?” 3 �Interviewer: “Minor leagues probably.” Mr. Wrigley, I don’t know if it was he himself. He asked me to come and I said, “I can’t come, I have no money”, and he said they would put me on the Hiawatha, which went from Lacrosse to Chicago and I never had a chance to see my parents, so I said, “I won’t come unless I can stop in Milwaukee and see my parents”, and they let me do that and when we got to Chicago there was a limo waiting and they took me to a gym and tried me out. When the movie came out I was sitting there and I had forgotten about that experience and all of a sudden tears were coming down. It was a recall that happened to me and I’m sure it happened to other people also. 10:20 I played first base there. Interviewer: “Describe that tryout experience. What did they have you do?” Oh, they had me bat mostly in the gym and field when someone would throw a ball to you. That’s about the extent of it. It was a fairly large gym. Interviewer: “Who was watching the tryouts and who was making the decision?” I don’t know who the man was. They had somebody that took us there and was checking out what you could do and I had a first baseman’s mitt and an infielder.s mitt and a ball. I had one of those bags with me. It was a twelve-inch softball. It was the Olympic style softball. 11:09 Interviewer: “This actually took place though after you had already played with the Peaches, correct? You played with the—or did you go with the—“ I played one year with the Peaches and then the next year I played in Chicago. Interviewer: “Let’s back up to that Peaches experience. You got to Rockford on your own and do you remember the first game you played in?” No. I remember that at one of the games I slid into first base and I may have sprained my ankle, but we had no people to help us with injuries. We had a coach and the team and that was it, and a chaperone, that was it. The catcher, I remember, taped up my foot, but we were all so eager to play that we wouldn’t tell the coach what condition we were. 12:02 When I look back on it, when I look at the players now and all the help they get, exercises, food and all this. There was nothing and in fact most girls worked during the day, especially in Chicago. That’s why I went there, to make money for college. We worked during the day, like office work or store work and played ball at night. Interviewer: “Just so you had money to go to college, but earn money and also get to play the game you love.” To earn money for college and I loved the game. All three of them. Interviewer: “Any recollections of the—you played essentially part of a season in Rockford?” Yes. 4 �Interviewer: “Any recollections of the games?” They were terrific in Rockford, the people; they had lots of support and lots of people in the audience and then the American Legion and others there would say, ”today the first home run gets ten dollars”, you know what I’m saying, they use to give away prizes to the batters and a lot of times they would serve lunches for us after the game. 13:15 You always had to deal with the fans to sign autographs on cigarette packs and stuff you know people weren’t going to keep anyway. They were eager to see what you look like. 13:29 Interviewer: “Any guys hang around after the game?” Lots of guys, especially in Chicago. Interviewer: “So it’s a version of what goes on in major league baseball today only the genders are reversed.” Yes. The ladies went to see the men and the men went to see the ladies. Interviewer: “that’s good. What was the field like? The playing conditions, do you have any recollections of the condition of the field for example?” I thought they were very good fields. They were fields, as I recall, that other men’s softball teams played on in the communities. In fact, all of my sports experiences were out of the community. I played volleyball and basketball even in Iowa, you know, we would go on weekends on trips. I don’t know why, but during the war none of the companies got a lot of publicity and they always had these teams for publicity. 14:30 The paper always had the scores and the name of the company would be in the paper and that’s why they wanted people to play ball. Interviewer: “They wanted winning teams.” They wanted winning teams and they wanted their names in the paper and that’s why I was offered a job to play three sports, during the war, for that company and they said they would give me this nice easy job, but of course without an education, what kind of a job could you get, so to us—my mother was so proud—I told you she never went to school and I have a brother with a PhD and both myself and my other brother have masters degrees and my mother said we were the only ones in the neighborhood. 15:10 Interviewer: “She was very proud of that.” She was so proud of that, when she lived she was. Interviewer: “Any big hits, any big plays still come to mind from your playing days?” I remember that in Chicago at my first bat, I hit a triple and I’ve never forgotten that one. I also remember my first night with the Rockford Peaches, playing left field, a fly ball coming and I’m going after it and I catch it and I look and there was someone backing me 5 �up to make sure I would catch that ball. I remember getting my ankle wrapped when I slid into base. 15:49 Interviewer: “Pain is something you tend to remember.” It was painful later, also because it wasn’t taken care of. Interviewer: “So, you played part of a year then in Rockford and then the next year in Chicago, was that the extent of your professional playing?” Yes, I finished and I went to school. Interviewer: “Where did you go to school?” I went to school at Lacrosse State University and then I went to New York University for my masters and in 1952 we all went to the Olympic games as part of our studies. We wrote some papers on sports in America and as they are played in other countries and that’s a very big highlight in my life. 16:34 Interviewer: “That’s an incredible experience. Where were the 1952 Olympics held?” Helsinki. We saw Paavo Nurmi run— Interviewer: “Helsinki, that’s right. You didn’t just go to the Olympics, you got on a boat and traveled across the Atlantic to the Olympics.” Two boats. Interviewer: “When you say we all, who do you mean?” We were all graduate students for either masters or PhD’s at New York University. The only man who spoke Finnish in the group was a black man with his PhD and to me that was very interesting. 17:10 Interviewer: “I bet it was interesting to the Finnish people as well.” We slept in a dormitory of some kind on straw beds, double deckers, but you could see the Olympic torch all night long through the window. Those were interesting experiences and meeting the athletes from other places who were on steroids. You could see it in their builds Interviewer: “Already then you saw it.” Way back then in 1952, I think before they even noticed it. Most of the gymnasts--I never saw such shoulders on women Interviewer: “A little unusual.” Very unusual. Interviewer: “Particularly for you as a physical education major, you studied kinesiology and the structure of muscles and things, you knew what you were looking at.” 6 �Something was funny. I think it was a year later in 1953 or 1954 that they got onto the drugging. 18:11 Interviewer: “For the first time. I want to back up just a minute because I’m familiar with Lacrosse. Now Lacrosse, one of the featured majors is in physical education.” Yes, I got my first degree from there. Interviewer: “That’s what that school, among other things, focused on. How many women at Lacrosse were taking these kinds of courses? Were there a lot of women and was it unusual? ” No, there were a lot of women. We had practically—it was almost even the men to women as students. I don’t know what we had in my class, eighty or ninety and half were men and half were women. 18:48 Interviewer: “Then you went from there and got a graduate degree?” I went to New York University for my graduate work and I would go in the summers at first. They had a school camp and then later, the last year, when I got my maters we were on this trip and we studied on the ship all the way across. Interviewer: “That’s still an incredible experience.” Just a wonderful experience and I have never really forgotten it because we became very good friends after all the trips through Europe etc. The gents carried our luggage and it was wonderful. I still have friends from those days. 19:32 Interviewer: “Once you graduated, what was your career after?” The same thing after I graduated. My first job was as a physical education teacher at McKinley Jr. High School in Racine, Wisconsin where I started my career in baseball. Interviewer: “You came home.” No, I’m a Milwaukee girl. Interviewer: “You went back to Wisconsin.” That was strange, that was strange, that was very strange. I remember coming to that city and wouldn’t you know, I got a job there. I was in Racine at the junior high school and then I taught in the high school and then I taught at the University of Hawaii for a year and then I came back and I became the director for the district in health and physical education. 20:20 I spent my major lifetime in Racine. Interviewer: “In education.” Yes, in education. Interviewer: “You were in Hawaii?” I was in Hawaii before they were a state. 7 �Interviewer: “How did that happen?” That came up because I was a student at N.Y.U. and Dr. Sokhi, who was on staff in Hawaii, got to know me when I was going for my masters and at the time physical education teachers were hard to find and they wanted me to come the very year that I graduated, he did, and I said, “I can’t do that to my district. They took me when I knew nothing and they can’t replace me now because there are no teachers, so I went back to Racine and all the while I was in Racine that year, I kept getting missiles from Dr. Sokhi and he asked me to come the next year then. 21:20 I asked my superintendent, I didn’t know if I would like it or not, if I could take a leave of absence and he told me I could if I came back the next year, so I agreed to that and I wasn’t to Hawaii and taught and after a year they wanted me to stay on and I said I couldn’t because I had promised Racine that I would come back. I went back and the man I had made the promise to had lest the community and I have never forgotten that. That is a dirty trick to play on somebody. Interviewer: “You kept your word.” I kept my word, but the superintendent didn’t. Interviewer: “Hawaii would have been a very interesting place to be in.” It was and the next year they became a state. Interviewer: “Because of the fact that you were a player, a teacher—you’ve been in sports in one way or another, women’s sports, for a long time. Reflect a little bit for me if you will on the kinds of changes you’ve seen in the attitude towards women athletes for example and the attitude of women athletes toward their sports.” Well, I think the women are interested in their sports, but there’s little they can do with the fact that sports have become a business instead of anything else and unfortunately what happens is the women, even though many are more talented than some of the men, never are paid anywhere near what they are being paid and the reason is that they don’t bring in the revenue at the gates and I think that’s true with almost everything except maybe golf. 23:12 I was hole captain at the meets when the golf association was in Wisconsin and they got terrific crows, so golf and maybe tennis is good, but women’s basketball and softball, for some reason, do not draw crowds. The basketball’s a killer on the heart and the women play as well as the men do, but their not compensated. Interviewer: “Not at all. One thing that occurs to me, when you were playing baseball the uniforms were designed to emphasize the fact that you were a woman and it seems to me that all the way through, right up to today, that still is a part of the difference between men’s sports and women’s sports. There is still an emphasis on making sure that the fans in the stands know that they’re watching women athletes.” I don’t know, I think women will always be women, or they should be, otherwise we have a big problem and I think that the attitude that people think if you play a sport you have to be tough, it’s not true. I know many women who are very feminine who play 8 �sports very well, so I don’t know how you’re going to dispel that. There are a lot of very nice looking women in sports and not only in looks they have good shapes too. 24:39 You can’t—the only difference, I think, you have to remember—take for instance my shoulder for instance—men have more muscle spindles in that shoulder than I do and I’ll never be able to match them and maybe that’s the reason that when women got into overhand throwing, they lost so many arms, I don’t know. Interviewer: “There were a lot of injuries to women pitchers?” Yes, the women went to play just like the men play baseball, throwing from the pitching staff and we lost a lot of arms and pretty soon the league was over. Some of it might be part physical, I don’t know. 25:17 That’s just my opinion, you would have to ask a Kinesiologist. Interviewer: “At the time there wasn’t a lot of good science about the strain that was put on an arm by throwing.” I have a personal opinion, I can’t figure out why women would want to box. I don’t understand, I can see tennis, I can see volleyball, I can see the other games, but boxing and football, I don’t understand that. Somebody’s going to have to give me an education also. 25:53 Interviewer: “I’m with you.” Every man I know that ever played football has had back problems all his life. Interviewer: “Legs and knees and just serious problems.” It’s tough; it’s a tough sport. Interviewer: “This is a question I’ve asked an awful lot of the players. While you were playing—when you first started out as a professional woman baseball player, did you see yourself as a pioneer in any way?” No, I loved the game and I think—my mother use to say I shake to play. I would go to the social canter and play volleyball and basketball, you know I’ve done those three things all my life and now I golf and that’s about it, but I don’t know why because I didn’t have a family—my mother never went beyond sixth grade and my father never beyond tenth and they just didn’t have the opportunities that I had. 26:56 Interviewer: “Sports opened doors for you.” Yes, the sports have opened the doors for me and I’m sure it has for many young people, but first get the education. Interviewer: “Now as you look back on it, you have a chance to assess the role you played, now do you see yourself as--in some ways, although you didn’t realize it at the time, actually pioneering?” 9 �Yes, I think that helping women not only in the professional aspect, but even in the college sports and the scholarships and things of that kind because those things are much more available to women today than they use to be just as they’re available to someone who is good in theater or good in art, we have that in sports now and people will have to look for it, but it’s there. Some of the legislation is helping also. 27:58 Interviewer: “Ok.” I figure I was lucky and I thank you for this opportunity. Interviewer: “Well, we were the fortunate ones.” If anybody’s going to hear it---“get your education first”. Interviewer: “A great line to end with.” Thank you. Interviewer: “Thank you very much.” Interviewer: “Lets talk a little bit about the movie. All of a sudden the league—it wasn’t forgotten, but it wasn’t well remembered either and then all of a sudden there’s a major movie made about your experiences. What kinds of reactions and experiences did you have as a result of the movie?” 28:39 I think everybody was excited about the movie, but I forgot to mention the fact that I had my uniform sitting in my closet for, it must have been ten years, because the last game that Rockford played was in Milwaukee and I still have the programs from that day and here I had that uniform sitting and after about ten years or so I got rid of the uniform from my closet. I either gave it to a costume shop or to the theater group I can’t remember which, but the movie is unbelievable, every year and I watch what’s on the movies and they must show that thing eight or ten times a year and every time they show it they got a crowd watching it. Now, the movie made the comedian, Rosie O’Donnell, I think that made her, that movie and I think you should know that actually a bunch of players at the time, I’m not going to name them, didn’t want Madonna playing in our movie because they didn’t like her lifestyle at the time, so I didn’t know much about Madonna because I’m not a big movie fan, but I did buy the movie for all my nephews and nieces. 30:01 Interviewer: “After the movie comes out, did that affect you more recognition?” Yes, after the movie came out you get more mail—people asking for autographs. I have had autograph seeking from Germany, for soldiers, from people in the services that send you stuff and one person sent their first day issues of a stamp collection and instructed me to sign on that first issue thing and I thought—“what are they doing?” I know they’re selling autographs and I think mine is worth about fifteen dollars now. I had somebody check up and see, but there’s one I have from the Brewers called the—It’s in the case and that one’s worth more because I’m on with the men players also. 30:57 Interviewer: “And you get invited from time to time for appearances?” 10 �Yes, it’s usually clubs and schools. Every year I’m at some school because they’re studying women—what women have achieved and there will be some number of kids that want to write about the league, so then they call me up and ask for an interview and then they write their papers. So far every girl who has written a paper about my life in the—has received an A on their paper, including my niece. Interviewer: “what do you tell them when they--?” I tell them what I told you—how I was brought up, how I had never been on a train until I went to college, how my folks never had—and this was a way of getting an education for me because they couldn’t afford to send me and how the boys were both able to go because they were both in the army at that time and their school was paid for and mine wasn’t. I think at that time there was an attitude that it’s more important for the men to get educated than the women because I found a little of that in my father. He was afraid I would get married and all that money would go down the drain. 32:10 Interviewer: “You emphasize to the girls, when you get a chance to talk to them, to get their educations.” Yes, I really—that was the proudest—my mother was proudest of the fact that she had three kids—two had masters degrees and one had a PhD and that to her meant more than anything we did, even playing ball really, because she never went beyond the sixth grade. They never had a chance, they had big families and they had to help at home. My father never beyond the tenth, he wanted to be a doctor and never got to be one—they had thirteen kids in their family and they had to go to work. It was the end of the depression. 33:02 Interviewer: “Kids need to understand that in many ways they have far more opportunities and they better take advantage of them.” All of my nieces and nephews, I tell them that they’re spoiled rotten and they are. They’re living in an entirely different world, they have so many things and they ask for something and pretty soon it comes. We could wish for it, but we didn’t expect it. Interviewer: “Any regrets about taking time out to play professional ball?” No, I loved to play, I would love to play now, but all I play now is golf. Interviewer: “thanks for taking an extra minute. There was good usable stuff there.” 11 �12 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_GPiskula Title A name given to the resource Piskula, Grace (Interview transcript and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Piskula, Grace Description An account of the resource Grace Piskula was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 26, 1926. Growing up she played softball with the neighborhood boys and in school. She played all positions but mainly stuck to playing shortstop, first and third base and left field. Eventually, her coach, Buddy Greif, approached her one day and informed her she would be playing for the Rockford Peaches. Soon thereafter while she was up at college, she received a call from Mr. Wrigley, owner for the Chicago Chicks to come play for them. She played one year for the Rockford Peaches and then the next for the Chicago Chicks. Her career highlights include hitting a triple for Chicago and then catching a fly ball while with Rockford. Following her two years in the league she quit and went back to college. She discusses her post-baseball career in some detail. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Olson, Gordon (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945 Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players-Illinois Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-02-26 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/512de0c2fbf48375bcfb8050761f04c0.m4v d5b4439250e76137a05c1815995603ab https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1c106802744a02352d7c6210853ec0aa.pdf 0e68cc9612006380fc0ccab6af5bbd8d PDF Text Text Fidler, Merrie Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans History Project Interviewee’s Name: Merrie Fidler Length of Interview: (01:35:18) Interviewed by: James Smither Transcribed by: Chelsea Chandler Interviewer: “Okay, so, Merrie, just a little bit of background on you. Where and when were you born?” I was born in Weed, California, which is about ninety miles south of the Oregon border, on October 31st, 1943. Interviewer: “All right. Now did you grow up in northern California?” Yes, I grew up about—Well, in Dunsmuir, California, which is about thirty miles south of Weed, and then when I was seven, I moved to the Redding area, which is about fifty miles south of Dunsmuir. So all in the northern California area. (1:00) Interviewer: “All right, and what did your family do for a living when you were growing up?” My dad was a conductor on the railroad. Dunsmuir was a turnaround for the SP in northern California. And my mother didn’t work. And she just—Well, wasn’t just a housekeeper, but, you know, she raised us kids. Interviewer: “She wasn’t paid. She worked, but she wasn’t paid.” She worked, but she wasn’t paid. Yeah. Interviewer: “Right. Okay, and when did you finish high school?” I finished high school in June of 1961. Interviewer: “Okay, and then what did you do once you graduate?” Well, when I graduated, I went to college, and I started out at a junior college in the Redding area. And then I decided to go to a bible college in Los Angeles, and I was there three years. And I decided that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a teacher. (2:00) So I quit school and landed in the Sacramento area where my sister lived and got a job as a secretary at the PE department at the University of California at Davis, which is just outside of Sacramento. 1 �Fidler, Merrie Interviewer: “Okay. Now in your early life, did you play sports, or did you get out a lot, or did you develop that interest later?” No. My dad and brothers—I had two brothers, and they were eight and ten years older than I. And my dad was a rabid Yankees fan. And so we listened to Yankees games on the radio from as early as I can remember. And my dad and two brothers played on a city league team when my brothers got old enough to do that. And I remember as about a four-year-old going to the city park every Sunday afternoon or to one of the neighboring city parks to watch Dad or the boys play baseball. And so I grew up with sports, and as soon as I went to school, I played ball on the playgrounds. And my brothers had played catch with me as I grew up and showed an interest. And so when I was in the first grade, I was out on the playground playing with the older kids, and they were sometimes amazed that I could hit the ball almost as well as they could. So I grew up playing volleyball, basketball, and softball through school. Interviewer: “Okay. Well, when you were training to be a teacher, were you training to do PE or just general elementary or something else?” (4:04) I trained to—I majored in physical education and planned to teach either high school or college. Interviewer: “Okay. And so you got sort of sidetracked, but now we’ve gotten you—You’re now working as a secretary in the PE department, and then how do you move on from there? I mean, eventually you get more education.” Well, I—My office was right above the swimming pool, and I worked for the—I did work for several of the coaches as well as the intramural sports program. And one day I was looking at the swimming coach, and I’m watching him coach the swimming team, and I thought, “You know, I don’t think I want to be a secretary the rest of my life.” So I went back to school and got my BA and teaching credential, and a flyer came across the desk for a job at—for an intramural assistant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. And I was graduating—getting my teaching credential at the end of that semester, and so—And I was very familiar with intramurals, having done all of the administrative stuff for it, and also while I was back at school, I had gone to working as an intramural assistant part-time. And I flew back and had an interview, and they hired me. And when I was there, I could work on a master’s degree as a staff member without a lot of expense, and I thought, “Well, I should take advantage of that opportunity.” And I did, and at that time UMass Amherst had a sport history track in the physical education master’s degree program. (6:08) And science was never one of my strong points, so I opted for the sport history. And I took a course called “American Women in Sport” as part of that. Interviewer: “Okay. Now what year was that?” And that was in 1971. And part of the assignment for that course was to go through the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature and find all of the articles dealing with American women in sport that we could. And in the process of that, I found a little 1943 Time magazine article about a women’s professional softball league created by Philip Wrigley. Well, I knew about Philip Wrigley, and I thought, “Boy, I’ve been playing softball all these years, and I never heard about this league.” Of course, I was way off on the West coast, and this was in the Midwest. So I talked 2 �Fidler, Merrie to one of my doctoral student colleagues and asked him, “You know, how would I find out more about this league?” And he said, “Well, why don’t you write to the league city newspaper sports editors and see if there’s anybody around that remembers anything?” And so at that time I only knew that there were four teams in the league, and so I wrote. And the sports editor from South Bend—his name was Joe Boland—he had been the scorekeeper and also a—on the board of the South Bend Blue Sox team. And he responded and said, “Well, you need to get in touch with Jean Faut Winsch,” who I learned later was one of the best overhand pitchers in the league. (8:11) And so I contacted her and asked her if I could stop and interview her on the way home from Christmas vacation that year. And she said yes, and so I did that. And in the process of interviewing her, she brought out nine three-inch-wide binders of league and team board meeting minutes that one of the directors—one of the presidents of the South Bend team had put together. And I looked through those, and I said, “You know, Jean, there’s no way I can do justice to these on a weekend. Would you trust me to take them with me?” And bless her heart. She did. And I used those. There was a lot of information, especially the league board meeting minutes. A lot of information in those that I was able to use in the book. And that was the starting point of my research, and so I wound up doing my master’s degree—my master’s thesis on the—Well, my thesis is entitled, “The Development and Decline of the All-American Girls Baseball League.” Interviewer: “Okay, and what kind of range of research did you do for the thesis? I mean, you had her materials. Did you contact other people or other teams or things like that?” Well, while I was at South Bend, Jean arranged interviews with me for—with Chet Grant who had been a manager of the South Bend team, with Lucille Moore who had been a chaperone, with Ed DesLauriers who had been a business manager, and with Lucille Moore who had been a chaperone, and also with Lib Mahon and Betsy Jochum who still lived in South Bend and had been players. (10:10) And so I interviewed them, and in the process of the interview with Chet Grant, he said, “Well, you ought to get in touch with Arthur Meyerhoff.” And at that time I didn’t know who Arthur Meyerhoff was, but Chet said, “Well, he worked with Wrigley and getting the league started, and he ran the league for a few years.” And he gave me his contact information. And so I wrote a letter to Mr. Meyerhoff and asked if I could arrange an interview with him. And I believe that was the next Christmas vacation. I went home to California, and he lived down by San Diego and was there at that time. And so I drove down and interviewed him, and in the course of the conversation, he said, “Well, you know, you really ought to come to my office at the Wrigley building in Chicago and go through my files.” And so I believe it was the next summer—It may have been two summers. I don’t recall at the moment. But the following summer I went to his office in the Chicago building. I spent a week or eight-hour days going through his files on the All-American League, and it was really nice because he had this nice, big desk in his office, you know, and his secretaries would bring file drawers in to me, and I’d go through them. And he let me copy things, and if there were extra copies of things, I could take one. And so I just kind of fell into a lot of wonderful primary material for my thesis. (12:08) Interviewer: “So what was the reaction of these people as you’re contacting them? Were they surprised anyone was interested? Did they think it was about time?” They were mostly surprised, you know, and the common question is, “Well, why are you researching this lady?” And I said, “Well, I just was fascinated by the fact that there was this 3 �Fidler, Merrie professional softball league that I had never heard of.” And I had always played softball and, you know, been a baseball fan, and so it just captured my interest. Interviewer: “Okay, now you—So did it take sort of several years to do the thesis, or…?” Yes, I was working full-time and taking classes part-time, and in the meantime I had moved to St. Paul, Minneapolis—St. Paul, Minnesota where I got another job as an intramural sports assistant. And the reason I moved from UMass to Minnesota was because the professor I was working closely with had gotten a job there, and I wanted to finish up my work with him. And that was beneficial because in one of the PE department meetings, they had the intramural folks in there, too, and so some of the women on the PE staff, you know, got together and were talking. And so I gravitated there, and so they asked me what I was doing my thesis on, and I said, “Well, I’m doing it on the All-American Girls Baseball League.” (14:00) And unbeknownst to me, Nancy Mudge Cato, who had played in the league, was there in that group and said, “Oh, I played in that league.” And so I got to interview her, and she then put me in touch with Jean Cione who was working at the University of Michigan who I later arranged to interview, too. So that’s kind of how I met some of the players that I was able to interview. Interviewer: “Okay, now at the time you’re doing this work in the 70s, was there any kind of organization? Did the players have an association then?” No, they didn’t. They were all—A lot of them were kind of freshly retired, but they hadn’t—And they kept in touch with individuals, but there was no group organization. But I had contacted— been able to contact Marilyn Jenkins in Michigan, and she had put me in touch with June Peppas who was also in Michigan and a couple of other players. And it was fortunate that I had a contact with June Peppas. When I finished my thesis, I sent a copy of it to all of the players that I had interviewed, and so Marilyn obviously got a copy of it. And she shared it with June, and June wrote me a letter one time and said, “Would it be all right—”And June was a printer. And she asked if it would be okay if she made copies of it and shared it with other players, and I said, “Sure.” Because I was happy to get it out there, you know. And then it was June—And I don’t know if my thesis was the stimulant or not or had a part in it, but June was the one who started the newsletter with the purpose of having a national reunion. (16:13) And so I always like to think that my thesis had a little bit to do with it, but I don’t know that it did. Interviewer: “Okay. Yeah. When did they have their first reunion?” Their first reunion was in 1982. It was July of 1982. Interviewer: “Okay, and then can I go back, I guess, to your career trajectory? Okay, you’ll finish the thesis. Now do you go on to an academic position at that point, or what do you do next?” Well, when I was just about to finish writing my thesis, my dad had a serious heart attack, and so I told my mom I’d come home and help out. And she says, “Don’t you come before you finish that thesis.” Because she knew that once I got away that I probably wouldn't. And so I said, “Okay. I’ll finish it this summer and then come home.” And so I did that. And she was a realtor, 4 �Fidler, Merrie and I helped her out in her office for a little bit and did substitute teaching. And through the substitute teaching, I got a job at a high school nearby—Anderson Union High School—and taught there for twenty-seven years and retired in 2003. Interviewer: “Okay. Now you did eventually, I guess—Let’s back up a little bit. So you had made your contacts with the league. So then did you continue to stay in touch with those people and communicate with them?” Yeah, I did. I was able to attend that first reunion and met some more of the players there, and I even spoke to the group about my dream—was that they would establish a centralized location for their memorabilia and documents and stuff like that. (18:15) And Dottie Collins was there, and she wrote me later that she shared that dream. And so she, you know, asked me if I was going to do anything about that. And I was in California, and I said, “No, it would be better if you did that someplace that was centralized to the league.” And so the players started getting together then in little mini reunions and started talking about, you know, what to do, and then Sharon Roepke had kind of a similar experience to mine. She heard about the league from a friend and went to the Hall of Fame to find out more and found out that the Hall of Fame didn’t have anything. And so then she made it her objective to get the Hall of Fame to recognize the league, and in the process she asked me for a copy of my thesis, which I gave her. But she was able to travel to the different cities where players were, and she located them through the phone books and tax records and that sort of thing. And she actually traveled to where they were to interview them and all. And then they started having mini reunions together. And in one of those mini reunions, Ruth Davis from South Bend—she had been a bat girl for the Blue Sox and had a contract to play in the 1955 season, and, of course, the league ended in 1954—but she was at that meeting, and she said, “Well, let’s have a national reunion.” (20:30) And everybody said, “Well, that’s a good idea, but it’s going to be a lot of work.” And Ruth said, “Well, it can’t be too hard.” And she arranged the first reunion. Well, when they all got together then—And then they started talking about being recognized in the Hall of Fame, and Sharon Roepke was at that first reunion and started, you know, stirring the pot for that. Well, they finally were able to do that and get the league recognized in the fall of 1988, and I was able to go to that reunion. And then, of course, they started the newsletter, and I wrote some little articles for the newsletter. And then when the Players Association organized, you know, I always paid dues so I could keep the newsletters coming. And I wasn’t able to go to any other reunions because most of them were held in the fall of the year when I teaching and coaching. But when I retired in 2003, I said, “Well, one of the things I want to do is go to another All-American reunion.” And that year the reunion was in Syracuse, New York, and one of the—And that’s where I met Jane Moffet, who was on the board of directors at the time, and Dolly White. (22:09) And Jane and Dolly encouraged me to see if I could get my thesis published because they had read it. And so one of the activities we did during that reunion was to go to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and see the women in baseball display there and some other things, of course. And so I talked to the research librarian there, Tim Wiles, and asked him if he knew any publishers that I could approach with my thesis. And he recommended a couple. And so I wrote to McFarland, and they agreed to publish it. So I did some additional research on the Players Association at that point because I was impressed with how much they had come together and some of the things they had accomplished. And so I added more information, and then, in the meantime, I’d been in contact with other players and so I incorporated some information from interviewing them. 5 �Fidler, Merrie Interviewer: “Because the book itself seems pretty comprehensive at least to the outsider. It’s certainly valuable when you’re trying to make a documentary about the subject. But yeah. Because you cover very carefully the history of the league in a lot of dimensions and what’s going on, and so it’s sort of the starting point for anybody doing research. Occasionally, some of my own students. Yeah, so we appreciate your having done that. Now there were some other things getting published. So Sharon Roepke—Did she have a book, too?” She had a small book—more pamphlet-sized—that she did on the history of the league. (24:02) But she didn’t do a big one. Her focus after the players were recognized by the Hall of Fame was in making baseball cards for the players, and so she started that effort. Interviewer: “Right. Okay, and then one of the, I guess, sons or nephews of one of the players made his own documentary back in the 80s.” Yeah, Kelly Candaele. Interviewer: “And that, in turn—Now was that what got Penny Marshall’s attention originally?” Yes, that was aired on PBS at least in the Los Angeles area and maybe nationally. I’m not for sure. But an assistant of Penny Marshall’s saw it, and Penny Marshall was a big Yankees fan also. Baseball fan. And she saw it and then decided that she wanted to make a movie of it. And that process went in a little bit of a roundabout way, but eventually she wound up as director of A League of Their Own. Interviewer: “Okay, and what kind of impact did the film have on the association?” Well, in one fell swoop, it informed the United States and Canada and the rest of the world as it went to those countries that there was a women’s professional baseball league that existed during World War II. And the film was pretty historically accurate. There were some scenes that were entertainment, but it was fairly historically accurate. And it was well-done. (26:04) And it captured the interest of anybody who went to see it. And it became one of those films that you go back and see again and again, and when it’s on TV, you watch it again. And so—And it’s still, you know—You ask somebody if they’ve seen A League of Their Own. They go, “Oh, yes, that was one of my favorite movies.” Interviewer: “Yeah, yeah, and even a lot of younger people have seen it, so it’s still—It has legs, if you will.” And I’ve heard that there’s a possibility they’ll start showing it again on the big screen. Interviewer: “Okay. Let’s see. Now did the film—Did that bring in more of the former players to the association?” 6 �Fidler, Merrie Well, what it did is it made people aware of them, and then they started talking about—to others that they had been players in that league. And yes, it was baseball, not softball. And then they began getting the recognition that they should have had much earlier. And people began seeking autographs. They were invited to Major League parks to throw out the first pitch. And people began having, you know—Local baseball and softball teams would ask them to come and speak. And so they began getting a lot of recognition and deservedly so. Interviewer: “All right. Now let’s—Going to back up a little bit now to kind of—sort of talk about the league’s history itself. Now you mentioned early on—You talked about Philip K. Wrigley. And can you kind of just—sort of tell the basic story there? What happened and how the league came about to begin with?” (28:07) Yes. World War I, of course, started in 1941. World War II. I’m sorry. World War II started in 1941, and Major Leaguers and Minor Leaguers started being drafted or signing up for the war. And, of course, Wrigley—Landis, the commissioner of baseball, made his appeal to President Roosevelt about if baseball should go forward or not, and the president said yes. He thought it was good for the country to have that kind of entertainment. But then, in the fall of 1942, the War Department was going to have a big manpower push in the summer of 1943, and they told the Major League Baseball owners this and that there was a good chance that Major League baseball would have to be postponed for that season at least. And Wrigley was a very—I can’t think of the word I want to use right now, but he was the type of businessman that was very creative. Entrepreneur. And he knew that if baseball was postponed that his Wrigley Field both in Los Angeles and in Chicago would be empty, and there were a lot of jobs there. And so he was—He wondered what he could use those fields for to keep them up and running. And so he had some people that he asked to research. And in the 30s especially and early 40s, softball was a very popular sport for both men and women, and the amateur softball associations at that time promoted women’s softball just the same as they did men’s. (30:25) They had city, district, regional, and national competitions for both, so the skill of the woman players was very good because, you know, those that went to the national playoffs, they had to be good to get there. And in the—at the end of the softball seasons, Wrigley had his field available for the championship games for the city. And so he knew softball was—And he would—It would fill the stands and for both the men and the women. And so the committee came up with—that softball would be a good alternative for baseball in the fields. And so he came up with the idea. “Well, let’s organize a women’s professional softball league.” And he originally was going to put it in the large baseball diamonds but decided for whatever reason to keep it in the smaller cities where war production was going on to provide recreation for the war workers. And his advertising agent, Arthur Meyerhoff, was one of the people he utilized to go to the cities that he had chosen and, you know, work with the businessmen there to back—help back the teams. (32:17) And so he started the All-American Girls Softball League. That was the title, but the rules of play were those of baseball because he thought that baseball was a better spectator sport than softball because there was more pitching. There was leading off and stealing. And although the basepaths and pitching distance were shorter than baseball’s regulation field, they used baseball bats, all players used gloves, which was not the case with softball at the time, there were nine fielders instead of ten, which was common to softball at the time, they could lead off and steal—he expanded the basepaths longer than those of softball so that leading off and stealing was allowed—and the pitching motion—the rules for the pitching motion in softball—in his softball 7 �Fidler, Merrie and in baseball were the same. And so from the beginning the league played baseball rules except for the underhand pitch. And it’s interesting to read the baseball pitching rules because they don’t stipulate how the ball has to be delivered. Interviewer: “And there have always been some underhand pitchers around, some of them very successful. So that’s within the framework of the rules.” Yes, that’s within the framework of the rules. So I like to point out that the league played baseball from the beginning, and as time progressed, they lengthened the basepaths and the pitching distance. And in 1948 the pitching style became overhand. (34:02) And the fans then recognized that. “Oh, yeah, this is baseball. It’s not softball.” Interviewer: “Now what size ball did they use when they started?” Well, they started out with a twelve-inch softball, and in a couple of years they reduced it to an eleven-inch. And then the next step was ten and three quarters, or maybe it was ten and a half. I guess it was ten and a half. And then ten-inch, and then they finally—The last year of play they used the regulation nine-inch ball. Interviewer: “Okay, now what was the motivation for making the ball size smaller?” Well, you know, I think probably to give the appearance more of baseball than of softball. And, of course, they started allowing a sidearm—a modified sidearm pitch in 1946, and I think that it was—the smaller ball was easier for the players to handle. Not quite as heavy to throw the longer distances and that sort of thing. I’m sure those all fit in. Interviewer: “Yeah. Now some of the pitchers talk about how it was just that much easier to handle. The ball got smaller. They could throw more kinds of pitches and do more things with it, too. But yeah, so instead it looks more like baseball then as they go forward. Okay, now as the—So they have the idea to go ahead and form a league, and Meyerhoff is going around and signed up some cities to start playing in. Now the Hollywood film spends a certain amount of time on the whole recruitment process and so forth and scouts wandering around far corners of the country to find talent in all sorts of odd places. How do they actually wind up recruiting their players?” (36:04) Well, Wrigley used his professional scouts, and they had a network. And they just started searching for the best players all over the country and in Canada, and, you know, probably they had some cow pasture encounters just like the movie had. They also had encounters with urban areas like Cincinatti, Chicago, Boston, Regina, Saskatchewan, you know, where there were big centers of softball. Detroit. Interviewer: “Was there a substantial group in California, too?” Yes, there was a group in California. They came a little bit later. I think they were the 1944 crop from the LA area. Softball. And I’d like to say about the softball—That title was only used the first year, and about midway through the season, Wrigley and Meyerhoff started advertising it as 8 �Fidler, Merrie girls’ baseball. And the newspaper men said, “Well, it’s not really baseball because it’s of the underhand pitch, and it’s not really softball because of, you know, the leading off and stealing and the use of baseball bats.” And so in—at the end of the 1943 season, they changed the name of the league to the All-American Girls Professional Ball League. So they didn’t have soft or base in it. (38:05) But when Meyerhoff took it over in 1945, at the end of that season, he said, “I’m going to change it to All-American Girls Baseball because that’s the rules we’re playing.” And so from that point on it was All-American Girls Baseball League. There was another name change in 1951 when the local team owners bought Meyerhoff out, and they changed the name to American Girls Baseball League. But by then in the communities it was so well-known as AllAmerican that the locals still referred to it and the newspaper articles still referred to it often as All-American League. Interviewer: “And that’s the name that the league itself—the association today still uses.” Well, the Players Association changed it a little bit because they incorporated the 1944—’45 title, and from then on the title under Meyerhoff and combined it to be the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which it actually was. It’s probably the most descriptive title because it was a truly professional league. Interviewer: “Plus, the kind of thing done to confuse poor documentary filmmakers who try to make things simpler. ‘What label did they use?’ Yeah. Okay, now just to fill in another piece of this then—People, I think, understand baseball versus softball. The softball is larger than a baseball. That’s pretty easy to see. You talked about baseball bats versus softball bats. If you’re not a softball player, what’s the difference?” The circumference at the end of the bat. Baseball is two and three quarters, and I don’t know exactly what softball is, but I’d say it’s probably not more than two and a quarter. I’d have to look that up for sure. Interviewer: “And how does that make a difference?” (40:12) Well, it’s the amount of surface of the bat that can contact the ball. In softball, you have the thinner bat but the larger ball, and in baseball, you have the smaller ball but the larger bat. So the idea is that you have—probably have roughly about the same surface contact one way or the other. Interviewer: “And then would the baseball bat then be heavier because it’s thicker?” Yes. Interviewer: “So you can hit the ball harder.” Yeah. And longer. I think they’re a little bit longer. I’m not for sure on that, though. I’d have to do a little research. Interviewer: “Okay, but they are fundamentally two different animals. But they picked one or the other. Okay. Let’s go back sort of to the recruitment. So they’re getting people out— 9 �Fidler, Merrie What proportion of them do you think were coming out of organized leagues as opposed to just random individual pickups?” I think nearly all of them came out of organized leagues because they had to have a high level of skill to be recruited by Wrigley’s scouts, and not only did they have to be—have a high level of skill, but they also had to present high quality of character in some fashion because he was— Wrigley was very image conscious in his publicity and promotion even of, you know, his gum, and he was very aware that publicity was very important to selling the product. (42:03) And so there are—Some folks have shared with me that they believe that if there were two players that had equal skill and one was more petite-looking, he chose—He had his scouts choose the more petite-looking ones. And if you look at the stature of the former players today, they’re all fairly short and, you know, sixty—seventy years ago, were probably all fairly thin and petite-looking. Not to say that there weren’t some taller players, too, especially in the later years, but you look at those first ones and look at their size and weight, and you get the idea. Well, you know, the petite women in skirted uniforms playing with a high level of skill. You know, it’s something that captured the fans and kept them coming back. Interviewer: “So softball players wore pants, right?” At that time, they emulated the men’s baseball uniforms, and most of the teams wore either baseball pants or, in the warmer climes, shorts and long socks. And so the skirted uniform was a novelty, but there again Wrigley was very image conscious. And the most acceptable women in sport in society at that time were figure skaters, tennis players, hockey players, and they all wore skirted uniforms. (44:09) Interviewer: “Okay. Hockey as in field rather than ice.” As in field hockey. Yeah, not ice hockey. Yeah, and they all wore skirted uniforms. And so he wanted his endeavor to be socially acceptable, and I think that was one of the factors that led to the creation of the skirted uniform. Interviewer: “Okay. Now along with the skirted uniform, one of the things that people tend to be aware of about the league was that when it started they had very elaborate rules and regulations regarding how the women dressed or wore their hair or had makeup. And there was actually a charm school run by Helena Rubinstein’s people in Chicago. I mean, so how much of that actually happened, and how long did it last?” Well, I think that the rules of character and dress and that sort of thing were not all that different than what was going on in colleges at the time. You know, if you talk to women who went to college in the 40s and 50s—They couldn’t leave their dorm rooms in pants, and they’ll tell you stories about—Well, they had a long skirt that they wore over their jeans to go to breakfast. You know, and then they’d go back to their room and get dressed for classes. Or wore over their pajamas to go to breakfast. So the rules that Wrigley established for appearance off the field were, again, rules that were the highest standard of the day. The charm school training was actually a Meyerhoff idea as a publicity thing, you know, and it probably was stimulated by the fact that a lot of the players emulated the walk and movement characteristics of the men’s stars. 10 �Fidler, Merrie (46:22) And so they wanted, again, to project the image of femininity, and one of the best ways to teach that was through charm school training. Like Rubinstein was very popular at that time period, and so they hired her and others later on. And that lasted—I’m not exactly sure how many years, but I know at least the first three or four. Interviewer: “Because I had—Because Anne O’Dowd, I think, started in about ‘49 or so. Talking about going to the spring training and having it there, and she said by then there was just a couple of teams—kind of smaller groups, not altogether in the same place—but two teams were together, and there was a charm school there. Others talked about going around the same time. So I was kind of surprised there was still something around that late, but did that just kind of depend on what the teams did?” Well, that may have been that particular team’s—one of their focuses that—Yes, that’s the image they wanted their team to project. And, again, new players coming in, you know, would—may have had more manly mannerisms of movement and that sort of thing, and they wanted to instruct them, you know. You know, in public this is how you walk and act and that sort of thing. (48:04) Interviewer: “Now when they’re first recruiting the players, how old were they?” Well, I think in 1943 there were some players that started out at age fifteen. In fact, I think Sophie Kurys was only fifteen. Well, I know Dottie Schroeder was only fifteen that year. And I’ve done a little research, and I think that that was—that they didn’t recruit players any younger than fifteen because of the child labor laws. But there was a clause in the child labor laws that individuals who were in a professional sport could be recruited at age fifteen. Well, Dolly White, I know—They first—She went to spring training in Pascagoula in 1946, and she was only fourteen at the time. And her mother talked to Max Carey who was running the camp at that time, and she asked about if she was good enough. And he said, “Well, we don’t want to take her now because she’s a little bit young.” And her mother said, “Well, I didn’t want you to take her. I just wanted to know if she was good enough.” And he said yes, and then he contacted her the following year. And she went to spring training in Cuba at age fifteen and was contracted to play with the league at that time. (50:01) Interviewer: “Okay. Now when the league started up, what kind of response did they get that first year or so?” Well, I think that first year with four teams they had over 176,000 spectators, so that was really pretty good. Interviewer: “And it was a shorter season than the modern Major League season is.” Right. They started at the end of May, and, I believe, finished right at the beginning of September. Like the first week of September. But they still played like a hundred games that season, and Chet Grant said, “You know, I went to the first game because I think it was—Marty McManus was coaching.” And he had been a Major League player. And he said, “I really went to see him.” But he said, “Once I saw them play and the skill that they had and all—” He said, “ I 11 �Fidler, Merrie was captivated, and I kept going back. And that’s how I became involved in becoming a manager of the league.” And that’s kind of the response you get from people you talk to or fans. They were captivated by the skill that they displayed. Interviewer: “And it did well enough that the league expanded after that.” Yes, and that started under Meyerhoff, I believe, in 1945. They expanded with two more teams, and then in a couple years it was two more. In ‘47 they had eight teams, and then in ‘48 they expanded to ten teams. And probably would have been better if they had kept to the eight teams because they diluted their talent pool a little bit. (52:10) Interviewer: “Yeah. Did they have problems recruiting new players?” Well, as the league transitioned from more like softball to more like baseball, they had trouble getting softball players skilled enough to make the transition to the longer basepaths and longer pitching distance. And then after 1948 dealing with overhand pitching instead of underhand pitching. And one of my theories is that if they had left the game where it was in 1948 or maybe 1949 with the basepaths and the pitching distance that it may have lasted longer because I think that going to the baseball distances that the men use was beyond the talent of the players at that time, especially those with the image of petite women. I mean, nowadays women who are— because they have it in the schools—Women who are taller and stronger, you know, can handle the longer basepaths and pitching distance a little better. But at that time they didn’t recruit that kind of a player, and probably those women who were taller and stronger at that time period didn’t have the training, you know, to get involved in the league. (54:07) Interviewer: “Okay. Now one of the things the league did at a certain point in its history was that they created a couple of sort of junior level teams that were traveling teams or barnstorming teams that would travel together around the country on buses, and they played each other in exhibition games as a means of preparing some of these new players to make that transition. So when were they actually doing that?” I believe that started in 1949, and actually there was a precursor to that in the Chicago area. Meyerhoff set up a minor league in the Chicago area. There were four teams, and they played— the same uniforms, the same rules—and they were younger players from the playground areas. And they signed contracts and everything just like the All-American League did. And then in 1948 they had ten teams, and the season was not as successful. And so they dropped back to eight teams. Well, they—Some of those players were not as skilled as the rest of the AllAmericans, but they had potential. And so Meyerhoff started off in 1949 with what he called rookie touring teams. There were two teams, and they traveled together on the same bus. And he scheduled them to play exhibition games through the South and up the East coast. And it was a training ground for them. And some of them during the season were called up from the touring team, were recommended by the manager, called up from the touring team to fill in for somebody who had been injured on one of the All-American teams. (56:12) And that—Those touring teams operated in 1949 and 1950, and during the 1950 season, they were especially blessed by being able to play in exhibition games in Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C and Yankees Stadium in New York. And so that was fun. 12 �Fidler, Merrie Interviewer: “Okay. Now why did that stop? Because they don’t—They’re not doing it at the end of the league.” Well, at the end of the 1950 season, the individual team directors decided that the money they were paying from gate receipts to management or to Meyerhoff for advertising and publicity and umpires and that sort of thing—that they could do it themselves for less money, and they’d make money on it instead of losing money on it because, you know, baseball—Even Major League Baseball owners lose money on baseball. And there were some factors in effect that reduced fan participation. And so they bought Meyerhoff out, and they felt that the rookie touring teams were too expensive. And so they cut off one of the player development programs that was there, and in my mind they started cutting off their nose to spite their face. (58:15) And another thing they did—And, you know, they were businessmen, and it’s hard to understand why except that money was getting tight. And there was a recession in the works, you know, nationally. But they didn’t seem to understand that the rookie touring team was publicity and promotion as well as player development. And another thing that they cut fairly dramatically was the general publicity program that Meyerhoff had set in place. And so to me that was another factor that, you know— They whittled off a little more of their nose to spite their face. And so that’s why that transpired. Interviewer: “Okay. Now kind of backtracking into another piece of this—We’ve talked some about, you know, who the players were and where they came from and what kind of experience or talent—skills and stuff they had when they came in. Now the spring training for the league changed a lot depending on what year you were in. So the first year that was Wrigley Field or in Chicago someplace else?” No, it was at—The first year was in Wrigley Field in Chicago. Well, they had whittled down the number of players pretty much with tryout schools in urban areas like Cincinatti and Regina and Chicago and Detroit and wherever else they got players from. (1:00:00) And then in ‘44 I believe it was in Peru, Illinois. And one of the unique things about the league is that they took all of the players for all of the teams and had spring training together, and then instead of the team directors picking players, the league had an allocation committee that got together. And it included the managers and Meyerhoff and some of the administrative people, and they tried to delegate players to teams on an equal skill basis. So if they had four strong first basemen, that was good. They could put them around. But if they had two strong first basemen—second basemen and two weak ones, then they tried to say, “Okay, this team has so many strong players. We’ll give them one of the weaker second basemen in order to even out the competitive level of all four teams or all eight teams as the case may be.” And, in theory, that was good. Interviewer: “Now once a player was assigned to a team, did it become kind of customary to keep a lot of those same players from one year to the next? They would move some periodically.” Yeah. I think each team tried to keep a core of players that were the most skilled and became fan favorites like, I’m sure, Dorothy Kamenshek in Rockford. (1:02:15) You know, she was a Rockford Peach her whole career in the league, and I suspect that Rockford had dibs on her, you know, kind of thing. And they also had kind of a unique system of—If a particular regular player 13 �Fidler, Merrie on a team got injured or ill or pregnant, you know, and couldn’t play for a period of time, that they would borrow a substitute from another team in order to fill in that position. Like, for instance, a first baseman on another team—a substitute first baseman on another team might be almost comparable to the starter on this team, and so they’d pull her over and have her play until the other player could come back or just keep her, depending. Because everything was operated by a central office instead of by individual team offices. And so that’s how they dealt with that. Interviewer: “Okay. Now what determined where the league had spring training? Because they were in all sorts of odd places. Pascagoula, Mississippi, Opa-Locka, Florida, Cuba. I mean, what was at work there?” You know, I don’t know except that after the war—During the war, they had to train in fairly local centers because of gas and rubber rationing. (1:04:08) There was no outside transportation. Once the war was over, 1946 was the first spring training where they all went to Pascagoula, and my feeling is that prices were cheaper in the South than, say, in the Chicago area. And in Pascagoula, they utilized an abandoned Navy base for rooms and, you know, food. And they had fields there. Plenty of field space. And they could have everybody together and have spring training in the South like the big leagues did. You know, I think that was probably part of it. And it was, you know, a novelty and might be a recruiting tool, you know, to say, “Oh, we’re going to hold spring training in the South this year.” You know, as opposed to Regina, Saskatchewan. Where it would be warmer and more pleasant and that sort of thing. The Cuba trip, I really believe, was done through connections with Branch Rickey. And, of course, ‘47 was the first year that Jackie Robinson could play, and they didn’t want to go to the South with him because they knew there would be problems because of segregation, integration, and that sort of thing. And so the Dodgers went to Cuba. Well, Branch Rickey and Philip Wrigley, you know, had joined together to start the league, and then there was Max Carey who was a good friend of Branch Rickey. (1:06:07) And I think they kind of, you know, collaborated on, you know, that spring training in Cuba even with the flight expenses would be cheaper than in the South. And they had good facilities. They had good hotels. And, you know, it was—The Dodgers were going to be there, and the All-Americans could follow. And they captured the fans there in Cuba who I have since learned that—and I forget who the researcher—who the newspaper guy was—but he was a black man, and he said he went to Cuba when the Dodgers did to follow Jackie Robinson and reported back to his paper that he knew that the Cubans were very religious, and he found out that baseball was their religion. And so it was natural for the Cuban baseball public to come out and watch the girls play. And, in fact, I know that Max Carey worked with a gentleman from Cuba to train some Cuban woman players in the All-American game before the All-Americans got there so that they could have a game together. And so that was the first exposure of Cuban women to the All-American baseball, and, in fact, they had a Cuban woman player join the AllAmerican League, come back to play with the team, but she was too homesick and couldn’t stay. Vialat was her last name. (1:08:05) And that was the beginning of the league kind of drafting Cuban players to play in the league. Interviewer: “Okay, because there were a number of Cubans who wound up playing for them.” Yes. 14 �Fidler, Merrie Interviewer: “Okay. Now after the Cuba trip, they—or at least some of them also did a kind of Latin American tour. Central America, South America. At least around the Caribbean. When was that, and how did that work?” Okay. After the 1947 season, Meyerhoff took a team of players to Cuba, and they did exhibition games there. And that was pretty successful. And along the way—And I’m not exactly sure when Meyerhoff conceived this, but he conceived of starting an international girls’ baseball league to include Cuba and Puerto Rico. And I think it built in his brain, you know. “Well, why don’t we go to Latin America and do some exhibition games and see what we come up with? And maybe it will be very lucrative.” Because fans would come to see a novelty like that, and there were baseball people and teams there and all. And it’s my theory that he went to cities in Guatemala and those Central American countries—and Venezuela and Puerto Rico—where Wrigley had gum enterprises going. (1:10:01) And he did that in the winter of 1949. That particular trip was from February—the month of February and part of March in the winter of 1949. And there’s a—At the South Bend History Museum, there’s a folder of stuff that Annabelle Lee contributed, and there’s a picture of the All-Americans playing against a Puerto Rican team. And the Puerto Rican team has the same style uniform as the All-American league, so the—And that was probably done in advance of the All-Americans getting there with the style of uniform and the women playing. And, you know, I don’t know. One of my bucket list things is to someday go to Cuba and Puerto Rico and go through the library newspapers and, you know, see if I can find out if there were women’s leagues there before the All-Americans got there or if they were developed just prior to the All-Americans getting there to play. But I know that they— Most of the tour—Central and South America—were All-American players and Cuban players playing against each other. Exhibition games. There was a mention somewhere in Venezuela of—that the fans really turned out when the Venezuelan team played against the All-Americans. And I know that the Puerto Rican teams played against the All-Americans, and, of course, in Cuba they had Cuban teams playing against the All-Americans. (1:12:03) Interviewer: “Okay. Now how successful was the Latin American tour? Were there problems with it?” There were some problems with it. Apparently, the Cuban representative who traveled with the team was not totally honest about some of the transportation costs. And so what happened was he charged management system more than he spent, which meant that Meyerhoff then had to put forth more money to pay for the whole thing. And he wasn’t going to do that by himself, so he charged the team managers to kick in to pay the players because the players said, “Well, we’re not going to play if you don’t pay us. We’re not going to play during the regular season if you don’t pay us.” And that was some of the star players in the league. So they helped to pay—The team directors helped to pay Meyerhoff off, but they were not happy about it. And that was probably part of the beginning of the conflict between management and team directors. Interviewer: “Okay. Now did the whole league go on the Latin American tour or just parts of it?” 15 �Fidler, Merrie No, just selected players, and they were—They also used some Cuban players, and so what they did was they allocated the players to the two teams with some All-Americans and some Cubans so that the teams were as even as possible so when the fans went to see them, you know, there wasn’t blowouts type of thing. (1:14:06) But it was basically All-Americans and Cuban players. Interviewer: “Now after Meyerhoff was out of the picture, did the teams kind of go to holding more local-wise spring training in different places, or what happened?” Yeah. That was the beginning of teams pairing up and going to a location to have their spring trainings together and doing their exhibitions back to their home cities together. I know there was a year when a couple of teams went to North Carolina, and a couple went to lower Illinois, and a couple went to upstate New York or something like that so that they got exposure. But it wasn’t as centralized. The administration wasn’t as centralized as it had been before. Interviewer: “Right. Okay. Let’s see. Now how long did players tend to stay in the league, or what range do we see?” You know, I really haven’t looked at that for the players. That would be a good thing to do. To go to the website and go through all of the players and find out how many years they played. The stars played longer, but some only played a year or two. One of the things that affected the length that players could play was their ability to adjust to the longer pitching distances if they were pitchers. The change in pitching style. I mean, there aren’t a whole lot of players that can change from being an outstanding underhand pitcher to an outstanding overhand pitcher. (1:16:00) There were a few. But that was a factor for pitchers. But also, you know, for catchers, throwing a longer distance to second base was a factor. So as the league expanded the basepaths and pitching distance, it affected whether a player could make it or not. And some of the early pitchers, I know, when—Even like from ‘43 to ‘44, I think there was a change in the distance. A couple of feet of the pitching distance. And some of the pitchers couldn’t adjust to that, and so they didn’t play anymore. Interviewer: “All right, and there were occasional people like Jean Faut. And I suppose she’s kind of exceptional. She was really happy to go to a full overhand because—And some of them who had learned kind of on their own or individually were throwing overhand because that was what the boys did, which would have helped them.” Right, and some of the outfielders with stronger arms. They trained them to become pitchers. Like Rose Gacioch. You know, she’d been an outstanding outfielder, and as she got older, you know, she still wanted to play. And they needed overhand pitchers, and so there were quite a few outfielders that turned into pitchers. Helen Nordquist was one, you know. Interviewer: “Okay. All right. Where did the managers come from?” Well, you know, Wrigley was very smart. I think he knew that people would come out to see Major League managers if they wouldn’t initially come out to watch woman baseball players. And, you know, and some of those managers during the war may have needed a job. Some of those former Major Leaguers may have needed a job, and he knew them, knew their character, 16 �Fidler, Merrie and so solicited them to be managers. And some of the early managers like Johnny Gottselig— He was a Chicago Blackhawk. (1:18:12) Wrigley knew him. He knew that he had coached women’s softball teams up in Saskatchewan and been successful. And so that’s how he got involved. Of course, it was after the hockey season. Interviewer: “Okay, and at what point did he bring in Jimmie Foxx?” Well, Jimmie Foxx actually came in in 1951, and that was after the Wrigley-Meyerhoff era. And I should say here that Meyerhoff continued the standards and policies that Wrigley had started with. He expanded a little bit on the field and ball dimensions, but everything else was pretty much as Wrigley had set it up. The independent team owners—When they took over in 1951, they kind of dropped off on some things, especially like the publicity, but, you know, they—I think they too recognized that having a Major League manager was an advantage. And I suspect that somebody in Fort Wayne had connections with Jimmie Foxx, and he had just recently retired. Either that or—I’d have to go back. Whether he’d recently retired or recently been inducted in the Hall of Fame. Anyway, they recruited him to manage in the league, and he managed for a couple years. Interviewer: “Yeah. I seem to recall something a few years back about complaints that Jimmie Foxx wasn’t in the Hall of Fame. He had five hundred home runs and wasn’t there.” (1:20:00) No, he’s there now. Interviewer: “Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Because I guess one of the things is the assumption like with the Penny Marshall film. The assumption is that Tom Hanks’s character, Jimmy Dugan, is sort of loosely modeled after Jimmie Foxx except for the little thing where Jimmie Foxx came in a lot later. Because I think that may be an assumption that people might have. That he’s not one of the original managers.” No. No, he wasn’t. And that’s another thing that’s a little bit misleading about the film is that it gives the impression that the league started with overhand pitching the first year. You know, which is—But there again, for the purposes of the film, they wanted everybody to know that it was baseball, not softball. And they didn’t have time to cover all of the details, but yeah, Jimmie wasn’t one of the first managers. Interviewer: “Okay. Well, the players in their interviews—In their interviews, they talk about different managers and so forth, and one who keeps popping up a lot is Bill Allington. So who was he, or what was his background?” Well, Bill Allington was a Minor League player. And I’m not sure if he managed any men’s teams in southern California, but he managed women’s softball in southern California. And he was also involved in acting in some of the early baseball films. And so he kind of had a couple of jobs, I guess, but he loved baseball. I think it was Kammie that told me that she felt if Bill’s head was cracked open, baseballs would roll out, you know. And he was a stickler for his players knowing the rules, and he’d quiz them on bus trips. (1:22:00) They said that there was always 17 �Fidler, Merrie quizzing going on on the bus trips. He’d say, “Kamenshek, if a fly ball is hit to an infielder with a runner on first base, is that infield fly rule or not?” You know, that kind of thing. And I think that’s part of why he was such a successful manager because his players knew the rules on the field, and they reacted instinctively to situations that those who weren’t as up on the rules might not have done. And Kammie said that after practices he took her aside. And he would work with any of the players after practice that wanted to. And she wanted to improve her bunting. And so he put handkerchiefs down on the ground in front of home plate and threw pitches at her and had her work at bunting to the handkerchiefs. And one of the pitchers—I don’t remember exactly who right now, but she said that that was one of the problems with Kammie. She could bunt that ball anyplace she wanted to. Interviewer: “All right. Now when the league folded, he kind of kept going in a form for the next couple years. He created his own traveling team. So can you talk about that?” Well, and there again, I think he recognized how skilled these women were, and he was baseball man through and through. And he didn’t want to give up. (1:24:00) And so he put together a team of players who were willing. He tried to recruit others who said, “No, I’ve got to go to college this year,” or, “I got to get a real job,” or, “No, I’m getting married.” Or something of that nature. But he put together a talented crew of players and barnstormed with them around the Midwest and even down into the South and along the East Coast. And I think he hoped that he could—And they played against men’s teams because there weren’t that many talented women’s teams. And they exchanged batteries so that the men were throwing, you know, to the men batters, and the women were throwing to the women batters. And I guess it was pretty good entertainment. And he did that for three years. ‘55 through ‘58. And then, I guess, it didn’t become as lucrative anymore, or it didn’t have enough players who were willing to go with him anymore or something of that nature. Interviewer: “And then women’s baseball kind of—to a large degree disappears. And, I mean, there are, today, women playing baseball in various organized fashion and efforts to kind of have more of them do it. But the league itself—Most people really didn’t know anything about, you know—Still are people occasionally now who didn’t know. And the film was kind of a revelation to a lot of them. I guess, sort of the question comes up on some level. You know, were these women, you know, pioneers in sports, or did they do things that had a lasting impact? Because you could argue on the one hand that, well, they kind of went away and then women’s sports got going separately later. But is there more to it than that?” (1:26:09) Well, I think in the Midwest where the teams played—I think that had an impact on at least some of the populace. Ruth Davis, for instance, was batgirl for the South Bend Blue Sox, and she mentioned that the women playing baseball, which—Even at that time women weren’t supposed to be playing baseball. That that expanded her view that, well, if women can play baseball, women can do anything else they want. And that motivated her to seek out following her interests in college and university. There was a fan—shoot, her name escapes me right now— who went to the Grand Rapids Chicks games and became a professor at one of the New York universities. Columbia University, I think. And she knew—And you have to keep in mind that the Division for Girls’ and Women’s Sports in education at the time—Their philosophy was, 18 �Fidler, Merrie “Yes, we want girls to play, but we want all girls to play, and we don’t want to focus on just the skilled. We want, you know, everybody to have an opportunity to play.” Which is wonderful. Wonderful philosophy. (1:28:01) But it didn’t provide those highly skilled girls with the opportunity to participate in highly skilled competition like the boys had in school and colleges. But this lady became—obtained a doctorate in physical education, and she knew from watching the Grand Rapids Chicks that women could develop high level skills and that high level competition was a good thing for women. And she also recognized that girls and women were paying the same fees in college, which included intercollegiate sports that they didn’t have an opportunity for. And so she was a moving force in the Division for Girls’ and Women’s Sports to change the focus to allow women to have interscholastic and intercollegiate sport. And they had strict rules, but at least they still had the opportunity to play. And so the individual teams, I believe, had an effect on the people in the local populaces to accept women playing highly skilled competition with each other. Interviewer: “Okay. I guess one thing that I’ve observed in just interviewing and getting to know a lot of the players is that they went on often to do pretty remarkable things, and a fair number of them wind up being educators and even professionals in physical education. And some of them were pretty much in the trenches to help promote Title IX or help enforce it when it came in. And so they’re going out with an understanding of what they can do and what women can do and in a lot of cases, whether it’s at a high school level or a college level or whatever, encourage women to do it. So that piece of it certainly goes there. So there’s not a direct, linear sort of descent from this league to the WNBA or something like that, but a lot of those things were possible because of groundwork that does in part come out of this.” (1:30:24) Yeah. I think there’s a connection, like you say, especially with those who went on to college and coached. And, you know, when Title IX was in the works, they said, “Yes. Let’s do that.” And they did provide some of the groundwork for it because of their experience and how satisfying playing that high level competition can be. And yeah, Dolly White, for instance— Dolly Brumfield White—she would not have been able to go to college without the money she earned playing professional baseball. She came from a lower class, Southern family. Just her father worked as a mechanic. Her mother did some clerical work later. But basically she grew up, you know, with a single parent providing for the family of two girls and a boy. And she told me that if there was to be college for anybody, it would have been the boy. And she was really— got upset at times with her father because the boy was always first. She was the oldest, but when it came to having a car, the boy got the car first. Type of thing. (1:32:00) And so if she hadn’t earned the money she earned playing professional baseball, she would never have been able to go to college. And she went to college, majored in physical education, became a recreation specialist, and did a great deal to educate people in the field of recreation who then went out to become heads of recreational parks in Alabama and Arkansas and in that area where she taught. And so, yeah, I think, you know, individually those women had influences. And like Lou Stone Richards—She married and had a family and coached for boys’ little league teams. Well, Andrew Card was one of those little league players, and he became George Bush’s Chief of Staff. You know, so it’s fun to see those influences. 19 �Fidler, Merrie Interviewer: “Well, even today long afterward the personalities of these women kind of still stand out. They really are a pretty remarkable bunch of people, and you’ve done them a great service by going and recording their history. And it’s kind of up to all of us, I guess, now to make sure that people remember this and give them the credit they deserve.” Yeah. It was a unique thing, and I think—You know, my hope and, I think, the hope of a number of the players at least is that there comes a situation in the not too distant future where young women will again have the opportunity to play professional baseball in their own league. (1:34:08) They shouldn’t have to play with or against men. You know, they should have their own league and their own competition among—excellent competition among themselves. Not that it would be objectionable to having individual highly skilled, highly capable women play on a men’s team. But that would not include the majority of highly skilled woman players. Interviewer: “And in other sports, they’re already doing it.” Yes. Like in basketball. They have a women’s professional basketball league, you know, and they’re not asked to compete against bigger, stronger men. And I think that’s the way it should be for baseball, too. And, you know, there’s things in the works. That hopefully it will happen. Interviewer: “All right. I’d just like to close out here by thanking you for taking the time and talking to me about all this.” Oh, my pleasure. (01:35:18) 20 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_FidlerM1969BB Title A name given to the resource Fidler, Merrie (Interview transcript and video), 2016 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fidler, Merrie Description An account of the resource Merrie Fidler was born in Weed, California, on October 31, 1943. She attended community college in the Redding area, then a Bible college in Los Angeles before dropping out of school and working as a secretary in the physical education department at UC – Davis. Merrie completed her bachelor’s degree and got her teaching credentials, then pursued a master’s degree at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. During her master work, she took a course on American women in sports and discovered the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Over the course of several years she interviewed former players and managers and eventually completed her thesis, The Development & Decline of the All-American Girls Baseball League. She went on to contact more players and became part of the League’s association and attended the reunions. Merrie is now the association’s historian and a contributor to its newsletter. Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Veterans Video recordings Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--California Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-10-22 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fff4db0931b72f7532359498cdb682a4.m4v 72ed15cc84d8bda66515f1060fc06225 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/428f12781a3bd30360554b6dce3001a6.pdf 9d94cfc8650e7efc9c87ceb92ddb1a91 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW ELMA WEISS Women in Baseball Born: Columbus, Ohio Resides: Phoenix, Arizona Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 7, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, January 4, 2011 Interviewer: “Now Elma, can you begin by giving us a little bit of background on yourself?” Yes, I was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1923 and we’ll skip the early years. Interviewer: “I would like to ask a little bit about the early years. What did your family do for a living in those days?” Well, originally farmers, everybody was a farmer in that era and he was an electrician. He had a lot of work with professional buildings. He wired hospitals and businesses and part of the Ohio State University stadium because we lived in Columbus just a short distance from the campus. 55:12 Interviewer: “Did you grow up in Columbus and go to school there?” Yes, I grew up and went to school there and started at Ohio State University, and I completed three years and then the war changed people’s lived dramatically, as you know, and we had we had a shortage of teachers, but the rule at that time was, if you had completed three years of college and you could get a principal to hire you, you could teach school, so that’s what I did. After my third year I went to Port Clinton, Ohio, and taught high school for a year and then I was supposed to go back and finish, but I went back, but the urge, the desire to be patriotic again—instead of finishing my senior year I joined the navy. 1 �Interviewer: “Why did you choose the navy as opposed to another branch of the service?” 56:00 This is going to sound funny, but it was strictly because I didn’t like the khaki uniforms. I liked the navy blue. Interviewer: “You are not the first WAVE to tell us that. That they had better uniforms. Is that right? Interviewer: “So you did that and once you signed up what—where did they send you for training?” For the navy, do you mean? Interviewer: “Yes” All of us went to New York at the time and we spent—I think it was four months or six weeks, it was six weeks, in basic training and my major was in physical education, so I had another three months in New York City and then eventually I ended up in Oakland, California. Interviewer: “While you were going through basic training and then more specialized training, tell us a little bit about what that was like. In basic training, what do they have the women do?” 56:56 Well, they were trying to get us familiar with navy terms and so forth, and we had to learn that the floor was the deck and the stairs were ladders and so forth, so we spoke in navy terms and we were taught to recognize and identify airplanes and ships and so forth. Just so we could—we didn’t expect to get aboard a ship, and of course we didn’t, but we knew all the navy lingo and that’s the way they wanted it. 2 �Interviewer: “Did they teach you discipline and all that kind of thing?” Oh yes, we were under the same rules. I went home for Christmas at one time and we were snowed in on the train coming back and in the navy they don’t care about a snowstorm. What happens if you miss your ship? The war might hinge on you making your ship, so we had to serve what they call “a captain’s mast” and you had to work cleaning the decks or something of that nature. 57:54 They treated us like the young men. Interviewer: “Did they give you a lot of physical training and exercise?” No, I already had that actually, at the university, but we did go through—they called it PT and we did some exercises and swimming. Interviewer: “What year was this when you joined the navy?” It was in 1943, in 1943 I was still in school at that time, so we covered the summer and I went in the fall of 1943 and served in 1944 and was discharged at the end of 1945. Interviewer: ‘What did your physical education background—how did that affect your assignment? You mentioned you had been majoring in that, so they had you go to a particular kind of training and you stayed in New York for three or four months and what were you doing at that time?” Well, they called it Specialist I Training and I guess it’s what a drill sergeant would do more or less and when I was a student I was a student company commander and I was in charge of six sections of forty girls each. 59:05 I recall one day we mustered out in front to go to breakfast and one—she was a specialist I guess, and she called out the window that she overslept and I was standing down there and we were all standing at parade rest, two hundred girls there, and she said, “can you get them to the mess hall?” I called the 3 �company and turned them around and marched them down the street and bleeped them to the right and to the mess hall, and I was so proud of myself and I was so proud of myself as a youngster doing that, really. Interviewer: “Now, were most of the women training about the same age?” I suppose they were, you had to be twenty-one to go in—well I was, let’s see—you had to be twenty-one to go in the navy, which is one reason I didn’t go in earlier. I wasn’t that old yet. 59:54 Interviewer: “Well, the men were going into the navy at seventeen and eighteen.” But not the women Interviewer: “Not the women, alright, so basically you’re training to train other people.” That’s pretty much the size of it, yeah. The S really stood for shore patrol for the men, but we ended up being in charge of barracks. Interviewer: “So, you go out to Oakland, California, now what was there?” Well, the WAVE barracks were in the heart of town and what we had to do, we were called “ship’s company” because we didn’t go, but every morning buses would come in, and several hundred girls would get on the buses and they would be taken out to one of the navy stations, but “ship’s company”, there were about twenty of us, stayed there and I arranged recreation for them by buying books for the rec room I guess, and records and I painted a badminton court and I managed a softball team and things of that nature for the girls. 0:56 Interviewer: “All right, what do you think was the most interesting aspect of that job?” 4 �Well, I enjoyed—I took leather craft the year before—see, when I’d gone out there I couldn’t get in because I was a day late at the university, so I was out there and all I had was about seventy five dollars and I came from Ohio of course, and didn’t have enough money to go back home and didn’t know—I said, “don’t panic”, and I had training in recreation, so I went down to the city recreation department to see if they would hire me and they said, “well, you’re in luck because we’re just doing Civil Service training now and you can take the test”, so I took the test the next day, as a matter of fact, and the rule in Civil Service was that whoever got the top scores had to get the top jobs, so they had to hire me. There was a woman who had taught at the Golden Gate Recreation Center down there and she was much better and knew her job and they wanted to keep her too, so they had to create a job for me. 1:58 I ended up working at playgrounds quite a bit for a year until I was eligible to go to the university. Interviewer: “That was after the naval service then?” No, this was—let’s see, I’m getting mixed up on dates. It was after the naval service, but before the baseball. Interviewer: “All right, we were talking about the naval service itself and I asked what was the most interesting part of that job.” Well, I use to play a trumpet years ago and I recall one time we were raising the flag on our post and several officers came out and I practiced raising the reveille in the morning and took some pictures of that and that was kind of thrilling and exciting too because I wasn’t a top trumpet player. I was kind of exciting with all the people standing around saluting and watching the flag go us and here I was struggling with that bugle. 2:59 that was interesting and then we had a softball team and the navy girls played the coast guard 5 �and marine women’s group and we sang in a chorus and we went out to San Quentin one time just to sing for the prisoners, so there were recreation type of things you know. Interviewer: “Did you feel like you were doing something useful for the war effort or making a contribution?” Well, I suppose so, I didn’t really think about the war in essence, I just did the job that I was supposed to do and we were supposed to take care of the women. They trained me in leather craft during my work in the recreation department there in the city of Oakland, and I ended up teaching the craft to women in the Golden Gate Community Center. That was fun because that was strictly afterwards, but I had learned that in the navy and that was good because that was something they could really gain from. We made wallets and belts and purses and things like that. 4:02 Interviewer: “So, you had kind of a direct connection between the naval career and that work in the Civil Service that you did afterward. It all kind of fit together and they all grew out of the training that you already had in college.” You’re exactly right, the physical education and the actions there and the recreation things that I did. Interviewer: “All right, now we’re going to go back up a little bit, going back again to being a kid, how did you start playing sports?” Well, we lived near a playground and it was just about a block away, a city municipal playground, and every summer when school was out we were at the playground. They had fifteen softball diamonds there and every summer they had the industrial leagues and church leagues and other leagues there and I used to go down there all the time and sell pop for five cents to—carry a bucket with twelve bottles of coke and holler, “ice cold pop 6 �five cents”, and they would stop the ball game, and so I worked in the summer selling pop to the ball players. 5:00 In the daytime when the diamonds weren’t used , we used them and we played different, other playgrounds.. Interviewer: “Who is “we”, who were you playing with?” Well, mostly local boys and girls that I knew and who were my age level. It was from about the—well, I started doing that when I was in the first or second grade when I started playing softball, but more in the ninth grade and on into high school. Interviewer: “There were other girls beside you who were playing?” Yes and we played other local playgrounds and eventually we played night ball for a shoe company, J.K. Shoe Company, and we were hired to work at the shoe company because we played softball, so every summer we did that and we had a pretty fair team. Interviewer: “By this time you’re getting specifically women’s teams?” Women’s softball teams 5:52 Interviewer: “So, you’re actually involved in that at that time. Then did you continue to play when you went on to college?” Yes, but not so much. You know in those days women were supposed to behave differently and we were told not to play on a team that was coached by a man. That’s what they told us at Ohio State, so we—but I loved softball so much that I thought what I do in the summer is my own business as long as I make my grade in the winter, so I played for local teams that were coached by men and then we went to state tournaments and so forth, so we had pretty fair teams. Interviewer: “Did you go out of state when you were playing softball or did you stay in the state?” 7 �It was all state wide, but we went to state tournaments up around Elyria and Toledo and Cleveland, up that way. 6:41 Interviewer: “How did you wind up signing with the All American Girls Professional Baseball league?” Well, I was out in California at the University of California Berkley working on my master’s degree in 1948 and I was playing at the time with some softball players in Alameda, California and they were quite famous because they were the world champions. I knew two girls out there that had been picked to be members of the All American League and they told me about it and they told me that Bill Allington was a scout and coach and he was trying people out, so I got a hold of him and he tried me out and I was an outfielder, so he hit a lot of fly balls to see if I could catch and checked my arm out to see if I could throw and whether I could run and the next thing I knew I was in Peoria, Illinois. I was sent there to play with the Red Wings. Interviewer: “What year was that?” That would be 1948 and that was a little bit difficult for me because, well, I was older then, I was twenty five and many of the girls played ball when they were fifteen years old, but it was a little different for me and I sort of suspected that maybe they were going to make a chaperone out of me because I had the college credits and all of that, but I played there and enjoyed it very, very much. 8:03 Interviewer: “Did they have you play all outfield positions?” I was outfield and I could play any of them. The trouble is, the college wasn’t out until June and they started their spring training in April and by the time I got there they had finished their spring training and were well into the season, so I’d of had to be a pretty 8 �fair player in order to break into the line-up, so I did a lot of things, I pitched batting practice, and participated and they taught me different things. The game was different from softball, so it took me a while to learn, so one time at the end of that first season the coach said, “you’re going to start tonight. You’re going to play right field and you’re going to play the whole game”. Oh boy, I thought this was just great, so I played the game and played well. I made a couple double plays, which I figured in catching the ball and throwing the runner in off base. I thought, “Now I can show them what I can do”. This proves, in those days professional ball was the same for the women as it was for the men and it is a business. 9:08 I didn’t know it, but the next day I was shipped out to Rockford, and he let me play the game because he knew I was going to be leaving the next day, so it’s a business, you go wherever they want you. Interviewer: “All right, when you got to Rockford did you get a chance to play any more?” Well, there were two weeks left in the season, so then I went home and worked there and the next year instead of going back to Rockford they had me on the tour. They were trying to popularize the league in the south and we played in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana, all the way down there for the season. Getting close to the end of the season my back was hurting me quite a bit, so when I went home I just never went back to the league. 9:51 Interviewer: “Because of the way you joined the league, coming in in mid-season and kind of moving around a lot, and maybe also the fact that you were a little bit older, did they tell you much in the way of what kind of rules you had to follow and that kind of thing?” 9 �Well, they didn’t because they were well into their training, but I learned from the other girls everything that I had to know and they had their rules, which we had to follow, as you well know. Interviewer: “So, you had to wear the skirts and so forth and all that kind of thing.” The nice thing about the league—the fact was they just accept all the girls. If you play one day, one week, one month, one year or ten years, you’re part of the family more or less. That is the thing that has been so good because over all these years we’ve all maintained a relationship with each other and I think that’s a wonderful thing. I think we did a lot really. 10:50 I was teaching school when Title IX came in and women just didn’t do things in those days and I was in on a lot of this changing and I think it was fascinating business. We didn’t know we were pioneers until the movie was made and the cards were made and we didn’t know this. Interviewer: “When they got to the point where they were making the movie were you connected with that or did you participate?” I was teaching school again and I couldn’t go. You know that’s—that was a good thing, but it also kept me from doing other things. Interviewer: “How long did you teach?” As a whole now, I’ve taught over thirty years. I have a degree from Ohio State and from the university in Berkeley, California and a doctorate from Arizona State University. Interviewer: “And did you take the doctorate also in physical education?” Yes Interviewer: “And have you taught at the university level as well?” 10 �Yes, it was almost all—I finished my last twenty-five years at Phoenix College, which is a two-year community college. 11:51 Interviewer: “Did you do coaching while you were there too?” Yes, we had to coach and that was another thing, we had intramurals and we had sports day, but women coaches were not paid, we just had to do these things, but we never got paid, we just had straight teaching jobs. We got paid for teaching and we went through all of that, we went through all the different sports and then Title IX came along and the men gave us a lot of static because they thought they were going to lose some money. That the women were going to get the scholarships and some of the money, so we had all kinds of wars with the men’s departments. It was just true over all the universities at that time and I think Title IX was—and thing like our league here being pioneers and all that, I think they were some of the best things that ever happened for women in sports and to live in that era was a very interesting thing for me. 12:47 Interviewer: “And you were really in a position to watch those changes.” Yes, I saw all those, I was department chairman when the money came in and we hired volleyball players, basketball players and I coached a softball team in college then. Interviewer: “Let’s go back to the playing days. Tell us a little bit about life with the traveling teams. How did that work?” Well, when I was with Peoria, with the Red Wings, we had so many games away from home and we were assigned by the chaperone, we had roommates in the hotels and we were given per diem money. When we were at our home base we had a family that we lived with and I guess maybe we were home about a week at a time and then we would go off on the different trips, so that was interesting. The second year when I was 11 �traveling in the south and it was kind of rugged. 13:43 They had the two teams, we traveled on one bus and I remember we had one more player than we had seats, so we alternated and walked up and down the aisle. When it was time to stop somewhere they had two rooms in a hotel and we all showered in those two rooms and we were off to a game every night, but when you’re young you can do a lot of things. Interviewer: “Because you were a little bit older, did you kind of fall into a little bit of a chaperone role too?” No, but after the end of my two years, they had never said this to me, but I kind of suspected that might have been why they kept me on because I was not playing regularly. As a matter of fact, I only played about seventeen games in those—if you take both of the summers, the summers were only two months long because of teaching, and to play seventeen games in four months was, I guess, all I could hope for, and that’s the reason I suspected maybe they had another plan for me. 14:42 Interviewer: “Aside from that game toward the end of that first season when you kind of got in there and played the whole game and made a couple double plays, were there other games when you were out there playing, that stand out in your memory?” Well, I was out there practicing certainly as hard as the rest of them and learning all the tricks and everything they were doing. I might have been called in for a pinch hitter or something of that sort, but no, whether you were home or you were on the road, you had to get there hours before the game started and of course I did the same routines all the other girls did as though I was going into the game, but most of the games I spent on the bench. 12 �Interviewer: “All right, who did you have managing you when you were going around on the tour?” Schrall, Leo Schrall that was his name, yeah, and we had a good team and there are some very famous girls that played. 15:42 Now, Twila Shively, and we had—let’s see, who were some of the others, these manes are—Terry Donahue, who was well known and Kate Vonderau, who was a catcher. That one game I played before I was sent out, and the reason I thought I was going to stay—I was playing out in the field and there was a long low fly that I had to run and reach down to catch and I just saw the runner starting in from third, so I just heaved it toward the catcher. We’re taught to bounce it in if you’re coming from center field and one bounce if you’re coming from right field, but I just heaved it and it got to the catcher on the fly and she tagged the runner coming in, so it was a double out. I thought, “boy, I got it now”, and the next day I end up in Rockford, so it’s a business. 16:30 Interviewer: “As you were traveling around, what kind of reception did you get when you went to these little towns in the south?” Oh, everybody just loved it and we had big crowds. The biggest crowd I every played before in the baseball was ten thousand they were giving away—the girls all got a suitcase and they were giving away an automobile, so when they had specialties and things like that, the crowds were bigger. Everybody would stand outside the locker room and wait for the girls to shower and then they would sign autographs, so it was exciting and you begin to think you have some importance in this world. Interviewer: “Were there any particular places that you went that kind of stand out in your memory or do they all just run together?” 13 �No, they probably did at the time, but as I look back sixty years ago, I can’t remember anything special except that it was just great. Of all the things I’ve done, the college degrees and the teaching and getting married and having children and all of that, I recall that the baseball was the thing that I remember the most and enjoyed the most of all the things I’ve done in my life. 17:44 In eighty-seven years you do a lot of living. Interviewer: “What is it about is it about the baseball, do you think, that makes it particularly distinctive and makes it stand out?” Made it stand out? Interviewer: “Yes” Probably—we played softball on the playground and I just knew since I was a kid—I remember I use to play in the second grade, at recess we would play and at a high school reunion one time a man said to me, “when you were in the second grade everyone wanted you on their team”, because not too many girls played, just the boys, and they knew that I could play some, so they enjoyed that and I enjoyed that also. I just always played softball and we had some quite good teams in softball, we really did. Interviewer: “What did you think of the “A League of Their Own” movie? What was your impression of it?” 18:41 Well, I thought it was very good. Of course, it was an entertainment feature of course, the parts with Tom Hanks and some of the other things. I don’t remember any girl that I knew that had a husband who was killed in the war or anything of that sort because they were still pretty young and there were not very many girls that had mates or anything at that time, but you just get involved, you don’t have time to do anything else. It was fun to go on the road because you would get up and have breakfast and you would go to a 14 �movie every afternoon or you would go shopping and then there would be practice and then there would be the ball game. When you were home you had more things that you could do and it just became like a sorority. We’re all sisters in the same thing, but we all admired it. The pitchers did well, they usually made about a hundred and five dollars and I made fifty-four dollars a week and that was my best salary, but that’s pretty good for sitting on a bench. 19:47 Interviewer: “Do you think you changed much or grew much because of that experience? Did that add something to your life or was it just a really good experience?” Well, I think so, it enlarged my field of acquaintances and you become quite close because you’re definitely into it in depth. You don’t just play around like amateur ball. Your money depended on it and you were competitive in other words and you wanted to play. In softball, as amateurs, we use to play men’s teams and we got a kick out of trying to beat the men’s teams, but in baseball you just wanted to make the team and play. They had more players and of course they couldn’t put them all in and they had several pitchers just like they have in ball today, so I enjoyed that. As a matter of fact, when I married my husband was a professional ball player and he AAA ball for the Chicago Cubs, so I continued liking baseball. 20:51 Interviewer: “As you were going through your career teaching and so forth after you were out of the league, did you tell people that you played professional ball?” No I didn’t, I just got busy teaching school and doing the things I had to do teaching school because it was an era of my like that was over with just as the navy was, just as the college was, and so forth. Actually it was the making of the movie that brought us all 15 �back to life again really. Before that we—it was it and it was over and it was done and when I read through a lot of the biographies of the girls, they got different jobs, went on doing their other jobs and the movie came out and all of a sudden we became pioneers. Interviewer: “But you didn’t see yourselves as pioneers when you were doing it?” Oh, no not at all, and in fact for the twenty-five years I was teaching after that until I found out they had reunions every year and I started coming back. I didn’t know any more about it, so I think that was a good thing, it makes you feel like you are part of a sorority, part of a group and it was the relationships between the players, team work. 22:00 Interviewer: “That’s something that comes up very consistently when we talk to people. It’s a hard thing to get people to talk about individuals sometimes because everybody is the group.” We pretty much liked everybody and everybody liked each other and we cooperated in the things that we did and had a good time. Faye Dancer was on our team and she was well known as liking life, but we didn’t do some of the things—well, you know a lot of times they would do what—Faye liked to put Limburger cheese on the doorknobs so you couldn’t turn the door and go in and playing pranks, but kids do that. Between fifteen and twenty-five you’re still a kid and you’re not under your parents’ authority, so you do what you have fun with. 22:49 Interviewer: “So, what have I left out? You have done a very good job and I anticipated multiple questions in the process, so you were very helpful. Thank you, thank you, I didn’t want to say too much and like I say, I wasn’t one of the top players, but I was lucky to have lasted as long as I did and I had other conflicts with 16 �school and all of that, but over the years I think I accomplished more things than many women did. That wasn’t our thing, women were supposed to stay home and cook and I don’t like to cook. 23:00 17 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_EWeiss Title A name given to the resource Weiss, Elma (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Weiss, Elma Description An account of the resource Elma Weiss was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1923. She attended Ohio State University and then enlisted in the Navy in 1943. She served in Oakland, California during the war and subsequently attended the University of California and was playing in a softball league in the area when she was recruited for the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. She played for parts of two seasons with the Peoria Redwings and Rockford Peaches, including a barnstorming tour of the south, and was a reserve outfielder. After her time in the league, she continued her education, received a doctorate and was a Professor of Physical Education at Phoenix College in Arizona. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945 Baseball players--Illinois Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-07 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7c2b7ef52968bdc5639a8cefe3b88dd5.m4v 801928cc9c04f1b5b10aea3ffc829529 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c8b1740876438254838419adac0900ff.pdf b6093bbd79151fdf0ec188f12ab9dda8 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans History Project Interviewee’s Name: Earlene Risinger Length of Interview: (00:57:00) Interviewed by: Frank Boring Transcribed by: Joan Raymer August 19, 2008 Resides: Grand Rapids, MI Deceased: July 29, 2008 Interviewer: “If we can begin with your name and where and when were you born?” My name is Earlene V. Risinger and I was born in Hess, Oklahoma, which is hardly on the map ever, on March 20, 1927. Interviewer: “What were your parents’ occupations? Did you live on a farm?” We just lived in the country and we worked for farmers, they did. I can remember way back even, my mother and my dad lived in a big tent one time and they would pick cotton and do anything to make a few bucks to feed their family. 1:18 I was the first born and five or six years later I had my first brother and on down. I have three brothers. Interviewer: “Three brothers and you. What was your early childhood like?” Lonesome, and you didn’t know what you were going to do, but we made it up by playing games, Annie Over and all that stuff at my grandfather’s place. It was just –you just made your own—somebody asked me one time, “What did you do for fun down there?” I said, “We drowned out crickets”. That’s the truth, there were big crickets and we would fish with them. 2:02 Interviewer: “You eventually were in a house?” Yes, we lived in a house. It seems like there were a lot of empty—they were really shacks that we lived in. I can remember during the storm, you know the dust storms; you would get up some mornings and have a half-inch of dirt on your stove and everything. It wasn’t an easy time. 2:31 Interviewer: “Who were your neighbors, or were there neighbors around you?” Oh yeah, they were maybe a quarter of a mile away. This was way out there and the houses were spread out, but the town of Hess at that time had two grocery stores and two service stations and things like that and nothing is there now. We live there now. I live back there now with my niece. 3:00 1 �Interviewer: “When did you start school?” When? When I was six years old. Interviewer: “So it was like kindergarten?” There was no kindergarten then. It was first grade. Interviewer: “What was the school like?” It was a big brick building and it went from first grade right through the twelfth grade. Later on they closed the Hess school and Hess and Elmer, which is another little town over there, consolidated and during the WPA years, because my dad worked on that project, we got a new rock school. It was made out of rock. 3:43 That was when I was in the seventh grade. I went to the Baptist church. That was one of the schools until the school got finished and then in the eighth grade we had this wonderful school with good teachers and the towns had consolidated. Interviewer: “I see. We were talking earlier about recreation. Did you have chores that you had to do when you were younger?” Oh gosh yes, I had to go out and try to find kindling to make the old pot belly stove in the morning. That was my job, to get the kindling so dad could start the fire in the morning. 4:28 Many times at my grandparents’ house—sometimes, you know they all lived sort of together, we would eat corn and that was it for supper. Interviewer: “Where did you buy your food?” We would go by wagon mostly into Altus, which is thirteen miles away and you would buy your stuff for a year, I don’t mean a year, but a month because that’s a long haul, that’s a day up there and back in a wagon with two horses pulling. 5:02 Interviewer: “Who owned the horses?” Oh, my grandpa. Interviewer: “Your grandpa was actually a little better off than your folks were?” Yes. Interviewer: “Because you were family, you shared responsibilities and whatnot?” Oh yes. Interviewer: “What were some of the earlier games? You mentioned a couple games, but when did baseball come into your life?” 2 �Oh, my dad played on a, what did they call it back then? A sandlot team and he and my uncle and all of them played on Sunday afternoon. He was a first baseman and he had me out throwing balls to him when I was six years old or five years old playing catch with him. 5:39 Interviewer: “Did you have a glove?” No, he had a glove, but I didn’t. My uncle Will finally bought me a glove; you know they were not much bigger than my hand back then. He had a service station, so he bought me my first ball glove. Interviewer: “When your father was playing, I assume you went to church on Sunday morning and then afterwards you had these baseball games?” Yes, and that was up at the old schoolhouse. Interviewer: “Where were these teams formed from?” Just different—like Elmer would have a team and Hess would have a team and Tipton would have a team and they would play each other. 6:18 Interviewer: “So, this was just basically recreational baseball, it wasn’t pro?” Yes, families sitting up there in covered wagons and stuff like that. Interviewer: “There were no benches?” I don’t remember any. That was a long time ago when I was a kid. Interviewer: “So, I know this is a long ways back, but what appealed to you about baseball? What was it, when you were a child watching was it because your father was playing?” It was just something that I could do. Just something I could do and I had an uncle Doc and he had two sons and they loved baseball too, in fact they went to college at OU on scholarships because of their baseball. 7:01 Then there was Jack Shirley, a good friend of mine and his dad saw me throwing a ball to somebody one time and then Jack and I became good friends and we would get together and just play games. I would throw him grounders and he would throw me grounders and then we would hit—just the two of us. Interviewer: “Were you at all aware, I realize you were out in a very remote part of the country, but were you at all aware of major league baseball from newspapers, radio or anything like that?” 3 �Yea, we always had a radio, it had batteries, but we would run it at certain times. I remember my dad hauling it out on the porch and plugging it in during the World Series. 7:45 Yes, we got to listen to that. Interviewer: “So this is a whole group of you would gather around the radio and listen to it and hear the roar of the crowds?” Yep, Interviewer: “Maybe this is where the seeds were planted. Right. Interviewer: “You’re tall, six foot one, how quickly did you grow when you were a child? Did you sprout right up?” I think so because my mother—people would see her carrying me around sometimes and they would say, “Why are you carrying that long legged gal around?” I was all legs, and I was only about six months old. 8:23 My dad was tall, but my mother was tall for a woman too. Interviewer: “When you watched your father playing baseball, did you ever think that maybe you could play someday?” No, I never did. Later on when I started in high school and I was warming up the catcher or pitching batting practice for the boys or coaching first base, which I did a lot, I thought, “I wish there was a girls team”. I’ll put this in, before when I was in the sixth grade, I was going to school at Elmer, I was out playing with the Fancher boys and people that I knew and we were just throwing high fly balls and stuff and then Mr. Boyer, who was the superintendent at that time, he had a girls softball team. 9:25 He would let me go, I couldn’t play, being in sixth grade, but he would let me go with him to play other schools. He would put me out there, I don’t know why he did it, but he would bat fungoes, high ones out there for me to catch. Then the highlight was, we would come back through Altus on the bus and he would buy us a nickel ice cream cone. 9:58 Interviewer: “You did get through high school right? Yes. Interviewer: “Did you play during high school?” Yeah. Interviewer: “But not on a team per se.” No. I just played with the boys and warmed up the pitcher and pitched batting practice. Interviewer: “That’s what I want to get into. There was a boys team for the high school?” 4 �Oh yes. They were the South Side Red Devils. 10:18 Interviewer: “You’re a girl, how did you get in that position?” I just did it and they were happy to have me do that. The coaches didn’t mind. Interviewer: “I assume that a lot of people that were on the team knew you already?” Yes. Interviewer: “You were a tall person and you could throw the ball. I guess what’s interesting to me—when I was in little league, there is no way we would let a girl, even on first base or even coach so, you had to have gained the respect of the students.” Yes, and the guys who played. 10:54 Ya, they respected me and if they just had a little pick-up team or something, I would always get chosen. Interviewer: “So you were playing on boys teams that were not part of the high school curriculum?” Yeah, just for fun. Interviewer: “What did you think you wanted to do after high school?” I didn’t have any idea. I knew I wanted to do something, but I had no idea. There was no money for college or anything. I knew that was out of bounds and I didn’t want to do it anyway. I could have because I was the Salutatorian, but I just didn’t know. 11:33 I was going to go to the navy to the WAVES, but my mother wouldn’t sign for me and it is a good thing because I probably would have flunked out or gotten homesick or something. Interviewer: “The war began in 1941. Do you remember Pearl Harbor, do you remember that at all?” Oh yeah. Interviewer: “Tell me about your experience?” Well, we just heard it on the radio or somebody calling maybe, a few people had telephones back then, but not too many around Hess had telephones. The old kind that was on the wall. 12:09 Interviewer: “How old were you?” Well, I was born in 1927. 5 �Interviewer: “So you were old enough to recognize that this was serious?” Yes, I know that my two uncles got drafted and went to war. Interviewer: “I know this was a long time ago, but did you have any grasp—did you have any idea, you’re from a very small town and this is a world war, did you have any idea of Germany and Japan, bombings and all this?” No. I know that papers came through the school and you would have to give reports on them so therefore, we did get a little bit. We picked it up that way. But I didn’t realize it like people who had radios and stuff like that. 12:56 Interviewer: “Up to that time, what was the farthest you had traveled?” Oklahoma City, which was 100 miles away. I had to go there to meet that girls team. Interviewer: “Let’s back up, I don’t want to jump ahead too far. How did you hear about this girls team?” I went down to the grocery store, the lady down there would get the day late paper and I was reading the sports. 13:28 Interviewer: “Why did you get a day late paper?” Because that’s the way it went back then. In Oklahoma City you could buy it that day, but then they had to mail it down. I read in the paper where this girls team was coming to Oklahoma City to play a charity game against each other and I thought, “Oh brother”, and then I got a postcard and I wrote it to the editor. Interviewer: “Where did the postcard come from?” We must have had a penny postcard. 14:00 Interviewer: “You got a postcard to sent to them?” Yeah. I got the postcard, a penny postcard, sent it to the guy who had written the article, and he sent it on to Chicago and it’s a miracle that I even heard about it, much less got to go. That’s when I went up there and just— Interviewer: “Wait a minute, there’s a lot more to this story than that, I know that. Alright, you had the initiative to send a postcard to the guy who wrote the article, what did you write on there?” I just wrote, “How do I go about getting information about this league?” Interviewer: “He just forwarded it on to them?” Yeah. 6 �Interviewer: “Why did they contact you?” 14:43 Probably because they needed ball players. They needed ball players. Interviewer: “So, how did you find out that they were asking you to come out? Did a letter come?” Yeah. Interviewer: “So, now the letter arrives and you got to be excited about that.” I am excited. Interviewer: “You were at home with your parents?” Yeah. Interviewer: “Tell us about getting the letter.” 15:05 I just got the letter, was excited about it and filled it out and sent it back to them. I had never played on any professional teams or anything, but anyway, I told them I threw overhand and all that kind of stuff and so they said to go to Rockford, Illinois. Interviewer: “What did your parents think about this idea?” They were happy because they know I was unhappy doing nothing. 15:31 Interviewer: “Now, did this team offer money? Were you going to get paid for this?” Yeah. You had to go, and if you made the team they reimbursed you your money for going, and if you made the team you would get sixty or seventy dollars a week. That was a lot of money and I thought I was rich. 15:54 But, then I got to Chicago—I had to go to the bank and borrow the money. Interviewer: “I want to hear about that too—I found that very interesting.” I went to the bank and Tom Thaggert, he was quite a sports guy and he was a big shot in the bank, and he loaned me the money to go on. Interviewer: “So, you actually sat there—you’re a young girl and you sat down with one of the richest people in town, a banker, and told him that you had this offer to go?” He wanted me to go. 16:24 Then, I got to Chicago finally and went on a milk train as I call it. I was so homesick and it took so long to get to Chicago, at least I thought, and I turned around and I had enough money to come back home on so, then I had to go out and pull cotton and make the money to pay Mr. Thaggert back. 16:50 7 �Interviewer: “How much did you earn pulling cotton?” About fifty cents a hundred pounds. You had a twelve-foot sack around your shoulder and you would empty it in the wagon and that’s what’s wrong with my back right now. 17:06 You would make maybe twelve fifty a week pulling cotton. That was seasonal, but you had to do if you wanted a pair of shoes or—many a time I’ve worn a pair of shoes with—you would cut out a cardboard and put in it. Interviewer. “How long did it take to pay the bank back?” Not to long. It wasn’t very much money back then to borrow and thing sere different. Seventy-five bucks a week was a lot of dough back then. Interviewer: “When you came back and had to pick all that cotton, what did you feel like?” I felt really let down and everything that I shouldn’t—but it was a miracle that I turned around and came back and here’s why. They were pitching side arm and underhand and I couldn’t do anything but pitch because I was a slow poke to China when it came to running and I couldn’t have played any other position. 18:21 So it was a good idea that I did turn around and come back because in 1948 then they sent me another letter and I got to Springfield, Illinois and played for the “Springfield Sallies” that year. Interviewer: “You could only throw overhand. You were not a very good batter or runner so, in other words, if you went there in 1947 to try out?” I probably wouldn’t have made the team. I would have been sent home. 18:51 Interviewer: “So, what was different about 1948?” Well, I just wanted it and we were pitching overhand then and we had a chaperone and Carson Bigbee was the manager and they just took me under their wing and that’s what happened and I stayed. Interviewer: “Well, let’s actually talk about that. You arrived there in Springfield right? Yes. Interviewer: “This is a fairly good size town?” Springfield, Illinois. Interviewer: “Yeah, did you go by train or by bus?” Bus, and in one day we made it from Oklahoma City. 19:34 Interviewer: “Who was there to greet you?” 8 �Nobody, I mean, they had a room for me. I went to the room and I was tired and sleepy and I fell down and went to sleep on the bed and finally somebody came knocking at the door and said it was time to go to the park. I went down and went out there and we got dressed. Interviewer: “Hold on, so you went down there and previous to this time you had been playing in back lots and you had been playing in farm team type things. When you first walk into the stadium, what was that like?” Well, that was wonderful and then all these people standing around in their short skirts and everything. They were very friendly and very nice and I was very shy back then, but I got over that pretty fast. 20:25 Interviewer: “So, the uniform you’re talking about, what did the uniform consist of?” Just a thing you pull over your head and it come down here and you wore some kind of shorts or something underneath it and you had socks that came up and everything like that. Interviewer: “Didn’t you have to physically tryout for that team?” I guess not, I just started pitching because they needed pitchers. The sad part about that was Springfield did not draw so, halfway through the season we were kind of on the bus together all the time just finishing out the year and we were called a traveling team. 21:14 Interviewer: “So, you would get on a bus and you would go to another town and you would play whatever team was there?” Yes, and stay in the hotel. We lived in hotels. Interviewer: “What was the early camaraderie like? These are all girls that were baseball players. You played with boys before and now you’re actually with your peers. How good were they?” They were good. Most of them were good and if they weren’t, they weren’t there. That’s the thrust of it. Some of them went home too, just like they would get hurt and not return again and so on. 21:48 Interviewer: “You had been on a farm, you mentioned before how you lived mainly in overalls, didn’t wear shorts or anything like that. What was your reaction to these short little uniforms?” 9 �Well, I was embarrassed when I first had to go out and pitch in front of them, but you got used to it because everybody else did too and so, it didn’t bother me after a few times. 22:17 Interviewer: “Your first few games, how did you feel about being out there actually in a uniform, in a stadium, that’s a big jump?” Kind of scary. Scary, and all I knew, I hadn’t had any training you know and everything—this was in 1948. No training and I just threw the ball jut threw it and I could throw it hard. 22:41 Somebody asked me once what my best pitch was and I said “high and tight”, but anyway in the winter of 1949, we went on this Central South America tour and they asked me to go and I accepted and that was another scary thing, getting on another train somewhere in Texas and we went to New Orleans and then ended up in Guatemala meeting a bunch of kids from Miami, a whole plane load from Miami. 23:21 Then we all got together and they called them the “Cubanas” and the “Americanas”. I remember pitching in the Panama Canal [Zone] and we stayed in a barracks there. Interviewer: “Military barracks?” Yes. Interviewer: “What was your reaction to coming to a foreign country?” Scary, everything was scary, but you know, the kids were so nice that they just took you right in and so, there were three or four girls that were going to play and Johnny Rawlings was our manager and he was an ex-baseball player, Johnny Rawlings, so was Carson Biggby, they were all ex-players in the big leagues. He taught me more about pitching than anybody else ever had. 24:32 I had gotten allocated to his team so therefore, his kids that were playing for him took me in and everything worked out just fine. Interviewer: “These were women from all different teams and this was formed to play in a foreign country?” Yes. Interviewer: “So, it wasn’t the “Peaches’ or it wasn’t—it was almost like an all star team?” Yes. Interviewer: “So, he took the time to teach you how to pitch better, is that right? So you were basically just throwing the ball across the plate?” Yes, trying to. Interviewer: “What did he teach you?” 10 �Well, when you got two strikes on them, waste a pitch or two, and things like that. I never could throw a curve ball though, never, but my pitches would go in and dance in like that and I don’t know what they call those now days, but they got a name now days. 25:29 Interviewer: “Did you feel like you were getting better as a pitcher because of that?” Yes. Interviewer: “Your confidence rose. What about your batting?” Oh, they always called on me to bunt mostly. Move them along. Interviewer: “That’s exactly what they did with me.” Yeah. Interviewer: “You have long legs, you must have been a good runner?” Heck no, heck no, one time I did get a hold of a ball and it hit out to the fence there in Grand Haven and I was running around the bases and another time the accountant for our league had his little boy there at a game in Grand Rapids here, and he looked at his daddy and he said, “Why don’t she run daddy?” In the paper the next day it said, “Here she was being staggered into third”. I was strictly a pitcher and that was it. 26:21 Interviewer: “Your experience in South America, did you have a chance to get out to the city and look around?” Oh yeah, poor countries, Managua, Nicaragua, and the Panama Canal and Guatemala and all those. Interviewer: “Now you say poor, but you were poor?” Yeah, I mean, but their meat hung out on the street and you know, all that kind of stuff, but it was a very good experience. We were invited to General Somoza’s big palace and all that kind of stuff. 26:56 Interviewer: “Was there a lot of newspaper coverage? Were there newspaper people around?” Yes, I know, one time before I started playing, they went to Cuba for spring training and they were very, very well received there. Interviewer: “This is pre-Castro of course.” Yes. 11 �Interviewer: “You mentioned that the original team you played with, they were not drawing the audiences, so you were playing out on these traveling tours and then you got the opportunity to go to South America, when that ended then where did you go?” I just came back home and went to spring training. 27:41 Interviewer: “Spring training for what?” The Grand Rapids Chicks. Interviewer: “Ah, you didn’t give us all that information. I know what the story is, but you need to say it. So, John was impressed with you and he was in charge of?” The Grand Rapids Chicks and the players that he had, if he wanted to trade them off or whatever. Interviewer: “So, with his experience with you in South America, he decided he wanted you to be on his team? ” Well, I was allocated there, but he could have passed up on me, or whatever he wanted to do, but going to Central South America was a good thing for me because of meeting him and some of the players. 28:15 Interviewer: “What were your thoughts about going to Grand Rapids, Michigan?” I guess I liked it. I stayed and I made a lot of friends and a lot of friends that aren’t baseball players too. Interviewer: “Let’s talk about—you’re back—you did go home after the South America trip, to Oklahoma?” Yes, and then back into West Baden, Indiana, that’s where we were having spring training and from there back to Grand Rapids and I got assigned a room mate, with another pitcher. 28:50 Interviewer: “I want to get into more detail about this. Did you have contracts?” Yes. Interviewer: “So, you had a contract that specified that you would be playing for a certain period of time and these are your responsibilities. Was it any different in terms of what you had to do when you were the “Chicks” as opposed to the team you were with before? Did the “Chicks” have a better facility? Did they have better equipment?” 12 �No, but we had rules, strict rules that we had to abide by. We had to wear skirts all the time and we couldn’t be seen in public in shorts or anything like that and always act like a lady. Like somebody said, they wanted us to play like men, but act like ladies. Interviewer: “You had mentioned earlier about a chaperone and I wonder if you could explain in detail what was the chaperone for your team?” Well, our chaperone was Dotty Hunter and she was wonderful. She didn’t really have any trouble with her kids. After a game you would get two hours or something and you had to be back in your room so, most of us respected her and we were back in our room, but a lot of chaperones would do bed checks, but she never did, but a lot of them did and that was their job to do because we weren’t supposed to be up carousing around. 30:20 Interviewer: “So, chaperones were officially part of the team and their responsibilities included, making sure that you followed all the rules?” All the rules and if you skinned your knee she put methyalate on it and stuff, which they did, they had strawberries, the gals that would slide into base would get strawberries and that was awful. Interviewer: “You didn’t have to do that too often.” No, I didn’t slide. I didn’t get to slide. Interviewer: “Did you have to go through the charm school?” No, that was only the first year. They had quit that by the time I came in. That was in 1943. 31:00 Interviewer: “Where did you stay in Grand Rapids?” I stayed on Delaware Street. The chaperone would go around and talk to people and two people would stay in one room and roomed with another pitcher and we could walk down to the ballpark from Delaware Street. 31:26 Interviewer: “So, you were in people’s homes. You would rent out a room in a home, somebody’s home, and you would share that room with a roommate?” Yes, with another gal. Interviewer: “What was your schedule like during the actual season?” We usually played double headers on Sunday and you were lucky if you ever go a day off. We did once in a while, or a rainout or something like that. 31:50 Interviewer: “You would get up in the morning?” 13 �Sometimes we would have to go to practice in the morning about 10:00 AM and then be back there at 4:00 PM to get ready for the game. Interviewer: “What did you do in the meantime? I mean, you went to practice and then you would?” Oh, we would eat lunch and just whatever. Some of them played golf, but I didn’t. 32:18 Interviewer: “You were making pretty good money, were you saving it or sending it back home?” Well, I would go up to Smitter’s store in The Heights and buy my three brothers some short sleeve shirts and send them home to them and things like that because I knew how desperate they were. Interviewer: “So, you were in a sense making more than your parents were making or your brothers were making?” Yes. Interviewer: “That must have made you feel pretty good?” Well, in a way, but like one gal said one time, my dad was making thirty-five dollars a week working for the telephone company and I was making three times that much. That’s the way it was back then. 33:02 Interviewer: “What were your first experiences with the “Grand Rapids Chicks” and did you feel like you were welcomed in by the—you’re a rookie right? How were your first experiences with them?” Fine, no problem at all, I just took my turn and we had five pitchers. I just took my turn. Interviewer: “Being six foot one, I don’t think too many people would mess with you anyway.” I went to school with—I went to high school with my—she’s more like a sister to me and she would be my grandfather’s kid, and the boys would pick on her and I would have to whop them around once in a while. They were picking on her because she couldn’t take care of herself. 34:00 Interviewer: “You said there were five pitchers on the “Grand Rapids Chicks”.” Yes, or at least four. At least four. Interviewer: “So, in a given week, how many games were you playing?” Probably seven. 14 �Interviewer: “Seven games over the course of a week and some of those are double headers so, you got Sunday off?” No, Sunday was a double header. It wasn’t easy, but it was a good life—riding the bus, you know when you ride a bus you get to—everybody gets along. 34:38 Sometimes they pull jokes on you and all that, but you didn’t care about that. Interviewer: “This is the team players on the bus?” Yeah, they would play canasta and gin rummy and all that stuff, or singing and we had good times. 34:54 Interviewer: “What was your first experience playing as a pitcher after you had this training from Rawlings, did you notice a difference in the way you were pitching?” Yeah, but sometimes I would go wild as a goose and that would make him so mad. One time he came out to me and he said, “Beans, if you can’t get the ball over, bounce the damn thing in”. So, that’s the way it was. 35:30 Interviewer: “With four to five pitchers, though, how often would you actually be able to pitch? Were you first string?” Yeah, and then sometimes the next pitcher, if I got wild or something, they would put them in. They didn’t have regular-- like they do now, you pitch six innings and a reliever comes in, we didn’t have that. I pitched a twenty-one-inning game and a twenty-twoinning game and did it all so, that’s why I get a little upset with these primadonnas as I call them. Give them one like that and they’d charge the mound, you know. 36:06 Interviewer: “You had several quite remarkable experiences playing in the “Chicks”, but you started in 1948, 49, 1950. This was your regular job now right? Uh huh. Interviewer: “What was—the season itself lasted how long?” I forgot, but it was in May and all the way to September and then you had the playoffs. Interviewer: “What happened during the lull period?” You mean after the season was over? Interviewer: “Yes.” Well, I used to go home, but then there was a Mr. Jordan, who was a—he had a Buick place on South Division here and he just made a job for me in the wintertime. I started doing that in 1952 I think it was or 1951. 37:06 15 �Interviewer: “What kind of a job was that?” Oh, answering the phone or running around here, just gave me job and I made twentyseven or thirty dollars a week to tide you over until the season started again. Interviewer: “Why didn’t you go back home?” There was nothing to do, nothing to do. Interviewer: “No work?” No work, no nothing, I sure wasn’t going to go back to pulling cotton. Interviewer: “What would you say was your highlight season?” Probably when we were playing for the trophy against the “Kalamazoo Lassies” in Kalamazoo. 37:47 Interviewer: “What year was this?” 1952 [actually 1953]. It was a cold night, the bases were loaded and the manager, Woody English, had gotten kicked out of the game. Interviewer: “How come?” I don’t know, I said, “It’s because he got too cold”, but he had his long pants on out there, and so they made it a seven inning game because of the weather and it was the last game and the bases were loaded and Sammy Samms came to the bat and I struck her out and we won the game so, that was my highlight of my whole deal. 38:30 Interviewer: “Sammy Samms was, I understand, a very good hitter and player?” Yes, a very good player and a good hitter. She could pitch and she could play outfield because of her hitting. Interviewer: “So, when she came to bat with three people on?” Marilyn Jenkins was my catcher and you’re going to interview her next week, she just walked out to the mound and said—first before that, “Ziggy”, Alma Ziegler was the captain of out team and she was the coach after he got kicked out. So, with the bases loaded she walked up to me and looking up, she was little, she said, “Can you get her out “Beans”? I shrugged my shoulders and she left me in, but I got her out anyway and that was a good deal. 39:15 She was a wonderful person and she’s now deceased, Alma Ziegler. She could pitch and play second base both. 16 �Interviewer: “The Grand Rapids Chicks was actually a very successful team. What do you attribute to the success of the “Chicks” compared to some of the other teams that didn’t do so well?” Well, they tried to keep all the teams equal and they would trade someone off to make it more better, but most of the time, thank goodness I never got traded off and I guess it was because I was a pitcher and they were in demand. They busted up the team once and Tiny Petry, who was a shortstop, and she was wonderful with “Ziggy” playing second and then the team kind of went down a little bit then you know, but we won a lot of games. 40:14 Interviewer: “You got to know these women quite well right? Where did they come from?” The come from California, they came from Canada, they came from Kansas, Florida, all over. Interviewer: “This was a nationwide search for ball players and then a lot of them ended up in Grand Rapids, Michigan because it was a team.” A lot of them stayed on here and a lot of them are deceased that played on our team for a long time so, I feel lucky to be alive right now. 40:51 Interviewer: “1952, you had a wonderful year, how was 1953? How were the crowds etc?” Well, it had fallen off a little bit, but then it had started gaining back and even in 1954 we were gaining back, but South Bend and some of the other teams weren’t drawing at all so, the men just got together and decided that was the end of it. Like that—we heard about it. 41:26 Interviewer: “What kind of crowds were you getting here in Grand Rapids at the height of it all?” Well, there would be a thousand people; there are pictures of the people in the stands. I think it’s down at the library. They drew really well when I first came here. Interviewer: “How were the crowds? Were they enthusiastic? You see major league baseball and you see fans screaming and yelling.” Oh, ya, cheering and carrying on. We got to playing later and later and there was this writer, what was his name? I can’t remember, but he had a little article, a thing in the paper, and he said, “Chicks were getting sleepy”, because they were keeping then up to late at night. 42:15 17 �Interviewer: “Early on and this was in the movie and the movie was not that accurate, but it had some good points to it and it was a wonderful film, but especially early on, were you harassed at all by people, being women out there?” What the movie showed in the beginning they were, but not when I came in 1948. That had all calmed down because they knew that we could play the game and play it right. 42:50 Interviewer: “Did you ever get a chance to play—I think this happened on occasion, but play exhibition games with the men’s teams?” No, not to my knowledge, one time we might have, after the season was over, played a game with the Sullivan’s or something once. Not very often. Interviewer: “1953, you said things were going fairly well still, were there any indications that this might come to an end?” Well, I think there was, but I didn’t know it and most of the players didn’t know it. We figured, like they said, we owed Grand Rapids, owed the cleaning people that cleaned our uniforms money and I guess in the end we might have been getting paid in cash rather than by check. Things were getting tight because TV came in and the war was over and there wasn’t any gas rationing. 43:54 Interviewer: “Now, there was a real financial tragedy that happened in the 1950’s where the equipment and everything was burned up.” That was at Bigelow Field. I still say that guy who owned us then, more or less, Jim whatever his name was, I still say that he probably had somebody set that building on fire and the reason I say that is because of the fact that he immediately built a motel out there and that was hard on us because we had to get a different uniform and that wasn’t hard to do because it was back down to six teams and they had extra uniforms and stuff, but your glove, everything was gone. 44:54 Interviewer: “Now, you say that you got uniforms from other teams, but you’re six feet one.” Well ya. Interviewer: “How did you get a uniform to fit you? Did they actually have tailors come out?” Well no, we could get them hemmed or whatever they needed to be. Interviewer: “In the past, when you were with the “Grand Rapids Chicks”, you had your own uniforms and it was all color coded right? The hat, what about these new uniforms?” 18 �Well, in the end, I think we had the “Peoria Redwings” uniforms and we wore red then with white, whereas in the beginning we wore blue--- gray and then the blue sox and cap. 45:40 Interviewer: “You said there were indications that something might end, but you didn’t know and most of the players didn’t know?” We were hoping it wouldn’t, yes. Interviewer: “In your case, did you actually think that this was going to go on for a career?” I think a lot of us did, yes. We were very disappointed. Especially the ones that came in late like I did. Interviewer: “How did you officially find out that the league was ending?” I think it came out in the paper, but I’m not sure. Interviewer: “Do you recall at all what your reaction was?” I thought, “Oh well, I have to start thinking about doing something else?” Like I told them out there before you got there, that I’d gotten hit on the elbow and had to go get an x-ray and I thought hmm, that might be a good thing for me to get into, and so, Dr. Blackburn was our doctor. and he said, “Oh yes, they have programs at the hospital and we’ll get you in”, and that’s what I did then. I got to be an x-ray technician and I did that from 1955 to 1969 and then I decided to work for orthopedic doctors and was the manager of the office and took casts off and all that stuff and I worked with them until I retired in 1991. 47:13 Interviewer: “When you were an x-ray technician, were people aware that you were in the baseball league?” Some were and some weren’t. Interviewer: “I’m talking about the early days, I’m not talking about now because now people know who you are, but in those days?” Just the one’s who had attended, if they would come in and then they would say who we were. We got a little publicity because Marilyn got into x-ray too after me and another gal, Betty Wanless, and somehow I ran across a picture the other day where the three of us were in our white uniforms. We got a little publicity back then even, but we didn’t get a lot until we had our first reunion in 1982 and then-- 47:57 Interviewer: “How was that organized?” 19 �A bat girl from South Bend and then June Peppas had a printing shop and she was a player for Kalamazoo and she got the idea of sending me a letter and do you know the address of somebody else? And that’s the way it went and then they got it going. There were a few people there, historians who came to that, and three years later we had another one and so on and so forth and we’re still having them. Interviewer: “Now in the movie it’s very moving when Geena Davis comes to the reunion, and of course her sister is there with a family and all that. Was it sort of like that?” Yes, sort of like that the first time you see them and you have to look sometimes at there tag to see who they were, ya. 48:51 Interviewer: “There were a few people from Grand Rapids that went, right? Marilyn went and did Rosemary go?” I don’t remember if she went, but I bet she did. Interviewer: “I just wondered if the “Grand Rapids Chicks” gathered together and the “Peaches” gathered together?” We probably did after we got there. Dolly Konwinski went and all of them went, but we didn’t stick together, we mixed and mingled with other people. 49:24 Interviewer: “That must have been an amazing experience, I’ve been to several reunions of the Flying Tigers and I’ve been to reunions of other WWII groups and it’s a magical moment to be standing there and just hearing these conversations. “Do you remember when this happened?” Yes, and as the years go by everything gets a little more, you know what it is—the stories get bigger, yes the stories get bigger as you have these reunions. You daydream back and then you think about so and so who’s not there because she’s deceased and we say she’s, “gone to the dream team in the sky, the ball team in the sky”. It was a wonderful experience for me and made me and made my life. 50:08 Interviewer: “I just want you to comment on the movie. The thing that impressed me about it, I’m not looking at it as a historian at all because you heard from Gordon Olson and others that it was a Hollywood movie, but it seemed to capture the spirit, the excitement and of course the characters were just wonderful, what did you think of the movie?” Well, I thought it was about 89% correct. They made the chaperones look like they were simpletons, I thought. They were all very educated and wonderful ladies and that was one thing I didn’t like and of course the manager never came into our space. If he had anything to say he would talk to the chaperone and she would relate it to us. So they Hollywooded it up a little, which is all right and it put us on the map anyway. 51:15 20 �Interviewer: “Yes, that is what I was going to say, it certainly drew attention to what you had done and made much more interest in what you had done.” Like Penny Marshall said, she thought it was a story that should be told because— another highlight I had was when we went to Evansville to see them film and after it was over, she said, “Come down here, we want to play”, and I went down and pitched to her and after working hard all day, she wanted to have a little fun and that was kind of nice. 51:47 Interviewer: “When did you see the movie? Did you just walk into a movie theater or did they have a special screening for you?” They had something at the Star Theater here and the fact is, somebody made me a collage and I gave it to the library here about it and we signed autographs and everything before the movie even started up at the Star Theater. 52:16 Interviewer: “Did you go to the public museum when they had their exhibit?” Oh yes, and we signed autographs and everything there too. That was really quite an exhibit, really, that will never happen again. Interviewer: “I got to Grand Rapids just when that was ending, but a friend of mine had a video camera and a crew and they actually videotaped the entire inside and they interviewed a couple of people. I didn’t see you, you didn’t get interviewed while you were there did you?” I got a story written about me and they took pictures and I forgot, it was one of those— she asked me, the gal that doesn’t work there anymore asked me if I—she said they might not get it, they wanted, but they did and there was this booklet that came out, ya. I had to come and I know about this a little bit because they had to take pictures you know to put a picture in the magazine. I imagine they got one down at the library. 53:25 Interviewer: “We had students from the history department actually do all the research and we know where all the pictures are and where everything is. At some point I will have to go down there and take a look. I want you to make some comments now in general. The beginning of the war, after Pearl Harbor, the United States was not in a very good position, not just us, but the British and we were losing all over, the Japanese were taking over Asia and Germany was taking over Europe and as the story goes, Wrigley was concerned that perhaps major league baseball would be affected by this so, he wanted to set up this alternative, this women’s team. 54:12 I guess the question I have for you and I want you to think a little bit outside, did you and your players, did you have any sense or a feeling that you were a part of the war effort? Because you know “Rosie the Riveter”, you hear about that and of course we know about the WACS and the WAVES and it is my opinion that you did a lot, what was your perspective?” 21 �Well, we feel that helped women get to play more sports etc. by us doing that because when I first came to Grand Rapids and stayed in the wintertime, I said, “What do the girls get to do in high school and around”? Well, they didn’t get to do anything and I feel now that softball is so great now, that we were stepping stones for the younger generation. People ask, “Do you think there will ever be another team like this”? I say, “No, it would be too much money and also, I don’t think the gals of today would follow those rules and regulations because they are too independent now. We feel like we made our mark in that respect. 55:35 Interviewer: “Looking back on that experience, you had a successful career afterwards, you were a professional and made a living for yourself and helped your family out, how do you look back on that magic period of time and the effect it had on your life?” Well, all I just say is that it made my life and if I could do it anybody else could do it. Interviewer: “One other final question, how do you think it affected you as a person, how do you think it affected you as the person you are today? More independent perhaps?” Integrity, I get very emotional. 56:44 Interviewer: “This will be our last question. Your doing fine, your doing wonderful.” That’s why I can’t go and do speeches like a lot of them do because I get too emotional. Interviewer: “We can stop now, we can stop now and thank you very much this has been wonderful, wonderful.” 57:00 22 �23 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_ERisinger Title A name given to the resource Risinger, Earlene "Beans" (Interview transcript and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Risinger, Earlene Description An account of the resource Earlene "Beans" Risinger was born in Hess, Oklahoma, in 1927. She grew up on a farm in Dust Bowl country, and played baseball from a young age with family and friends, and practiced with boys' teams in her community. She saw a newspaper article about the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, and joined the Grand Rapids Chicks in 1948. She went with the League to Spring Training in Cuba in 1948, and then on a postseason trip to Central America. She was a talented pitcher, and pitched the final game when the Chicks won the League championship in 1953, and played until the League folded after the 1954 season. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945 Baseball players--Michigan Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-09-26 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8e6d48b0e5c7c6d3814d83c018200257.m4v 7e4edfe8bd6732feb5ec98285841618d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a869307cf1ab7639c73371219f3f9afe.pdf c810c952e6380577a0b17747f698cf01 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans History Project Interviewee’s Name: Delores White “Brumfield” Length of Interview: (01:09:42) Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, September 27, 2009, Milwaukee, WI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, July 25, 2010 Interviewer: “If we could begin with, and boy this is going to get complicated, your name, I mean the full part, and where and when were you born?” My name is Miriam Delores Brumfield White and I was born in Pritchard, Alabama, May the 26th, 1932. Interviewer: “And what is the name that you go by when you sign your check and whatnot and what is the name you go by in baseball?” Today I sign my checks as Delores B. White and when I sign autographs for baseball, I sign Dolly Brumfield. Interviewer: “We got that straight for the record now.” Yes, I hope. Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like?” I was one of three children, I was the oldest of three and we lived in the early years near an elementary school and a block away was also a junior high school, so my playground at the school was where I grew up, where I preferred to play the things that the boys were playing, baseball, football and all the other things. We were on the school ground most of the time. 1:16 Sometimes we were in the neighborhood and I remember some of the childhood games we use to play. Under the house was a good clay pit and we could throw clay balls at each other and this type of thing, but I primarily grew up on the school playground. The junior high school had a baseball field and that was the time when the men use to come and play baseball after their workdays in the shipbuilding era during the war. 1:44 Interviewer: “What did your father do for a living?” My father was an automobile mechanic. Interviewer: “So was my dad, and your mother was a homemaker?” A homemaker yes, until the war and during the war she then took her skills of typing and shorthand into the business world and worked with an insurance company. Interviewer: “Pritchard was a fairly good size town?” 1 �Pritchard is north of Mobile at that time that’s the location. We were really Mobile, but it was kind of a suburb of Mobile, but it’s an independent city known as Pritchard, Alabama. It’s a pretty good size because at that time it was the fifth largest city in the state of Alabama. 2:32 Interviewer: “You were talking about the war, so do you remember Pearl Harbor when it happened and how did you hear about it?” Well I heard about Pearl Harbor because our next-door neighbor had a son at Hickam Field, so that made it very personal and I do remember some of the early happenings and particularly the day of December the 7th of 1941. Interviewer: “I can’t do the math, but how old were you?” At which time? Interviewer: ‘At Pearl Harbor. Well I must have been about nine. 3:05 Interviewer: “All right, so you were old enough to recognize that something big was happening.” Something was happening, yes. Interviewer: “So you spent a lot of time playing in the school—your back yard in a sense, was the school and the baseball diamond and all that. How did that all work out? You’re a girl how could you play baseball?” Well I was called the tomboy of the neighborhood. I did not like paper dolls, that’s what the girls were playing and they would cut out these little paper dolls and have these little tea sets and that never appealed to me. I’d rather have the beanpole and do the polevaulting over the neighbor’s bushes or around the school were big ditches and we’d pole vault across the ditches. Those were the things that were more interesting to me and of course we always had the basketball games and the football games and baseball games and that was the environment in which I grew up. 3:59 Interviewer: “Looking back now and playing baseball with the boys, how good were you as a young kid? How good were you? Were you a good batter? Could you pitch? I mean how were you as a player?” Well, on the playground we played a game called work-up and you got to do everything. They would let me play with them and sometimes they weren’t too happy about it, but they would let me play with them. I remember one incident, I had trouble with a neighborhood boy who didn’t approve of something I did, I have forgotten now, but all the way home from the ball game I was riding my bike and he turned around and I guess he thought I was riding at him and I was not, but he lived next door and he was older and he turned and threw his glove and hit me in the middle and knocked me off my bicycle. 4:51 I’m usually very peaceful, but at that time I was not. Junior Cassidy was the one and I went home and I think I got my bat, but anyway I went back and met him before he 2 �got home and chased him around the neighborhood for knocking me off my bike—he made me mad, but anyway I didn’t catch him, but I was after him, around the house, across the street and he was yelling for his mama the whole way and she came and got him in the house and I was glad of that. Many years later as adults we enjoyed talking about it. 5:32 That was one of the early ones and yeah, I got to play most of the games and most of the times peacefully and that was one event that I can recall that was not very peaceful. I guess one of the maddest I had got—my father was home at the time because we were going home for supper and he wanted to know, “Delores what are you doing”, and I went out of the house and daddy followed me, so they had to come and get me, but his mama got him in the house in time. 6:05 Interviewer: “Now in high school, did you get a chance to play any organized sports in high school?” There were no sports for girls in Alabama, at least in my part of Alabama at that particular time. Mobile public schools had no sports for girls. Interviewer: “So what was your way of playing sports? Was it still like with the children, did you still have these pick-up game type of things?” On the playground, on the playground of the school and during the war they did start some organized, but there were none for me. I had no opportunity and I actually came into the league without any team experience. 6:40 Interviewer: “So right around, I believe and correct me if I’m wrong, right around fifteen something happened to kind of change your life, was it fifteen?” Fourteen, make it back even—how about thirteen? Interviewer: “All right, let’s go there.” In 1946 the all American league came to Pascagoula, Mississippi for their spring training. Mr. Max Carey was the president of the league at the time and the fellas from the shipyard use to let me play with them when they would come to practice on the junior high diamond and if someone was missing they would let me fill in that spot and on occasion they would even let me play a position if the opportunity presented itself and they needed somebody. They were the ones that actually got me started in—when this league was down in Pascagoula it was in the Mobile Press Register that they were going to have tryouts etc. 7:42 So some of the guys went to my parents and wanted to take me to the tryouts, but my mother said, “no, if you think she should go, I’ll take her”, so one April afternoon in 1946 we borrowed my grandmother’s car because daddy had to go to work in our car and she took me out of school and we drove to Pascagoula, Mississippi where I actually tried out. After I had done all the things Mr. Carey asked me to do, the hit, throw, run business, he asked me how old I was. It wasn’t until I had done all those things he asked me how old I was, so I told him, “I’m thirteen and I’ll soon be fourteen”, but he said, “we don’t take the girls that young”, and he went over to talk to my mother and he said, “Mrs. Brumfield, we don’t take the girls this young”, and my mother said, “I don’t want you to take her, I don’t even know what you thought”, so that was my tryout period. 8:36 3 �Interviewer: “I want to stop you here for a moment though. Did you grow up fairly quickly? You must have been a taller girl than most of the girls—I mean thirteen years old looks like a thirteen year old, how would they?” I was very slender at that time and not very large at all. I guess I’m down to 5’6” now, being elderly, but at that time I was probably 5’6” or 5’7”. Interviewer: “That’s fairly tall for a thirteen year old isn’t it? I mean—were you taller than your other sisters?” I guess I was taller, I have a picture at home, a picture with my father and one of the fish he caught out of Mobile Bay and my brother who is sixteen months younger than I am, but I’m a head taller than he is, so I guess maybe I was a little tall for my age. 9:21 Interviewer: “That makes more sense, yeah. When you played with the men before they came to your mom and said that you should go and tryout for this, were talking about men who were already in their teens and twenties playing baseball. Remember this is WWII, these guys have been in the shipyards and they came for all over and one of my favorite guys was a guy from Mississippi who played. He was a tall slender guy who wore brogans, I don’t know if you remember the old high top work boots or work shoes that they played in, we’re talking about school yard teams, we’re not talking about organized teams as such, just teams getting together to play. 10:14 Interviewer: “They must have known you were playing pretty well to be able to play with them?” I was at the ball field every day and when they came over to practice I was there, so they would let me play catch with them and all and that type of thing. There was a place we use to go to, Alabama Village, which was in Mobile at that particular time, and Mobile was one of major industrial areas during WWII. There were a lot of housing areas that grew up at that time and Alabama Village being one of them and where this ball diamond was with the junior high school was called Pritchard Homes, which was another housing project during the war, so they played one against the other, but never uniforms or organized like that. 10:58 Interviewer: “But still, somebody is throwing a pretty hard ball at you and you’re having to hit a ball.” Oh yeah Interviewer: “At thirteen now your mother reveals that you’re glad that you’re not going to be taken, so what happens? What happened, you went back home?” I went back home. Interviewer: “How did you feel?” 11:18 At that particular time I didn’t know, I didn’t know at the time if I thought I was going to go anywhere anyway because I was just trying out. One of the interesting things—there 4 �was a fella by the name of Bill Mitten, as my mind reminds me, who was a local sports broadcaster and also worked at a sporting goods store and I guess I feel like I was meant to be a baseball player because Mr. Carey lost my name and they were coming to Mobile and were asking about this girl that tried out and they didn’t know and I had gone into the sporting goods store to buy a pair of shoes and talking to him about it and he said, “you must be the one”, and that’s how they got my name back to Mr. Carey. 12:03 That year in June, I tried out in April, they finally found me in May there, and in June when school was out, school years were quite different than they are today, but he wrote my parents and wanted me to go to Chicago and put on one of the teams because I had never had the opportunity to be on a girls team and the parents said, “no, you shouldn’t go that’s too far, too much”, so the next year in November I received a letter from Mr. Carey that said they were going to Havana, Cuba for spring training and that they would like Delores to be one of the girls we ask. I don’t know how many he said, I forget. At one time I had a letter, a copy on that and I think it’s in Cooperstown. They said how many girls they were going to take, new girls and that’s kind of the way that all happened. 12:59 Interviewer: “Now had you ever heard of Cuba before?” Oh, I think I heard of Cuba. There was another girl from Mobile, her name was Margy Holgerson and she also tried out in 1946 and was selected and she pitched for the Rockford Peaches. Over that winter, Mr. Carey sent her out to meet me and to meet my parents and then it was time for spring training to be in April and I’m in school. Now, I’ve got to quit school in order to go to Havana, Cuba, so Margy was my chaperone, we went by plane to Havana, first we went to Miami where we met up with all the girls from everywhere else and we flew over to Havana for spring training. 13:45 Interviewer: “Now I want to stop you here. Had you traveled outside of your immediate area at any distance before that?” Only to my grandparents in Mississippi Interviewer: “It was still in the south.” It was still in the south. Both my parents were from Mississippi, but my mother and dad met in Mobile and married in Mobile, so all of us were born and raised in that area. Interviewer: “So now you arrive in Miami and you’re meeting girls from all over the country?” Yes, and Canada Interviewer: “And Canada, what was that experience like?” Very interesting, I have always been interested in people, I don’t know if it was that experience led me to my interest in names, I’ve always been interested in that. It was just a very exciting time, I’d ridden a train, I was in a different area, I didn’t know anybody but Margy and then we were flown over to Havana and to the Biltmore Hotel. 14:49 I can remember very well one of the older girls, there were several of us in a room and adjoining rooms and this type of thing and my problem was that I said, “yes ma’am and 5 �no sir”, which was the way that I was brought up to do and this one gal from Detroit said, “don’t ma’am me”, and that was a strange experience, but most of the girls were friendly enough. I was put with the Fort Wayne Daisies for my spring training that year, but at the end—I don’t want to get too far beyond, but all the tryout business. At the end of spring training I was selected to be put on a team and I was put with the “South Bend Blue Sox “. 15:37 Interviewer: “I want to address two questions. One, you were much younger than most of the girls, is that correct?” That is correct, I only know of one other girl that was younger than I that came into the league later on and she was a month younger than I, but a lot of the girls came into the league at fifteen. Interviewer: “Now did you notice anything that you were treated any differently because you were younger than them?” The chaperone took care of that. The most important part of the experience was taken over by the chaperone. The chaperone determined where you lived, whom you roomed with and this type of thing she was very selective. 16:28 Interviewer: “So she made sure that there wasn’t going to be any kind of razzing or they were going to tease you because you were younger?” I didn’t have any of that, we were there for spring training and we were there for business. There were places I didn’t go and things I didn’t do that the older girls did, but that was all right with me. Interviewer: “How did you deal with the fact that they all talked so funny?” Well, that was funny, that was funny, I couldn’t understand some of them and they couldn’t understand me, but it was just an interesting experience. The spring training in Havana in 1947 was a highlight for me as I look back. So many fond memories come out of that particular time. 17:13 Interviewer: “Well, I guess what I would like to get at is—I know I have been through experiences in my life where when they’re going on you’re just doing them and you’re not realizing that it’s something special or it’s something unusual. Did you have any sense of—I mean Cuba, I’m playing baseball?” I just had a uniform and I could go on the field and I could play and do what I loved to do and it didn’t make that much at that particular time. There are some pictures in Life magazine coming down the steps in Havana, Cuba, just kind of a wave of us coming down that I kind of enjoy thinking about that and the people that I met that was so important to me. I met people from all over everywhere. Margy had gotten me there, but Margy was with the Rockford Peaches and I didn’t see her much anymore and now I got to deal with all these new people. 18:11 6 �Interviewer: “How was it playing with all the girls?” That was fine; in spring training you’re doing everything, the calisthenic approach to things. At that particular time they didn’t think girls should be doing weights or be in weight rooms, that all came much later. That gets me into a whole new area of how the football coaches didn’t want the very idea of you in their training rooms, but baseball, calisthenics, exercises, running sprints, your infield training and that type of thing. Interviewer: “For that particular team in Cuba, what position did you play?” About everything, mostly infield, but I don’t remember being put in any one position, general skill, running, hitting and throwing. Interviewer: “Now you say Life magazine was there taking pictures?” There was a picture, but I wasn’t aware of it, but there is a Life magazine picture of the girls coming down by teams. 19:24 Interviewer: “So, where did you stay in Cuba?” At the Sevillia Biltmore Hotel. Interviewer: “This was a nice place?” Oh yeah Interviewer: “Had you stayed in a hotel before?” No, the interesting thing is I guess, I remember that particular time, there were people riding around in Jeeps with guns, which was very different and this was before the overthrow of the government and we were not allowed to go out by ourselves, we went in groups. One of the interesting things is as I look back is, there were always fellas standing across the street from the hotel and there were balconies out from the room and I had to learn about things like that, but Havana itself was a beautiful place. One of the interesting things to me was there were only two stop lights in the whole city and the congestion of traffic, the sidewalks were about half the size of sidewalks as we think of them and the buildings were built right up to the corners and as I understood it, the first one to blow his horn had the right away—interesting traffic. 20:40 It was very difficult to walk around some parts of the city, but then they had great plazas that I did like to go down. We got to go into the capitol building itself and do some touring. I had a chance in the next year to go back to Havana for some games. Interviewer: “Tell us about the games the first season, the first time, what was it like, who were you playing against and what were the, for example, when did you get up in the morning, what was your routine like?” 21:11 Well, as you can imagine, you’re traveling most of the time, the traveling part, packing a bag, taking care of laundry and doing those types of things, getting on the bus, being on time, we toured going back, when we came back to the states we were doing tours all the way back. I remember playing in Savanna, Charleston, and Roanoke-- places like that. 7 �One of my memories at that particular time, and I must share that one with you, we were in Charleston and my mother and grandmother rode a Greyhound bus from Mobile to Charleston in order to see me because I had been away from home now for several weeks and I had been selected to be on the team and they rode the bus and came in and we had been on the bus all night riding from one city to the other when my mother comes in early that morning knocking on the door and I’m just getting in bed and she’s knocking on the door. 22:13 She comes in and I say something to her and she is upset at the way I’m talking and she said, “you’re not going to play this game if you’re going to talk like those Yankees”, and that was going to be a no, no, but anyway it worked out all right. I think about it, what they must have endured on the bus ride. If you can imagine going on a bus ride all the way from Mobile to Charleston just to check and see if I was OK. 22:45 Interviewer: “Did they watch the game?” They saw us play I guess, but I don’t have memories, specific memories of that. We did play different cities as we worked our way back and then we flew from Roanoke, Virginia to South Bend. Interviewer: “Did you write letters home?” Oh yeah and some of those are on file in Cooperstown. Interviewer: “So really the way you communicated, they knew you really were ok. They had to have wondered what’s going on with my—“ They wanted to find out and they did. Interviewer: “So your first season that you played, and you played in Cuba, and you also traveled right? What happened in the off season, where did you go?” Back to school, I had dropped out of school, so I had to go back and make up some time. It cost me another semester in high school, but at that time we only had eleven years of public education anyway in Alabama, so it just cost me eleven and a half years to finish. I had missed one course that you can’t take the next course until you had the previous course. 23:56 I think one of my favorite stories about that particular time is in 1948, the second year I played, and I wanted to go to spring training and I’m in high school, Murphy High School in Mobile, and I had to get my teacher’s permission to take two weeks out of school to go to spring training. Spring training that year was in south Florida, Opa-locka, Florida, I think that’s right, and all my teachers had to sign permission for me to go, well didn’t all and the worst one was my Spanish teacher and she always made you feel very bad when she would get you before the class. This is a young lady that wants to go and she made it be known that if I didn’t pass that class it wasn’t her fault if I was going to go to Havana, Cuba and be gone for all that time. 25:00 Well, I did go and I did go back to Cuba, spring training was in south Florida, but we went back over to Havana, but when I came back she—I was gone two weeks and three days, so that’s when she said, “this young lady’s been gone two weeks and three days”. I got back on a Wednesday, I went to school on Thursday and we had an accumulative test on Friday for what I had missed and she didn’t realize that when I was in south Florida some of the team mates were Cubans and were helping me with my Spanish and I was 8 �getting to go to Havana with Spanish, so she was really pointing me out that I was doomed for failure, but I made the second highest grade in class. 25:53 After that, the next year when I came to school, I was always late because of the season, she met me in the hallway and took me to the principal’s office to be sure I was taking second year Spanish. She was a pretty tough teacher and she made a point that I had done all these things and missed school and taken out of class. Interviewer: “But you were smart though by getting somebody who actually speaks Spanish to work with you like that because you were actually getting a better education with traveling and with them in Havana, Cuba because you’re hearing all that as well. The kids in school didn’t have that; they just had whatever they had in class. That’s pretty smart.” That’s right, Mickey Perez was one of the Cuban girls that really helped me and we would write letters back and forth to each other and we were good friends, and we never played on the same team, but she was very helpful to me. Anyway, this was one of the toughest teachers at Murphy High School. Interviewer: I’m going to ask you an indelicate question now, how is your Spanish today?” Boco Interviewer: “Ok, fair enough, fair enough.” 27:06 Although I think about it often and if I have the opportunity, I think, with the languages being done today, I would like to go back and try to get with it again. I didn’t have much conversational at that time it was reading and writing and very little, boco. Interviewer: “Ok, I know this is kind of a tough question because it goes so far back and we’re only two years into your career here, but did you at any time in those first couple of seasons think, “this could be my job? This could be my career?” Not long term, one year at a time, because I’m playing ball in the summer, I’m going to school in the winter, I was always late getting back to school, but I was a pretty good student, so I made it up all right until I got to be a senior and I had to have that special class that took me into another semester, but like I say, we only had eleven years of school anyway at that time. 28:08 Interviewer: “Now you were real young, so maybe this isn’t a fair question. Did you have any idea what you wanted to do?” At that time no because I really was so young and so early in my school career and I hadn’t even had physical education until I went to the high school. I think the physical education teachers at the Murphy High School were very influential in that also, the experience I had. A lot of the girls who played in the league and friends that I had were going to college and many of them also, were teachers. At that particular time, that was 9 �one of the opportunities that women had. The opportunities were very limited in what girls do and if you could get the education, you could teach. 28:57 So the emphasis on education was there to go on and teach and I mean my gym teachers were good for me. Interviewer: “So the second time that you toured with the group to Havana and to other places, what was the next step?” Remember, I only went there for two weeks spring training and then I had to go back to high school. Then during that interim period I find out that I’m no longer with the South Bend Blue Sox, I’m now with the Kenosha Comets, so when I catch the train now to Chicago and be on the new team, I have to get to Kenosha. I traveled by myself, by train, to get first to Chicago and then into Kenosha and then I have a new chaperone, but Mrs. Moore in South Bend, I have to give her credit, a great deal of credit, where she placed me, with whom she placed me and the location that she placed me. 30:04 The chaperones were very important, I hope that we’re going to give them good credit. For the younger girls that came into the league, they always arranged for your housing and who your roommates were. When you’re on the road they also controlled who you were rooming with and that type of thing. Interviewer: “So what were there—you mentioned just now in terms of what they did for the rooms and making arrangements and all that sort of organization, but what were their jobs? What were their duties?” The chaperone was in charge of everything. They were the trainer, they were the business person, you had to have the uniforms, you had to get the first aid, if you had to see a doctor they went with you, they made the appointments, they arranged where you were going to live, who you were going to live with. The first assigned place I had was within walking distance of the ball field and with another girl from the south and I thought that was important too, and into a home where there were no children. 31:09 The husband worked at Sears, he was an usher at the ballpark at night and then his wife was a homemaker. One of my favorite stories is my fifteenth birthday; I’m turning fifteen and Mr. Warner had to do the chore of what you did, he gave me the fifteen licks. In those days you got a lick for every year, so fifteen and one to grow on, she baked me a cake and I was able to go with teammates, some of them and I’m the rookie, but I got to go to the radio show for the Knothole Gang, for younger girls that play in South Bend and the sponsor gave me a beautiful sweater and they did birthday things over the radio and that night at the ball park—I always was assigned to sit by the manager, Chet Grant and that night they pushed me out of the dugout and in front of everybody during the seventh inning and they played a song on the big microphone, “I’m a Big Girl Now”. 32:18 “I wanna be treated like a big girl now”, and that was one of my special memories of that year was my fifteenth birthday. They gave me the cake and ice cream and all that business at home with Mr. And Mrs. Warner and then I got to call home and that was special. Interviewer: “That sounds like a magic moment.” 10 �It was a magic moment, it really was, here I had been away from home now and that was May 26 and I had been away since April, it had been about a month or more I guess, but it was a special time. 32:56 Interviewer: “So what was the next step in your career, so to speak, with baseball? You’re now?” With the Kenosha Comets and driving—I didn’t get to go to spring training again until I graduated from high school and that was in West Baden Springs, Indiana in 1950. Interviewer: “So you miss spring training because of school, but where did you then end up with the group? If they were spring training and went somewhere where did you end up?” They had started the league, they had started play and I think this is where I attribute some of the team pictures where we could identify the people on the teams, so of them we couldn’t identify because those were girls that were picked up in spring training and given a chance to come with the team, but in the team, games being played up to the opening of the league, then some of them were let go. Then you had usually about fifteen or sixteen players were all we had. 33:57 That sometimes leads to misidentification of those girls who didn’t make the team, but they were in spring training pictures. Interviewer: “I gotcha, wow, I didn’t know that.” Once, and others I’m sure, I was one of the ones that went to school and got to finish school and then go play. Interviewer. “Did you have any idea by this time about the scope of the league?” I guess as I look back on it, when I went home there was nobody there and most of them back there didn’t know anything about it. As I think back, I missed all the teenage things growing up, going to the beaches and going to the ballpark to cheer for the boys church team and that type of thing, but we didn’t talk about it and they didn’t know anything about it. That league was totally dismissed away from them. 34:57 They had no idea about it. Interviewer: “But they followed other sports like major league baseball and things like that? People talk about games don’t they?” Oh yes, the boys were very active; they had all their teams you know. The American Legion came in and organized all the boys and they had a team and they played and we had church league softball for the boys and all like that, but it was in the summertime and I didn’t get to play any of that. The American Legion came and said girls can’t play. Interviewer: “that amazes me because here you have been playing professional baseball and you would think they would want you on the team.” No 11 �Interviewer: “No way, so that’s 1950 we’re talking about now?” When I graduated from high school it was mid year, remember I had a half year I had to put in. Interviewer: “So you graduated from high school and had you any idea by that time, had your parents, for example asked you what you are going to do now? When you get out of high school are you going to be a teacher, are you going to do this? Did any of that kind of conversation go on?” Oh yes, you had to with the family, particularly my father, because he couldn’t see educating me, I’m a girl. I have a brother sixteen months younger than I am and if anybody goes to school it will be my brother. During that time I’m saving my money and with my grandmother’s help, and my mother, I got to go to college. My brother went right out of high school into the Air Force and stayed in the Air Force, that type of thing, so he never wanted to go to college and my dad in later years apologized to me about that as he was moving me –I’m getting all this in later times and I hope you can put it all together later, but the year I got my doctorate and he was helping me move back home, after that he apologized to me for that particular time. 37:03 Because of the league, and the point I want to make is because of the opportunity I had to play in this baseball league, that I was able to make money, I was able then to get my education and that was so important to a lot of the girls that played in the league. If it had not been for that opportunity there would not have been a college education for many of us, it certainly was for me. Interviewer: “Let’s go, I’m glad we went there, but I want to go back to 1950. Did you play for another team after that or are you still with the original team in 1950 after you graduated from high school? Well let’s see, I was in Kenosha until 1951. I played four years in Kenosha. I would go to school and I would go back to Kenosha, I would go to school and back to Kenosha and then in 1951 I started in college, 1950 really. 38:08 I ended up graduation in January of 1950 and I started college in September of 1950. Interviewer: “I’m trying to get in my mind the chronology here. Did you play professional baseball while you were in college?” Yes Interviewer: “Ok, that’s where I want to go next.” I’m in school, I’m at the ballgame, I’m in school, I’m at the team and that’s what I did. Interviewer: “So where—the Kenosha team was a traveling team though, right?” No Interviewer: “Ok, now I’m getting back on track here.” No, the Kenosha team wasn’t established, the last year that it folded, 1951, it did travel a lot. 12 �Interviewer: “Let’s go back to 1950, you’re going to college, but now you got a team that’s staying at home.” See, I’m in Alabama when I’m in school. Interviewer: “Ok, college in Alabama?” I’m in college in Alabama and then I go to Kenosha and then when I went to Fort Wayne the same thing was true. My first meeting with Jimmy Foxx I very well remember because I didn’t go until school was out and again school was not out until about the first of June and then I reported just as soon—usually it’s one day apart, I’m out of school one day and I’m on the train the next I’m at the ballpark, that type of thing. 39:25 The first day in 1952 when I went to fort Wayne, I met with Jimmy in the dugout and it was the first time I’d ever seen him and I didn’t know that much about him and the night before they had let one of their rookie players go to another team and it opened up a position at second base. I had never played second base, but Jimmy said, “you’re going to be our second baseman”, and I said, ”I’ve never played second base”, and he said, “You’re our second baseman”, and that whole year was one of my worst years that I remember, but it was a good year in many other ways. 40:09 Interviewer: “What made it the worst year and what made it a good year in other ways?” My baseball results were not good, batting was down, I had led the Kenosha team in batting and I was not doing that now, I’m in a strange position, but the strange position was that I was between the best short stop in the league and also the best hitter in the league. In 1952 Dottie Schroeder was the shortstop for the Fort Wayne Daisies. The only girl to play all twelve years in the league and Betty Foss, who was on first base, a great big girl from southern Illinois that was the league hitter in the league. 40:51 One of my favorite stories, Betty gets sick and Jimmy says, “Dolly you have been wanting to play first base”, and I told him I liked first base, “you have been wanting to play first base, so this is your time”, so that night we had a double header and I got to play first base and I had the best hitting, I think I went six for eight or something like that, and then the next year they put Betty in right field, she’s still a great hitter, and he put me on first base and now I outhit her and after that I was on first base. I earned my spot to be on first base. 41:34 That’s one of my favorite times. I had a bad time—when you’re not comfortable in the field it affects your batting. Interviewer: “I was going to say, you either earned the place or Jimmy finally figured out where to put you.” Well, Bill Allington the next year, but that experience Jimmy probably did have some influence in that particular event alone, but that’s one of my favorite times. Interviewer: “What were some of the highlights that you can think of during that period of particular games, not only for you, but maybe seeing another player make 13 �a play that was really amazing. There were a lot of them, but any one that you can think of?” It’s hard to come up with just one thing. There weren’t that many home runs hit because we were playing in big fields. I have a ball at home that is signed by Jimmy Foxx and it’s my prize possession right now and I’m trying to decide where I am going to want it to go. 42:40 August the 26th , I think it was, of 1952 when I hit that home run and I’ve got the ball and the teammates signed it, but Jimmy also signed it and he didn’t sign all that much. That’s a—but you’re playing with great girls, girls that were really great players. I played with Audrey Wagner in Kenosha and the influence again, she went on to be a medical doctor and I think the achievement of some of the girls following the time we were in the league was very influential to me, interesting to me, what all they went on to do. 43:20 Interviewer: “You know what interests me is that you were so young and that’s a very impressionable age and impressionable can go with who you are hanging out with. It can be very good or it can be very bad and in this case you had all of these incredible examples of girls that were doing really remarkable things and you kind of had to keep up to make sure you were being as good as they are, that’s got to be good training.” Well, so many things go back to, not only time on the field, but also time off the field. One of my memories of Mrs. Moore, who was the chaperone in South Bend, we were in Kenosha in the hotel, I think the Dayton Hotel, you’re in and away from home and with not much to do and they played cards, so they were playing cards and playing poker and I was just watching, I wasn’t playing and Mrs. Moore came in and got most upset with all them and got me out of that room, I wasn’t supposed to be doing that, so that was one of my early remembrances. 44:22 Mrs. Moore took a very close account of me that whole year. In fact, during practice when the first team would practice, Chet would let them go home and keep the rookies and the girls that played in the Knothole Gang, the younger girls in town, so some of my best friends were the younger girls in town. I wasn’t able to go with my teammates to the places they went for their entertainment and everything afterwards, but one family particularly, the McCrackens, that took me in. Their youngest daughter, my age, we became best friends and that’s another thing that will carry over to other years when I’m in Kenosha or anywhere else, it was not uncommon for that family to show up to support me. 45:11 Interviewer: “Your personal fan club huh?” Personal fan club, that’s right. It was very important to me because I could walk from where I lived to their house. I never had a car when I was in the league. I always depended on somebody else for transportation. Interviewer: “Let’s talk about the fans in the early days and then maybe later on in your career, how were the fans?” 14 �Great and you had selective ones, but overall the fans were very supportive, they really were. You made friends and like I said, I made some friends younger out in towns where I played because I was so much younger than the other girls. Interviewer: “In the early days in particular, the most you had ever had in terms of an audience when you were playing with these baseball teams when you were a kid, very different than going into a ball park where there’s paying customers out there. Can you recall in the early days what it must of have been like to walk out, and this is not the way it was when we played at home?” 46:18 I don’t really remember being awestruck in that way, it was just because by then I had been with the team. You go by bus, you get on the bus, you get off the bus and you’re playing seven days a week, double headers on Sundays and holidays, you didn’t have much off time. The off time you had was to go get ready, pack and go again. I don’t remember that, but certain fields you liked better than others. The Grand Rapids field always had this big factory in right field and that was a problem. The Rockford Peaches played in a—had a football stadium for part of their stands. Different fields I remember, Playland Park in South Bend had an auto racetrack around it, so those were kind of strange situations there. To be awestruck by—because you come out early before the fans get there and two hours before the game you’re on the field. 47:18 Two hours, and you had batting practice, you had infield practice, you had all of that before the game. Interviewer: “How about the press? Were there newspaper reporters around at any time? TV cameras or things like that?” We didn’t have TV cameras in those days, but certainly the radio people, there was an announcer at every park. Then there were reporters, yes they always had coverage of the local games in the papers. Interviewer: “Did you ever get interviewed?” I don’t remember so much being interviewed. Certain games were important, had a good night, maybe hit in a winning run or something like that. They always had those. Interviewer: “Did you have a scrapbook?” My mother did more so than myself. A lot of the things that I had in that scrapbook are in Cooperstown. 48:18 They have a file on me in Cooperstown that has a good bit, my personal letters to my family and that type of thing. Interviewer: “So mama was proud huh?” She was proud. Interviewer: “What was the last season you played? That was fifty?” 1953 Interviewer: “So in 1952 you are still playing, you graduated from high school, 1950-1951 you’re going to college and how many years of college?” Four 15 �Interviewer: “Four, all right, so all through the first three years of college you’re playing baseball?” Yes Interviewer: “By that time did it almost become a routine because you’re—every year you’re doing this, you’re going off to play and then you’re going to college?” Yes, and then it’s time to graduate from college. Now the year before, even though it was my best year in the league, I had some health problems. Primarily anemia. [I] didn’t eat right as a kid, all those years that I didn’t eat right, I had severe anemia and the chaperone had taken me to get me booster shots and all the things they do for anemia. 49:33 the first night they did that I was a leadoff hitter and I don’t remember the first inning of that game and going down the steps I passed out, so after that anytime I had to take those shots for anemia, I’d get a day off, but that type of thing. Memories of that type of event, the chaperone would take you to the doctor for an appointment and that kind of thing. 50:03 Interviewer: “You say it was one of your best years.” My best year of hitting, of playing first base, I’m more comfortable and Bill Allington put me as lead off hitter that was another one, so it just kind of worked out that way. Because of that year, though I’d had a good year—Bill Allington, I was in the game and I was on third base and I told him I wasn’t going to come back and he said, “are you sure”, and this type of thing because he wanted me to come back, but anyway, I didn’t go back. It was time for me to go on with my career at that time, I was looking toward teaching and getting started in teaching, that’s another whole story as to why. 51:01 I had a job so early after—I had an uncle who was superintendent of schools in Mississippi where they did play girls sports and he had another superintendent that was needing a basketball coach at that particular time and a teacher , so he helped me get an interview during spring break that year, so I made my interview and I had a job before school was even out, but then I didn’t go back to baseball. As it turned out 1954 was the last year of the league, so it worked out for me. 51:33 Interviewer: “I want to get into that. Was there any indication in the last year that you played that things were different, that the league may not continue on?” Yes, the number of teams that were in the league had changed, they had the traveling teams and I don’t remember too much about the history of that part because I’m playing every day, I’m moving every few days, so I really wasn’t aware of it as much as it actually was happening. It just wasn’t a part of my everyday and I wasn’t one to be that concerned about it, I was just playing every day. 52:12 Interviewer: “I had asked you earlier, when you were in high school did you know what you wanted to do, and of course you said that at that age you didn’t. When was it that you realized that you knew what you wanted to do that wasn’t baseball, but your career?” 16 �The teaching, the fact that in that the physical education teachers did the things that I liked to do and some of the girls that played in the league that were teachers, were going to college, for one thing they motivated me to go to college and to want to teach. Interviewer: “That was not coming from your family? Your family was not saying--your father, as you said and there’s no blame attached, I’m not trying to— but basically he just wasn’t thinking you were going to go there, but you saw the example of these other women.” That’s what motivated me. Again, it wasn’t that my father didn’t want the best for me and I tried to bring that out. It wasn’t that he didn’t want me to do well or have the best of things, but I had a brother and he was supposed to get all of that. 53:13 Interviewer: “So there was that period then in transition, how difficult was it, and I know this isn’t even a fair question, but how difficult was it and was there an actual time that you decided that, I’m not going to play that next year, I am going to go and be a teacher? I don’t know if there was any specific time, but probably my senior year in college. Again I went to a women’s college at that time, that was the way things were done, a women’s college, majored in physical education, no sports other than intramural sports, there was nothing back home in the way of sports and I had to go to Mississippi to even teach sports. I taught in the Mississippi schools because they had girl’s sports, particularly in the country schools and that’s where I started, but there weren’t any opportunities for girl’s sports. 54:15 I think that’s one of the things that’s been passionate for me, for the girls to have the opportunity to play sports. I didn’t think it should only be for the boys and I still don’t think it should only be for the boys. I think there should be opportunities there and that’s a whole other story, so get me out of that one. Interviewer: “Did you have any experience in basketball before that?” No opportunity in basketball. Interviewer: “But you’re going to be teaching basketball?” In college I learned because I had classes. I had basketball classes and in our physical education we had activity classes and theory classes in all of sports, so I ended up coaching basketball, track, tennis, things of this nature because that was the academic and background training that I had, but no practical coaching things except intramurally 55:09. Interviewer: “Now, during your college days did your fellow students know that you played professional baseball?” It kind of came that way, but I was late getting to college the first year, remember I’m playing baseball every year, I’m always late getting to school. By the time I got to school 17 �the person I was supposed to room with wasn’t even there and I’m getting another room mate. That type of thing was always a problem—I was late getting to school, all the introductions and orientations had already been done and I come on late, so it was always a little bit of a problem and other than some of my closer friends, people who were in the academic area, where most of my classes were, they knew, but that was a—and they didn’t understand, but they knew I was coming in late. 56:08 Interviewer: “Didn’t happen to have a Spanish teacher in college who gave you trouble too, did you?” No, no more Spanish. Interviewer: “ I want to go back to the conversation that you had, if you can recall it, with the manager, it wasn’t Jimmy, it was the new—who was the last manager you had?” Bill Allington Interviewer: “What was that conversation like where he tried to convince you to stay?” The biggest part was that one night, that one night on third base in the middle of the game, that was kind of strange. It must have been a timeout or something and he was talking to me and I guess he had gotten word that I wasn’t planning on returning the next year and he wanted to talk to me about it. Now Bill was the one that after the league folded, that put together a team of players and they travel and played against the men. 57:07 I had been out of the league for a whole year teaching and he still was contacting me to come and join that group, but I didn’t, I said, “I’m teaching, I’m happy, I am going to stay where I am”. I had enough of that traveling around. You know, seven years of suitcases and traveling and hotels and that type of thing. Interviewer: “What was his main argument about why you should stay?” He wanted me on his team in some position maybe and at that time I was having a good year and he certainly had been aware of it from the years he had been in the league as a manager. In my opinion, he was the best baseball man that I played under. Chet Grant was, I think, very good for me because he was a teacher. I think my memory of the things I’ve learned that he was a quarterback for Knute Rockne at Notre Dame, so his background is in the part of sports. Johnny Gottselig was my other manager in Kenosha and he was a Chicago hockey player, but he was a scout for Mr. Wrigley that’s how he got into the baseball part of it 58:23 Jimmy was a nice guy and he got much of the publicity that year, but Bill Allington, who had been a minor league player, was the best baseball man—he taught you baseball. Interviewer: “During the period of time that you played, through our conversation here, you were always concentrating on the playing and of course you had school, then playing, then school, was there any sense during that period that you were 18 �doing, and your fellow players were doing, anything remarkable beyond just playing baseball? The fact that you were good at playing baseball?” Just having fun, we were just having fun, I made a lot of friends, I had friends in the towns where we played, got to do things that other people didn’t get to do, opportunities that they didn’t have and when you go back home, nobody knows where you have been or what you have been up to , they just know you’ve been away. 59:24 It was a strange happening in that respect. Interviewer: “When in your life did you realize that other people recognized that period of time as being very special? You knew it was special because you played, but now we’re talking about a totally different thing. In history, people are looking back on the period and saying that this was so unique and had all this impact, when did it dawn on you, or did it dawn on you?” I don’t think it dawned on the people in my environment, where I lived. I’m in south Alabama, Mississippi where I taught, now in Arkansas where I live—until the movie came out, the movie “A League of Their Own”, until that came out and also the recognition by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988 after we became an organization or association, we tried to help with that and I think that was a first step there and that’s how Penny Marshall got a hold of things too was showing up in 1988 when we were there doing that recognition at Cooperstown. :39 Interviewer: “The movie portrayed, and I don’t want to get into the movie at this moment, but Geena Davis’s reluctance to go to that, what was your reaction to being informed that you’re being inducted? Did you get invited to go?” I was there. Interviewer: “Can you see where I’m going with this? I want to know, what was your reaction to this happening and did you say, “Oh, I’m going to go”, or did you think about it?” Well, I guess the interesting part is that one of my colleagues that I was teaching with, I invited her to go with me. Of course she didn’t know—she had played sports in high school and she was a physical education teacher like myself, but I invited her to go to Cooperstown with me and I think that was exciting. 1:29 I had been to the first reunion in Chicago; even my husband went with me in 1982 when we went to that. It’s kind of hard to put it all together in your head just exactly, but Betty Wallace, who is a colleague, went with me to Cooperstown and was with me during that. I was just kind of the kid on the block, the older gals were there, but I was one of them and that type of thing. 2:01 We traveled together and had to fly into Buffalo I guess it was and get a car to drive to Cooperstown because it wasn’t an easy place to get to and got to be there with people I hadn’t seen, it was an exciting time. Interviewer: “What was your reaction to going in there and seeing all that stuff? There were displays.” 19 �I remember being at the display area when—I think that is when it was really taking hold, the display area in Cooperstown. You would sit around and hear everybody talking, That’s what Penny Marshall was doing too with her tape recorder. When you get together you talk about old times, what it was like, where you lived, what you did and that’s when it really kind of—that was something kind of special, but until that was made into a movie and somebody else knew about it. 2:58 Now, in the areas where the teams were in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan where the teams played, a lot of the fans were still there, but in my part of the world, they had never heard of it. You would say something, I remember fellas I coach with—“no you didn’t do that, that didn’t happen, you telling me one” and that type of thing. I found one fella I coach with that finally said, “Ok, you’re an athlete”, because girls didn’t have that much of a background at that particular time, so I got to go down and workout with the team. Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve been initiating girl’s sports. That’s something that I thought was important, so I’ve been able to be active in that. 3:51 Interviewer: “Why did you go to the first reunion?” I just wanted to see everybody. That one in Chicago and my husband was willing to go with me, that type of thing and he had never heard anything about it either. Interviewer: “What was his reaction?” He went with me to support me, but he didn’t really know anything about it. Interviewer: “You didn’t talk about it?” No, you don’t, you would go home and you wouldn’t talk about it because there would be no one there to talk to about it. You didn’t want to go around broadcasting all the time unless somebody asked you a question or something, you just didn’t talk about it. It was another world. Even the boys I grew up with playing ball on the playground in later years, they didn’t know where I’d been either and we had a fellowship of those people called “The Pritchard Kids” for many years. Just last year we lost contact and I still hear from some, but we use to have an annual reunion with those kids we grew up with, went to church with, these were church people and that was another era. 5:00 Interviewer: “Two more for you, one is, how did that experience of playing professional baseball affect you personally, in terms of the person you are today? What was it about that time, was there any effect that happened during that time that kind of determined or molded or shaped the person that you are today? Certainly, The travel, the exposure to girls from so many different places. I have always really appreciated that, I have always been interested in people and one of the things about teaching, I’m interested in people and opportunities wherever I’ve been to provide sports, particularly for girls, because that’s been my area, recreation. 5:56 The fact that you can help make it better for somebody else, I think that’s a part of it too. I still am a sports nut I guess you would say because wherever I’ve been, I’ve supported all sports and just tried to make things better for the next group coming on and I’ve started programs, a softball program where I have to start and they won’t let us use the little 20 �league field to play on and we have to go in front of a dormitory at the university where there’s no—we made a field out of it. Even to go to the little league field and we have to wait until the boys get through in July before they would even let us go on the field and to put up with things like that. 6:48 Some of the girls that have now gone on to be productive citizens and are doing good in our community, they came from those little girls softball programs that we started and from that the women’s programs grew from that. To see that makes you feel good, that the girls are having opportunities today to do things that they never had a chance to do before. 7:09 Interviewer: “That leads me to my last one. This is kind of the big one, the big question. In terms of history, American history, history of we as a people, where do you think your little group fits in that whole big scheme of things?” The changing lives of women. I think WWII was the really big one for my generation and the times changed, women had to leave the home and the kitchen and the statement in the movie that stands out, “now that the men are coming back you women get back in the kitchen”. I’m sorry, you’ve opened the door of opportunity and were not in the kitchen, we’re out in the world being productive and doing other things and having other opportunities. 8:03 Opportunity is the key word; you have to have an opportunity. What would my life have been without that opportunity that someone saw something in me that they thought would do something in baseball and I go the opportunity to do that. Did I have any other skills that would have gotten me the door that opened for me to have an education, to travel and meet all these people, to have friends all over the country and to travel to Cuba? It’s opportunity; I don’t care what it is that you do, if you don’t have—if you have the greatest of skills, but you don’t have the opportunity to use it, it is completely lost. We have to have the opportunity to do things and we’re still on the threshold of that in women’s baseball because we’re trying to get it into the Olympics now and I’ve been trying to support the girls who are trying to play baseball today and we do have a number of them. 9:00 Some of them are right here in this program we’re doing today. There is a Team USA Women’s Baseball and I’m very proud of that and I’m hoping that one day we’re going to have the women to play that again because it’s ok, if it’s ok in one sport and someone is just written me some things in e-mail saying, “girl’s just want to play baseball too and softball is not the same game”. Interviewer: “Thank you so much.” You’re quite welcome. Interviewer: “This is wonderful.” 21 �22 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_DWhite Title A name given to the resource White, Delores Brumfield (Interview transcript and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource White, Delores Description An account of the resource Delores White (nee Brumfield) was born was born in Pritchard, Alabama on May 26, 1932. Growing up, she got her start playing baseball with the school and neighborhood kids. Following tryouts in 1946 she was told by Mr. Carey that she was yet too young. Apparently, after her tryouts Mr. Carey had misplaced her name and sought her out until he found her one day in a store. In 1946, she made the trip to Havana, Cuba. That same year she was placed with the Fort Wayne Daisies during her spring training period. At the end of spring training, she was chosen to play for the South Bend Blue Sox in 1947. She played with the Kenosha Comets from 1948 to 1951. She then played the 1951 and 1952 seasons with the Fort Wayne Daisies. During her league career she played first, second, and third base. Her career highlight was on August 26, 1952 when she hit a home run and it was signed by her teammates and Jimmy Foxx. One other highlight she had during her league career was her spring training in Havana. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945 Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-09-27 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/87d150df23d71e970e32f6030510fc96.m4v 802089bdaa466bc342b6de51a77b992d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a99fe20f27f3ae797fc06c1ea9a723c5.pdf e6a8ae81ecf1ed27f463e1803d7458bc PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans’ History Project Interviewee’s Name: Dolly Nemic Konwinski Length of Interview: (01:23:44) Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like? Where did you grow up? What was your neighborhood like and your family?” It was a typical, typical working class neighborhood. The neighborhood consisted of Bohemians and Polish and Jewish and it was the most wonderful—growing up in this neighborhood was exceptionally fun as I can remember and to go to school with this group and to grow up with, I should say, the boys because that was my main team mates. We went to grammar school together, to kindergarten and elementary and high school. Interviewer: “What did your father do for a living?” Well, in the depression he was with the WPA, I forget what that stands for. Interviewer: “It was Roosevelt’s way of getting people to work.” Right, my mother was a stay at home mother of course—back then all moms stayed home and cooked, washed, etc. My dad played softball with a neighborhood group and in Chicago, I guess you get the picture—in the neighborhood where there’s a tavern on every other corner. Well, my dad would stop and have a little refreshment on his way home and that’s the group he played horseshoes with and played softball with and not having a boy, I was the tag along. (02:20) I wouldn’t let my dad out of the house, even if he was going to the corner store for some “Halva”, which is a Jewish candy by the way. I would sit by the door so, he had to take me to the softball games, which I was a “gofer” and some of the men, if they were true ball players, they chased their own shag balls, but since I was there, I was the “gofer”, to go for the ball. They would say, “Dolly get this” and of course they couldn’t have picked a better person than me because I wanted this badly. I wanted to be on the ball field since I can remember. Interviewer: “Why? What was your motivation? I know your back to your early childhood, but what was it about baseball that appealed to you as a young kid?” (03:15) You know, that’s really a hard question, but my love for my father, I wanted to be just like him and I would do things just like my dad and I just took to the sport. I didn’t like dolls—I have a sister and she had the most beautiful dolls in the neighborhood and I don’t know where they got the money to buy these, maybe they went down to the relief station and picked them up, but she had these beautiful dolls and I had the best bat and ball in the neighborhood. (03:56) Of course doing that, the boys all loved me too, but I was good—I was good when I was a kid. Interviewer: “How old were you when you actually started playing baseball?” 1 �I was probably seven or eight. Interviewer: “Whom did you play with?” I played with the boys in the neighborhood. Interviewer: “Where?” Well, if you can close your eyes and picture a neighborhood in Chicago and you will find that the streets were narrow and they held a car, if you were lucky enough to have one parked there. We use to play softball there and we used the manhole cover and the drains as first and the manhole cover as second and so on, and then we took chalk and drew home plate in the street. (04:53) When we started, we wanted to play baseball and Kuppenheimer Clothes had a factory just a half a block away and in back of the factory was a field, a large field and that’s where me and the boys went to play ball. Interviewer: “Were you the only girl?” I was the only girl. Interviewer: “Did other kids come out to watch you play?” (05:22) No, they played. I remember that movie “Sand lot” and I loved that movie because it’s what I did when I was a kid. We went out there and we played “round robin”, you hit, you fielded, you pitched, you were a Cub fan or a Sox fan and you took their names, you took Stan Hack, you took Andy Pafko, but I was a Sox fan and I was in love with Luke Appling so, I played short stop and I always told—you call me Luke—I wanta be Luke Appling, I want to play professional baseball just like Luke Appling and not realizing what was going to happen in the distant future. (06:13) Interviewer: “That was fantasy because you couldn’t play even if you—we know what actually happened later, but as a child at that time playing--fantasizing about playing professional baseball, there were no women in baseball at that time”. You know the old saying “Girls can’t play baseball”, well I did and I was a good player. I wasn’t the best, I wasn’t a home run hitter, but I always was picked first if I wasn’t the captain. Maybe it was because of that bat and ball I had and the boys liked it. I remember the bat. We played with cracked, cracked at the handle and couldn’t afford to go out and get a new bat—didn’t have aluminum bats way back then so, my dad took his manual screw driver and he put a hole through there and put in a screw and then he taped it up. (07:19) He didn’t use the shiny black tape we have today, he used the tape that would get your hands black, but he taped that bat up and it was as good as new and back to the ball fields. (07:34) 2 �Of course, we only played now in the summer—wintertime, there was time for skating and tobogganing and sledding. I think every kid in Chicago had a sled—so our summers were—and then I had a paper route. I had a Sun Times paper route. The first girl to have a paper route—a large one too. My sister would help me—please El, please El, I got a ball game, can you help me deliver these papers? I have to do homework and then I would have to run out—“They need me, they need me, my sister would say “Ok, ok”, she is two years younger so—you know when you’re eight and nine and eight and seven. I would say “Please El?”(08:25) It was the same with doing dishes when we were young. That was out job—we had to do the dishes, “Oh mama do I have to do the dishes?” “You have to do the dishes”. Well, I finally caught on and I would say to my sister, “Will you wipe tonight?” One night we would wash and one night we would do the wiping, but the dishwasher always got finished first so, I would say, “El, El, let me wash dishes tonight”, and she would say, “Well, you washed last night”, and I would say, “I want to get out of here, please, please, I got a ball game”, because the boys would be sitting on the fence waiting for me. 9:01 “Oh Dolly, oh Dolly, when you were a kid back then that’s what they would yell. Then when it would come to the pots and pans, I would say, “Oh mama, oh mama, can you do this pot? It’s really hard and the boys are waiting”. I had a wonderful childhood. I had a wonderful—when my dad got home from work—we played with a sixteen inch softball in Chicago and if you hit it enough times it gets like mooch. We were—you know, a small hand could squeeze it and the ball, when it was hit it would just kind of tumble around. (09:46) “Daddy, daddy, I need a new ball”. We had enough money for food, we were never without food on our table and there he would come home under his arm, with his lunch basket, would be a ball. Now, I don’t know where he got that ball—we’ll just leave it at that. (10:12) Interviewer: “You got through high school and graduated from high school?” Yes. Interviewer: “Ok, when did you first hear about the opportunity to play baseball?” One morning after church, my dad stopped at the bakery and we always had bagels and Kaiser rolls, he stopped at the Jewish market and they were the best in the whole world. I wish I could go back there today and pick up a dozen. He came home and after coffee he was reading the paper and he said to me, “Dolly”, he said, “did you know that girls play baseball?” I said, “Girls don’t play baseball”, he said, “There’s an All American girls baseball league that’s having tryouts and it’s going to be right in the neighborhood at one our park districts”. (11:18) That’s where I played a lot of my sports, at the park—volleyball and whatever girls played over there, whatever they would let us play. He said, “It’s going to be right down the street and I want you to go”, and I said, “Oh dad, I’m not”—he said, “You’re a good ball player Dolly, I want you to go.” Well, the glove I had was—if you go down to the hall of fame one day, you’ll see the kind of gloves we had. It was probably from the five 3 �and ten cent store, but I had this glove and he said, “I want you to go down there”. “Ok, I’ll go down”. (12:03) I never saw so many girls with baseball gloves in my life. Interviewer: “Now this is a field you had already played in so, you knew where it was?” Right down the street. Interviewer: “Right down the street”. In the park district. Interviewer: “What I’m really impressed with is your father really encouraged you to do this”. (12:22) He did, and of course my mother, you know, my mother didn’t really know first from short, but let me tell you one story. One day I said to my mother, “Mom, does it take longer to get from first to second or second to third?” and she said to me, “Now Dolly, that was just the most stupid thing you could ask me”, I was laid back and I said, “Well, what do you mean?” and she said, “Well, it takes longer to get from second to third”, and I laughed, “What do you mean mom?” She said, “Well, there’s a short stop in-between”. 13:10 I love to tell this story and I love to tell it in front of her because I don’t know where she got that information, maybe my father whispered it in her ear, but mama didn’t know too much about sports. Interviewer: “What did she think about this idea of you going to try out for this baseball thing?” Like I say, she didn’t—she knew I went out to play ball so, it was just another going out in the afternoon and having fun with the boys, but my father had told me “it’s girls baseball”. When I got there--Interviewer: “Tell me a little bit about the trip over, what were you thinking about while you were walking over?” (13:56) Walking is right, I was fifteen—walking over there and thinking to myself, “You know, will I be able to catch the ball? Are they going to throw really hard to me? Are there going to be ladies there throwing? What is this all about?” (14:21) It was about—I would say about three blocks from the house, maybe four and you know you skip down there and you think and you smile—baseball, baseball, organized. Well, when I got there to that gym, I had to sign in and there were a lot of men and there were a lot of women, young girls, in fact, we weren’t women yet, we were fifteen and sixteen years old. (14:52) I walked in there and my eyes must have been almost popping out of my head. I could not believe what I was seeing. Well, you know, grab a friend and here’s a ball and start 4 �throwing and the ball was—I believe the ball was eleven inches. It had come down from the twelve inch that the league started with and so, we started playing catch and my name is Dolly—well’ my name is Mary Lou and my name is Ginger and where do you live? (15:29) Well, I live way on the south side and what school do you go to? I go to Tillman, and I went to Farragut, the conversation was just fun and women throwing hard to me, I did not have to look for a boy to throw the ball to me like I’m use to catching. It went on, we played catch and of course it was in a gym and so the men, who were coaches, started hitting ground balls to us, we were in line and we each took our turn fielding the ball and throwing the ball and we couldn’t hit, but we could slide—slide on a gym floor? Ouch. (16:18) It wasn’t strawberries, it was floor burns. Interviewer: “What were you wearing?” I was probably wearing a pair of pants and to this day, and I just bought them last year, I never owned a pair of jeans. It was always a pair of girl’s slacks, some kind of a shirt, I don’t remember. Interviewer: “I was just trying to think. It wasn’t a uniform or anything?” No, I was what everybody had. They had their jeans on and tennis shoes. I don’t know if I had tennis shoes or if we could afford tennis shoes. Interviewer: “What year was this?” (17:01) This was in 1947. Interviewer: “Ok, so the war was already over with?” Right, what they were trying to do is get four teams in Chicago, like a farm system, which the All Americans never had. They were trying to form the farm system with the local gals and then we lined up and they told us a little bit about the league and what they were trying to do—get four teams—there would be two south side teams, two north end teams, and we would play each other. (17:41) I must have impressed the coaches because they called my name and they came up to me and they said, “Does your parents know about this?” I said, “Yes, my dad sent me down here”, and they said, “Dolly, you’re a good ball player”, no Joe DiMaggio, no Luke Appling, and I said, “Thank you”, and he said, “Would you be interested in playing on one of the Chicago teams?” I said, “Oh, yes”. Well, they had some literature, some notes that I had to take home and show my mom and dad. (18:31) Interviewer: “Did you have a job at this time?” 5 �Just my paper route, just my paper route, and boy when I would get those penny and nickel tips—you know when you’re nine years old or ten years old, and I had that job right into high school. Interviewer: “What were your options? You had a fairly decent relationship with your father and with your mother, what did you talk about? Obviously professional baseball was not in the discussions about what you were going to do with your life before this happened”. (19:03) Right, right, it—well, I ran home, I mean I ran, I sprinted, I could have beat Owens that day. I ran upstairs and I said, “Oh daddy, daddy, daddy”, and he said, “What happened, what happened?” I said, “Daddy, they want me to play, they want me to play”, and he said, “I knew, I knew it” so, I said, “Mama, can I play ball? Can I play ball?” “Ask your father, ask your father”, and I said, “Daddy said yes, daddy said yes” so, I brought the details home and made these friends, Mary Lou Studnicka you know, Ann O’Dowd, we were picked for the Southside team (19:56) and my other friends, Ginger and Champ and some of the gals on the North side, Joan Sindelar, they made the North side team and so, we were going to be playing against each other. (20:11) Interviewer: “Now, you were getting paid, right?” Well, no pay, we got our streetcar fare and I think we got fifty cents and that would have been a lot of money because streetcar fare was a nickel and that would have been ten cents round trip and that would leave us fifteen cents for a hamburger and a malt. (20:40) That was the extent of it, just get on—maybe it was a little less, but fifty cents sticks in— and that was so much money when I think of those nickel tips. We were paid that and I was still active in the park districts and we were playing volleyball and we had a good volleyball team. I love that sport to this day. As a kid I loved to go out there and watch and my grand kids play, but we were playing in the park district tournament and we were playing for the championship and we won, we won. (21:35) We were just so happy, so happy and before they gave the medals out, that’s what you could win, a nice medal, I was called in the office and the lady who was in charge, the director of this, she said to me, “Dolly, do you play baseball?” And I said, “Oh ya, I do play”, and she said, “Do you get paid?” I said, “No, I get money for the streetcar to go there”< and she said, “Well, we heard you got paid and we have to disqualify your team”, and I said, “You mean we don’t win? Does that mean we don’t win?” She said, “That means you don’t win”. (22:27) Well, our coach, I’ll tell ya, I can feel the pain right now—how could they do this to me for streetcar fare? So, that’s another thing you know, when you’re fourteen or fifteen and that—it just—so, I quit playing volleyball and I just played in adult leagues when I got older. I said, “I’ll show them, just don’t call me grandma” but, I played since and then I stuck to my baseball—still going to school—still in high school now, not being able to play sports—the only thing girls could do in high school—we had a swimming team, but they couldn’t be on the swimming team, but they could be divers. (23:28) We played, of course we played basketball and taking you back a long time ago, we played half court and six on a team and of course we played volleyball so, I got my thrill 6 �of playing volleyball in high school, loved it, had more fun and played ball with the boys, I could practice, they wanted me out there to practice so bad, but when they had a game it was “See you tomorrow Dolly”. (24:04) Interviewer: “So, what were your options when you got out of high school? What were you going work as? Were you going to try to get a job as a nurse or what?” No, this is the most fun, playing with the boys in the field. I played with a young boy, his name is Joe Schoenberg, how that stick out in my mind I don’t know, but we had a Mages Sporting Goods store, Morey Mages and his brothers, I don’t remember his brothers, names, but Joe lived in the apartment building on the first level and Morey Mages lived above him. (24:48) We would talk and he said, “Oh Morey, he owns the sporting goods store” and I don’t know what made me do this, one day after we played ball he said, “Oh, Morey always gets home about five thirty from the store” so, the wheels are turning in Dolly’s head so, I went to the corner where Joe and Mr. Mages lived, and he came by one day and I said, “Mr. Mages?” and he said, “Hello, how are ya?” I said, “Fine, I play ball with Joe Schoenberg”, and he said, “Well, that’s nice”, and I said, “We play at Kuppenheimer Field” and he said, “Oh, that’s nice” and I said, “You know I’m playing ball, baseball with a girls organized team” , and he said, “Well, isn’t that nice?” (25:47) I said, “Mr. Mages, I need a job, can I get a job (very blunt—no tact) at your store?” and I think he was taken back and he said, “We don’t have any ladies in sales, we just have them in the office part”, and I said, “That would be ok, that would be ok, can you use me?” And he said, “I’ll tell ya, come by after school tomorrow or Monday (this was on a Friday) and come see me”, “Wow”, I ran home and told my mom that I talked to Mr. Mages. (26:45) A long time ago we called our mother and father—we either called her mother or him father or mama and daddy, because when dad would go out he would say, “You stay home with mama”, or vice versa. I said, “Mama, mama, Mr. Mages said I could come talk to him about a job”. She said, “Doing what?” I said, “I don’t know, just working” and she said, “Well how much?” and I said, “I don’t know, just working” so, I couldn’t wait until I got home from school, got my paper route done and hopped the streetcar because Mages was on North Avenue and Crawford, it was just off Crawford, west of Crawford and I got dressed up as nice as I could look and I took the streetcar out there. (27:41) I was so excited my heart was just beating and I got to the store and asked one of the sales people and they said he was in his office and to go to his office. So, he said, “Well, hi Dolly” and I said, “Hi Mr. Mages”, and he said, “Well, have you ever sold anything, do you have any experience?” I said, “No, just playing ball” and he said, “Well, how would you like to try to be in the shoe department and sell bowling shoes, ice skates and ski boots?” I thought and said, “Sure, I would like to try, I’d love to”, and I was the first saleswoman for Mages Sporting Goods. (28:38) I loved my job, I loved my job and so, after I graduated and was playing ball, playing ball in the summer and he knew that. I started going to college and I would go right to work after that and then of course the All Americans came to be where—we graduated in 7 �1949 and we went on a barnstorming tour and I worked when I could and I thought, (29:14) “This isn’t fair, maybe there’s somebody who wants the job at Mages” so, I stuck to baseball where I made some money and graduated high school, left my paper route, my customers were very sad too because they got their tips worth when they gave me that five cents and ten cents, their paper was at their door every night and early on Sunday morning. I did that before church. (29:51) Interviewer: “Let’s go back now to—you’ve kind of wrapped up your job and your paper route and all, but how did you find out about the professional All American Women’s League? How did you find out about that?” Well, because of that tryout, which was held by the All American, and I was picked for one of the four teams, which made me a part of the All American. Interviewer: “You’re not being paid though, you said”. We weren’t, but then at the end of 1948, after our season, the four teams were brought together in a meeting and Len Zintack, who was from Chicago and the director of the four teams, (30:38) asked who would be interested in going on a barn storming tour of the United States to introduce the game to the south and the east coast so, Chicago had two teams, they had the Springfield Sallies and the Chicago Colleens, which in 1948 did not make it. Chicago had the Cubs and the Sox and the Bloomer Girls and some very good softball teams and our team just couldn’t bring the crowds in. (31:14) Springfield had the same problem. They had a good minor league team and they had some good softball teams. So, they took the Colleens and the Sallies and they distributed those women to the Peaches and Chicks and the teams in the All Americans, and we became the women and girls who said “yes” they would go on a tour and we became the Sallies and the Colleens and we traveled together on one bus touring. We started in Oklahoma City, toured the south, New Orleans, Pensacola—(31:59) Interviewer: “Playing against each other?” Yes, against each other. Maybe on day I was a Colleen and one day I was a Sally, but it didn’t make any difference, people were out to see the two teams play. We were heavily advertised and we had wonderful crowds, we had wonderful crowds and they accepted us. There was no one saying that girls can’t play baseball because we showed them a very good brand of baseball. (32:29) Interviewer: “What were you wearing?” We were wearing the uniforms of the All Americans, the ones the Colleens and Sally’s had. Interviewer: “What did it look like?” 8 �It was like the pictures you see today, the uniform of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. Interviewer: “You had a baseball cap and a top, but then there was a skirt.” The—Mrs. Wrigley designed those uniforms. She wanted every one of the women to look like ladies and the men, the manager, play like men, and that’s what we wore. It was a skirted uniform with shorts underneath and the stockings up to our calf. 33:14 Interviewer: “How did you feel about this? This is a different time, now you can walk around in a skirt and you can have it as short or as long as you want, there is no difference, but in those days women didn’t wear skirts like that.” No we didn’t and if you find a picture of the first four women who played ball, you will notice their skirts are almost to their knees, which was still—you know, if you’re sliding and your skirts coming up and you’re going see the shorts, but that’s all you’re going to see. Well, each year the gals took a hem up, which was ok, the chaperones never said anything and I don’t think anyone was reprimanded for taking a hem up and making the skirt a little shorter. (34:08) Interviewer: “The reason is because of the running and the—?” Probably the running, and people say, “Well how did you ever slide or play in those skirts?” And this was the easiest thing to do because we had shorts on and like so many high school and college teams have today, we had a little skirt that covered that, which made it a little more feminine looking. The charm school of course-Interviewer: “You had to go through the charm school?” That was in the beginning of the league and I didn’t join the league until, you know, 1949 or 1948 so, I was not into make-up, but the chaperones made sure that when you were out in public, you looked like a lady in al phases at all times. (35:08) Interviewer: “You did this barnstorming tour, which was playing basically against the same teams that you were playing with. When did that shift into being part of the league that played other cities and other towns?” After the 1949 barnstorming tour, which ended in—I believe it ended in August, sometime in August, we were all allocated to teams in the All American League. So, my friend Delores Muir, who just passed away two weeks ago, we were sent to the South Bend Blue Sox. Dave Bancroft accepted us and I don’t think I played a game because it was about two weeks. I think I was there long enough for a 1949 team picture and Grand Rapids needed an infielder and South Bend needed a pitcher so, I was traded. (36:13) I joined the Grand Rapids Chicks in 1949. Most of the gals did the exact—they were sent to South Band and Fort Wayne and Peoria. 9 �Interviewer: “What was your first impression of Grand Rapids when you came here?” This is kind of a small city compared to Chicago. I said to somebody, “I would like to go downtown, how long is it going to take me?” And they said, “Oh, five or ten minutes”. I lived in Madison Square and I said, “Five or ten minutes, what?” And they said, “The bus will get you down there”, and that reminds me—my mother came to visit and she said she wanted to go downtown. Well, I had a game to get ready for so I said, “Ok mama, you’re going to go to Hall St. and the fire department is on the corner of Madison and the bus will stop and he’ll take you downtown. (37:16) Now, notice the number of the bus and where you got off and that’s where you’ll get on” and she said, “Ok, no problem”. Well, I get a phone call and the first thing she asked the bus driver was she wants to go down to the loop and he said, “You must be from Chicago?” Well, she wanted to go downtown and she got off at the wrong stop and she went into the fire department, which was just down the street, but she didn’t recognize anything and they told her where she wanted to go. (37:52) That’s just kind of a side story, but I love Grand Rapids, I love Grand Rapids and it was so fun to play here and the people I stayed with, they treated us like their daughters. I stayed on Horton Street, right off Cottage Grove and these people, like I say, we paid them our rent, I don’t remember what it was a month, not much, but they always told us the refrigerator is always open. On our day off they would say, “Dolly, would you like to have dinner with us tonight?” (38:38) We were so a part of their family and so welcomed here that I’m sure the minor league baseball teams that we have today stay with these families and are treated like their sons and you don’t forget. Interviewer: “Lets go back to—you signed up originally with this one team and you were traded to the Grand Rapids Chicks. You’re getting paid now and there’s a contract, give us some idea what that was about. You had to sign a contract for what. What period of time and how much were you paid?” (39:17) Well, first of all when I agreed to go on that barnstorming tour, my mother and dad had to go downtown to the Wrigley Building and sign a contract because I was just sixteen. So, off on the El we went to the Wrigley Building. They gave their permission and when I got to South Bend or Grand Rapids, I had signed a contract on my own, I was eighteen and I made sixty-five dollars a week and that was really big money. (40:00) I didn’t even make that at Mages Sporting Goods. When I was on the tour, going back to the tour in 1949, I want to say we made twenty-five dollars a week, but of course everything was paid for, our hotel, of course the bus, we didn’t have to worry about—we did have to buy our own meals, but I had enough money that when I left I said to my mother, “I’m going to send you some money home and I want you to go buy yourself some stockings or a slip, I want you to treat yourself to something, treat yourself and do not put this money away, treat yourself, I’m ok”. (40:45) When I got home, going back now to 1949, when I got home I said, “What did you buy mama? What did you buy? Did you buy yourself some new shoes or stocking or a slip or a dress?” She said, “No, I saved the money for you”, and I said, “Mother, why did you 10 �do this? I sent the money for you to treat yourself”, and she said, “I knew you would need it for school” and so, “Ok, I got money”. I don’t remember what I had, two hundred dollars or something like that in savings so, I went to my dad and I said, “Daddy can I buy a car?” He said, “What are you going to use a car for?” I said, “I don’t know, can I buy a car?” (41:51) He said, “We’ll see”. Well, he and my uncle, my uncle Rudy, go out looking for a car—now, I haven’t graduated yet from high school in 1949 so, one day I come home from school—take the streetcar—came home from school and he said, “I got a surprise for you”, and I said, “We’re going to get a car, we’re going to get a car?” and he said, “Come on outside”. I almost cried, I mean I almost cried because here was this 1936 Plymouth four door—here’s your car, and I don’t know if people go back and log into old cars, but they have the back door—the front door opened this way and the back door opened this way. Well, I really didn’t want a four door gray car, but what could I say— he would probably say, “Well, I’ll take it back”. Well Ok, I have a car and the next day I said, “Daddy can I take my car to school?” (43:08) Well, he jumped out of his chair and he said, “Are you crazy? Are you crazy? Nobody drives a car to school, you take the streetcar”. So, there I am ten cents on the streetcar and I have this 1936 Plymouth sitting in front of my house, but that’s the way it was back then. If you see the schoolyards today, there are not many that don’t drive. It was fun to do this, it was fun to do this and in high school I was about to graduate and my class honored me with the most likely to succeed and in my log, Frigate, you know, the ship— we had the log and in there it said that I wanted to be a professional baseball player, long before the dream came true, and being outstanding athlete in my class, which made me proud. (44:25) I also was in the concert band and concert orchestra—I played the trombone. I had wonderful, wonderful years in high school and all through school. Now I’m a professional baseball player and when we have our reunions, I take the log with me and I say, “Ok you guys, how many else lived up to what they put in the log?” Interviewer: “Tell us about your experience with the Grand Rapids Chicks. Do you remember your first game with them?” Oh yes, the first game was Racine, Wisconsin and I was put right into the lineup and the first two times at bat, I got hits and I will never forget that. (45:09) Since that first game it became a little bit more difficult to get a hit because they knew I couldn’t hit a curve ball and all those wonderful pitchers we had who threw fast ball with a hop on it, they had equally wonderful curveballs. All they had to do was throw that to me, but we played at South Field, the Grand Rapids Chicks played, and of course South Field was a football field before they made it a baseball field. Of course we had a short right field and with the fast balls, I could make line drives to right field—I was a good hitter to right—but of course they knew I wasn’t that speed demon that a long time ago I was and they would throw me out at first. (46:12) Well, there went my batting average so, I was good field no hit, but I remember those first two hits in Racine , Wisconsin. Interviewer: “What was your position with the Grand Rapids Chicks?” 11 �I played third base, but at times I played second base, when our pitcher Zig would be on the mound. I think because I was a good infielder and I had played second at one time, I could make the double play very easy—it wasn’t difficult for me to do that—I started out as a shortstop back in the schoolyard days, you know, Luke Appling. Interviewer: “Professionally though, you were a third baseman?” Yes. Interviewer: “Who were some of the teams you were playing at that time?” We played of course, the “Rockford Peaches”, “South Bend Blue Sox”, “Peoria Red Wings”, “Fort Wayne Daisies”, “Racine Belles”, “Kenosha Comets”, “Muskegon Lassies”, when the league started to slow down and attendance—Battle Creek bought the “Belles” so, we had the “Battle Creek Belles”, Muskegon slowed down so, Kalamazoo, Michigan bought the “Lassies” and we had the “Kalamazoo Lassies”. 47:37 Interviewer: “What was a season like? The first season you played with them? Was it a lot of traveling; was it a lot of home games? What was the actual season like?” I think we were split—home and away games. We played seven days a week, double headers on holidays and Sundays and there were a lot of rain dances. We looked forward to rain when we didn’t have a day off for a long time, but occasionally we had a day off. Usually if we were traveling we’d have a night game and travel in the morning either to South Bend—wouldn’t make the long trip to Peoria, we would stop at South Bend or Fort Wayne or Rockford before going on to the longer miles. (48:35) Interviewer: “What were these road trips like? I that when you’re traveling a lot and then you have to play a game and then you’re traveling some more, but you’re young of course, you’re very young, but what were these road trips like for you? Did you like them? Were they tiring? Were they fun?” You learn to sleep on the bus. We traveled on the Division Avenue bus line, which was a step above a school bus, the seats were more comfortable, and so, you could take a nap. They were fun, you would sit with a friend and chat and sometimes we would sing. Sunday morning Alma Ziegler give her sermons so, we had a touch of religion in there one way or another. (49:37) Interviewer: “This is the baseball playing nun you were talking about?” No, this was Alma Ziegler, Gabby Ziegler who played for the Grand Rapids Chicks. I never played with our former nun. I did play with Tony Palermo, his sister Toni Marie Palermo, she’s still in the convent, and when we have reunions today, Saturday night she gets on the podium and reminds everybody that Sunday is tomorrow morning and “Do you have your wakeup call in there? (50:15) If you don’t go to church you know we’ll pray hard for you.” So, we do have a nun still in the convent. Alice Harnet was a nun—we had three nuns—we have three 12 �physicians—three doctor. Mary Roundtree, who was a catcher for the Grand Rapids Chicks sometime ago, just passed away in Miami and she was a surgeon, a very, very outstanding doctor and Audrey Wagner played for, oh gosh, I don’t want to get this wrong, I believe the Kenosha Comets and she was a doctoring California and she flew her own plane and she was going to a medical convention and crashed. So, we lost not only lost one of the outstanding outfielders and hitters and outstanding physicians, but we lost Audrey too. (51:26) Interviewer: “These road trips to other towns, had you traveled—I know you were from Chicago and Chicago of course is a big city with a lot of different types of people and different things around you—groups and what not. How different was it when you went to all these other towns? Was there a sense of I’m in a new town here, I’m from a big city and this is a small town, what were your reactions to these other areas and places?” Of course the towns were all the size of Grand Rapids so we enjoyed it. We stayed in very nice hotels, we were given three dollars a day meal money so, we always had that fifty-nine cent breakfast. If there was a good movie and we didn’t have to play until evening, we took in the first feature. We saved our two and a half dollars for an evening meal and sometimes that would only cost us a dollar and a half so we saved a dollar. (52:31) The towns were lovely, the fans of course were anti-Chicks, but they only treated us that way when we were at the ball field, you know boo, boo, boo and what have you. Cheered hard for their teams, Fort Wayne was noted—they had a tailor in Fort Wayne and of course we had to wear skirts, and it seemed like every team visited this tailor to have their skirts made. (53:03) We would pick the material up and he would measure us up and then on our next trip back, we would pick-up our skirts and you could tell everyone who had their skirts made by him, they were very tailored. I think I wore them when I was married. I mean the herringbones and the wool skirts so; I remember that about Fort Wayne. Fort Wayne also had a sporting goods store that would carry spikes our sizes. Rawlings made the spikes and they would carry a size four or a size five, specially made for the women. Another city that’s well known is, I believe, Racine that had the Jockey--Jockey Cooper and they made the men’s underwear. Well, at one time they would turn their factory over for a short period and they would make Jockey underwear for the women, of course a whole different pattern in the front, but we would always order out undies from Jockey so, those are two towns. (54:34) Interviewer: “What ever happened to your—the place you worked for, the sports place you worked for in Chicago?” Mages? You know, I believe Mages sold his stores when he retired. Interviewer: “I mean when you became a baseball player and they were actually paying you to be a professional baseball player did you ever go back there?” 13 �I did, I did and I talked to all my friends there and they kept saying, “You’re playing baseball now and I’d have some pictures to show them and they were quite proud and I said, “Now you catch our games if you go to Kenosha, which is a short drive”, That’s where my mom and dad would catch our games, up in Kenosha. “It’s a short drive— come see us and call me and let me know if you’re coming and I’ll get you tickets”, so, they were quite proud that I made a stepping stone to something I loved. (55:37) Interviewer: “How did your dad react to that?” Oh, my dad was so proud. He would tell everybody, my Dolly is playing baseball, softball, my Dolly is playing baseball and we’re going to see her next weekend. They had a car—I don’t know what happened to my 1936 Plymouth, I guess when I left for Grand Rapids, I didn’t take that car. He probably sold it, which was good and I don’t remember back then, but I know I didn’t have my gray Plymouth anymore. (56:17) People at Mages were quite proud of me and I’d always ask them, “Do you miss me in the shoe department?” When I’d talk to people, especially when I’d sell them a pair of ski boots I’d say, “Well, where do you ski?” They would say, “Well, in northern Michigan”, and I’d say “Northern Michigan, past Grand Rapids?” “Oh, Boyne City and Traverse City”, and not being familiar with northern Michigan, I said, “Oh, I think that’s quite a bit North of Grand Rapids, I play ball there”, and they would say, “Oh, you do?” Of course they wouldn’t see me in the summertime so, I’d sell ski boots and of course bowling shoes and going back to 19—in the early forties, when the war started, in 1943 my uncle enlisted, that was my fathers very best friend. (57:19) Now, my dad bowled too and again, “tag along Dolly”, I can remember the Windy City Bowling—they were bowling alleys back then, not bowling lanes, and he would take me and they would have the best orange soda in the whole world so, “Daddy, daddy can I go with you tonight? Can I go with you?” and he would take me with him and the first thing we would get in there, he would go to the bar and I’d have my orange soda and he would say, “Now, sit and be quiet”, and I would say, “Oh, I’ll be very quiet”. I would watch his team bowl and I said to him one time, “Can I try this game? Can I try bowling?” and he said, “Ok” so, one Sunday morning after church we went to the bowling part and he got me a ball with small finger holes and my father always bent over, it was very unique, he always bent over and the ball hung down and he would push away. (58:19) That’s the way I bowl, I followed his form, and there was sometimes the pin boys, you know, they were off to war and they wouldn’t have one and he would go back to the pits and he would set pins for me and then I would go back to the pits and I would set a game for him. That way it only cost us a nickel instead of a dime to bowl a game. Interviewer: “Let’s get back to baseball.” I was just going to say that I became a professional bowler too. Interviewer: “I didn’t know that. The first game you said you played with the Grand Rapids, Chicks and you had two hits and after that it was a lot more difficult to get hits because the pitchers were on to you. Is that because you played you played these teams so often, they were able to—there weren’t that many teams for one thing—“ 14 �There were eight teams at that time. Interviewer: “Eight teams.” They each had—I would say, they each had four pitchers so, I didn’t face everybody in the same series or time after time, but I’m sure I faced all of the pitchers at one time or another. (59:40) Interviewer: “How was your first season?” It was good, it was good, my batting average wasn’t that bad, of course it wasn’t 300, but I had a good season on the field, I enjoyed playing along side of my team mates, who were very helpful, John Rawlings was our manager and he was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates and very knowledgeable Hall of Fame player, and because my hitting wasn’t the best, I would have to go out there every day we were home and he would pitch to me. Today I realize what I was doing wrong. (01:00:31) I was not throwing my arms out at the ball, I was kind of crimping in on them and I think back, “No wonder I wasn’t a good hitter, now I have to tell the kids how to throw the bat at the ball” . Interviewer: “What were some of your memorable games? Which ones really stick out in your mind?” I find that question, not impossible, but difficult, because every game out there was a joy for me. I looked forward to every game we played, there was never a game where I was bored, there was never a time in my life I was bored, Always something to do, (01:01:23) I guess the one game—it was in Kalamazoo and probably the shocker of my life because I hit one off the fence in center field and it was right off the top of the fence and it came back into the field and I only got a triple, I don’t know if I scored or not or what happened because I was in seventh heaven—to see me hit that ball that far—I think John Rawlings fainted in the dugout. I don’t even know if my team cheered for me because they must have all been in shock. (01:02:03) That’s one game that stands out ant that was extremely fun. Interviewer: “I have seen film footage of professionals like you sliding into a base and it doesn’t look comfortable. Could you explain what it was like to actually slide into a base?” (01:02:29) One experience that I had—now we’ll be shocked again because I got a hit, and I’m standing on first and not taking a big lead off and John Rawlings gives me the steal sign and I’m thinking, “Does he know who he’s giving a steal sign to?” Old turtle Dolly? Well, he thought I could get a—the pitcher had a high kick and “ok, he’s giving me the steal sign”, I’ll show him I can do it. So, off I take and I slid and I was safe, but I had the biggest, hurtingest strawberry in the whole world. (01:03:24) Well, everybody is saying, “Just shake it off, shake it off”, well I’m not going to cry out there—I’d like to— eventually a hit was made and I scored. I got to the dugout, Dotty Hunter waiting for me 15 �because she knew. Out came the methialate, we had the fan going, which is all your teammates blowing and I’m thinking, “This is going to burn, this is going to burn like the fires of hell”. On goes the methialate, on goes the bandage, a big bandage—get out there and play. (01:04:09) Well, I did my job, “It doesn’t hurt until the next day I’m thinking, it doesn’t hurt more until the next day”. The next time I get up—this should be my most memorable game— Dolly gets a hit—“I got another hit, this pitcher must like me, she’s grooving it”. I’m standing at first and I look over across the playing field and John Rawlings gives me the steal sign again and I’m thinking, “If I have to slide, they’re taking me to Butterworth Hospital or some hospital that’s nearby, I know it for sure”. He gives me the steal sign— well, up it goes, a high kick again and I ran in there. The catcher threw it to center field—I didn’t have to slide and I’m thinking, everybody in the dugout is clapping too, “Hey she made it to second”. Well, I don’t know if I scored on that one or not, but John, as I came in, he was smiling at me and I said, “Did you think I was going slide again?” He just smiled and walked away. (01:05:33) I guess maybe we’ll chuck that hitting the top of the fence and use this as my most memorable game. Two hits and a strawberry and the “ouchie”. It takes a while for that to go away and it starts peeling and you want another hit, but if John gives me the steal sign again I’ll really cry. Interviewer: “Did anybody ever get hurt that you remember, beaned on the head with a ball or anything like that?” I don’t remember, I remember not getting beaned, but going back to the barnstorming tour, one of our Cuban gals had a fastball, but she also had a very fast curve ball and I was batting against her and she had thrown me a fastball and it was high, and I knew she was going to throw me another fastball—I knew it, I knew it—I stood in that box and here comes that fastball right at my arm, but I thought it was going to curve because she was kind of smiling—that she would throw me the curve and get me to go for it—so, I’m waiting for the fast curve and that ball is coming so fast and it didn’t curve and I didn’t get out of the way and it hit my arm. (01:07:18) I couldn’t lift my arm for two or three days and it was black and blue and of course we were on the barnstorming tour and we were all living together and I said, “I thought you were going to throw me a curve”, and she said, “I a fool a you, right Dolly?” I said, “You didn’t fool me, you hurt me”, but to this day we’re still friends. Interviewer: “The crowds initially were big, but you said there was a period of time where it started to get less, the crowds were less and less. Did you actually notice that?” Of course I was through playing in 1952, but I had still gone to some of the games in 1953. I was in an automobile accident and hurt my leg so, that kind of finished my playing career, but so many people ask, “Why did the league fold? Why did the people?” This my own theory, now high schools were-this was really a family gathering, families came to our games and now high schools were beginning to blossom out and have activities in the evening. Cars now had gas so, dad could go here and mother could go to the movies and get her dish. Back then if you went to the movies on Wednesday night, 16 �you could make a dish collection. Of course television was in the ballgame now and who wanted to go out when Uncle Miltie was on? No body, your Show of Shows, they kept the family around this new invention, television. (01:09:28) So, we saw the crowds drop and like I say, it was a family and the family went from a closeness to everybody is out doing their own thing so, the money wasn’t there to pay us and it wasn’t coming from anywhere but the fans, and I always like to add this today, “We see the family now today, coming back together. Who’s at the football games together? Who’s at the soccer games together? Who takes the kids out to the golf course together? It’s mom and dad and the kids and this is so wonderful because our children need this today. They need to know that the family once again cares”. (01:10:27) Interviewer. “I know you have been asked a variation on this question before, but we know for a fact, the fact that you played baseball, that women played professional baseball, did have an impact on the changing attitudes that schools had toward girls playing sports and whatnot and now, as you well know, there’s soccer teams, girls baseball team, there’s all kinds of things. What is your personal opinion? What do you think was the effect, not just you, but your fellow players had on the attitudes that people had towards girls and women?” I am so proud to have been a part of the All Americans and to show people that women had skills and if title nine was passed not only because of us, now young ladies can see their dreams come true, like we saw our dreams, we are so proud to have been a part of this and I went to a couple of the U.S. Olympic Softball Team games and these women, these young women come up and to us and hug us and say “Thank you, because of you, we can do this”, and not only myself, but you can talk to the oldest player in our league or the youngest and they have the same pride that I do, and young girls, no matter what they play, the Olympians, to be so proud of that team and to have them say, “Because of you, we’re here”, makes us so proud. (01:12:38) Interviewer: “Baseball Hall of Fame, tell us about—how did you find out? What happened?” The Baseball Hall of Fame, you know, we didn’t put on any marches, we didn’t put on any protests, but we had a group of women in Fort Wayne, Dottie Collins—it was our first board of directors that slowly went there and show them. Ted Spencer—let me tell you something about Ted Spencer, the Curator. (01:13:27) He was schooled in Boston and it just so happens that one of the players we had in 1943 named Mary Pratt, happened to be a gym teacher, not PE, gym teacher in the one of the Boston schools. One of her students was this young boy named Ted Spencer. Well, when we started, I want to say we, but I talk about this board slowly infiltrating—no protests, just presenting the facts. Going there, she found out that Ted Spencer happens to be the curator of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. (01:14:27) Well, what an in. so, she goes there, the Hall has a lot of her memorabilia, she contacts our board and now they start having meetings with him and this has gone on since we became an organization, a players organization in 1982, and we now get the word that there’s a possibility that the hall of fame would recognize the All American Girls 17 �professional baseball league. How excited, how excited—I know a lot of the women today say that we’ve been inducted and it’s because their proud, but in 1988, November 5th, 1988, the National Baseball Hall of Fame recognized all of the All American Girls. (01:15:33) They wanted to induct—there were some names thrown at them for induction, but our board said, “No, we want to go in as a group. If we’re not inducted, we would be honored to be recognized”, and Jane Forbes Clark, who is the CEO of—and has been one of our biggest supporters, they have had us there on Mothers Day, and we have signed autographs, they have—the tenth anniversary of the movie, they had Penny Marshall and the movie stars, and we were invited to go along and she signed a book and we had dinner with them, they have promoted us, they have things in their gift shop that are related to us, they show the movie, Abbott and Costello, A League of Their Own and in the bleachers, which is a section of the hall of fame, we had our sixtieth reunion and Cooperstown wasn’t big enough to hold all the women who were going to be there so, we stayed in Syracuse, but we had buses take us there. (01:17:03) We had a breakfast in honor of us, we had, right in the hall where the pictures of the hall of famers are, they had tables set with white table clothes and they had waiters in tuxedos and white gloves, and they just honored us in the highest praise they could give us and they do this, they do this. Now when they remodeled, we have a display on the second floor which has pictures and memorabilia and the honor they have given us, we are so proud of. (01:17:55) Interviewer: “That’s wonderful, that’s wonderful. What’s your relationship with the Whitecaps here locally?” Before they became the Whitecaps I knew Lew Chamberlin and I talked to him because he would have lunch at Crystal Springs Country Club. We belong there and we knew they were working on bringing a baseball team and so many times I would sit down at the table and say, “Lew, Grand Rapids, Michigan needs baseball back here again, don’t give up your dream, don’t give up the pushing, don’t give up the hope, of bringing someone here”, and Mr. VanderWitte is a friend of Lew’s and a friend of mine so, when I would see him I’d say,” Please, keep prodding him, keep prodding him, people may give him negative this and that, look what happened here, look what happened there, we need baseball here”. (01:19:13) So, I have been, not the last couple of years—summers have been really—I’ve been out on speaking engagements and doing a lot of traveling, but we were the first ones to have box seats out there the first season and I can go up and into the office and knock on the door and say, “How ya going? How’s everything?” “Good, good”, and Jim Jarecki and their all very close to my heart. Don’t worry, they’ll bring the—they’ve had so many championships; you have to be proud of this team. Interviewer: “They are very supportive of this project by the way. I have met with Dan McCrath and with Jim and they are very much supporting the idea of doing this documentary film. In fact they even helped—next summer they are going to have some announcements and we are going to be helping to be part of this Library of Congress Veterans History Project, to get the veterans who are in that crowd to 18 �come forward and be interviewed. I was very, very pleased with their respect for not only the project it’s self, but for the “Chicks”. (01:20:22) It’s interesting, somebody told me that one of the Grand Rapids Chicks threw a ball out this last season, was that you or do you know who it was?” I didn’t throw out this season, but we’ve thrown them out several times and Jim has said, “You know we’ve got to get you girls back there again this year”. I’ve been kind of proud because I’ve thrown the first ball out for the Braves and the Yankees. The Braves in Cleveland, the Braves in St. Louis, down at spring training, and two summers ago, maybe three, time flies when you have fun, I was invited out to Washington D.C. to the Nationals game, to throw out the first pitch there, and they were playing the Cubs. (01:21:11) We had a rain delay for a while, but eventually they called me to the mound. I threw a perfect strike at the catcher, he never moved his glove, and forty seven thousand people gave me a standing ovation, but now I don’t know why. Is it because I threw the strike? Is it because an eighty-six year old lady could run? Or eighty—eighty, what am I talking about? I’m only seventy-six, or I’ll just call it an old lady, could throw the ball? (01:21:52) When I finished throwing that pitch, I got off the field and was going back to the seats, of course everybody was standing and clapping and high fives and there were two ladies that yelled and came running out there and had to have pictures so, were standing in the aisle and we even held up the beer man for pictures. That was one of my extremely fun outings. Interviewer: “As we close, is there anything that you want to say? Something that you think is important to get on the record about your experience with playing baseball?” (01:22:37) The girls and myself had this extra ordinary experience playing baseball in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. It was a time that we don’t know if ever will happen again. We were born at the right time, we were in the right place and our experience that we had then and that we have now, speaking and making this type of documentary, the honor it has given us, and we will keep doing it until the grass is above us. We love what we do—the grandmas out there now do not baby sit anymore, we’ve told our children to go get a baby sitter because we’re busy doing and telling our story to people who want to hear it. (01:23:44) Interviewer: “Thank you so much, it was a real pleasure” You’re welcome, you’re welcome. 19 �20 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_DKonwinski Title A name given to the resource Konwinski, Dolores L. (Interview transcript and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Konwinski, Dolores L. Description An account of the resource Dolly Konwinski was born on May 27, 1931 in Chicago Illinois. Starting at the age of seven, she played baseball with a neighborhood team and her father who encouraged her to pursue it. In 1947, Konwinski got her big break and tried out for one of the four teams the All American Girls Professional Baseball League was trying to form in Chicago. She began her professional career playing for the Chicago Colleens. In 1949, after the barnstorming tour she was allocated to play for the Springfield Sallies. In 1950, she was traded to the Grand Rapids Chicks and played mainly for them until 1952 but played for a brief time with the Battle Creek Belles in 1951. During her professional career she mainly played second and third base. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945 Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-10-06 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f5226560f3829ce3ed21ec829bf36de5.m4v 73f97170a2d1a87c828ac8ee22608368 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a5e04c105fa679f4dd6951cb3f746f30.pdf fd7cbcd2fa95f2861fb64b196870c57a PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW BETSY JOCHUM Women in Baseball Born: Cincinnati, Ohio 1921 Resides: South Band, Indiana Interviewed by: James Smither, PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 4, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, October 26, 2010 Interviewer: “Betsy, can you start by giving us some background on yourself? Beginning with where and when were you born?” I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Interviewer: “In what year?” 1921, and when we were kids we use to play on the corner lot with an old beat up ball and when the cover came off we would just put friction tape on it and keep on playing. That’s how I started out playing and eventually I played on the local softball teams and went to the national tournaments in Chicago and Detroit and then P.K. Wrigley sent his club scout to Cincinnati for tryouts and I made that and we were sent to Chicago to try out at Wrigley Field and I played for the South Bend Blue Sox. Interviewer: “Ok, back up a little and we will fill out some more of the pieces of the story as we go forward. So, you’re talking about playing sandlot ball with balls you knocked the covers off of. What did your family do for a living in those days?” My dad was a carpenter and my mother stayed home. Interviewer: “And growing up there you’re getting—by the time you’re nine or ten years old the depression is starting and things like that. Was it hard for him to make a living?” 1 �The great depression, yes, and according to Tom Brokaw were “The Greatest Generation” right? 4:52 Interviewer: “Did your father have a hard time getting enough work to keep the family fed?” During the depression he didn’t have a job for quite a while, but then things picked up. Interviewer: “So, there wasn’t a lot of money to go buy bats and ball s with or things like that?” No, we just played with any old thing and friction tape to fix anything. Interviewer: “Now did you have school sports that you could play or teams?” Not for the girls, we just had intramurals maybe once a year. Interviewer: “Now you talked about getting involved with an organized softball league, and how was that run or what was the set-up for that?” They got a sponsor and they bought the uniforms and we couldn’t get anything paid, we were armatures and I played on a team in Covington, Kentucky and Cincinnati and then we went to the national tournaments in Chicago and Detroit and we ended up in second place I think at one time. 6:02 Interviewer: “That’s sort of how you came to the attention of the Cubs scout when they were looking for people to go build this league with. Did they come to Cincinnati to scout you and how did that work did they just watch a game?” No, they hit fly balls and you ran this way and ran that way and run back and batting etc. Interviewer: “And were there a lot of women they were looking at or just a few of you?” I think there were about six and they took four for the same team. 2 �Interviewer: “So, a pretty small group that they had identified already as the ones they want. Alright, then how did they get you up to Chicago?” On the James Whitcomb Riley train and we stayed at the Belmont Hotel in Chicago and P.K. Wrigley game us free food, free shoes, free glove, everything. 6:59 Interviewer: “Now you were born in 1921 and the league starts in 1943, so you’re a little older than some of the women that were getting involved in the league.” I was twenty-one and we had some players that were fifteen and sixteen, Dot Schroeder and Lois Florreich and a few after that. Interviewer: “Right, now did you have a job then before you went up?” I was working in Cincinnati as a Comptometer operator; they’re out of existence now, Comptometers. Interviewer: “What is a Comptometer?” Added, multiply, divide, subtract. Interviewer: “Sort of an adding machine?” A glorified adding machine really. Interviewer: “So, at that point you didn’t really have a whole lot of exciting job prospects or whatever at that point?” No, I think I had to pay to get that job, it was during the depression and then I started playing ball. Getting paid to play a game, that was nice. Interviewer: “That’s a good deal. All right, so you go up and this is your first season in it, so they bring you up to Chicago and what happens when you get there?” 8:09 3 �We had tryouts again and they ran us all over the outfield, batting practice and all that, but the big thing was, we tried out at Wrigley field and women were never on that field. We were the first ones to play under our temporary license, our league. Interviewer: “Did you have any sense, of the women that tried out, how many actually made the teams? Did most of them get assigned to teams or did a lot of them get sent home?” A lot of them got sent home. There were only four teams and I think there were sixteen or seventeen players on each team and there were, I think, five hundred trying out. I don’t know, I forgot. There were quite a few there that didn’t make it. They put just a poster up in the hotel, not like in the movie, it was in the hotel the next morning and if your name was on it, you made it. 9:08 Interviewer: “All right, What team were you assigned to?” South Bend, and the four managers had to set up the teams not knowing which teams they were going to coach or manage of the four original teams, Kenosha, Rockford, South Bend and Racine. Interviewer: “You said the four managers set up the teams.” There were four teams, but they didn’t know which team they were going to manage at that time, until later. Interviewer: “What was the logic of that? Why did they do it that way?” Well, they could set up a good team for themselves, otherwise, like anybody else would do. Interviewer: ‘So this gave them some balance, they had to create teams?” They always tried to keep the teams evenly balanced as far as skills. 4 �Interviewer: “All right, now, at least in the movie version of things, there’s a pretty big production made out of efforts to teach all of these girls how to be like ladies; how to dress and how to act and that kind of thing. How much of that did you get and how much do you remember about that?” 10:08 The first one was Helena Rubenstein and she taught us how to put on a coat and how to go up and down the stairs and we each got a make-up kit, that was put away, but it was good and worthwhile and it was a good thing to do. Interviewer: “What other rules and regulations stood out at that point?” We always had to wear a skirt, and we were not allowed to wear shorts in public and of course and for the four or five years we had the North Shore and the South Shores and each team had their own bus and when you were on the bus you could wear shorts and when you got off the bus you had to put a skirt on. Those were the strict rules and no smoking or drinking. Interviewer: “Did they try to control dating and things like that?” You had to see the chaperone, each team had their own chaperone and you had to be checked out with her. Interviewer: “And who was the girls’ chaperone when you started?” It was Rose Way from Tennessee and she had to wear the players’ uniform and the next was Helen Moore from Milwaukee and they had like an airline hostess outfit and the one after that was Lucille Moore and she was from South Bend and that was through 1948 and after that some of the players became chaperones when they ran out of money. 11:32 Interviewer: “What did you think of the chaperones?” 5 �Well, they weren’t nerds like they were in the movie. They were very nice and they were our first aid people and if you got a strawberry they patched you up. They were really nice I thought, and they looked really nice in their uniform, those airline hostess uniforms. Interviewer: “Did they look after the younger players particularly?” If they got homesick they would kind of talk to them. Interviewer: “What kind of living accommodations did you have?” Well, in the movie it showed like a boarding house. We didn’t—it wasn’t true, we lived in private homes and we had a room in private homes of people who were usually fans of the team and that’s the way it was, not in a big dorm. It was usually close enough to the ballpark, so you could walk to the ballpark. 12:26 Interviewer: “How much did they pay you when you started playing?” Fifty dollars plus expenses when we were out of town and that was a lot of money because coffee was only five cents then. Interviewer: “Was that a month?” A week Interviewer: “That was pretty good money then at that time.” I made more money than my dad made. Interviewer: “What did you do with your money when you made it?” I tried to save it for later on and I bought myself some nice clothes every once in a while Interviewer: “What position did you play?” 6 �I started out playing left field and I played center field and some first base when the first baseman was injured. Then when they pitched over hand I pitched and when I wasn’t pitching I played in the outfield and substitute batting. 13:18 Interviewer: “Were you a good hitter?” Yeah, except in 1948 I got tired I think and we didn’t have any days off. We played every day and traveled. We got in Southfield sometimes at five o’clock in the morning and played that evening and it was really tiring sometimes. Interviewer: “Now, were you a power hitter or a singles hitter?” No, I hit a lot of doubles and sometimes the people in South Bend would give us silver dollars for hitting doubles or triples or whatever. I just hit a few home runs. Interviewer: “Did the field have outfield fences like modern parks do or did some of them have open ends?” They all had fences. Now, in Racine it was a humongous field and if you hit to center field it would roll a mile after that, but most of them weren’t that large. Kenosha had a small field and the fog would roll in off of Lake Michigan and in the outfield you couldn’t see the ball sometimes. 14:23 They moved the field to a different location later on. In South Bend we played at Bendix Field first and then moved over to Playland Park which was an amusement park with a race track and the ball field was inside the racetrack and home plate was on a cinder track, so if you slid home it was kind of ouchie. Interviewer: “What was the fan response to women playing baseball, particularly in that first season? How were you received in South bend and other places?” 7 �When the league first started we were playing softball and they didn’t believe that we could play until they came out and saw us play and then they came out all the time and watched us. 15:15 Interviewer: “What kind of people were your fans? Were they kids or older people, men, women?” They were family people, professional people, doctors, lawyers and bankers and everything. You know I always thought they didn’t wear those hats until they showed old movies and everyone wore hats to the ball game, those big gangster type hats. When Penny Marshall made the movie they all had those hats on and I thought they didn’t wear hats, but they did. We went and watched the movie being made and Penny Marshall really talks that way all the time, but they were real nice to us down there, the whole bunch. Gretsky’s wife, he’s the ice hockey player, the big tall blond that pitched a few times, but we had a real nice time and they treated us like stars. 16:08 Interviewer: “Now, are there particular games that stand out in your memory or things that happened in individual games?” Yes, when I hit a foul ball and it hit me up in the eye and I went flat on my back, I remember that, a stupid thing. Interviewer: “All right, how about good things?” When I caught a ball bare handed. My glove was over here and I caught it bare handed over there, I remember that. Interviewer: “Now, the time you played with the Blue Sox did they win the league championship any of those years?” 8 �Not while I was playing. They came in second, but they never really won anything until later on in the fifties I think it was. Interviewer: “Who do you thing were some of the best players you played alongside of on that team?” On our team or the other team? Interviewer: “Your team?” 17:06 Jean Faut, Schroeder, Liz Mahon, Worth Interviewer: “What made them stand out from the other players?” They made everything look easy instead of making it look hard. Interviewer: “Were there particular pitchers that you didn’t like to go up against?” The slow pitchers, the faster they threw it the better I liked it. I couldn’t hit slow pitching. Interviewer: “So, did you like it, in terms of hitting, as they began to move away from the softball style and did the ball stay the same size during the time you were playing or did the ball get smaller?” We were lucky, the ones that started out, we started out with a softball and as we kept playing the balls got small and the bases got longer and the pitchers moved back, underhand, sidearm to overhand, so we were kind of eased into it, the older players. Interviewer: “But, if you like to have faster pitches and they started to move in that direction from sidearm to overhand, did the pitchers get faster or could they pitch just as fast underhand?” 18:13 I would say underhand was a lot faster because they were a lot closer. They were only about forty feet away and they could zing it in there. 9 �Interviewer: “So, you actually got a little more time to wait on the pitch if it’s fiftysix feet out or whatever they got it to.” I think we did--too long Interviewer: “Now tell me a little bit more about the traveling, you mentioned you were out—“ It started out we rode the South Shore, North Shore electric trains from Chicago to Racine and South Bend and then in 1945 each team had their own bus, which was nice. They weren’t air conditioned, but no more suitcases to lug around from station to station and it was so hard and it was so hot to carry that suitcase with your uniform in it and on the bus the uniforms were put in the back and we wouldn’t have to mess with all that. 19:08 Interviewer: “How would you get to Rockford then? Was there a train that went that way too or would you?” I really don’t remember. Interviewer: “Kenosha, Racine and South Bend are conveniently on rail lines that go out of Chicago.” I remember when they had a team out in Minneapolis and we rode the train out there and it seemed to last forever out there, but that didn’t last very long and Milwaukee either. I don’t remember how we got to Rockford the first few years. It must have been by train or bus or taxi I don’t know. Interviewer: “ I guess it was the Milwaukee team about one year and then it went to Grand Rapids.” Yes, and Minneapolis went to Fort Wayne. 10 �Interviewer: “Right, so you got that. Which team do think was probably the best team that you played against?” I thought the Grand Rapids and Rockford teams were the best while I was playing. 20:02 Interviewer: “Who did you have as a manager while you were playing?” We had Bert Niehoff first, all major-league players, Marty McManus, Chet Grant, he was a football man really, and then Marty came back again. Interviewer: “Alright, and how effective were they as managers do you think?” I liked Marty McManus he was my favorite. He would take more chances and we had more hit and run and things like that and the other ones wouldn’t do too much of that. Interviewer: “Did they do much coaching in terms of teaching you to do better or did they just send you on out there?” Oh no, they taught us how to bat and where to throw the ball and things like that. Hit and run or stealing bases and things like that. Interviewer: “What did you do in the off season? You played in the summer and then what?” 21:06 I was lucky, I went back to French Barr as a comptometer operator in the winter. Other people had to find a new job, but I didn’t. Interviewer: “So, they held your job for you basically and you could go back and do it?” Yes, but I always took a month off after the season and then went back to work. Interviewer: “Why did you stop playing ball?” I was traded to Peoria and I didn’t want to go and they said my choice was to either go or quit, so I quit. 11 �Interviewer: “Once you quit what did you do?” I worked at Bendix Products as a comptometer and eventually I went to college and became a teacher. Interviewer: “Where did you go to college?” Illinois State and I was thirty-six years old when I graduated. Interviewer: “What did you get your degree in?” What else, phys ed Interviewer: “There you go… and what did you do with that degree once you had it?” I taught grades three through eight at Miesel School in South Bend and I was there was twenty-seven years and then I retired. 22:17 Interviewer: “Now, did the people know that you were a baseball player?” No, we never talked about it until the movie came out. They wouldn’t have believed us. Interviewer: “So, the people in South Bend didn’t necessarily even remember that there was a team?” They didn’t even know we played until the movie came out. Interviewer: “Now, were you involved with the league organization before that?” No, not really, do you mean our league? No, P.K. Wrigley did all that organizing. Interviewer: “No, I meant the organization of the players, the one that’s now— we’re having the reunion of/” Do you mean the AAGPBL? Interviewer: “Yes” No, I wasn’t involved in that. 12 �Interviewer: “Did you know about making the movie when they started it, did you get involved in that?” We went down and watched them make the movie in Evansville. 23:10 Interviewer: “So, you must have had enough of a connection that they could invite you. Did they go and research and find the players or what did they do?” No, we just went down on our own and watched. Interviewer: “OK” They hired Karen Kunkel to kind of help them out with the movie and latter on I think, Pepper Paire was down there too. We just went down as spectators. Interviewer: “OK” Very interesting how they faked on a lot of stuff Interviewer: “Which parts of the movie do you think were the most authentic or realistic?” The base running I guess, the batting was all faked out. They had a machine behind home plate and the batter would swing and the machine would throw the ball out in the outfield. Interviewer: “So, you swung the bat better than Madonna did then?” Yes, but she tried. 24:06 Interviewer: “Which pieces of the movie struck you as being the most really out of character from what really went on or the most Hollywoodish?” When they showed the chaperone. She was horrible, that chaperone in the movie, but the games, actually, were pretty authentic. They made it look authentic anyway and they did a good job. It put us on the map, really.. 13 �Interviewer: “When you were playing, did you think that you were doing something really distinctive or unusual?” Not really, until later on. Interviewer: “You were just playing ball, so that was a good idea.” We were having fun and getting paid to play a game. It was a very unusual league for that time. Interviewer: “I can’t think of anything else like that and that could have been equivalent, you had women athletes, but—“ 25:10 Not team sports, not professional team sports. Interviewer: “Golf and tennis, but not a whole lot else.” Mostly golf with Babe Zaharias at that time I think and Patty—what was that golfers name, Patty Burg? Interviewer: “As we kind of got into the seventies and eighties etc. and had Title IX come in, you had a lot of efforts to actually get women involved in sports—“ That was real good, that Title Nine and women got scholarships and everything and we had nothing before that really. Interviewer: “Have you gotten much of a chance to meet or talk to the women athletes of the younger generation? Ones who play softball now or college sports?” Not really, some of the ball players did, but I didn’t really do that. Interviewer: “If you look at it now, how do you think your experience in the league affected you? What did you take out of that?” It changed everybody’s life I think; I met a lot of people, bankers, lawyers, doctors, plus players for all over Cuba, the USA and Canada. 26:27 14 �Interviewer: “Now, did you get down to Cuba for the spring training they did there?” Yes, my first flight Interviewer: “What was that like? What do you remember about that?” It was wild; we went to the ballpark in a taxicab. They didn’t have traffic lights and when you got to a corner whoever beeped their horn first had the right away and we didn’t have any water to drink, it was always Coca Cola. We had our practices at the stadium out there and the Brooklyn Dodgers were there at the same time in a different park and they came to watch us play and not them. Interviewer: “So, why were people watching you and not the Dodgers?” Women in skirts playing ball Interviewer: “So people came to watch you play and how did the fans in Puerto Rico [Cuba] behave?” 27:23 They were wild and we weren’t allowed to walk down the streets alone, we had to go in groups. They had real good cocoanut ice cream and fresh pineapple they sold on the streets. It was a real experience and this one man that made movie shorts, I can’t think of his name, walking down the stairway of the Havana University, all the teams and I have a snapshot of that, but he made a movie shorts and it got lost somehow and I still can’t think of his name. He was very popular at that time, making shorts. Interviewer: “Were these like newsreel movie?” Yes, newsreel things Interviewer: “Now, what year did you do that?” 1947 in Cuba 15 �Interviewer: “Of course for the first year for 1943 you went to Wrigley Field and everybody got together there?” We practiced in South Bend I think and we went down to Opa-Locka, Florida one year at an old naval station I think it was. 28:30 Interviewer: “What was that experience like?” We swam in the swimming pool and had a good time when we weren’t practicing. It was nice and I liked it, but Pascagoula was roach heaven. The roaches were that big and got in our suitcases and everything. Interviewer: “Was that a different year at Pascagoula?’ Yes, and I would like to forget that year. We were in the army barracks and it was horrible and hot and filthy. Interviewer: “When you went to those places did you play games that people would come and attend or were you just working out?” 29:10 We would get two teams together and after practice we would travel throughout the south and shared a bus for about a week and played every night and travel all day and play the next night with no days off. Then we would fly back to South Bend Interviewer: “What kind of response did you get when you were doing that kind of barnstorming?” Oh, they loved us and we had real good attendance there. Interviewer: “Would you sometimes recruit players as you went through that way?” I guess so, once in a while, that’s how we got the Cubans. 16 �Interviewer: “Some of the players we have talked to, like Sue Kidd was from Arkansas and that kind of thing. You come through and they sign on and join them and just go on along. Were the audiences all white when you were in the south or did you play for black audiences too?” 30:02 I think they were all white. We were in Charlotte, was it South Carolina? Interviewer: “North Carolina has the large town of Charlotte.” Anyway, we had a room that had these large bowls with a pitcher of water; an old hotel and you would take a bath in the bowl. I remember that, I don’t know why, but we stayed in nice hotels really most of the time. Tampa Terrace, I have some old postcards from some of them. Interviewer: “When you were playing against the teams in the league, were there certain towns you liked to go to better than others?” In the league, I didn’t like Peoria, it was so hot and I didn’t like the hotel there. Kenosha, there was a nice hotel there, it was a small town and Racine was nice. Peoria is the place I didn’t like because it was so hot there and there was no place to eat there that was good. 31:03 We played in Racine and we went to this bar to get something to eat after the game and there was a piano player there and a singer and it was Patti Page. Interviewer: “Well, that’s pretty good.” We asked if we could request a song and she was very nice. That was before she became popular and that was quite an experience meeting her then. 31:30 Interviewer: “Once the movie came out and the league got more attention, have you done anything in terms of helping with museums or anything like that?” 17 �We went down to the museum in South Bend and identified hundreds of pictures for the museum. Interviewer: “All right, you’re also involved with a bigger museum than that. Who has your uniform?” The Smithsonian. Iin 1983 I donated my uniform to the Smithsonian. It had been in Japan and all over the U.S for two years on its tour. Interviewer: “How did you wind up giving your uniform to the Smithsonian?” One of the players said they wanted our uniforms and I said, “I’ve got one down in the cellar”, and it was all rumpled up and dirty, so I cleaned it up and ironed it real nice and put it on this statue. They had a nice display of my uniform with my picture there. 32:30 Interviewer: “All right, and did they get anymore of your stuff?” My hat and my cap, my socks, my belt and my glove. Interviewer: “At the time you were donating that stuff, did you think much of it or did you think that if they wanted it that was fine?” They might as well have it, it’s down in my basement and somebody else can see it there at the Smithsonian. Interviewer: “You didn’t know it was that important yet?” No, not really. They were glad they got it and I got a lot of letters thanking me. Interviewer: “Did you get to go there and see them present it?” This Audi automobile club had a big todo about the traveling display and they had this big rotunda and the ice skater Nancy Kerrigan was there and Bill Russell and they had these old-fashioned popcorn machines and they had cotton candy and free drinks and free 18 �food. It was really an experience and it was the grand opening of the display that was going to be traveling for two years and sponsored by Audi. 33:36 Interviewer: “Now, if you think back to your playing days and things, are there any individual events or memories or things that stand out in your mind that you haven’t brought up here yet?” Yes, when I was batting in Rockford, I hit a foul ball that came up and hit me in the face and I landed flat on my back on home plate. Another time I was going to run down first base and I stepped on that liquid whitewash and fell down. Interviewer: “What was the liquid whitewash from, or was that what they painted the lines with?” They painted the lines with that liquid stuff and if you stepped on that it was slippery and I happened to step on it after I hit the ball—one step and down. 34:21 Interviewer: “Did they have you wearing cleats?” We had regular steel spikes and they were long ones, not the short ones like softball, they were long. Interviewer: “But that didn’t stop the whitewash from tripping you up?” No, not me Interviewer: “All,right, there were a lot of experiences there and thank you for coming in and telling them to us. Thank you for having me. 34:44 19 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_BJochum Title A name given to the resource Jochum, Betsy (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jochum, Betsy Description An account of the resource Betsy Jochum was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1921. She grew up playing ball with neighborhood kids, and was playing in a local women's softball league in 1943 when she was recruited to play in the All American league during its first season. She played until 1948 with the South Bend Blue Sox, and went on the league's spring training trip to Cuba. She later became a physical education teacher, and donated her glove and uniform to the Smithsonian. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945 Baseball players--Indiana Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-04 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/eded5ef8e5516cd446dddcc17e7b89ed.m4v 278592a3e572a9a24588c53c16982846 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fd499bc71424407048b75bd0272a4666.pdf 11adbdca6a3ad3ecd7e37e0c6272cf29 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW ANN PETROVIC, Infield Shortstop Women in Baseball Born: November 17, 1928 Aurora, Indiana Resides: Tucson, Arizona Interviewed by: James Smither, PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 7, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, October 4, 2010 Interviewer: “Now Ann, can you start by giving us a little bit of background on yourself?” I was born and raised in Aurora, Indiana. There were about five thousand people and I was the youngest of nine children. I had five brothers, and now you know where I got started in baseball, and three sisters. That’s how I got started in baseball. Interviewer: “In what year were you born?” I was born on November 17, 1928. Interviewer: “What did your family do for a living?” My father worked at a chair factory, he was a bandsawer and he sawed legs and arms and stuff for chairs and that’s what we did for a living. Interviewer: “So, did he keep that job through the depression?” He did. He was about fourteen years old when he started and he worked until he was about seventy-eight years old. Interviewer: “What kind of school did you go to?” 1:03 Well, I went to school; I went like anyone else you now, elementary and junior high, then high school. Interviewer: “When did you start playing sports?” 1 �I had five brothers of course and when I was real little we lived on a farm and I kind of hung around with my brothers a lot and whenever they would go play ball-- of course they were on any team—if anyone would give them a uniform they would play. They were on church league, industrial leagues or anything. As far as I can remember, I used to tag them around to the ball parks and everything and every time they would, I grew up eventually, put me into the field and let me play with them and as soon as one of them would go out and—second base, they would go out and take batting practice, I would take their position. 2:04 I kept going with them every year and playing at home with them and in the winter time, of course, the snow was up over the house, so we would move furniture and then we would play ball in the house from the living room to the dining room. I can remember one brother, he was fantastic and the Cincinnati Reds wanted him, but he got injured in World War II and he’s the one that taught me everything. He played shortstop and of course that’s what I played. We played all winter because we just played in the house and that’s all we had in those days. If you had a mitt and you had a ball, you went out and played ball, but I had to play with the boys because the girls couldn’t catch me you know. They would say, “don’t play with “Shorty Meyer” she’s nothing but a tomboy”. In those days no one would play with me and of course I couldn’t play with the girls anyway. My name was not good and it wasn’t exactly right for a girl to go out and play ball in those days, so that’s how I got started, with my brother. 3:03 Interviewer: “When you were in junior high and high school did you have any chance to play organized sports?” 2 �Yes, I was with sports all through and in senior high they even had a parade and they picked out the best athletes, a girl and a boy, and I was the best of the girls and they had a big parade and this was a town of five thousand people and everyone knew what you were doing almost—they knew when I was going to All American to try out and everything, so they had a parade for us and I was the athlete of the whole school. Interviewer: “How old were you when you tried out for the All American?” Ok, when I tried out for the All American I was only fifteen years old. The way I got into the All American is my father read in the Cincinnati Inquirer that Betsy Jochum was going to go and play in the Girls All American Baseball and all these fifteen years I had been playing with my brothers and everything and I said, “there must be a team that I can get on somewhere in this place”, and he said, “well, I’ll go up and talk to her parents and see where she went”. I said, “ok”, so he went up and talked to Betsy Jochum and in those days it wasn’t easy to go from one place to another hardly. 4:20 Cincinnati was about thirty-five miles from us, we lived in Aurora, Indiana right on the Ohio River, so he went up there, my father did, and he got the address of the people, so they said, “you bring her up, we’re going to try out at Peru and La Salle, Illinois”. They had six ball parks I think and they said to go up there and try out, so I went up there after we got the address and they said to come on up, so I went up there and the first day I was so nervous I couldn’t even hardly catch the ball. All these girls and all this excitement and everything, so my father said, “we’re going home tomorrow”, and I said, “oh no, I gotta meet all those people that thought I was going to make it and everything?” He said, “yup, the way you played today you won’t even sigh a contract or anything”, so I said, “ok, give me one more day”, so I went the next day and I said, “over on first base is my brother Wally, 3 �second base is my brother----“, and I went on and I was playing with my brothers all this time, so I didn’t even look at the girls and man, when that ball was hit to me I threw it over to first and went all around there, so that night I signed the contract. 5:32 I sort of relaxed and played the way I was supposed to play, so anyway, that’s how I made it. Interviewer: “And your father thought that was a good idea?” Yes, he sure did and he was there after I signed the contract. I have a picture of my father standing there beside me and then he asked if I was going to be in good hands and the manager said, “yes, she’ll be in good hand and we’ll take care of her”. I had never been away from home for fifteen years and my mother cried when I left, but anyway a couple of nice All Americans took me in, Faye Dancer and Pepper Beare, I was on their team and I went right to Minneapolis. Anyway, they took me in. The chaperones; they help you if you’re homesick or anything like that, that’s their job. 6:20 I got over it after a while and I spent a whole year with the All American. Interviewer: “Now, did you join them after their spring training or were you part of that?” After spring training, and then they put you on a team, after I tried out and everything. Interviewer: “You tried out, but did you go to a spring training with the whole league there or did you just go to join a team?” Well, the whole league was there. Interviewer: “I think in 1944—did they use Wrigley Field that year?” Yes Interviewer: “Ok” 4 �After—after we played ball, I went back to school, in the wintertime. We weren’t in the playoffs or anything. That was in September. Interviewer: “I was just trying to follow the sequence of events. So did you go to Chicago to try out or did you first go someplace else?” 7:15 After I got through they told me, at the end of the season or almost to the end, they asked me to go Chicago with the National League because they need players over there, so then I went to Chicago and it was the same year, at the end of the year almost, in September, and they told me to go over there and see them. I went over there and tried out over there and I made it, but it was just about at the end of the year. Interviewer: “I was still talking about the beginning of the season.” The beginning of the season when I went to Peru and La Salle, Illinois—then what they do after that is put you on a team and that’s when they sent me to Minneapolis. 7:59 Interviewer: “Ok, all the way to Minneapolis.” After Minneapolis they sent me to Kenosha. I was traded for Liz Mahon, so I went to Kenosha and played. One or the other, but Minneapolis only lasted one year. Interviewer: “When you joined the league, did they give you a list of all the rules and regulations and how you were supposed to behave and the way you were supposed to dress?” Oh yes, you had to be in at ten o’clock and when you’re in your own home town, of course, you’re always with a family and there’s always two of you. They never go in with one person, so they did put me with a roommate and get me a place to stay in the town where we stayed, like in Minneapolis or Kenosha. 8:50 Interviewer: “Did they have a dress code that you had to follow?” 5 �Oh yes and you’ve heard this a hundred times, you had to wear a skirt. You could wear shorts inside when nobody saw you, but you had to wear that skirt and dress up when you would go outside. Both of us never smoked, but you couldn’t smoke or anything like that and you had to dress up when you went out into public, and they had the charm school. When they had the charm school they looked at me and they picked me out of that whole bunch and used me as an example. I just came up and I wasn’t the type to--I was a tomboy anyway--dress up anyway, and they would say “Ann you come up here, we’re going to use you”, so they fixed my hair and fixed me all up and I was a little embarrassed. I was only fifteen you know, and never been—anyway, they used me as an example when they had the charm school. 9:42 They would teach you how to walk and how to sit and when you go to someone’s home they wanted you to be ladies--to be ladies and play like men, that’s what they wanted me to do, so that’s what I did. Interviewer: ‘So, you actually got the charm school experience, because a lot of the players that joined later didn’t have that, but you were still early enough that they were still doing it.” It was a good thing and to this day I remember the things they told me and I never forgot it. How to sit, how to do—and it’s good, some of the education I never had in my life being on the farm you know. Interviewer: “Now, were you a starting shortstop? Did you get to play regularly with the team?” No, when I started that was a problem, they had too--enough players in those leagues and they told me to go out there to Chicago and play and get more experience and then you can come back to the all American. Well, I got more experience and I liked it a lot and I 6 �was playing all the time, so after that I said, “no, I don’t want to go back”. I was familiar with the team and the league and all the people and Charlie Bidwell was good to me. 10:56 I played for the Bluebirds, Eddie Kolski was good to me and all of them, so I said, “no, I’m going to stay up here”. They needed players in the All American—see, they went from underhand and sidearm to overhand and a lot of girls came up to the National League because they didn’t want to pitch overhand and we had a lot of girls up there. I said, “hey this is great for me and I’m playing all the time, so I’m staying here”. I made a good name for myself up there. 11:22 Interviewer: “Ok, you did get to play in some of the games with the All American?” Oh yes, I was backing up Pepper Beare in shortstop when I was playing in Minneapolis and when she got hurt I went in, yes I did. Interviewer: “In Kenosha did you get to play?” Yes, the same thing there in Kenosha. I didn’t go in all the time as a regular player, but I used to go in when anybody would get hurt or when they were way ahead and they wanted to see what I could do and things like that, but I did get to play quite often. Interviewer: “Were you a good hitter?” I always betted first or second, I was fast because I always ran from my dad all the time because I got in trouble on the farm and I had a lot of speed. I slid a lot and I got a lot of strawberries. Batting, my brothers and them, they never did give me much help because when we took position I took the infield and they never let me bat. They would go in for game practice and they never let me bat. I warmed up my brother when one pitched and I caught a lot and did a lot of infield, but they never let me bat much, so I had to learn that 7 �when I was on the All American. 12:33 That’s the position I was in. Defense, but not offense, but they were working on it. Interviewer: “When you were playing for Minneapolis, did you have some long road trips?” Did we have long road trips? Well, playing for Minneapolis, I can remember this one— we were getting on this train, not the bus, the train, and it was a troop train, I’ll never forget it. Fifteen girls got on that train with these servicemen and it was something else. I was fifteen years old, so I just got in a corner and watched what was going on. The guys were wanting you to write to them and asking when they go overseas and stuff like that. They were giving out addresses and talking to you and stuff, but it was some experience and I really enjoyed that. That’s the only thing I can remember that really happened when we were traveling, but otherwise we went on the bus. 13:28 Interviewer: “Did it take a long time to get from Minneapolis to the other places?” No, from this day I don’t remember, but all of them were pretty much close together the year I went in 1944. We didn’t have to travel too much, but I can remember going on the busses and stuff from one place to the other, so it was interesting anyway. Interviewer: “Tell me a little bit about how the softball leagues in Chicago worked.” Oh, in Chicago? In Chicago you only played ball at night and I think you had eight to ten teams in Chicago and I worked at the Edgewater Beach Hotel during the day. Now this is exciting because I worked at the reservation office. Now, when the ball players came in at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, we’re talking about the National League, they came in and they only played in the daytime because there were no lights at Wrigley Field, so I would 8 �meet them at the door because I knew they were coming in. 14:29 I met Mel Ott and Harry “The Hat” Walker and all those guys you know, and I was at the door and I met them and I told them who I was and that I was playing ball. They wanted to come out and see me play ball because they had nothing to do at night and here I was working during the day, so I set them up and they took a cab out to watch me play ball and the first time they watched me they said, “hey come over here. The next time you come to the hotel I want to show you how to bat”, so they got a bat out and they started showing me how to stand and bat and they were trying to help me and everything, but it was exciting and I met the whole team when they came in and had a lot of pictures taken and autographs and I have several balls from them that are very valuable to me today. I got to know them well and that was exciting. Whenever they would come into the hotel, and I knew when they were coming because I was making their reservations, so it was great. 15:24 Interviewer: “So you had a day job, but then did they also pay you to play the ball games at night?” Oh yeah, we got paid just like we would in All American. The National League paid the same and I got the same amount. They made sure that where you were working, that it was a good place and they were the ones that helped you get the job. There were certain jobs they didn’t want you to do because it was too hard on you and you couldn’t play ball. Here I was just sitting at a desk and I didn’t have to use up much energy, so they placed you where and in jobs so you could still play ball. You had the day free, but you would go out and play at night, so it was no problem with me to do that. 9 �Interviewer: “When you played for the All American and you had gone in at fifteen, you weren’t done with high school yet.” 16:27 No, I played all through high school and I was in the National League, but I played in the summer, then when we had playoffs that would run into September and school was still going on, I went ahead and finished up the playoffs and then when I went back to school they let me make that up. They were nice enough to say, “hey you’re two weeks late or three weeks late”, and they helped me to make it up so I would catch up with the other students in the high school. I did graduate from high school because of their help and everything, so I went right through. I was the only one, oh there were two, of nine that graduated in my family and I was one of them. Interviewer: “When you were playing in Chicago, where did you live?” I lived—when I worked for Edgewater Beach they had a an apartment for employees and I lived there and before that, before I got into Edgewater Beach, we had an apartment and my father said, “hey, since she’s not traveling, I’m going to send your two sisters”, and two of my sisters came out to Chicago to live with me. 17:38 She said, “I want you to take care of Shorty”, that’s what they called me at home, she said, “I want you to take care of her, so I’m sending you guys out to stay there”, so they got a job, and it was during the war of course, in an airplane factory, both of them did, and it wasn’t hard to get a job in Chicago in those days. I went ahead and worked at Edgewater and they worked at the plane company and they took care of me and when I had to go to the ballpark I always took the El and I rode place to place around Chicago on the El by myself at night and you can’t do that today. 18:23 Interviewer: “You can in a lot of Chicago, not all of it”. 10 �Anyway, that’s what I did. Interviewer: “How long did you play in Chicago?” I played in Chicago—I played pro ball until 1950. I went to college after high school and the first year in college, and of course that college that I went to, the same problem I had all year, girls aren’t supposed to play with boys. I was called into the president’s office because I was playing ball with a boy on campus. Do you believe that? I was passing ball with a boy on campus, so they called me into the president’s office and they said, “we are not allowed to do that here”. It was at Nyack College in Nyack, New York, and I said, “well, if I can’t keep up in the wintertime because of all the snow and everything, and all the girls in Florida and California and Phoenix, Arizona and places are playing year around and they go back to spring training and they’re all in shape and here I am in snow country and I gotta keep in shape if I want’ a do anything and stay in the league with the rest of them. I wouldn’t have enough money to come back here next year if I didn’t make the team.” 19:45 He said, “ok, we’ll change the rules”, so I got to play ball with the boys and beside that I joined the Y to keep up on the exercise in Nyack, New York where the college was. I went down there and worked out myself a lot in between, but when it got warmer I played outside with the boys. So that’s the story on that one. Interviewer: “All right, then what did you get your degree in at college?” In college, Christian education and I wanted to be a physical education teacher, then I met this nice man and went two years to college, three—I know I had one more year to go and I went ahead and he was one year behind me, so I went to work and helped put him through and I decided to get married and that was something too because we announced our engagement and they said, “freshmen aren’t supposed to get married”, 11 �because they only had three years in this college and you had to go three and I went two years. He said, “I’m not the one that’s announcing it, she’s announcing it and she’s a sophomore”, so it was all right and they changed the rules on that one too. 20:57 I went to work and I worked at Lederle’s’in Pearl River, New York and I made Oramycin capsules in those years and I helped put him through college, so he got to finish. Interviewer: “What did you do after that?” After we went to Nyack, we settled down in a town, after he graduated, in 1952 we settled down in Ashland, Ohio. Now, Ashland is about 20,000 people between Cleveland and Columbus. He was born in Mansfield and he was a professional photographer, so he got a job there in Ashland and we settled down and we bought a home and we stayed there and raised two children, two boys, and we lived there from 1952 until 1978 and then we moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1978 and that’s where we live now. 22:02 Interviewer: “I guess, while you were playing and going off to college and after you finished playing, did the people around you know that you had been a professional athlete?” No, they didn’t believe me. My boy, when he went to school, he said, “my mom was a professional ball player”, they had show and tell and he was in the first or second graded I thing, and he said, “my dad is a professional photographer”, and he gets up and they didn’t believe his mom was a professional ball player and I would tell the neighbors, “I used to play pro ball” and they would say, “oh yeah, my mom was a garbage collector”, and they didn’t believe it., so that’s what we went through all these years until the movie came out in 1992 and that was different now. They called me up two or three times in Ashland, Ohio, they wanted me to come back, so this October the 9th, I go back to 12 �Ashland, Ohio and I will be in the Sports Hall of Fame this year. 23:06 They all believed me after the movie came out and now they want me in the hall of fame, so that’s quite an honor. Interviewer: “Were you involved at all in any of the events surrounding the movie?” Around the National, two blocks from the biggest park, they had softball tournaments, industrial, in Ashland, Ohio where I was, they were famous for softball and they had it from all over the United States coming there and I’d go down to the ball park and watch them all the time and meet the players that come in and everything and you didn’t have to pay or anything. Of course some weekends when they had professional teams come in I did pay, but I went down there and got to meet them and I told them I played bal and stuff. I went out and passed and at that time I could still play pretty good. Remember, I quit during my prime time and I was only twenty-one years old when I quit in 1950, so I could still play ball. I also played for an industrial league. I got a job in Ashland and they made leather jackets, it was called Kesko and they said, “hey Ann, you played ball, you can play ball for me”, and I said, “ok, I’ll come out”, so they put me on first base. 24:15 It was the first night, this is an industrial league, and I was playing third base and the ball was hit to me and the girl was going into home and I threw that ball into home and it hit her chest, it hit the ground and they called 911, I’d of liked a killed her, so that was the end of me playing ball for the industrial league. These were like the housewives you know and I didn’t know it, I just went in there and did my thing and I couldn’t play there anymore. 24:40 Interviewer: “Did you ever do any coaching?” 13 �Yes I did, they wanted me to coach the girls. I went down at the park where they played and helped with them once and a while, but I didn’t do much because I didn’t have much patience, but I told them what I knew and everything, and the Y in Ashland, I went for volleyball in the wintertime and basketball, so I played volleyball and I traveled all over Ohio and we got for that Y and I don’t know how many, but I played like a pro once and I hate to lose and these were a bunch of housewives and this girl beside me couldn’t hit it too good, so I would get in front of her and hit the ball, and I got in a lot of trouble doing that you know because once a pro always a pro. You play so hard and I don’t care what I do, I play—I put everything in it and my name got to be mud after a while, but I stuck with it. They got to know me and I was pretty good, so they hung onto me because I helped the team. 25:48 I enjoyed traveling and playing with the women. We did that from 1963 all the way until I left in 1978. I traveled all over in the wintertime. Interviewer: “You were pretty constantly active in sports the whole time, so leaving a professional league didn’t stop you, you kind of just kept going and in various places and in college you kind of made them do it your way.” Exactly, mom could never find me, I had a bat and a ball and I was in the neighborhood and anybody would catch me, they would pick up a team, the boys, I was right there. We had to play in the street a lot of the time because they didn’t have ball fields or anything and every time we hit the ball and a car came by we had to get off the street, this is home plate and we would get off the street right in the middle of a game and we had to move over and let the car go by and then we would go back out in the street you know. 26:37 We played in the street a lot of times and you might have one or two cars go by. They didn’t have many, but that’s what I did. As soon as I would get up in the morning as a 14 �kid, I was all ready to go out and play ball. My mom had to send my sisters out there to find out what street we were playing on and what team I was on , but I loved it so much that and that was the only way I could play and I just went out every day to see who I could play with. Interviewer: “When they made the movie, A League of Their Own, they tried to get together a bunch of the former players and they were involved in different events connected with the movie. Were you a part of any of that?” When they made the movie I signed up to go to Evansville, Indiana where they were for their spring training, because I’m from Indiana. Anything in Indiana, like I left all my stuff in South Bend, Indiana for the historical society because I’m from Indiana and I’m proud of that. 27:36 I signed up to go, but at the time I was working at, it was like Kroger’s, I worked fifteen years in Tucson, Arizona, it was called Alpha Beta and later it was called Abco and I worked at that store, it was like Kroger like I say and a grocery store it was and I was working—I started as a courtesy clerk and they were right across the street from where I was living and I would go over there every day and say, “hey, can I get a job?” They would say that they didn’t have anything and I said, “well, I’ll even scrub the floors”, and I just wanted to get in because I knew what I could do. One day after—I would say almost a year I tried to get in there and they said, “hey Ann, I’m getting tired of looking at you, I’ll give you a job as a courtesy clerk, so I said, “ok, I’ll take it, what is it?” I didn’t even know what it was. I knew what a bagger was, but I didn’t know what a courtesy clerk was, so he said, “you just take this uniform and get ready and come over tomorrow and you’ll be a courtesy clerk and I’ll teach you what to do”. 28:38 I said, “ok, I just live across the street”, so I got this nice uniform and I put it 15 �on and I went over there and he said, “you’re going to be bagging these groceries you know and you’re going to be pushing those carts”, and I was about fifty years old at that time and I was the oldest bagger in the state of Arizona, so I didn’t care and they had all these teenagers and this is something else, so I went over there and I got to learn how to bad, they taught me how to bag and stuff and I was going so fast they said, “that lady must be on dope”, because they never saw anybody move like that and the teenagers were just messing around and all they wanted was the money and they didn’t want to work and I was working. I said to the manager, “I’d like forty-eight hours”, and he said, “we don’t give courtesy clerks forty-eight hours, but I watched you work and I’ll call up the office in California and I’ll see if I can get you forty-eight hours”, so he called up after a couple of weeks or so and he said, “I got permission and you can work forty-eight hours a week”, so I said, “ok”, so that’s what I did, forty-eight hours and I worked there for fifteen years. 29:47 I got so I even taught courtesy clerks eight years and like I say, I worked there fifteen years and I really enjoyed it. Moving fast was just the way I was brought up. I move fast all the time, but they weren’t use to that because people there don’t work like that and I was because of being so active getting those carts. I would go out and get maybe eight or ten at a time and these people would bring in four or five you know. He liked the way I worked, so I got to work forty-eight hours. Interviewer: “Now we got into this subject when I asked you about going to Evansville or you signed up to go to Evansville?” I signed up to go to Evansville and my husband had open-heart surgery at the time and I didn’t get there. I was working at the store, that’s why I got that store, so I stayed there, 16 �but I wanted to go to be in the movie, but I didn’t make it. 30:46 At the end of the movie and stuff. Interviewer: “Now, since you only played with the all Americans for one year, how did that combination of playing in the all American and then playing in the Chicago League, what effect did that have on you?” Well, because I was so young, I was still learning and a lot of those girls that came up there, they had been playing for a few years and I was working on experience and I wanted to get up there where the rest of them were you know and I wanted to stay in the league for along time, as long as I could and that was the thing I was working on. The only way you get experience is to play and I was sitting on the ---and that’s what the manager told me, “Ann you’re good, but you need more experience”, so you’ll get it at Chicago and I did. That’s what I liked and I stayed there and I got to know everyone and everyone knew me and that’s why I decided to stay in Chicago when they wanted me back. I said, “no, I’m going to stay here”, so that’s why, experience is what I was working for at that time. Interviewer: “You’re playing professional sports as a woman fairly early on, the late forties and early fifties, did you see yourself as any kind of pioneer or didn’t you think about that?” I didn’t think about that, I went year to year, I had fun and I enjoyed it. Shorty Decker and me and in Chicago on the Queens, we had more double plays than anyone in the whole league and she took short stop and I took second because she was a little better and short stop and she was older and I could play second and I could play third. Finally the girl on third got to be forty some years old they put me on third and I almost got it down 17 �my throat between short stop and third, but I learned when to come in and when to go back and I ended up playing third at that time. 32:51 Interviewer: “It makes for an interesting story and a little bit different one, so I would just like to thank you for coming in and telling it.” I enjoyed it very much and thank you very much. 18 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_APetrovic Title A name given to the resource Petrovic, Ann (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Petrovic, Ann Description An account of the resource Ann Petrovic was born in Aurora, Indiana, in 1928. She grew up playing ball with her brothers and played on different girls' teams in school. When she was fifteen, she heard about tryouts for the All American Girls Professional Baseball League being held in Illinois, tried out and was assigned to a team in Minneapolis which soon moved to Kenosha. After playing in the league's first season, she signed with a professional softball team in Chicago, where she played until 1950. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945 Baseball players--Wisconsin Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-07 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5fc7576f3fb5e0a71ab05c0f3063f034.m4v 379449f22faeb4adf6c42ee5e20bfc5c https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e28077674b090e59d908f0d40babe7ff.pdf 9190ccb5a6f681870a51c9ca30bccb01 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW AUDREY HAINE DANIELS, Pitcher Women in Baseball Born: Winnipeg, Canada May 5, 1927 Resides: Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 5, 2010, Detroit, Michigan at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, November 16, 2010 Interviewer: “Audrey, let’s start with your full name and where and when were you born?” My maiden name is Audrey May Haine. I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on May 5, 1927. No, May 9th, I told you I would make some mistakes, meant to say 5/9/27. Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like?” I suppose it was not much different than any of the others at that time. I had a very good childhood, it was a—my father really wasn’t there most of the time and when he was he just upset the whole thing, do you know what I mean? We had kind of a bumpy road there for a while, but we got out and played. We played baseball around the street with the other kids. 1:28 Interviewer: “Where did you grow up? Was it on land or in the city?” It was in the city of Winnipeg. Interviewer: “So, did you live in an apartment?” We had a house. Interviewer: “All right, and then you went to school, did you walk to school?” Yes we walked to school; we weren’t too far from school. Interviewer: “All right, how did you get involved with playing baseball?” 1 �With the kids in the street, I mean we always played baseball. We didn’t have to stop too often to let cars go by because where I lived in those days there weren’t too many cars. The doctor went by occasionally and we didn’t really have a good bat or a good balls. Our balls were usually half ripped, but I don’t think it ever bothered us, we were out there playing and had a great time. Interviewer: “It was neighborhood kids? Did you ever play kids in other neighborhoods? 2:30 No Interviewer: “So it was just pretty much by yourselves. How was school for you? Did you like school?” Interviewer: Oh, I liked school very much. Interviewer: “You got into high school I take it?” Yes I did Interviewer: “Did you have any idea what you wanted to do at that stage of your life?” I wanted to be a nurse. Interviewer: “How did the opportunity to become a baseball player come along?” I knew I had no opportunity to be a nurse for sure, and baseball was just something that I grew up with. I didn’t just say, “I want to be a baseball player”, I just grew up with it and I played for a team called the St. Anthony Brown Birds when I was fifteen or something like that and I was a pretty good pitcher. Interviewer: “Now, is this softball or baseball?” 2 �Softball, so I moved up to the next bracket and I played with them for a year and had a very good year. Interviewer: “Now, this is just for fun and you’re not getting paid or anything like that?” No, absolutely not, this is just teams that were put together and you had managers and everything that went with it, uniforms. 3:48 Interviewer: “All girls?” Yes, all girls Interviewer: “When did you first hear about the professional league?” Well, I got a call from a girl who played in the league the first year and her name was Dotty Hunter, she called and she said that a scout had seen me play and wanted her to get in touch with me and tell me all about the league and see if I would be interested. Interviewer: “Had you heard about it before?” No, I had never heard about the league before, so I invited Dotty over to my home and she told us, my mother and myself and my sister probably, all about the league and that it was run on very high standards and that the players lived in private homes with good families and that we got paid for playing and when on the road we had real money and stayed in the best hotels. So, that sounded pretty good to me 4:46 Interviewer: “What was your mother’s reaction?” Well, she didn’t react, and she certainly didn’t say, “no, you’re not doing that”, no she didn’t, she always let us have opportunities when they came up. Interviewer: “How old were you at that time?” Fifteen 3 �Interviewer: “So, they were offering you to play in the league at fifteen?” I was fifteen when I got my contract and I turned sixteen that following summer and then when I played and got to leave, I had just turned seventeen.. Interviewer: “What was your first experience? Did you go for tryouts?” I never went to tryouts, and being young; I assumed I was on the team. Interviewer: “Wow! Where did you go, to Peoria?” 5:46 First of all Dottie Hunter came and explained the whole thing to my mother and me finally said I could go. I had never been more than one hundred miles from home or ordered or eaten a meal out, so I was just about as green as the grass we were going to play on, you know. I had never had any experience being away, so it was a pretty exciting and nerve-wracking experience for me to join the other players from western Canada and get on the train in Winnipeg and head for Chicago. 6:48 Interviewer: “You had never been on a train before?” No, I hadn’t Interviewer: “How was the trip?” Well, it was nerve-wracking for me you know, you want to do the right thing and everything is new to you and I don’t think I slept much that first night on that train and the first sun-up I looked out and saw the wonderful rolling hills of Wisconsin go by and it is a memory etched in my mind forever, those wonderful rolling hills and green grass. Everything I did-- I was a little bit nervous about everything and when we had breakfast on the train I just didn’t even know what to order because I had never been out. Seeing the waiter with this white towel over one arm and a silver coffee pot in the other had, I 4 �was just baffled by it all. 8:05 It was just over whelming to me, but we headed out and I guess most of the girls going were in the same position as I was. Interviewer: “Had you met some of them at that point and you were talking?” Oh yeah, I had met some of them and there might have been one from the team that I was on going as well, but we headed up to Chicago and we were met there and they put us in a hotel. Interviewer: “Did you meet the chaperone? Did you have a chaperone that met you?” 8:40 No, personnel from the league met us because at that time we weren’t assigned a chaperone. You were assigned a chaperone when you were on a team. So, we arrived and they put us up in a hotel and I think it was on the seventeenth floor. Alright now, wow! Interviewer: “Did you have a room mate in your hotel room?” Yes Interviewer: “Also from Canada?” Yes, I think it was the player I had played with before. Then of course there was the spring training the first day out there. Interviewer: “What was that like coming out?” It was—I was really nervous and self-conscious because I didn’t have all those clothes and mind you there were others in the same bracket that I was, but I didn’t have the clothes that they had. I remember on a hot day I had this pleated woolen skirt on and I was just about melting, but you met these girls and they were from all over the U.S. and Canada and you realized that they were in much the same spot at I was. 9:59 Spring 5 �training went well and much like in the movie, they put up a list of who made what and where. I was assigned to the “Minneapolis Millerettes” and it was a new team in the league that year. Unfortunately the game did not go over well there because the field where we played was too large for the type of game we played and it was just something they weren’t ready for, so during the season, I guess halfway through the season, that whole team went to Fort Wayne, Indiana where it was very successful. 10:44 I played for Fort Wayne and our manager was Bill Wambsganns, who made the only unassisted triple play in the world series in 1920, I believe, and he was great. So, I played for Fort Wayne for two years I guess, Interviewer: “What was your—going back to your first team, you actually played for half the season though?” Yes I did, we played half the season and the other half we were a road team. We were called the “orphans”. Interviewer: “Did your nervousness start to go away once you started playing?” Yes I think it did a little bit, but I was always tense you know, you don’t get over that in a week or two. 11:35 Interviewer: “Plus you were very young.” Exactly, I had just turned seventeen. Interviewer: “How did you rate yourself compared to the other players? Did you feel like you were a good baseball player?” Well, I always felt like I was never as good as the others, but I was a good pitcher, yes I was Interviewer: “Is that what you trained to be, a pitcher?” 6 �Yes Interviewer: “Did you play any other position?” Never Interviewer: “Same with me, I couldn’t play any other positions and that’s why they gave me pitching.” That’s probably the way it was with me. I couldn’t have made out it any other position. Interviewer: “The first manager you had, did you learn very much from him? One of the things I have asked the girls is that they knew how to play baseball, but the managers gave them new tricks and techniques they didn’t know about.” My first manager was—I can’t remember his name, but I don’t think he really taught the girls too much. We were all so basically green that it was a big job to—but we gradually got pretty darn good. 12:49 Interviewer: “Were you thinking at that stage the this was going to be your career, that you were going to be a professional baseball player?” No, absolutely not, no Interviewer: “This is going to sound like a stupid question, but what was the point, why did you do it then?” Because it was fun and I got paid for it, I mean, it was something I loved to do and I got paid for it quite well and I was able to send money home to my mother. If you’re a ball player and you’re on a team and you’re doing ok, you’re not leaving it. Interviewer: “So, what was the fort Wayne experience like?” 13:29 It was lovely, we had a lot of Canadians on that team and I played with them for about two years and Bill Wambsganns was a terrific guy. 7 �Interviewer: “Did he treat you like a woman or treat you like a ball player?” Oh, I think he treated us like a ball player with consideration. We had chaperones of course, who really took over that part of the job. Interviewer: “You didn’t have to go through the charm school or any of that?” I did, don’t you know? Interviewer: “Well, let’s talk about that. You were a green seventeen year old.” I thought maybe you would recognize that I had been to charm school. Yes, we learned how to pour teas, how to sit properly, stand properly, how to walk with a book on your head straight and tall, and we learned all those essential things. I think they only had the charm school for one year as I recall, but we were all so bright we picked everything up in one year. 14:45 Interviewer: “What was a typical day like during the season, you got up at a certain time?” Yup, got up and if we were home, probably had a practice scheduled and of course the afternoon or evening baseball game and we had to be in the home or in our rooms when we were on the road, two hours after the game. On the road we did—we went to a movie or just walked around the city or things like that. Interviewer: “Well, this is a new experience for you and you’re completely outside of the home, what were you thinking? You make friends and there were a lot of Canadians on that team, so we felt a bond you know, so we sort of strengthened each other. 15:46 Interviewer: “there were older girls there too?” 8 �They were mostly older than I was, but they were maybe eighteen, nineteen and even twenty. Interviewer: “What was your social life like during the Fort Wayne period?” Well, very often we were invited out to dinner by some of the families, they were really very good to us and I think that was probably our only social events that we got to go to, otherwise we were pretty well secluded from—I mean it was practice in the afternoon, game at night, so you didn’t have too much time to get into trouble, but we tried hard. Interviewer: “What were the road trips like?” The road trips were a lot of fun, but also very tiring, we played every day and double headers on Sundays and got up and got on that—at first each team didn’t have a bus, so that first year we traveled by train and after that each team got their own bus. We spent the time by doing crossword puzzles, reading a book and singing the songs of , popular songs of those days. 17:04 Interviewer: “Any particular memorable games during the Fort Wayne experience?” Fort Wayne? No, I don’t think so or maybe that was the year—that might have been the year I pitched a no hitter. We were playing against Kenosha, it was a very drizzly day, kind of foggy, and I was pitching against Helen Fox, who was also a Canadian girl and very good, and we both pitched a no hitter because of course, the fog and the mist, I mean we were just great. Interviewer: “Once the season was over with you went back to Canada, you went back home?” 9 �Yes I did, went back to Winnipeg and back to my job. They always took me—I worked for the Hudson Bay Company and they always just took me back and I left in the spring and came back in the fall. 17:57 Interviewer: “They knew you were a ball player?” Yes, of course Interviewer: “Were you kind of a local celebrity?” Well I was kind of because I had done so well and my picture was in the paper practically after every game. I must sound like I’m kind of—but anyway it was because I had made the record in strikeouts and stuff like that. Yeah, people treated you very good. Interviewer: “So, Fort Wayne you did for two years and then what happened after that?” I was traded to Grand Rapids, to the Grand Rapids Chicks. I think I played with them a year and a half and then I went to—Grand Rapids Chicks, I can’t remember where after the Chicks. Interviewer: “We’ll go there later. How was your experience with the Grand Rapids Chicks?” Great, all the experiences were great. You know, we were all young, we were just looking for new friends and we did find them and you would always stay with a few Canadians because you were Canadian. I always had about four or five Canadians that went to have lunch together or whatever. The Californians probably stuck together and that’s the way it went. 19:23 Interviewer: “Any memorable games when you were with the Chicks?” 10 �No, I had some very good games, but none of them stand out except that no- hitter that I pitched. I did pitch another no hitter during my days. Interviewer: “How were the teams that you played against?” Oh, they were very good, we had some absolutely marvelous players, and they were just outstanding you know. When we first started playing, people came out to laugh—“oh my gosh, girl baseball players”, but we showed them that we could play just as well as men and gradually then the game did change into the regular baseball. 20:18 Interviewer: “So, you started out pitching underhand?” Yes, and then side arm and then overhand. Interviewer: “How was that transition for you?” It went pretty well. When they transferred from the regular, from the size of baseball that we were using to the regular hardball size, they sent us baseballs for us to work on before we got to the spring training and Doris Barr, who lived on the same street as I did, just per chance, she knew someone who allowed us to practice in the armory where we had a lot of space and that’s what we did. 21:08 Interviewer: “So by the time you got to spring training, you already had been practicing throwing overhand?” Right Interviewer: “Was that a difficult transition for you though?” Not really, I don’t recall it as being, if I had to pitch overhand I would have found that difficult. 11 �Interviewer: “Did your record change? You were pitching very well in the beginning with the larger ball, but was there any difference in terms of your record?” I can’t tell you that, I just really—it’s not a secret or anything, I just don’t remember. Interviewer: “Nobody complained anyway and said you were a lousy pitcher now?” No, they didn’t fire me or anything. 21:52 Interviewer: “What did you think of the uniform?” It didn’t matter what kind of uniform they would have given us, we would have put it on. We were playing baseball and we were so thrilled to be there, but there was a lot of laughing etc. of the uniforms, especially by fans in the first year, but I think most of us liked to play in that. I cannot speak for all of them and I know that some didn’t. Interviewer: “I guess what I’m trying to get at is, I know a lot of them did adjustments. One of you said that when she first started wearing it and when she went out to catch a ball she got most of her hands in her dress as opposed to getting the ball. Did you alter your uniform at all?” I altered mine because coming through on the pitch. I had to pin a large portion of the dress onto the front so it wouldn’t go into that material. 22:52 Interviewer: “If you were on the bus and you needed to get off the bus could you wear blue jeans?” No, no, you had to have a dress or skirt on and no, we were never allowed to get off at stops, so we followed the rules. Interviewer: “The playing field it’s self changed, the distance and whatnot. How did you adjust to that?” 12 �Yes it did and yes, Philip Wrigley wanted the game to be faster and more like baseball, so the pitchers mound was lengthened and the base paths were lengthened and now we were pitching either side arm, I believe started side arm, and then side arm and overhand, so those were the changes that were made and you could of course in regular softball you can’t lead off now, so we could do everything that the major leagues could do. 24:03 Interviewer: “Then you were traded again?” Yes, then I was traded to oh, gosh, the Peoria Red Wings. Interviewer: “How was that experience?” Very nice and I liked that team very much. We had a very good team. Interviewer: “Any favorites of the three?” I think Fort Wayne, I think because of all the Canadians on that team. Interviewer: “Any particular hitter that you did not want to go up against?” I know there were some that didn’t want to go up against me because I was wild at times. Of course there were hitters that I didn’t want to pitch against. I mean they were good hitters. 24:58 Interviewer: “By the time you got through several years now, were you looking at this as something that was a lot of fun and not something you were going to do for the rest of your life?” Oh no, no, no Interviewer: “What did you want to do?” I wanted to get married and I had been going with my husband, previously my boyfriend, for six years or so, so we eventually got married. 13 �Interviewer: “I guess that’s one of the questions that I have. How did you meet him?” Oh, we lived on the same block and on the same street. Interviewer: “Oh, from childhood?” Yeah, we never dated anyone else and now we have been married for sixty-one years. Interviewer: “Wow! I didn’t know that.” We’re going to stick with it. 26:02 Interviewer: “You’re finally sure of each other.” Yeah, the trial’s over. Interviewer: “Alright, so you knew him from childhood and you went off to play, you came back and he was?” He was there waiting. Actually we generally played catch most of the time. Walking down the street, he’d go backwards and I’m be going forward pitching to him, but that’s what we did.” Interviewer: “Did he come to any of your games?” I think he was able to get to—let’s see, one of the seasons, where was I at that time? He came down to see me play. Interviewer: “I understand he has a special picture he carries around with him?” He does Interviewer: “What is that picture?” It’s of me in my uniform and he’s carried it around for all the years we’ve known—when we got the picture it was probably in the third year or something of my ball days and yes, 14 �he still has it. 27:12 He’s very proud of it and I’m proud of the picture and proud of him, maybe proud of him and then proud of the picture. Interviewer: “What brought your baseball career to an end?” Getting married, what could you do? I mean, yes we got married and I did play for a year after that, yes. Interviewer: “Then what, you got married and had a child as well, but did you go to work of any kind? Were you still working?” No, and then we were living in the states, we had moved from Canada and I played home games for the Rockford Peaches. Interviewer: “But then, you made a decision not to play anymore? The league still went on didn’t it?” 28:11 Well, I made the decision because we had family and then another family and you know, we added on and it was impossible for me to play, but I think family like probably just became more important. Interviewer: “Did you miss it?” I think I probably did, no doubt about that. Interviewer: “Some of the girls never even talked about their baseball career and their kids didn’t even know about it. How about you?” Same thing, because people made fun of you, like you told them you played and you played men’s rules and they go and say,”yeah”, you know, “yeah, right”, so you felt embarrassed, so there came a time when you didn’t tell anybody. 29:02 Interviewer: “How did that change because you came to a certain point in your life—you’re coming to reunions for example?” 15 �Absolutely Interviewer: “Was it the movie that changed things?” I think so and I think the movie helped a great deal, right. Interviewer: “How did you hear about the movie to begin with?” We had meetings and talked about this movie and that there was a possibility because of the Players Association, we have a Players Association, and all news gets into the newsletter and people have a chance to study it and that’s how it came about. Interviewer: “Now, the association formally began in? I forgot what year it was, do you remember?” I do not. Interviewer: “Were you one of the first members?” Oh yeah, I was one of the first, I mean in that group. Interviewer: “Right, we talked with someone who actually put together the original database and contacted all of you and said, “we’re forming this association”. 30:05 After all those that have gone by and not talking about it, why did you want to get involved with an association of ex ball players?” Of course you’re—it’s in you and of course you’ve met all these young women and everything. The girls you played with, I mean they were all important to us and they were like family to us. After all we lived with them all summer and played ball and kept in touch with them and Christmas cards and they were and still are a very, very important part of our life. Interviewer: “What did you think of the movie? 16 �Well, I think we liked the movie because we saw that it was pretty well accurate and we were happy with Madonna’s part in it. I mean, it wasn’t what Madonna was popular for at that time, so we were happy with the movie. 31:13 I think we all really liked it, I did anyway. Interviewer: “Did it change your attitude about talking about the baseball period?” Yeah, it did, definitely, oh definitely because now people saw it and they were able to see that it was pretty good and these girls could really play. Interviewer: “In terms of reaction, people actually treat you almost like movie stars because of that movie.” Yes they do. Interviewer: “It rubs off on me, I told my students--I’m a professor at the university, and I tell my students that I’m doing this documentary and they’re excited because I get a chance to meet you.” It’s amazing you know, we can’t understand it, but now we’re used to it because it’s been going on year after year and they come and, “oh my gosh, can I have your autograph?” Come on. 32:15 Interviewer: “You seem amused by it.” I am amused by it you know, by the way they are just lined up with a hat to sign or a baseball glove or a card or whatever. Interviewer: “Why do you think people react that way?” Well, I think it was something different that turned out ok. It was pleasing to watch, it was on the up and up. 17 �Interviewer: “Now, you had a full life, you’ve had a family and you’ve had a lot of other experiences, and how does that few years, how does that fit into the scheme of things in your life? You obviously loved it.” You’re asking me to compare that? Interviewer: “Yes, somewhat.” My baseball life with my family life?” 33:08 Interviewer: “Well, I’m not asking you for a comparison, if you prefer this or prefer that, just where does it fit in terms of—some of the girls said, for example, it was their first experience of really becoming a woman and having a more broad understanding of life as opposed to being in a small town. Was it a like changing experience for you at all?” It taught me a lot. It taught me to be considerate, it taught me quite a few things you know. Interviewer: “At the very least you know how to pour tea, right?” Listen, I was one of them that learned how to pour tea and if you ever need someone to pour tea at some of your social events. Interviewer: “I’m going to ask you about putting a book on your head and see if you can still do that or not.” I honestly—yes, we learned all that and I thought you would notice it. 34:12 Interviewer: “Looking back on it now you said you’re amused by how so many people just get so excited about all this kind of thing and I had asked you why you think people are so excited about it and you said because it was something unique and it’s got to be more than that. It’s—young girls especially look up to you.” 18 �Yes they do, they really do. I mean, even now if we go out to eat or if somebody knows that I played in the league, they are just all mushy. We get better service, we give them a card and it just fixes everything up. Interviewer: “I want to ask you a more philosophical question, it may be a tough one. Looking back on that experience at that time, what do you think the All American Girls Baseball League accomplished? What do you think they—I mean they were a baseball team, there are lots of baseball teams.” 35:15 No, we accomplished more than playing baseball, we showed that we were as equal as boys. Coming into sports and giving the women’s sports the same consideration that you’re giving the boys and we did you know, chapter nine [Title IX] was passed for equal opportunity in sports and I think we accomplished a great deal and we’re proud of what we did, we’re very proud of it. If you’ve been through—I’m sure you’ve been through and seen the girls and that and yes, we’re proud of what we did. Interviewer: “Let me ask you a real stupid question. Why do you come to the reunions?” Because I love all of my friends and it’s so exciting. You come to see your friends, absolutely; because they’re like more than just friends and some of them you probably think are your family you know. Yes, that’s why we all come and I’m sure that you might get a similar answer from many. 36:27 Interviewer: “One of the things about reunions that I’ve learned, because I got to reunions of my fathers, for example, because of his military history. You get to know people that you didn’t get to know when you were playing ball. Did you meet some of the players that you never knew?” 19 �Yes, absolutely, that’s true—that you never got to meet. You played against them, but then you were a player and they were a player and you just hoped you got the batter of them, but other than that, you come for your love of the game and love of the people you played with. Interviewer: “Did you have any involvement in the production of the film like some of the women did?” 37:16 I happened to be an extra. I did get into the movie as an extra and it was great and I got paid. Interviewer: “What scene were you in?” Ah, well when they were talking about the Canadians there was a scene there and they were singing a song about the Canadians and there were about three or four Canadians and they had us standing at the back and we were Canadians, Irish ones and Swedes, so there were a few Canadians in that. Then I was in another spot too, but you know, you have to be quick to see that. Interviewer: “Were you in Cooperstown film at all?” Yes and that’s in Cooperstown and that’s in the scene where we’re being inducted into the Hall of Fame. 38:18 Interviewer: “Now, did you go to the induction?” Absolutely Interviewer: “What was that like?” Incredible, incredible, I mean it’s all incredible you know, something that other people have never done. I’m sure other people have done more important things, but this was special. 20 �Interviewer: “What was your reaction to the whole league being inducted into the Hall of Fame?” It’s fabulous, I mean we all figured we had it coming and we deserved it so to speak. We played hard and a lot of people enjoyed our games and why not? 39:05 Interviewer: “My favorite scene in the whole movie, and I actually use it in my classes, is the scene between Tom Hanks and Geena Davis where he says—“she said it got too hard.” Yes, that’s one of my favorites. Interviewer: “That brings tears to my eyes whenever I watch that.” It’s hard yes, something like everything is hard you know. Yes, that’s one of my favorite spots. Interviewer: “He says, “of course it’s hard, if it was easy everybody could do it”, and obviously they couldn’t because only you guys could do it.” Right Interviewer: “Which is great. Well good, I’ve enjoyed myself and I hope you have survived through this.” Yeah, well I did my best. Interviewer: “Thank you so much.” 21 �22 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_ADaniels Title A name given to the resource Daniels, Audrey (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dearfield, Norma Description An account of the resource Audrey Daniels was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1927. She grew up playing ball with the boys in the neighborhood, and then joined a girls' team when she was fifteen. She was later spotted by Dotty Hunter, who had played in the All American league's first season and encouraged her to try out. She joined the league in 1944, and was assigned initially to the Minneapolis Millerettes, who then moved to Fort Wayne, and she later played for Grand Rapids, South Bend and Rockford. She was a successful pitcher who threw several no-hitters over the course of her career. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945 Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Women Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-07 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c06c8ce94e4eb6efae8934af8ca00afa.mp4 26147b7326ea404e7281dd82aaeae574 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/19bdabf6caa0470a9272ac9f450eb7f4.pdf 520195aee97472c483e9b6466582af34 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW DORIS COOK Born: Muskegon, Michigan June 23, 1931 Resides: Muskegon Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, April 18, 2013 Interviewer: Could we start with your name, and where and when were you born? My name is Doris Cook and I was born in Muskegon, Michigan on June 23rd, 1931. Interviewer: What were your early days like? You were born in Muskegon and what was your family? Tell us about your family and where you were living. Well, I’m a member of a twelve children family and we lived in the suburbs and we played sports all our life. My dad was into baseball, so the rest of us just got into sports naturally. Interviewer: What did your father do for a living? He was a pattern maker. Interviewer: So, he was the bread winner, so to speak, and your mother was a home maker? 1:03 Yes Interviewer: Where were you in the chain of twelve children? I was fourth from the oldest. Interviewer: What was your early schooling like? Well, we went to like country schools and the school went through eighth grade and then we went on to junior high and high school. 1 �Interviewer: In your early days of schooling though, did you have to walk to the school, and what did the school look like? Well, it was kind of modern like, but we did walk most of the time. There was a bus, but we lived about four blocks from the school, so they preferred we walked. Interviewer: You had a sister that was a couple of years older than you? Yes Interviewer: Did you go to school together? Yes Interviewer: In the early days I know—I‟m an only brat myself, but how did you get along with your brothers and your sisters? Oh, just fine, we played together all the time. 2:01 Interviewer: Okay, so your older sister though, what was your relationship with her? Well, it was good and we played on teams together. Interviewer: Well let‟s, before we get into that, where did you first get introduced to baseball? I guess I was such a young age, it was sand lot ball back then with all my brothers and all the neighbors. We played mostly with boys. At that time girls sports weren’t really popular, so we were playing with the boys most of the time. Interviewer: Okay, this is—you say it‟s a sand lot, so did you set up your own bases, or were they already there? No, we had to make our own in a field out behind the house, we did our own. 2 �Interviewer: This may sound like a stupid question, but how did you even know how to play baseball? Well, I guess maybe, my dad taught us. 3:00 Then it comes naturally, we didn’t seem to have a problem with it. I had two brothers older than myself and we all just—I guess we learned from my dad probably. Interviewer: Was there any adult supervision, like umpires or anything like that, while you were playing? No Interviewer: So you guys were just playing together and divided up into teams and just played? Yeah Interviewer: When you were in school learning English and math and all that, did you have any idea what you wanted to do with yourself? No, I didn’t have that in mind. Interviewer: Okay, what would be the normal route for a girl of your age at that time? For you to go—where would you go after you got out of school for example? Well, back then there weren’t a lot of careers for women, so you didn’t talk about careers. Maybe you thought you’d become a wife and a mother and you just didn’t get into where your life was leading. 4:06 Interviewer: But, you brothers, of course, were thinking in terms of what they were going to do, have jobs or things like that, but in your mind it was just a matter of getting through school and then what are you going to do at the end of school, maybe get married? 3 �Right, we didn’t think about that. Interviewer: Where did the idea of playing baseball in a more organized way come about in your life? Well, I was probably about twelve years old and my sister, of course, was a couple years older and we had city softball for women. There was nothing in the high schools, they had local city [league], and most of those women were older, of course. School teachers, physical education teachers, and I think I was twelve when I started. 5:00 Donna played ahead of me like that before she turned to pro. Interviewer: Well, let‟s not jump ahead too quickly here. How did Donna get involved with—since she was ahead of you, how did she get involved in this league? Well, because of playing locally and all your local advertisements and publicity and it was a known fact that she was a good ball player, so then they started scouting that, you know. Interviewer: So, they actually had scouts going out to these lots and watching? Well, I can’t say that, I think they got it from the newspaper and word of mouth in town where you’re popular, you know. Interviewer: So, you‟re two years behind and here she is going to play, how did that make you feel? Did that motivate you or did you get jealous? What was your reaction? I think I thought, “Well, I’ll do the same thing”, but her time came along first and that didn’t bother me. 6:04 I was still in high school; she started playing, and my dad and my mother, the family, supported it, so I just kind of followed along with that. 4 �Interviewer: Did you talk about that at the family dinners and things like that, that she was playing and that you wanted to play next? Did they have any idea that you were going to follow in her footsteps? I don’t know that we discussed it. I think it just came naturally. I was doing the same thing she had done, playing with the city softball, local and it just was like I just followed her. Interviewer: This is going to sound like a stupid question, but why baseball? Girls didn‟t play baseball that much and certainly not in the professional leagues, but why were you interested in baseball? Well, we really played a lot of sports, and I played a lot of basketball and that was also city. When I say city, we came to Grand Rapids, Holland, Zeeland and played teams from those cities, so we were really into all sports. 7:08 At that time I didn’t start bowling yet. I was busy with baseball, basketball and volleyball, but you didn’t have that stuff in high school, there wasn’t enough of that going on for girls, so you had to go and look outside of school. Interviewer: You say your parents were supportive. Did your dad talk to you and give you hints on how to play, or at that time were you playing pretty well? Oh, he gave us a lot of hints. In fact one thing he did, he’d take a new glove and take the strings out of it and remove some of the padding, because they were too thick and stiff, and he’d loosen that up for you and put it back together, so you could catch better with it. Interviewer: You know, I‟ve talked to some of the women who had difficulty getting equipment and things like that, because their parents didn‟t have the money. 8:00 5 �Your father did pretty well, I mean, he was able to buy you the equipment you needed? I think so, and between all the kids somebody had a ball and a bat. It might not be something like a bat for yourself, it’s one that everybody uses. We had our own, but other kids brought bats and balls and gloves and stuff too. Interviewer: Okay, this is a period of time in America where things economically were pretty bad. This is the depression era and how did you and your family survive through that? How did you fare? We did very well, and at that time there was probably eight of us, because some came along later, but we never had to go for help, my dad worked a lot of hours, worked every day, never took a vacation and we were well enough off. 9:00 Interviewer: First of all, Doris was always ahead right? She was always the kind of person that got involved in something and then you kind of followed in her tracks. When did you first, or your family first hear about this professional—women playing baseball, what‟s that all about? We were lucky--they came to Muskegon with a team, and in 1946 one of the teams came into Muskegon, so we just fell into it. They started playing in Muskegon at Marsh Field and my family started going to the ball games. Donna was still in high school, then graduated and went right into baseball. Interviewer: What was the process, maybe you don‟t know the detail, but I want to know the details of how you got in, but how did Donna get in? You went to the ball games, saw that there was this professional league and did you see it in the papers too, was it on the radio, how else did you know about this league? 10:00 6 �Well, I guess we saw the sports page and the ball games, and our whole family went to the games. Then Donna tried out, of course, you didn’t have to go anywhere else to try out, you know, they watched her play right there in Muskegon, so it was easy. Interviewer: So, she gets in and what about you? Well, I’m still in school, of course, I’m a couple years behind her, and while I’m a senior in high school they were going to have tryouts in Chicago. So, I got out of school and went to Chicago for a week. Interviewer: How did you get there? On the bus Interviewer: So, your dad is very supportive of this, because somebody had to have some money to get on the bus. Right, and he was all for it. Interviewer: There were no worries, at this point, about you going off by yourself to Chicago? Had you been to Chicago before? No, I don’t know if I’d ever been to Grand Rapids, and you just didn’t travel back then like that. 11:05 We had a car, but you just didn’t travel, and I don’t think they were afraid for me. I think they thought it was well supervised. Interviewer: How old were you at that point? Seventeen Interviewer: I know that was a long time ago, but what were your feelings as you got on that bus to go to Chicago? You know, I had mixed feelings about it. I didn’t know if I wanted to be away from home or get on a bus and to all these strange towns, even just getting to Chicago. But I 7 �think that once I got there they kept you so busy with the training, and all the girls, you just didn’t think about it after that. Interviewer: you had to go through a tryout though didn‟t you? Yes Interviewer: Where was that? In Chicago Interviewer: You get on the bus, you don‟t know if you‟re going to make the team, right? No Interviewer: But Donna already has? 12:02 Donna is already in the league. Interviewer: I‟m just trying to think, younger sister getting on the bus, going to tryout, sister‟s already in there, you had to have some feelings about worrying about it, are you going to miss her now? I think you do, but I think I had enough confidence that I knew I could play as well as the next one, and I didn’t have a problem with that. So, we trained and after the week was over I knew I’d made it, but I had to go back to school and graduate. Interviewer: Before we jump into that, you say it was a whole week? Yes Interviewer: Walk us through, basically, the whole week. You arrive in Chicago. Okay, is there somebody there to meet you? Yes Interviewer: So, tell us about that. 8 �The hotel arrangements are all made and all the girls are staying at the same place. then you just start right out early in the morning training all day long. Interviewer: You met these girls, where were they from? 13:02 They were from all over. Interviewer: Well, that had to be new. You grew up in a small town and had not even been to Chicago and suddenly there are all these girls. Ah huh, and they were from all over. I knew nobody, but it’s easy, you’re busy playing ball and it doesn’t seem like it was a problem. Interviewer: In the movie, A League of Their Own, they really made it a point to show that there were New York girls and they kind of had an attitude and there were other girls that were more Midwest and they were—was it anything like that to you in terms of different parts of the country? Well, it was different-- the fact that we were in Chicago and the manager was from Chicago and coached their other teams, and he had a lot of his own girls there, so they were like they had their foot in the door. They knew him and they had played together, some of them, so it wasn’t a problem for them. 14:04 Interviewer: So, your first day there, you arrive in Chicago. I take it you didn‟t train that day; you probably had a day off before you started? Probably, depending on what time I got there. Interviewer: So, first day of training what am I seeing? There‟s a—you see a baseball diamond, right? What am I seeing when you walk onto the field? Lots of girls out there, running, throwing, batting. A lot of it was running, throwing and catching; a lot of practice and training in catching. 9 �Interviewer: And there were a lot of individual—I take it there were men standing around watching every step to see how you threw, how you hit the ball and that sort of thing. Right Interviewer: There‟s a scene in the movie where Geena Davis walks out and she sees all those girls out there. That‟s pretty much the way it looked right? Is that right? Yes, ah huh, that’s pretty true. Interviewer: What were you thinking during that week? You said you had confidence going in, but you saw all these other girls, and you probably saw some of them were pretty good and maybe others you were thinking, “Well, you‟re not as good as you think you are”. What was going through your mind that week? 15:14 Well, I don’t think I ever thought I wasn’t going to make it. I just think I had enough confidence, and thought I knew how to play ball well enough that I didn’t know there was any way they wouldn’t pick me. I guess it must have been confidence. Interviewer: At the end of the week, how did they let you know, or let the other girls know, that you made a team? How did you find out? Well, I don’t recall that, I just don’t remember. I do know that I had to leave to come back to Muskegon, so they told me before I left. Interviewer: Did you know what team you were going to be playing for? Yes Interviewer: What team was that? The “Springfield Sallies” 16:00 10 �Interviewer: Now, Springfield is quite a distance away from Muskegon, in fact it‟s not even in Michigan. What was your reaction to that? Well, I wasn’t familiar with the Chicago team either, so as far as the names of the teams, or the states, I guess it didn’t mean a whole lot to me, I just knew I was on that team. Interviewer: Now, you go back home by bus and what was the reaction of your family when you told them you made the team? They were happy, and it’s like they knew I would. I don’t know that anyone thought I wouldn’t make it. Interviewer: That‟s wonderful—do you think part of it is because your sister came ahead of you and she was making it and you had shown that you—your father was confident that you were a good ball player? Yes, and we had a lot of write-ups in the paper, publicity, where they made it known we were good ball players. 17:00 Interviewer: I know that the media does things like that. Were there any items regarding the fact there are two sisters who had made it into the ball team? Well, with the league I don’t know that it did. Locally, with the city it did, because they were aware of it, so that made a lot difference in Muskegon. Interviewer: You graduate, now what happens? Like the next day, I had to get on a bus and go down to Evanston, Illinois. The teams left Chicago and started on the road and I met them down in Evanston. Interviewer: Let me get an idea—now you lived this and I have read about this, but I want to get to the details of how you were actually told where you‟re going, or did 11 �you just not know where you were going? You arrive now in Evanston and you‟re going to play for a season, right? Yes 18:03 Interviewer: Did they sit down with you and the whole team and say, “Okay, Tuesday you‟re going to be here and Wednesday you‟re going to be there playing this”. Did you have any idea where you were going and who you were playing? Not really, you had a business manager, a coach, and two chaperones for each team. The business manager went out ahead and scheduled the games. We’d play a game, get on the bus, and go to the next town. We might know where we’re going, but it didn’t mean anything to us, we didn’t know these towns, we just went wherever they said, “We’re leaving now and going to the next town”. Interviewer: Now, this is 19---you said 1945 was when you first— No, mine was 1949 Interviewer: 1949 was when you got in the professional league? Yes Interviewer: Okay, the war is already over with, the league has actually been going on through the war, so it‟s already established, it‟s not like it‟s a brand new thing, and it‟s been around a few years. 19:06 Yes Interviewer: Now, you joined a team that had experienced girls already playing and then some rookies like you. Tell me about being a rookie. Well, there were enough rookies that you know, but they made you know you were a rookie. But we didn’t have a lot of the girls that had been in the league too long. It might 12 �have been half and half. There were girls they sent on down to the tour team then from the teams they were playing with. See, Springfield was a team that was in the league and then they dropped the franchise in that city, that’s how it became Springfield, because there was a team there at one time and they had the uniforms and the whole bit.[The Sallies and another team were barnstorming teams made up mostly of new and younger players that traveled together and played each other as a sort of minor league for the AAGPBL] Interviewer: So, you‟re joined up with this team, you‟re one of the rookies, and tell us about your first game. 20:06 Oh boy, I don’t know if I can remember that. I played left field, I was the left fielder, and nothing stands out as far as-Interviewer: Were you first string? Yes Interviewer: Wow, so even though you‟re a rookie, they had you starting? Oh yeah Interviewer: Wow, so what‟s the first game you remember? Boy, I can’t tell you that, nothing stands out. Interviewer: When you‟re traveling like that it must be almost like a blur. You‟re playing a game, and you‟re playing another game. Let‟s talk about how that works, alright? You get on a bus, and it‟s a bus with all the girls and you‟ve got your chaperone on there. When did you first meet the chaperone? When you first started out, when you first came in there? Probably when the tour started 13 �Interviewer: What was her responsibility? She had to make sure we were all in our rooms at night and everybody was safe. 21:06 didn’t get in any trouble, and if there were injuries she also served like a nurse, giving rubdowns for “Charlie horses”, and she really had a big responsibility. See, both teams traveled together on the same bus. Interviewer: Two opposing teams? Yes, there were like thirty-five of us. There was the manager and two chaperones, and then girls from both teams, and the business manager. Interviewer: In the early days, as you well know, there was a chaperone and also, the chaperone was making sure you looked right and you didn‟t do this and that. But, you didn‟t have to go through any kind of charm school did you? No, they did earlier, but at that point they did not have a charm school. Interviewer: But, did they still—in particular the chaperone, did she make sure that when you were out in public you had to sit a certain way? 22:06 We had to be sure we were in skirts at all times. Never shorts, jeans, or slacks, those were not allowed, even riding on the bus. When you were on the bus you could put shorts on, but if you got off the bus you had to put your skirt back on. Interviewer: What about things like make-up and things like that? Well, they didn’t talk about make-up a lot. They worried about the hair, having the hair a certain length, and making sure everybody was clean and neat. Interviewer: And that was the chaperones‟ responsibility, so if you got out of bed one early morning and came out and your hair was disheveled, she could actually walkup to you and say, “Comb your hair”, or something like that? 14 �That’s right, yes Interviewer: Now, the manager, of course, was in charge of what goes on, on the field. Your first manager, how was your relationship with your first manager? 23:01 It was very good, a very nice man, and then he coached that team the first year. I went on tour two years, but then later he went into the league and I played for him in Kalamazoo. Interviewer: Managers, of course, are different because they have different personalities, they have skills and what not. There are some managers, for example in the movie; Tom Hanks was kind of angry and yelling at the people. What was your manager like in terms of how he reacted to you and to the team? He was very mild mannered, and a very nice guy. He liked to laugh and have fun. He kept everything under control and I won’t say he wasn’t stern, but he was not mean or-he wasn’t good at yelling at the girls. He could make them understand without getting irate. Interviewer: What was his background? 24:01 I think all he did was coach in Chicago. He coached girl’s teams in Chicago. Interviewer: Some of those guys were pro baseball players. Right, and he didn’t happen to be one of those. Most of those guys were former major league ball players. Interviewer: So, I want to get an idea of the traveling time. You have to go from city to city to play and you have both teams in the bus. What was it like to be on the bus? 15 �Well, we had a lot of fun, and when the season goes along, sometimes you get kind of irritated. There’s a lot of people around all the time, but for me it was easier because I came from a big family. It’s like I just fell into it, where some girls were the only child in their family and it was harder for them, but we got along good, even with our opposing team, we were all friends. 25:01 Interviewer: In the early days, did you have any idea of the impact that you were making on baseball, and on young girls who—as you know, later on baseball became part of high schools and girls had a lot more opportunities than they had before and when you were a kid. Did you have any idea, in the early days, that something like that would happen? Never, never in a million years Interviewer: You‟re playing baseball and you‟re enjoying baseball. We’re doing something we love. Interviewer: Now, you were paid pretty well too, by the standards of the time. Yes Interviewer: Do you remember what you were getting in the early days? When I was on tour, we made twenty-five dollars a week, but they paid all our expenses, and we got three dollars a day for meals, which back then, you could eat on that, those years back. So, actually I saved a lot of money, because we were always on the road, we weren’t spending a lot of money, so most of my money I just sent back home. 26:07 Interviewer: And your dad just put it in the bank, or whatever? Yes 16 �Interviewer: So, you had a little nest egg that you were building as you were moving along? Right Interviewer: And your father, you said, was doing well enough that he didn‟t have to tap into your money. Oh, no Interviewer: Because as you know, some of the girls were very poor and had to actually help support their families. So, in your case, you were actually building your own little nest egg, that‟s pretty good. He was all for that, that’s what he preached, “Get an account and save your money”. Interviewer: Now, in the early days you were playing on the Springfield team, where was your sister? She was in Muskegon to start with, and I think she went to Grand Rapids from there. To the Grand Rapids Chicks, and she played on several teams Interviewer: Now, did you know what she was up to and did she know what you were up to, in other words, was there a way of finding out if she hit a homerun in a game or not, or were you completely isolated because you were on the bus and doing your own? 27:06 No, we had no idea what was going on in the league and they had no idea what we were doing either. Interviewer: How did you get your news of what‟s going on in the world? Did you—were you so insulated in that bus, and then playing a game, and then back on 17 �the bus and then into the hotel, did you have any idea of what was going on around you? Yeah, we’d get the paper when we would stop at the hotels, you know, and check in. We’d usually travel all night after the ball game and check into a hotel, but we usually got the newspaper to know what was going on. Of course it didn’t have anything to do with the league; we didn’t know what they were doing. Interviewer: Right, because it wasn‟t like the New York Yankees or something like that. Right Interviewer: The local papers, though, would carry stories about, not the league necessarily, but about the individual teams in the town. Is that right? 28:00 Yes, and our business manager went out ahead and got the publicity out, and that’s how the crowds came to the ball games, they knew we were coming to town. Interviewer: In the early days, and we‟ll get into more details about your particular games that you played and your career, but in the early days, what were the crowds like? Well, we’d hit a lot of small towns, but we would get seven and eight thousand people, which was really great, because we’d be in some towns where it was almost like you were playing out in a field, in a pasture, but those are the towns that drew the fans from all over. Interviewer: Ball parks were different town to town obviously, but in terms of—a baseball diamond is a baseball diamond and you‟ve got bleachers for people to sit 18 �on, but you‟re saying that in some of the smaller towns it was out in the middle of nowhere, so to speak? Yes Interviewer: Okay, were some ball parks better than others to play on, just in terms of dirt and the way it was set up? 29:05 Yes, and we did play in some big parks, in big cities you know, a lot of big cities. Interviewer: Walk me through the process—you get up in the morning, you‟re in a hotel, you all get together and you‟re showering and you‟re getting your teeth clean and all that kind of stuff, and you‟re all kind of mingling around, and you get on the bus, right? Then the bus takes you to the ball park, and u go out and do your warm ups and your practice and what not. The crowd shows up, you play the game, get back on the bus, and then back to the hotel? No, normally we had to shower right at the ball park and get on the bus and travel. Sometimes we played a couple of nights in one town, but mostly it was just one night. After the game, we’d shower, get back on the bus, and travel all night again. 30:00 Interviewer: When did you sleep? Well, mostly on the bus. Interviewer: I‟ve been on buses, you can‟t sleep on buses. I know, I didn’t do good sleeping, but I’ve never needed much rest either, so I, really, didn’t worry about that. But when we got into a town early in the morning, most girls went to bed and got their rest before we had to get ready again. Interviewer: What time were the games, usually? Probably seven o’clock 19 �Interviewer: You had the whole day, basically. Yes Interviewer: What did you do? We did a lot of things we shouldn’t do, like go swimming. It was hot, and something we liked. A lot of us would go to the swimming pool, a lot of girls went to the movies where it was air conditioned, to keep cool, but basically, that’s about what I remember. Interviewer: How come you said it was things you were not supposed to do? What‟s wrong with swimming and going to a movie? Well, you take all your energy Interviewer: Ah, okay 31:04 They didn’t want you to be all tired by the time it came time for a ball game. Interviewer: Well, if that‟s the case, how did you get by the chaperone to go swimming? We had our skirts on, and she didn’t know that we were doing that. Interviewer: So, there was a little bit of talking amongst you, “Today we‟re going to go to the swimming pool, and how are we going to get out?” You were pretty much free to do what you wanted in terms of, “you got your skirt on, so you‟re allowed to go out into the town”, right? Go shopping or whatever? So, they didn‟t have someone with you all the time? No, so several of us would be together, and we’d have to get a cab to go to a pool, and we were just busied for the day, and we really stayed out of trouble. Interviewer: Were there any of you that got in trouble? Not really 20 �Interviewer: Okay I think maybe one or two girls were sent home. 32:02 Interviewer: Why were they sent home? Maybe even smoking, and we were young enough there was very little drinking. There might have been one girl that had been drinking and they sent her home, but normally, we were too young for any of that. But, if they didn’t do what they were told, that’s why they were sent home. They didn’t follow the rules. Interviewer: The rules were made very clear to you I take it in the very beginning? Yes Interviewer: No smoking, no drinking, always wear the dress, behavior had to be within certain guidelines and what not? Yes Interviewer: Where do you recall is the first real game that you played that you can remember as this is the game that you played and did something that was out of the ordinary? Was there a game you can remember? No not—what happened, I was the left fielder and I started getting Charlie horses, so then I wasn’t able to run. 33:10 So, when I was on the injured list then he started changing me over to pitching, so then I started becoming a pitcher. Interviewer: Had you pitched before when you were in softball or early on? No, never and I still, today, couldn’t pitch softball, I don’t think, underhand. Interviewer: By 1949 I‟m trying to remember now, what size was the ball? Had already gone from a larger size to a smaller size? 21 �Yeah, it was just under a softball, and then as the years went along they reduced it. Interviewer: Now, were you pitching side arm or overhand? Overhand, and there were sidearm pitchers though/ Interviewer: So, basically, the coach got you to be a pitcher because your leg was bothering you, you couldn‟t run out in the outfield to catch, you would hurt your leg. 34:04 Whereas a pitcher, basically, stands up there and throws the ball and doesn‟t run around a whole lot. Yeah Interviewer: What happened to the pitcher that was before you? Did you just become like a substitute pitcher? Well, we had several pitchers; we had three or four pitchers, so nobody had to pitch every night. Interviewer: From my recollection of baseball, you had first string and second string. Did that apply to your group, or you just had pitchers that pitched different games? Yeah, just different pitchers Interviewer: So, it wasn‟t as if you had one pitcher that played most of the games and when that person got tired you replaced them? No, it’s like the majors today where they put in a pitcher. Interviewer: Okay, your first game as a pitcher, if I remember correctly, was it Yankee Stadium? Is that accurate? 35:00 Well, we played there, but that was not our first game. Interviewer: But, your first game as a pitcher? 22 �I’ll tell you, nothing rings a bell as far as anything outstanding. Interviewer: Okay, because I have a note here that when you played at Yankee Stadium there were some Yankees there and you exchanged a signed ball with Tommy Henrich, is that right? Tommy Henrich, yes Interviewer: Tell us about that and what happened there? Well, we were there to play some exhibition before their game, so we were out in the field with them while they were having warm-ups, and so we got to talk to the fellows and I changed balls with Tommy Henrich. They would take our ball and bat it, and we were all just inner mingling. Interviewer: What‟s the difference between an exhibition game and just a regular game that you usually played? 36:00 Well, being on the tour it was, really, mostly all exhibitions, but going into the Yankee Stadium was strictly an exhibition of a couple of innings. Interviewer: Oh, I see, you just played a couple of innings. Yeah, just before their game. They were playing the Washington Senators, and we were just out on the field ahead of that in a couple of innings. Interviewer: Okay, I got it. Now, when you‟re in a city like that or a town like that, doing exhibition, did you also have to play a regular game? Well, we didn’t that night. Interviewer: So, you had a chance to go out in spectator seats and watch the game? Yes, and we did that at Washington’s Griffith Stadium also. In Washington, we went there and did that too. 23 �Interviewer: You must have seen some amazing ball players. We did Interviewer: Who were some of the ones that were playing around that time? Do you recall any names? Well, I think Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, some of the big guys. Interviewer: Wow, these are legends. 37:05 Now, this is an unfair question and I‟m giving you this in advance, okay? You‟re a good ball player, you know you‟re a good ball player, and you‟re watching Mickey Mantle, or Whitey Ford, was there ever any comparisons in your own mind about, “I can hit better than that”, or anything like that going on? I never thought that. Interviewer: Okay I never compared myself to the men. A lot of women think they could have played with the men, and maybe they could have, but as a rule, generally women are just like a step behind men, I think. Interviewer: Well, in terms of that league, you had—your actual diamond was a little bit different, right? A little smaller Interviewer: Smaller, and of course, the ball was bigger as well. Yes Interviewer: Okay, the trips that you took on the buses and the times that you spent in the hotel rooms, having dinner, lunch, or whatever, what was the mood of the 24 �team? 38:06 Did you have some friends that you made or was it kind of like you were all ball players? Did you make some good friends out of that group? Yes, lots of friends, and they’re still friends today. We still see each other at reunions or talk on the phone or correspond. Interviewer: What about the fact that they came from all over? The part, I guess that I‟m trying to get to is — I‟ve been fortunate enough that I‟ve been in an international environment. I met people from all over the world and I met people from different parts of the country, but you‟re coming from a small town, going into some of these bigger cities that you‟ve never been to before and you‟re meeting other girls that play as good as you, and are on your team, and opposing teams, but one‟s from South Carolina, maybe, and another one from New York. Was there any kind of curiosity, on your part, of how they lived their lives? Did they ask you questions about what it was like when you were growing up? Was there any of that kind of talk? 39:06 Yes, because quite a few of the girls were from Chicago and they live a different lifestyle, that’s all there is to it. When they understand how we lived they just said, “I couldn’t live like that”, and I’m saying, “I can’t live like you live either”. Some girls were from like Arkansas where they came right from the hills, and they lived a different lifestyle, but we all intermixed, you know. Interviewer: But there was a noticeable difference though, you could really tell there was—the way they talked for example, and I imagine they thought you talked funny, and you probably thought they talked funny? 25 �Yes, that’s right, and there were places where we went and people would say, “You’re from the Midwest states; we can tell by the way you talk”. We don’t think we have any kind of an accent, and when you get out east too, you know, it’s another ball game out east, the way those people live. 40:05 We were in around New York, New Jersey, Newark, and all those cities around in there. We played those when we’d wrap up the season, we’d be up in that way and you can tell immediately the difference in the attitude of the people just getting on an elevator, being in a hotel and being with different classes of people from different areas of the whole country. Interviewer: But you had a pretty solid family background. You had a solid ground, so you knew pretty much who you were, so even though you were dealing with people who had different ways of doing things, you still pretty much stuck to your own way of doing things. Yes, I think I always had a mind of my own. Nobody could convince me of, like doing the wrong thing. I knew what was right or wrong and I just wasn’t made that way. 41:02 Interviewer: Now, 1950 you leave the Springfield Sallies, and you‟re now moving on to Kalamazoo, is that right? Yes Interviewer: Why did that happen and how? Tell us about how that occurred. They didn’t have the tour after that. The two teams did not tour again and my manager from the tour was doing the Kalamazoo team and they asked me to play there. Interviewer: So, you‟re going from being a touring team, now to having a home team? Yes 26 �Interviewer: Okay, so what does that do in terms of where you‟re living, because you‟ve been living on the road, basically, all through the season? By the way, what happens after the season is over, did you just go back home? Yes Interviewer: And what did you do in the off season? The first year, we‟re talking about 1949-1950. We ran a soda bar. My dad had a soda bar, and us girls ran it, and it was just strictly in the family. 42:05 Interviewer: So, he went from his job—he was able to invest in a business and sold malts and root beer floats and things like that? Yes, sandwiches and we had a really good business, but the problem was my sister and I going away, and during the summer months when it’s the most busy, so after a couple years we stopped doing that, because he couldn’t handle it with us gone. My other sisters came and helped us, but they were all still in school. Interviewer: Now, when you got back home, both you and your sister, did you talk about—brag to each other or try to one up each other, what was that like? Oh, I don’t think we did, I don’t remember doing that. You talk about things, but we weren’t trying to outdo each other. 43:01 Interviewer: Did you talk about particular plays that you did that you thought she would be interested in, like you hit a home run, or something like that? No Interviewer: Okay, there‟s no real competition between the two of you? No, not really 27 �Interviewer: Okay, because sometimes those siblings, they got that competition going on. I didn’t feel that way, but I’m not sure how she felt. I can’t speak for her, you know. Interviewer: So, the touring team ends, and now because the manager already knew your talents, he decided he wanted you to become part of the Kalamazoo Lassies now? Yes Interviewer: What was that transition like? You went from being on the bus all the time, hotels, play, busses, what was the difference? Did you have to move to Kalamazoo? Yes, and I lived with a family. I just had a room with a couple other girls, and girls that were on the tour that I knew. In fact, neither one of them were on the team I was on, on tour, but we were friends and we lived with this family in Kalamazoo. 44:06 We just rented a room. Interviewer: So, what was your daily routine? I know what it was like when you were on the touring bus, but what is it like now that you‟re in Kalamazoo? Well, a lot of times we had to go and practice, but otherwise we found things to do. Like I said, go swimming, or other things, going to movies. Interviewer: Do you remember the first day playing at the Kalamazoo, playing for the Kalamazoo Lassies? No, not really Interviewer: Okay, what was the difference though, in terms of playing, was it just, basically, the same kind of thing, you‟re just playing the game? 28 �I think it was the same, except now I’m a real rookie with lots of veterans, and that’s the point where they made us know we were rookies and they were veterans, but there were enough of us that we stuck together, so that didn’t bother us. 45:04 I can’t say they were mean to us, they were just like, “We’re a little better than you are”, but that doesn’t last either. Interviewer: Oh, okay, because you start to prove yourself and once you start hitting that ball or catching that ball, they— And they get to know you, you know. Interviewer: Are there any notable games you can remember while you‟re in Kalamazoo? No Interviewer: How was your hitting? Not good Interviewer: Neither was mine, I was a pitcher too. I have to admit, I was not a batter. Interviewer: How was your pitching? I was fairly good. Interviewer: Any specialalities? No Interviewer: Okay, I actually learned how to throw a knuckle ball, and that was pretty impressive in little league, somebody throwing a knuckle ball. Yeah, because back then you didn’t talk about all the pitches they talk about today. 46:00 29 �Interviewer: Sure, sure, was it during this period of time that the transition went from the larger ball to a smaller ball? Yes, as the years went along it reduced two or three times. Interviewer: Right, how did you adapt to that? Was there any problem in adapting to it? I mean, it‟s a different weight though isn‟t it? Yeah, and it was a good change. It would have been worse if it was the other way around, to a bigger ball. Interviewer: So, you played with the Kalamazoo lassies from 1951 to 1953. During this period of time you were making good money and money was still going back home to be saved up in the bank. What was happening during the off seasons? You said that after a while you were no longer working in the soda fountain. 47:00 No, when I started playing in Kalamazoo I decided to stay there, because several of us stayed there then, lots of the girls stayed. Interviewer: You‟re now like nineteen, almost twenty years old by this time right? Yes Interviewer: So, you‟re actually going from being a girl to, now you‟re more of an independent woman? Yes Interviewer: You‟re making your own money, you‟re not beholding to anybody per say, okay, so you decided to stay in Kalamazoo. Just renting the room? Yes, living with, like, the same girls most of the time, and then we all played basketball together, we had the Lassie basketball team. Interviewer: This was a city team? 30 �Yes, and I started working at a bank then. Well, I started working at First National Bank in Kalamazoo. And, of course, I left there to play ball again in 1952. 48:02 They said, “Now, when you leave, we’re not going to hire you back, you won’t have your job”, and I said, “that’s okay, I’m going anyway”. So, the next year, after I played ball and was looking for a job, I was hired at Comerica Bank right across the street, and then they hired me back each time. Interviewer: This leads me to another question then. You‟re playing baseball professionally, making good money; you‟re working at a bank now okay? In your own mind now, at that time, what were you thinking in terms of your career? Were you thinking you were going to be a professional baseball player for the rest of your life, or at least for the rest of your physical ability to play, or were you already thinking, “Wait a minute, this is not going to last very long, I‟m going to be a banker or whatever”. Was any of that going through your head? Well, not in the early days. 49:00 In 1953 then, when I was loaned to South Bend, and came back to Kalamazoo, because I was still living there, that’s when I decided, “I’m just going back to the bank, I got a job at the bank, I’ll just give up baseball”. Interviewer: Jumping back a little bit, did you ever think of baseball as being a career? Not for my whole life, no. Interviewer: Why, why would you not think that you could continue playing, at least until you were physically unable to? 31 �I think that’s what you think about, “I won’t always be able to do this”. Of course, we had no idea the league was going to fold either, that was a surprise because there were girls that intended to keep playing. Interviewer: That‟s why I‟m asking you this, because I‟ve interviewed girls that thought that they were going to continue to play baseball, but you already figured out that wasn‟t going to be your path. 50:04 Right, when they loaned me to South Bend I thought, “Oh, I’m not going to go through this and have them start shifting me around”. I thought, “I got a job, I’m just going to go to work”. Of course, then I went back into local softball and basketball. I still had my sports, just not on the professional level. Interviewer: 1953, you„re playing with the Kalamazoo lassies and you were saying, just now, that they loaned you out, what does that mean? South Bend was short players, so they sent me there to help out, which they did a lot of girls. In fact, that’s the only time my sister and I played on the same team; she was loaned to South Bend also, so then we got to live together for those couple of months and play on the same team, which was the first time. 51:01 Interviewer: We‟re going to start winding it down, were about down to about five minutes more of tape, so we‟re going to wind it down and when they change the tape we‟ll get back into more of this. I wanted you to know in advance that we‟re going to stop here just briefly and switch the tapes. Okay Interviewer: I want to get into, not right now, but I obviously want to get into you being in South Bend with your sister. I think that‟s interesting and hopefully there 32 �are little stories there. You haven‟t really talked a lot about your own playing and the games. I don‟t know if it‟s just a matter of not remembering specific games, but I‟d like to talk more about some of the games that you played, and the other thing is more of the details of things like uniforms and equipment, because when you were playing on the sand lots you were saying somebody had a glove and somebody had a ball and somebody had a bat you always used and it was different when you became professional, so I want to get into those kinds of details as well. Yes, okay 52:02 Interviewer: Not being able to hit a home run—my entire time in the little league, as a pitcher, I only had one home run. Are you ready for this one? It was a bunt and they made so many mistakes, they overthrew this one and overthrew that one, so that was my claim to fame. My only homerun was on a bunt. Isn’t that funny? Interviewer: Now, we‟re into some of the details of the league, how the league was run, how you perform within the league, and let‟s start with the uniform. 53:03 When you were playing in the back sand lots it was what? Basically blue jeans and what not, whatever you could wear. When did you first, if you can recall, first see the uniform, the girl‟s uniform? Well, I was fortunate to see the Lassies in Muskegon when they came there in 1946, so I knew what they were wearing before I ever joined the league. Interviewer: What was your reaction? You‟re a young girl and you‟re supposed to dress in certain ways. Certainly you couldn‟t walk out in the street, at fourteen 33 �years old, wearing a skirt like that. Was there any reaction at all of the uniforms from you? I don’t think so, I think a rule is a rule and that was the uniform to wear, and if you didn’t like it you wouldn’t play. There was no question, it’s like all the rules, and you just had to abide by the rules. 54:01 Interviewer: What was the uniform that you wore, the first one--with the Springfield Sallies? What were the colors and what did it look like? Well, I had been fortunate, I had a white uniform with green trim, and, basically, that’s what I had in Kalamazoo, except on the road, then we wore gold, but our home uniforms were white with green, just like I was accustom to. Interviewer: Hat, baseball hat? Hat and those were like wool hats, socks, knee socks that were wool. Interviewer: Did you wear cleats? Yes Interviewer: So, they were just like professional baseball. Yes, and those were not furnished. Interviewer: Oh, really? No, you bought your own cleats and your own glove. The bats and balls were furnished, and the uniform, but we provided our own mitt. 55:02 Interviewer: Why? 56:08 You said you had to furnish your own shoes, the cleats, and your own glove, out of your own pocket. Why was that, the balls and the bats and the uniform, all that was taken care of? I don’t know why either, you know. 34 �Interviewer: The skirt itself also had shorts underneath, but the skirt did not protect your knees sliding in or anything. Did you ever have an incident where you had to slide into a base that you can remember? No Interviewer: But you saw other do that? Yes, and in the earlier years those skirts were a little longer and they were fuller. 57:02 But, they learned to make those more chic like and shorter, where it was easier when throwing and sliding and running, otherwise you had too much of a skirt. Interviewer: Right, did you ever see anyone slide in? What happens when they slide onto a base? Well, a lot of the girls had strawberries, raw hips, and some had it all year long, because they were used to that. I think my sister was one of the first people back then that slid head first. You know, they all do it today, but years ago they didn’t do that and I think she was the first one that I can recall seeing slide head first. Interviewer: From a civilian perspective, a male civilian perspective, I find it really difficult to grasp that you would slide into a base. 58:02 Literally, you call it a strawberry and we‟re talking about scraping the skin in the dirt and the stones and all that. That’s right Interviewer: Well, did they put anything on it? Did you put a band aid on it? Oh yeah, they got treated afterwards by the chaperone, 35 �Interviewer: But this was common. This is something that went on game after game and women were always getting these scrapes and what not, but that didn‟t strike you as strange? No, it’s like that was the rule and you just abided by it. Interviewer: so, the uniform, each team had their own uniforms so you could tell the difference between the teams, obviously, but you said you had, I missed the wording, but you said you had one kind of uniform and then you had a second kind of uniform? Yeah, we wore white uniforms at home and colored on the road, which the major leagues do now too. 59:00 But, we did that way back then. Interviewer: I get you now, okay—tell us about the fans. You got good crowds? Very good, very good Interviewer: These were people who were e supporting one team or the other, the home team or the other team, but were there any, in particular, that you can recall, particular fans? Well, I had a lot of friends in Kalamazoo, being I worked there during the winter months, and I would become acquainted with people, but we had regular followings though. Back in Muskegon we had a “knothole gang”, kids that stood outside the fence and they had little holes in the fence to look through and they called them the “knothole gang”. Back in Muskegon, one year, they had a hundred and forty thousand fans, which was a record, and at one game they had seven thousand. 00:01 Interviewer: Now, the “knotholes” is because they couldn‟t afford the ticket to get in, right? So, they just looked through the holes in the wood. 36 �Yes, and I see people today, kids, guys in Muskegon who were part of that. They come up and say, “I used to go to the games and I was part of the “knothole gang””. Interviewer: We got to talk to those guys--that‟s wonderful. Now, I know that professional baseball, whether it‟s women‟s baseball or male baseball, there are certain—there are fans that like one particular player or a couple of players. Did you ever have a fan club? Kind of, yes, I—it’s easy for me because I like people and I didn’t have a problem. Interviewer: Tell us about this, how did you know that these people were watching? These were young boys? Yes, and off the field I was friends with them, and we became friends because they came to the ball games. 1:03 And after the game we’d go out and eat and during the day, or on weekends, we’d go to a movie, and these fellows would follow us wherever we went. When they could do that, their work would allow them to do that, and they would come to Grand Rapids, Fort Wayne, and South Bend. We were centrally located in Kalamazoo, so these fellas could move around, and they did not miss a game. There must have been six or eight of them. Interviewer: Were they around your age? Yes Interviewer: Okay, what was their motivation for following you guys around? Well, I’m not sure, and they became friends with the other girls too and some of them might have their eye on one of them and be interested. I mean, there was always that chance. 2:01 37 �Interviewer: These are baseball fans who just happen to be enamored by you and your teammates since they would travel around to different places. I imagine that was also true of other teams. I don‟t know if you know that or not, but do you think that‟s true of other teams? I think so, I think so, I’m sure that’s how some of the girls met their husbands, by going to ball games. Interviewer: You were a pitcher through most of your career? Yes Interviewer: You started off, as I recall that, you played in left field and because of your Charlie horses you were made into a pitcher. Did you feel that you got better as a pitcher as time goes on, simply because you were practicing, obviously, more and more, but did you feel like you got better, or did you just kind of take to being a pitcher? I don’t know if I got better. I felt, myself, that I was kind of wild, but, you know, I’m left handed and that’s what they say, that left handers are wild. 3:05 Interviewer: Did you ever “bean” anybody? No, but close, and one incident, we were in New York and the leadoff batter was a small girl and the first pitch I threw went behind her instead of in front of her, and she yelled so loud you could have heard her for a mile. She was just like, you know, petrified. Well, that made me laugh and everybody there was laughing and I could not keep a straight face after that, the way she yelled. I couldn’t believe I did it to start with, but it was just an incident I’ll never forget. 38 �Interviewer: There had to be individual batters that everybody knew was a really good batter. 4:03 When I was in little league there was a guy that was taller than all the rest of us and everybody knew that this guy was a major hitter. So, the first time he ever came up to me, as a pitcher, I remember that distinctly. Now, this interview is not about me, so I‟m not going to go into details, but I want to know, did something like that happen to you? There was somebody who already had a reputation for being a hitter and you‟re the pitcher, and your job is to strike that person out, or at the very least, have them hit the ball in such a way that your teammates can get them out. Now, can you recall running up against somebody who was—had a reputation for being a good hitter? Well, we had several in the league; in fact, one of them was on our own team, Doris Sams, who was one of the league’s best hitters, but there were several on other teams that you had to watch out for. Interviewer: Do you recall any incident where you had real trouble striking a person out? 5:02 No, not to my knowledge Interviewer: Did anyone hit a home run off of you? I don’t think so, I don’t remember any. Interviewer: What was the biggest fear, as a pitcher, what was the biggest fear you had of the batter? In terms of, are they going to hit it into right field, left field, are they going to hit a line drive, what were the ones that you were concerned the if you threw the ball a certain way, it was going to get hit in a certain way and then you guys were in trouble, do you remember? Because I can remember when I was a 39 �pitcher, one of the things I was concerned about was when they would hit over my head right down the line and, of course, the short stop and they would all try—and then you would have bases running. Did any of that kind of strategy go through your head when you were pitching? Nope, nope, I think I was so busy trying to get the ball over the plate that I didn’t worry about where they were going to hit it. 6:02 Interviewer: Okay, did you have a special? Was your fast ball really good? Did you have a curve ball? Mostly fast ball, but being a left hander you had a natural curve, so that’s one thing the catcher was worried about, you know, a left hander throwing it. Interviewer: What was your actual pitching style? I raised my leg and threw that way. How did you pitch? Straight overhand Interviewer: But you had to wind up? Oh, yeah Interviewer: And then what? You brought the ball here, right, and then what? Then I kicked my leg too. Interviewer: You did kick your leg? Yeah Interviewer: That gave you the traction to do the overhand? Right, to throw straight down, you know. Interviewer: Any times when the ball came straight at you, when they hit the ball? 7:01 40 �A couple of times Interviewer: Can you talk about that? Do you remember that? No, I was fast enough to reach out, you know. I didn’t get hit with it anyway. I was either fast enough to get out of the way or catch it. Interviewer: Do you remember any close games? I mean ones where you really didn‟t know if you were going to win or not? Not right off hand, no. I guess we’re talking about too many years ago that nothing sticks in my mind. Interviewer: Sure, sure, you were talking about this “knothole gang” and these young gentlemen who used to follow you around. What about girls, did girls come to the games? I mean, eleven, twelve, thirteen, you know, a little younger than you, but were there girls at these games? I’m sure there were, because we had bat girls, too. There were young girls that hung around the ball park and then they became a bat girl, but most of them were not real young kids. 8:05 There were lots of ladies there, lots of women that enjoyed the sport. Interviewer: I was thinking that here you had these male admirers that were following you around, and I‟m just wondering why there were no younger girls that were fascinated by the baseball and would want to meet with you and talk to you. I don’t know, I think that it wasn’t that popular yet in the schools like todays time. They didn’t do that in school like they do today. Interviewer: Did you have to sign autographs? Yes Interviewer: Like balls and things like that? 41 �Yes, we did a lot of that. Interviewer: Was that done just after the game? People would come up and ask you for an autograph? Sure Interviewer: What was your reaction to that? You‟d seen Yankee‟s baseball gets those sorts of things and did you just take that in stride that somebody wanted your autograph? Yeah, I didn’t think about it like I’m really something, and it seemed like that was the thing to do. 9:05 You liked that they wanted your autograph and I liked it when the people liked me. Interviewer: Did you ever get interviewed for a newspaper or radio during those days, do you remember? No, I’m trying to think Interviewer: In terms of—I want to get, once again, down to the “South Bend Blue Sox” when you were loaned out. You were part of a major team, the “Kalamazoo Lassies”, you were part of a touring team, the “Springfield Sallies”, was that a different experience for you to be just loaned out to a team? Yes Interviewer: In what way? I don’t know, but I didn’t like it, and I know a lot of girls were loaned. My sister played on about eight different teams and I guess that comes with the territory, but I didn’t like it when I was loaned out. 10:07 Interviewer: Why? 42 �I don’t know, I guess I thought, I didn’t know if Kalamazoo didn’t need me, and maybe it hurt my feelings, and maybe that’s why I quit at the end of the year. Interviewer: I guess that‟s what I was getting at, maybe that was part of the motivation. It was like; “I’m not going back”, but they still had my contract in Kalamazoo. I’m like, “I’m not going to go back and have them start shifting me around”. Interviewer: When you‟re playing with the “Lassies”, and when you played with the “Sally‟s”, you had mentioned that there‟s a sense of--you have a team, there‟s a camaraderie, you know the people, you‟re going through the same kinds of trials and tribulations, but with the South Bend team did you feel that, it was—did you feel like you were part of that team? 11:00 Yeah, it was alright Interviewer: A different uniform? Oh yeah—well, the same short skirt, different colors is all. Interviewer: Right, how did you get fitted for those? Did they have a tailor there, or something? Yeah, they had places they would take them and have them dry cleaned and stuff. They had places to take them, because we didn’t wash our own uniforms. Those were left at the clubhouse and I believe the chaperone, that was her job to make sure the uniforms got cleaned, so they were dry cleaned, you know. Interviewer: What did you do for—you mentioned before that on the off days, or the days before you played a game, you would either go swimming, or you would go 43 �to the movies, but what was some of the other recreation? What were some of the other things you used to do? Right off hand I can’t tell you. Interviewer: Were you a reader, did you like to read? Sure, but then you didn’t have TV like today. 12:02 You didn’t sit home and watch TV, and it’s like we had something going on all the time, maybe with several of us going shopping. Interviewer: Were you very fashion conscious? No, not really, of course I worked in the bank, so you had to wear skirts again, you always wore a dress, so that part of it, you weren’t in slacks like you are today. That wasn’t the style. Interviewer: Right, now during this period of time, you‟re starting out at seventeen and you‟re into your twenties, and if this is too personal you just don‟t have to say anything, but it was at this time—usually, when a young girl starts to think about boys and boys start thinking about girls. Was there anybody in the wings there? 13:00 Yup, I had boy friends in Kalamazoo, and I had them in Muskegon while I was in high school, but nothing serious on my part, but I had several boyfriends. Interviewer: Now, these boyfriends--were they people you attracted because you were a ball player, or they met you when you were not playing ball? Well, both 44 �Interviewer: Because that‟s got to be flattering, to be playing baseball and some guy comes up and he‟s obviously interested in talking to you and maybe wants to go out to a movie, or something like that? Yes, and I did that a lot, or we went swimming. After the game they took you out for dinner. We had a couple of hours until we had to be back, but we went out for dinner a lots of times after the ball game, but I did go places with them, or go to movies—a lot of activities. Interviewer: Did you travel in groups when you went on these dates, and whatnot? Was there like two of you, or three of you, a group of you? 14:05 Yes, maybe a couple of the girls and two or three of the boys. Interviewer: Were you a dancer? No, back then I wasn’t. I just wasn’t interested then. Interviewer: We had talked earlier about the fact that you didn‟t see baseball as a career for you, and you could see that there was something else you wanted to do, what did you want to do besides baseball, or did you know at that time? I know you worked in a bank, but that was basically because it was a job, but what did you want to do? Well, I think at that point in my life, I thought I’d be in banking all my life. I wasn’t scouting around looking for something new. I wished I had gone on to college, and living in Kalamazoo, that would have been ideal. Interviewer: That was available to women, at that time, to be able to go to college? 15:02 45 �Yes, and some of our girls did that, some of the girls that I roomed with. I wish I had, because I would be a physical education teacher. Interviewer: Okay, that makes sense. That’s the regret I have, of not getting into PE. Interviewer: Right, but you, after you—let‟s talk about that. The south Bend Blue Sox, you still have a contract with Kalamazoo though, right? Yes Interviewer: What made you decide to quit baseball? The league didn‟t fold until 1954. Right Interviewer: That wasn‟t the reason. No, I got my contract in 1954, but I was working at the bank, and I just decided I wasn’t going to do that, and then have them shift me around, which I had no idea they would, but I just thought, “I’ll just keep my job”, and it’s funny how that happened, because the league stopped then that year. 16:08 In 1954 it was all done. Interviewer: Was your sister still playing? Yes Interviewer: So, what was her reaction to your quitting, do you remember? No Interviewer: There was no conversation about, “What are you doing?” “Are you crazy?” “What are you doing?” There was nothing like that? No Interviewer: What about your dad? 46 �I think he didn’t like it, because he really enjoyed the fact that we played, and that was really his life, you know, but he didn’t try to stop me. Interviewer: Well, it was a responsible job, and working at a bank, at that time, was a very prestigious thing. Right Interviewer: But what about—and maybe it‟s too much detail, but what about the money, was the bank paying better than baseball, or was baseball paying better than the bank? No, I think I was making more playing baseball. Maybe not a lot more, but I was making more than on the job. 17:03 Interviewer: But, you didn‟t have to travel, didn‟t have to get on the bus, didn‟t have to do a lot of that sort of thing. Right Interviewer: Did you—forgive me because my dates are not where they should be, but did you go to Cuba? No, I was not in the league at that time. Interviewer: Okay, was there any unusual place that you went beside just to South Bend and Kalamazoo. Was there any particular place that really sticks out, maybe New York City or someplace like that? When I played on tour there were a lot of places, and Washington was one of them, and New York. Interviewer: Washington D.C.? Yes 47 �Interviewer: What was your impression of Washington? This is has got to be—I remember when I first went to Washington D.C., it‟s amazing with all those monuments and all that, and you were a young kid. I know, and you know, they kept us so busy playing one game here and moving into one game there, that I wasn’t really impressed too much with a lot of cities. I liked the fact that I had been there, and we did see a lot of the country. 18:05 When we were on tour we went over a hundred thousand miles each summer, and played games, usually one night stands. It took us all the way from the Midwest, down south, back up to the east coast, and then we went up into Canada. So, we went across the border into Canada, and those are things that never would have happened in my lifetime. Interviewer: If you were a banker. That’s right, yeah Interviewer: What was it like down south? Different than the way we live, but nothing sticks out in my mind that—where the people were so—I think the people down south are really nice people, where I can’t always say that when you get to big cities. 19:04 You know, you get to New York and Newark and some of those big cities and everybody’s-- it’s a busy life, it’s a different life style. Interviewer: Did you have hecklers? Yes Interviewer: Like what? Do you remember? Probably in New York Yeah well, I just—I can’t tell you what I---anything that sticks out in my mind. Interviewer: But, you did get heckled, and there were people that would yell out. 48 �“White girls can’t play ball”, you know, and stuff like that. Of course I think they change their mind once they see us play, and that’s when it comes about, you know. They can talk and holler all they want, but once they see the game they know better. 20:00 Interviewer: What was the process of getting out of your contract with Kalamazoo, or did it just end and then you just decided not to renew, what happened? They sent me a contract and I just returned it and said I wasn’t interested. Interviewer: Your coach didn‟t contact you or say, “Why aren‟t you going to do this?” No, it went back to the business manager and they probably had enough players that they didn’t worry about it. Interviewer: How did you find out that the league folded? Well, living in Kalamazoo I was able to be up on the latest news with that, and I was rooming with one of the girls that was playing. We roomed together and then when I stopped playing ball we still roomed together. I went to work and she went to play ball, so I knew, because I was still friends with all the girls. 21:02 Interviewer: What was your reaction? Well, I just couldn’t believe it, but I’m sure the ones still playing ball couldn’t believe it more than me, and I was stunned. I thought they’d still be playing. Interviewer: Did you have any emotional reaction? Were you angry or sad or anything like that? No, because I wasn’t part of it anymore. Interviewer: Did you miss it? 49 �Yes, but I did go back into softball, local softball in Kalamazoo, so I was still playing, and then we started playing basketball, so I was still active. Then I got into bowling and some of the other sports. Interviewer: So, sports have been a major part of your life. Yes Interviewer: Let‟s talk about the aftermath of playing baseball. 22:02 You‟re working at the bank now, and what was the next major thing that happened in your life? Well, I still would have been in Kalamazoo, but my mom got sick, back in Muskegon and my three sisters that were still home got married and they went away with their husbands to the war. So, they all left town and my mom wasn’t well, and that’s when I decided I better quit my job at Comerica and go back home and see if I could help. Interviewer: So, what did you do? What work were you doing back home? Well, I worked in a bank. Interviewer: I see, so you just found another job in a bank. The vice-president there got be a job back in Muskegon, so I knew when I went home that I already had a job, and then I lived at home with my folks, and there were still some of the kids’ home, the younger ones. Interviewer: What happened to your older sister that was playing baseball? When baseball was over with what did she do? 23:01 She stayed in Rockford the first year. Interviewer: Rockford, Illinois? 50 �Yeah, that’s where she ended up playing ball, so she got a job over there and things weren’t working out right, so she came back home and I got her a job in the bank, so then she worked at the bank for twenty-five years after that, so that was good for her and then she got settled down. Interviewer: Did you start a family? No, I never did. I don’t know, I guess because I came from a big family I never felt like I missed anything. We always had little kids around, you know, and by then we had nieces and nephews and my life was already full. Interviewer: Looking back, now we had talked earlier about when you played baseball you really had no idea of the effect that your actions, and the actions of your fellow ball players, as women, were having on this culture and on the way women play sports. 24:10 Now, go to any high school in America and you‟ve got a girls baseball team, a girls basketball team and whatever. When you were growing up that didn‟t happen, that didn‟t exist at all. No Interviewer: So, here you are working in the bank now, the league is over with, you‟re going on with your life, there‟s your family, there‟s families around you, when did you start thinking—when did you start becoming aware of the effect that professional women‟s baseball had? Was there any, even in the fifties and into the sixties, was there any idea that there was some affect that you had? No not really, it took about twenty years after our league folded and then we started having reunions and then things started happening where then we got inducted into the Cooperstown Hall of Fame. 25:10 51 �Interviewer: When was the first reunion that you can remember, do you remember that? I believe it was 1980. Interviewer: So, how did you find out there was going to be a reunion? They had one of our girls out of Kalamazoo, and she started it. Interviewer: Do you remember who it was? June Peppas, she had a print shop, in fact, she really lived in Allegan at that time, but she go everybody’s names and addresses and people that she didn’t have, somebody else would help her find them. They’d say, “Oh, I know so and so and I know where they live, or I have their address”, and she formed the first reunion, and we went to Chicago. Interviewer: How did you find out, did you get an invitation in the mail? How did you find out? She sent out invitations and planned the whole thing, with help. 26:04 Interviewer: I want you to think about this now. What was your reaction when you opened up that piece of paper and this has been twenty years? You haven‟ played baseball professionally, you left early and you open this thing up and they‟re saying, “We want you to come”. I thought, “Great, I get to see all the girls again”, and I had friends still in Kalamazoo, so we talked to each other and I went down to Kalamazoo and we rode together to Chicago to the reunion. I rode with other girls who had roomed with us before, and it was just great seeing everybody after all those years. Interviewer: Can you recall any of the conversation in the car going up? You must have had—the anticipation alone of seeing all these people you really cared for and 52 �had a major impact in your life, what was that like being in a car driving to Chicago? 27:00 Well, it was, “I wonder about her and I wonder about her. Will she be there, or is she still around, or what does she look like?” Interviewer: So, you arrive by car and there‟s what, three or four of you? Yes Interviewer: You‟re at the hotel where you‟re going to have the reunion. Do you recall walking into the lobby? Tell us about that. Oh, it was great, and there were people all over that had already gotten there, it was wonderful, you could not believe it. Interviewer: Did you recognize people? Yes, most everybody Interviewer: But you were a little bit older at that time, but not that much really, but you recognized people huh? Yeah, and there was one girl everybody was looking for who was famous, Dotty Schroeder, she was on the cover of a men’s sports magazine back in those years when we played ball, and she was beautiful. She was one that I had roomed with in Kalamazoo, but when she walked into the hotel—everybody was waiting to see when Dotty would come. 28:08 she walked in and everybody just stopped talking and were just looking. She wasn’t anybody that was forward, and she just stood there and was starting to get embarrassed. It was only for a few seconds, but it seemed like a long time. I said, “You’re just as ugly as you always were”, and that cracked everybody up, you know, it was like break the silence, you know, but that started everybody. 53 �Interviewer: Why was she kind of—because I remember from what I‟ve read and the research I‟ve done, always the focus was on the team, it was never about individuals. Not like Mickey Mantle or any of the baseball players that you—the male baseball players. How come she stood out? 29:01 Well, she was always one of the best, and there were others like that, Doris Sams, played with Kalamazoo, and she was another one, a great hitter, a great fielder, and a pitcher, she could pitch too, and she was one of the famous ones, and we had quite a few of those. Interviewer: But for some reason Dotty Schroeder, for you, for all of you, seemed to be the one everyone wanted to see there. Yeah, I think everybody thought, “I wonder what she looks like now?” I don’t know if you ever said it, but you could tell that’s what people were thinking, and she looked the same, she looked the same. Interviewer: I mentioned to you earlier, before the interview, that I‟d been to Flying Tigers reunions, and I‟ve been to reunions where there are these very close knit people from the WWII era. You were there for three days? Yeah 30:01 Interviewer: And you had dinners and what not, and was there talk about liking it so much you want to do this again? Yes, that’s when we decided we would do it every five years, and we did do it every five years for a little while, but then we stopped and we went to two years. Well then it wasn’t too long and now we do it every year. It depends on the location of the reunion, how many girls we get to come. If it’s centrally located we get them from the east and 54 �the west, where if you have to go clear to California, sometimes you don’t get the girls from out east. You know, not everybody can afford to do this. Interviewer: After the first reunion, which was just kind of thrown together because this one woman went through all the hassle, and I know what it‟s like to have to put on one of these things, you made it more formal and you have a board of directors, and you ended up as an association. 31:04 Yes, after that Interviewer: So, then individuals were elected to the board and they would decide, “Okay, we‟re going to have a reunion in Milwaukee”, or we‟re going to have a reunion here or wherever it is. Did you vote on that? A lot of it depended on if somebody volunteered to do it, and you’re talking about a lot of work. You’ve got to be in a place where you have help, and you can’t go to some far out place where you’re the only one. You can’t do it by yourself. Where like going to California there must have been ten or twelve girls out that way, close by, that could help and put on the reunion. We went to Fort Wayne for quite a while and we had many reunions there. You’ve heard of “Run Jane Run”? Interviewer: Yeah, sure When that was coming into town, in Fort Wayne, we’d be part of that, because our girls would get into the golf tournaments and stuff. 32:02 That worked for a lot of years, going to Fort Wayne, but we had people there to do that. Interviewer: After the first reunion, when did it start to become more of a public— when did you start becoming more into the public? When you were in baseball, obviously, you were part of the public, because the public came out to see you and 55 �they wanted your autograph and all that, but then you had this twenty years where you‟re working in the bank and your sister‟s working in the bank, people are married and they‟re having kids and all that, and now you have this reunion, and people have reunions because they want to get together and share the experiences they went through, so that‟s something special. When did you start to realize that the public was starting to, then or even earlier, know that this was something special? I think the public didn’t get involved until we went to Cooperstown. 33:03 We were admitted into Cooperstown, and of course, that became public all over the country, and then that’s when Penny Marshall got a hold of it and said, “Let’s make a movie”. Interviewer: Let‟s back up just a little bit. Did you ever have—I can tell just by talking to you in this interview that you didn‟t exactly toot your own horn and say, “I‟m this and I‟m that”, it‟s just not you, but did people know that you played baseball when you were in the bank, for example? Where there people that come up to you and asked for your autograph? Back then they weren’t asking for autographs. People knew and it wasn’t something you talked about every day, and of course, for a lot of years I was still involved in softball, so I was going to tournaments and going out of town to play ball, but being from Muskegon and living there and having a team there at one time, those people always knew that we played ball with the girls. 34:04 So, that was always a known fact, because we were local. Interviewer: But the change really happened when you got inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. How did that happen? 56 �I think one of our women started working on that and then when it became known, there were several players that wanted to be inducted all by themselves. They thought they should be the only ones that should be in it, not the rest, well people that were running it didn’t agree with that. They said, “We’ll all go or forget it, we’re not going to work on it”, so it had to be all of us, which was only fair, because whose going to go around and say this one deserves to be there, but not that one. Interviewer: So, they set a date for the formal induction. 35:00 It was going to be at the Baseball Hall of Fame and were you invited, or was it open to anyone that wanted to go, or how did that work out? Well, we were invited by the hall of fame, but that’s still—you had to go there and pay your own expenses, and somebody had to set up all this stuff to have our big banquet there, and of course, we had to start working on places to stay. You’ve been to Cooperstown probably? Interviewer: I have not, but— It’s very small, just a one horse town and they had not one third enough places. Well, we ended up having like seven hundred people, and they couldn’t believe it. They just were amazed, which they have been ever since, because of how popular the whole this is since we’ve been there. 36:01 They get more inquiries about our league than anything and they tell us that themselves. Interviewer: So, you get the invitation that you can go to the induction and you went, right? How did you get there? I flew and I stayed—we didn’t have a place in Cooperstown, we stayed about twenty miles north, and I stayed with three other girls. 57 �Interviewer: What about your sister? She wasn’t able to go at that time. She did not go, but I went there and stayed with friends and then we had to drive back and forth to Cooperstown, but we had to do that anyway. We’ve been invited back since then and we’ve stayed at Syracuse, and drive in to Cooperstown. Interviewer: Okay, tell me about that first day of walking into the Hall of Fame. What was—I saw the movie and I know in the actual movie they used a different room, it wasn‟t the actual place. 37:04 But, give me a visual, show me what you were seeing. Was there an actual ribbon cut and all that kind of thing? Well, tell us about that. To tell you the truth, it was so crowded, there were so many people, you just couldn’t even get up close to see the exhibit and everything. You had to go there another time in order to appreciate what was there, but it was fantastic. The people just were just all over the place and Cooperstown could not believe it. It was like we took them by storm, you know, and they still tell us that. I’ve gone back a couple of times with different groups, eight of us one time and four of us another time, and they always tell us how wonderful it is. That we’re there and that the people just love it and everybody that works in town says the same thing. 38:03 Interviewer: I know it‟s going back a ways, but I‟m trying to get inside of you for a moment. You‟re very modest, and that‟s very obvious from this interview and from the times that we‟ve talked on the phone and what not, but please, just for the sake of this moment—you‟re there, you‟re being inducted as a team, not you alright? What did you feel like? 58 �Oh, I thought it was fantastic, and it’s beyond your imagination. Nothing you would have ever dreamed of. All the years you played ball you didn’t dream of that. Interviewer: Let me ask you what might seem like a stupid question. Why do you think you were inducted, not you, but the team, why were you inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame? Well, I think it got to the point where they had to do something about women in sports, plus the Negro leagues. 39:03 That stuff had been put on hold too long, because the Negro league could say the same thing. We’re, like, in the same boat they’re in and I think that they thought it was time. And I know they’re not sorry at all that they did it, at Cooperstown, because it has really made their place a lot more popular. Interviewer: Did you get a chance to talk to some of the other ball players, the women ball players, about their feelings being inducted into the Hall of Fame? Oh yeah, everybody just was amazed, you just can’t believe it. Interviewer: You keep saying that part and it‟s interesting that you do, because you played the game because you loved the game, and you never thought in your wildest dreams that it would go anywhere beyond that. 40-:02 Never Interviewer: But, now you‟re in the Baseball Hall of Fame, which somebody‟s telling you, whether you want to know it or not, they‟re saying, “This is something really special”. Did it finally dawn on you that you were actually part of something that‟s part of American history? Well, that started the ball rolling and then the movie came along, right from that point on, and once the movie came out that just broke it all and it’s just been wild ever since. 59 �Interviewer: Then the world knew about it, and the world recognized something that you didn‟t even recognize, that you did something extra ordinary with your teammates. Yes, and we hear about it every day now, and we go out and tell the history of our league to different groups, talk to young kids, third graders, little girls that play ball, give autographs, you know, give them—and of course we have our own baseball cards, and we pass out baseball cards. 41:08 Anybody, any age group that we go to, just can’t stop thanking us enough for what we have done for women’s sports. Interviewer: Going back to baseball cards, and I want to get back to this, but did you have baseball cards when you were playing? No, that came about after all this. I can’t tell you what year, but it hasn’t been all that many years, maybe ten or fifteen at the most. Interviewer: What do you think was the overall effect of this league , looking back now, and now you‟ve gone through this period where you‟d played ball and didn‟t realize you were doing something extra ordinary, and now the world is telling you that you did something extra ordinary and it hasn‟t gone to your head I noticed, but let‟s really take this moment. 42:08 What does it mean to you, personally, what does it mean to you, this experience you went through and now you‟ve seen the reaction of the entire world? They made a movie about it. When you were seventeen and going to the movies, the movies were up there, you weren‟t a movie, you were just a seventeen year old. What does it mean to you to look back now? What does it mean to you, this whole experience you went through? 60 �Well, I don’t know if it means a lot in my life. I mean I don’t have any gains by it or anything. I enjoy being popular and that everybody else enjoys it. I like to talk about it and give them all the history that I can give them; I enjoy that part of it. I never sit back and think, “Look at me, I’m something”. 43:04 I’m just glad I’m part of it and can do what I can do for girls in sports today. Interviewer: On a final note, I always ask this of every veteran, if they‟re in battle or not in battle or from that period of time. Looking back, I know that you said thought this interview that you really didn‟t know that it would ever turn out like this, that this would have that kind of positive—and that‟s what it comes down to, a very positive effect on women and little girls and what not, and in your wildest dreams you said you never knew this was going to happen. Can you, somewhere inside of you, can you—is there any glimmer that somewhere back then you knew you were doing something that might turn into something like this? Was there any glimmer at all back then? No, no Interviewer: But, were you that surprised when it happened? 44:04 Yes, I worked many years after all of this and never talked about it with people. But, being local, people knew about it, but it was not something you discussed. You never said, “Look at me, I played ball, I played pro ball”. It was just a part of your life and it was in the past. If they didn’t know about it, no problem, but in Muskegon lots of people knew about it, so it was hard to get away from it, because people who had gone to the ball games still were living. You would, like, go to the store and you’d see fellows that had been going to the ball games, and they’d yell at ya, “Hey”, and they remembered that 61 �you were one of the ones that played ball and that’s before any of this stuff ever came out, and I really enjoyed that with people, or even today with people that are older, but they were young kids then. 45:08 They would say, “I remember, I used to be part of the gang that went there”, so it’s fun. Interviewer: One final question and it‟s going to be a tough one, because I‟m pretty sure you don‟t think in these terms, but can you try on this one? What do you think the legacy of the women‟s baseball is, what‟s it left behind, what‟s the legacy of what you all did? I hope we opened up sports for girls. I hope we helped with the Title IX. I feel like we did, the way sports has taken hold in all the high schools and college, for women, and I think we opened the door, and I think they’ll tell you that, a lot of the other ones that are in pro sports will tell you that. 46:10 I was in Cooperstown on a visit when a lady was there with her grandchildren, and she was part of Title IX from the very beginning. She said, “I’m just amazed to meet you girls. To think that I met you and you were part of that league”. She said, “I don’t believe it”, and here she’s worked on Title Nine all her life and she was just dumb founded that she was introduced to us. I think that’s a great feeling. Interviewer: Well, it‟s been an honor talking with you. Well, thank you Interviewer: Thank you so much. I appreciate it 47:00 62 �63 �64 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_DCook0176BB Title A name given to the resource Cook, Doris (Interview outline and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cook, Doris Description An account of the resource Doris Cook was born in Muskegon, Michigan in 1931. She grew up in a large family and played baseball and other sports. When a women's professional baseball team moved to Muskegon in 1946, her older sister tried out and joined the team. Doris then joined the league after finishing high school in 1949, and played first for the Springfield Sallies, a barnstorming team, and then for the Kalamazoo Lassies and the South Bend Blue Sox, and played through the 1953 season. She initially expected to be an outfielder, but when she had some problems running, she was converted to a pitcher, and was a pitcher throughout her professional career. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women Baseball players--Illinois Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Michigan Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-04 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4fd79f3a42b80b163012ce9af72c0643.mp4 3ef4b44d77cb66a1b3a556ae5e1aa501 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d466a4826d54deafe6f3032ecc42eec8.pdf d9f9aa41ac8efd6f78dba6ee36c1b405 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans History Project Interviewee’s Name: Joyce Hill Westerman Length of Interview: (54:24) Date of Interview: August 7, 2010 at the Reunion of the Professional Girls Baseball League Interviewed by: James Smither Transcribed by: Lindsey Thatcher, November 9, 2010 Interviewer: “The date is August 7, 2010. We are at Detroit Michigan at the reunion of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. We are talking today with Joyce Hill Westerman and the interviewer is James Smither of Grand Valley State’s Veterans History Project. Now Joyce, can you start with a little bit of background about yourself? Let’s begin with where and when were you born?” (00:51) I was born in on December 29, 1925. I might add that I lived through the depression. I mean, to me it wasn’t a big deal but to my parents it was a big deal. My father lost himself in the depression so I was in 6th grade, no 1st grade in the city, I was 6 years old and I went one year to school there and then we moved out of the county. My uncle had rented some land and there was an old house on this land and half of it was falling down and we lived in 4 rooms and I had 4 sisters and or 3 sisters and 4 brothers and my mom and dad and we lived in that little house that was not much. We did not have any running water, we did not have any electricity, and we had a potbelly stove to heat the house. We had to carry the water in from the water tank and also to take a shower we had to heat the water over the fire and stuff like that. Well I was a little bit of a tom boy and I played a little ball in Kenosha in school (02:00) and I used to be embarrassed at first to go up and hit because I hit better than most of the kids. And I started playing ball when I was about 5___ pounds so I played next door, but when we moved in to the county it was a whole different story. So I played mostly with all my brothers and sisters and stuff, and it was really a good thing for my parents because for us kids we loved it. We were out in the county and we could run, we had a big garden and I think that’s how we survived really, on the garden and so forth. Then as I grew up we went to a one room school with one teacher, actually the teacher taught my mother, she graduated from that school and I graduated from that school with the same teacher, from 8th grade from that school. So that in itself was an experience. I had played a lot of ball in school and stuff but then as I grew up and I graduated from my school when I was 17, and you couldn’t get a job until you were 18, now they didn’t have any (03:00) competitive sports to speak of in high school and junior high school but I did manage to go into the city and visit my aunt one night a week so I could play sports at the junior high school. Well then, after high school of course I finally, by the time I was 18 I got a job at the American Motors, they were making airplanes. Well we did have kind of a scrub team from the national holders (?). And that was the extent of pretty much of my baseball experience except with playing with my brothers and sisters in school and stuff like that. So anyway then in 1944 that was the first time that I got to see the Comets who were one of the regular teams of the league. And it was really �funny because they had a bunch of injuries on the team and they had called somebody. Who? I don’t know. But anyway they picked two girls from Kenosha to try to fill in. (04:00) Well luckily I was one of them and got to start with Hugh Rights a friend of mine who was a ball player. Well I got a uniform and everything for that series and all I did was get up and pitch some runs and I fouled the ball and I could…I thought oh my heavens it’s girl’s baseball. What a dream this would be? You know, always wanting to play professional ball and you know being a Cub fan it was the big thing you know, so anyway it was really funny because living on the farm and so forth by that time we had moved on to my grandmother’s farm and lived upstairs by the time I was in junior high school so we had all the conveniences then but my Dad still didn’t have the money where I could run back and forth from Kenosha to play ball and stuff like that. So anyway I tried out and like I said I got up a hit and fouled the ball and that was wonderful because they were so (05:00) fast that I couldn’t see the ball anyway in my estimation. And I tried out, they had try outs that fall in Kenosha and it was about 50 girls so I tried out there and I made the try outs and then the following week they had try outs where they were seeing and some of the girls went there and it was another I think another 50 girls there and I tried out there and there were only 2 of us girls out of all those kids that made the cut to go spring training. Like I said I was working at American Motors or National Motors at that time, I was making a dollar an hour and so forth and you know after that I went to spring training, and then I found out that I made the cut and I would be going to Grand Rapids. Well I signed a contract like $55 a week. Well my dad was making $40 in the plant you know at that time and I thought “Oh wow, I’m going to be making more than my dad,” and you know they weren’t sports people. (06:00) But my mother, they didn’t say I couldn’t play or anything and it wasn’t you know something like that but I think they knew how much I loved baseball you know, so anyway it was a little scary for me in spring training because I had to take the train heck I had never been out of Kenosha hardly you know, so I got on that train and got to Chicago. I made it through someway I don’t remember how, but I got there. And like I said, I made the cut. My first year I went to Grand Rapids and it was really cool, I had a lot to learn. Not having, I mean I had the ability but I didn’t have the experience I had a lot to learn and of course when I went to Grand Rapids Mickey Maguire was the captain at the time, and I was the catcher at that time and I didn’t get played too often but I learned a lot from her. She was a competitive let me tell you, she was but that was a really wonderful experience to be behind her. And I did, one time I was catching (07:00) and I did catch my finger. The first knuckle was lying on the back of the second knuckle and doctor came down and pulled it back into place you know and stuff like that. Anyway from then, I went to went to South Bend the following year and then I went on and played for 8 total years so, it was a wonderful experience. You meet so many wonderful gals you know that you get very close. (07:32) Interviewer: “Ok, that’s a really good overview or starting point here. Now I’m going to back us up a little bit.” Ok. Interviewer: “And have you fill in a few more pieces of this process. Why don’t you, the other thing I’m not quite getting out of your stories, where did you go to high school?” �Oh, I went to a Kenosha high school in Kenosha. Interviewer: “So you were able to go into Kenosha at least at that point?” Yeah, yeah. Actually we had to get up early in the morning and ride in when my dad went to work (08:00). Way before any other school started, and we stayed about oh half a mile or so from it and he would take us into high school as well. We would get up and in the morning go in with my Dad in the morning and stay up at my aunt’s until it was time to go to school, and then walk to school. Interviewer: “Ok, and the school, did they have were there any kind of sports there, or gym class or anything like that?” The school wasn’t didn’t have anything. Interviewer: “Nothing at all.” No, like I said junior high school had gym once a week, I mean we had gym but nothing after school. Interviewer: “Ok. And the Comets were a pioneer team and they would’ve been in Kenosha in 1943.” Yes. Interviewer: “Did you go watch them play?” No. I didn’t watch them, and I didn’t even remember seeing them. We didn’t get the paper, you know. And it was just all new to me I heard about them, but not a whole lot you know. And so no, when they called for me to come into their try out I was surprised I was brave enough to do it. I was pretty shy at that time. (09:06) Interviewer: “At that time, alright. And then, when you are doing the try outs, what did they actually make you do?” At the try out? Well we had to bat, and hit and then field you know you caught during the try outs, and stuff like that. But we didn’t do a lot of exercises and stuff it was mostly batting and catching and stuff like that you know. Mainly if you are a catcher they had you back there catching but that was pretty much, we didn’t do many exercises or anything like that so 50 girls you know so hit around with all of them. Interviewer: “Alright, don’t catchers have a lot sort of to learn about how to call a game and that kind of thing? Now you hadn’t played a lot of organized ball.” �Right, and you know the reason that I did that was because I thought well I think there is one position that they might need more than anybody else and it would be catching. And I thought well I can do that. (10:00) I can throw a little pitch you know and I thought, well that’s something I can do so that’s why I tried out for there, I thought that was my best chance. I was, I was probably a little chunkier at that time and that was another thing, I wasn’t one of the real fast girls that run and stuff like that and I thought, I think that’s my best chance. So that was why I tried out and I did hard too, you know. And that’s why I said being out batting late it helped. Interviewer: “Alright, and then, tell me a little bit more about how the spring training worked. There actually still doing that at Wrigley Field there was the first couple seasons they, what’s the process there? Now the people that come there, are they already signed into the league? Or are they still eliminating people? Well some of them were were, I mean they had been they had been there for 2 years. So a lot of them were regulars, but then us rookies had to fill in for the regulars you know, and that was put you know in a hard spot there (11:00) because they were so good and we were just so inexperienced and trying so hard you know. But we did all kinds of exercises and stuff. Being to the farm I worked on the farm and I did just about anything you could do on a farm. Milked the cows you know, but I, you know I was in pretty good shape even though I was a little bit heavier. And I, so it didn’t really bother me, the exercises and stuff. But still, at the end of the day you it would almost like you could crawl back to the hotel you know, so and it was after the exercise it was bad and the usual, much like the men’s you know. Interviewer: “Ok, and then how do you find out how you made the cut and you are assigned to a team? What happens?” Well, there, well I can’t remember exactly but I know they read it off or we, I can’t remember if we read something or, they just notified us and I don’t remember exactly how. Interviewer: “Ok, so what was your response when you found out that you had sort of made it?” (12:01) I was elated. I hadn’t quit my job or anything; I had to taken a leave of absence. So I went back and I had to quit my job and stuff, before I started playing ball. Interviewer: “Alright, now this is still fairly early in the history of the league. How much of the rules and regulations and etiquette training and all of that kind of stuff, when they teach you how to behave and so forth, how much of that was still in place when you started?” Well when I was there in 45, I did not go to charm school. Now the gal that went with me said that she did. So I don’t know how I got out of that, but somehow I missed that. So they must �have had it in 1945, but I think that was the last year because the following year it wasn’t in effect. And we thought it was ridiculous to put on eye shadow and lipstick and put on our masks and then go out and catch, you know? Play any position and you are perspiring (13:00) it’s bad enough the way it is, all of that gear on you and stuff. But I knew the girls had to keep their hair short and keep it curled. And anyway, down down to your neck there and so forth. And I wasn’t much, I always had really short hair, much as I do now as I grew up. Then of course I had to learn to curl my hair so it would look nice and then you would go out to practice in the morning and you had your hair curled and when you come home it wasn’t curled, you’d curl it up again, and I got so tired of curling my hair that after I was out of baseball it didn’t take me long to have straight hair. Interviewer: “Alright, and they had the dress code regulations? The skirts and…” Yeah, yeah. No slacks, and things like that. And we would go on the bus and if you had to have a potty break or something you would put your skirt over your slacks or take them off and if you had shorts on you know you would have to cover them up (14:00). But one thing that I didn’t like and I heard about the Comets and so forth was the skirts. I thought oh my god I couldn’t show my legs, and I came from a town that was very modest and so that was hard, that was something I thought I couldn’t do that. But once I played in the, the one series I thought well I guess I could wear these uniforms. I never knew what to do people. Interviewer: “Alright, now you were not too much of a runner so you didn’t get as many strawberries as some of them did?” Right, I got my share. But you know, they would send me, there would be a shock to the pitcher, I would make second base but yeah, you get your share. But I didn’t steal like a lot of the girls. Interviewer: “Alright, tell me a little bit more about that first season in Grand Rapids as sort of a learning experience for you, you are the backup catcher. What kind of accommodations did you have? Where did you stay when you were up there?” (15:05) We stayed with private families. And that was real nice you know, but we didn’t always have transportation so it was like you had to take a bus or take a car. I didn’t have a car until 1948 so that was a little difficult you know. Getting there in the morning for practice and then go home and shower and so forth and go back and get ready for the game at night that was kind of a bummer but you know it all worked out but… Interviewer: “About how far from the field were you living from do you think?” I don’t think I can remember. Interviewer: “Were they playing at Southfield at that point?” �Yeah. Interviewer: “Ok, so that’s still in town right?” Yeah Interviewer: “Rather than Bigelow field which they played at later. Alright. Ok, and then what was it like going on the road with the team?” Well that was really super, I mean you know, at first when we went to spring training and from there we went to Grand Rapids we took trains and that was really a bummer (16:01) because we had to get on a train and it was it was one of those old fire trains and you would get all dirty and then you always had a layover in in in Chicago and you wanted to go enjoy the scenery and everything when you went back and forth, and we spent a lot of time you know, just getting back and forth and it was during the war too and you know if if there was military men on the train you were supposed to stand up and let them have the seats but of course the guys were always so nice they always let you sit down which was very nice. So when they got the buses we were just elated by that time I mean oh my goodness. To just hop on a bus you know was wonderful. Interviewer: “That first season in Grand Rapids you were still riding trains most of the time?” Yup, yup. Interviewer: “Alright, and then how much supervision did you have? How much supervision did you have? How much did they look after you or regulate what you did?” (17:00) Well if you had a sore arm or any kind of bangs or bruises or anything you know, they would take care of you. I know when I have a picture of I was in, we were we were practicing on some field I don’t know where it was. Whether it was spring training, I think it was part of spring training. And I had, I was playing in the offense catching flies and stuff. And I had stepped and sprained my ankle really bad. So the chaperone came out there of course and took care of me. And we had to put ice on it and all that stuff. Well then she said well you have to use heat. Well evidently I must have been able to stand a lot of heat or something because I burned my ankle something fierce and I had to heat it and it was going to make it well in a hurry you know and so that wasn’t too pleasant. But had our share of, you know got spiked several times and stuff like that. So they were wonderful really. But my first year I might add that I was so shy I don’t know if I said 3 words the whole year. I’d listen and I didn’t ever have much to say you know, and I kind of got over that but it took awhile. You know because I was just a _ you know. (18:13) �Interviewer: “Ok, ok you got to the end of that first season. Now, did they tell you that they wanted you to come back or what?” No, I was just went home and when they wrote in the spring training you know I went to South Bend. Interviewer: “Alright” And that was fine. It didn’t bother me. The only time it bothered me was when I was with some, I had met some wonderful, really close friends. We lived in, we lived in a house and a lady went away for the winter and she let us stay in her house. It was 4 of us there and we got to be so close you know. Well we were going on a road trip and we were loading up on the bus actually and they called me over and told me it was I was traded to Racine (19:03). And at that time I thought Racine was one of the better teams and I thought oh gosh you know, how will be accepted in a team like that that won a championship? You know and stuff and I was kind of worried. And I cried a lot, and I hadn’t before ever ever cried, couldn’t. And at that time I had a car so I had to drive wherever it was to be the Racines so that was a bummer right before the bus left to go somewhere and then told that you had been traded you know, so. But after that it didn’t bother me. Interviewer: “Alright, after your first season did you get more regular playing time as catcher?” Yeah, probably, well yeah probably even the second year I was behind Bonnie Baker as catcher and it took a couple of years or so before I got to being got more playing time (20:04) you know, but you got wait your turn you know. And you know I always thought a lot of the girls have so much experience of course they had teams out there that played a lot so I just waited it out. So I just kept trying and working and catching a lot batting practice. So… Interviewer: “K, did you get to pitch hit or come into the games?” Oh yeah I would a lot of times. I was a pretty good hitter. And yeah I did pitch you know, I’d get my chances if we were ahead they put me in so I would get the experience and yeah that never bothered me. I was just there and I was playing you know, and hung in there. Interviewer: “Now you played with a number of different teams. Who do you think were the best pitchers that you got to catch?” Well the underhand pitchers was Connie Wisniewski (21:01) she was terrific. She was really fine. Jo Kabick was on the team and was an underhand pitcher and she was fast, she was a really good pitcher. Then, then later on when we went overhand I admired Jean Faut she was a great pitcher and you know it was funny because I could hit Jeannie like nothing for some reason and it used to get to Jeannie and she said she told them one time that it didn’t matter what she pitched I would get a hit you know. But she was a great pitcher. �Interviewer: “Alright, when you were catching her, who called the pitches? Did she decide pretty much what to pitch, or did you just know?” I called the pitches pretty much, when she was there. And we just got along so good and I think it was Dottie Mueller that she pitched a golden game one time and I got her and you know I did call the pitches (22:00). I used to sit in the dug-out you know when the other team was warming up and stuff like that and I would watch the hitters, where they hit the ball and how they hit the ball you know and kind of study them so I would kind of know where not to pitch them you know. Interviewer: “So it may be that you and Jean were pretty much on the same page.” Yeah. Interviewer: “Because when I interviewed her, she was pretty sure that she was picking most of her own pitches.” Well you know, she shakes it off and maybe she did, you know it’s been a long time. But I know for the most part I… Interviewer: “Right, but you and she did essentially the same thing. Which was to study the hitters and then to get it so you got that together.” Yeah, yeah. Interviewer: “Now, one of the things about the league was there were certain women who were really good base stealers. And, were you, how successful were you at keeping them under control?” I’ll tell you what to be honest I wasn’t the best catcher to pick off people (23:00). Now I had this thing when I was in Grand Rapids, I used to throw a little bit more side arm and I had a much better arm. Well when I got there they said oh, you go to learn how to throw overhand like this. So I got so that I practiced, I did have a good sore arm from doing it in Grand Rapids my first year, but I got the hang of it. But what it did was made me conscious of I had to bring my arm up to throw the ball and I lost the timing of it and I just couldn’t overcome that so I wasn’t the best in my mind I was always you know am I going to do this right?, or something you know and it probably, I wasn’t the best catcher to pick off people. I was good at something but just to be honest. Interviewer: “Now once you got to be playing fairly regularly, were you a pretty consistent hitter?” Yeah, yeah. I was a pretty good hitter considering the batting averages that we have you know the girls. I was right up there, not real close to the top but my last year in South Bend was my best year around 77 so… �(24:12) Interviewer: “Now would you get extra base hits, would you get doubles and triples?” Yeah. I never hit a home run. I can’t believe that because I was so slow. That would mean that I would have to hit it over the fence and we didn’t have that many fences. We did in South Bend but we didn’t in Grand Rapids. And I could do it in practice but I never did it in a game. Interviewer: “Alright, now you were, what was the total length of time you were playing? You started in really in ’45 in terms of full seasons and… ” ’52, eight years. Interviewer: “Okay, that’s a good chunk of time in there and a lot of different things went on in the league at that time. One of the things was that you kept moving spring training around.” Right. Interviewer: “Your first spring training was Wrigley field.” (25:00) That’s right. Interviewer: “Where did you go in later years?” Oh gosh. We were in Mississippi, Indiana. We went to Florida. And I don’t know, so many places I can’t remember all of them. Interviewer: “Did you make the trip to Cuba?” Yes I did. Interviewer: “Alright” That was quite a thing. My first airplane ride and first of everything and that was a lot of fun. I mean, but I wasn’t too crazy about the food over there. So I ordered some leche, that’s milk and at lunch time they would have ham sandwiches and stuff, American you know, milk…and I kind of liked that. And they had fried bananas and powdered eggs and stuff that I didn’t eat… Interviewer: “Alright, now how was playing in Cuba different than playing in the states?” Well actually it was very much the same. Interviewer: “Well I’m thinking in terms of the fans and the atmosphere.” �Well the fans, yeah yeah. They were something else. Actually we knew more people over there than we did in America so that was really interesting (26:00). So being in a hotel at that walking on the streets you have to be with somebody at the time. And we had a curfew. And we couldn’t go out of the hotel you know, because it was too dangerous. But anyway it was kind of comical we had, I have a picture of it, we had we had the long rope had been hung from the 3rd floor and it had a basket on it and we would lower that and the guys down stairs would go and get us some cokes you know and we would pull it up and I got a picture of that you know. But my daughter brought them up when she was here some of them, I remember that you know and sloppy joes. I have pictures of course. I have a lot of pictures. Interviewer: “And what sloppy joes?” Well it was, they use a lot of their drink, what is it? Rum, they had a lot of rum and stuff, but I wasn’t a drinker so I had coke, never was one to… I have never had a drink in my life. (27:00) Interviewer: “Alright, then what did you remember about Pascagoula? What was that like?” I remember going into the barracks when we were at an army base and opening the door and turn on a light and cockroaches running everywhere you know. And we used to call it Cockroach Boulevard and it was something else you know, it was something else. We slept with the lights on but that was something else. But our managers at that time when they saw the situation they came back with this, I forget what kind of fish that was red...no that’s not it. Interviewer: “River snapper?” Yeah, something like that. And they cooked it outside on a fire pit and that was the best fish I’ve ever…that was good. Interviewer: “Now when you came back from Pascagoula did you just go to your individual teams or did you stop and play along the way?” (28:04) We paired off with another team and then we would stop at various places. They had a book and we would play at exhibitions. Gave us the practice to play with teams and people could see what kind of ball we played and in many places the people there were so great you know. That one place, I think it was North Carolina a guy took us out on a cruise it was so nice, a nice man you know took us out on like on a boat and we went on a cruise and stuff like that. But they always wanted us in parades and stuff like that. You know, it was, it was fun. We would kind of laugh amongst ourselves, we’re not nothing you know we’re just ball players you know. But it was a great experience. �Interviewer: “Now were you with the group that played at Griffins Stadium in Washington and then when up into Yankee stadium? You didn’t do that part?” (29:00) I wished I had, but no. Interviewer: “Ok, so what parts of the country did you tour through then, because you were in the south?” Through the south North Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia or whatever…Mississippi. Interviewer: “Ok, did you have one season that you thought was probably sort of your best season or your most successful one, or either individually or as a team?” Well I don’t know. Yeah I guess you know as far as the friendships and stuff that was one thing, but of course I was fairly happy with my last year when we won the championship because I had never won a championship before, but then in ’52 we won a championship then and that was just an amazing you know. Although at that time you know I had been married for 2 years and after a game I would go right home you know. I didn’t participate with the girls a lot and stuff. So I probably wasn’t as close to them as I was with some of the other teams before. (30:06) Interviewer: “Now were you still catching at that time or had you changed positions?” No, at that time I was playing at first base. I played the last two years. Interviewer: “Now would you rather have kept catching or was it better at first?” Well I like catching better but first base was ok too. Interviewer: “Why did they shift you out from catcher?” I don’t know. Maybe because, maybe because I didn’t throw well enough. Interviewer: “Alright, well let’s see what was it? Well I guess when you had been growing up and had been playing you would play anyplace, well first base you got to field grounders and that kind of thing…” Oh yeah, we’d play short stop or play the outfield you know. A few times I played the outfield sometimes they would just stick me in so I could play. I was a pretty good hitter so they would put me in and I liked that. �Interviewer: “Ok, well you mentioned that you got married during your career, which was a little bit unusual. Tell us a little bit about that, how did you wind up getting married? And what, how, what happened after that?” (31:04) Well yeah, well I had been going with my husband for about, I probably met him about a year or two into when I was playing ball. And he used to come to Peoria and places to see me play and stuff like that. And then of course then when I would go home we liked to dance and we would go to a lot of dances every Saturday night and stuff. And then finally he in ’50 we got married so I was playing in Racine, well no I wasn’t but anyway a bunch of the girls from the Racine girls came to the wedding and it was real fun we had a big wedding. So we had been building our own house before we were married because I said my parents lost their house and I saw what they went through and I always said if I’m going to get married I’m going to have a house. So my husband and I, he hadn’t done much building, (32:00) he had some cows and stuff but he hadn’t done much building. But I had worked on the farm. I had shingled roofs and I had made cement block. My Dad was always going to build a house and he never got to it but I would make cement blocks by myself you know. So I had more experience. And we bought a place you know and we did all, we built the house ourselves and we did all the cement work. I mixed it with an electric mixer I mixed all the cement and Ray would install it. And I ended up bricking the whole house and we had a very very nice house. We had hardwood floors. We did have, my uncle was a carpenter so we did have him that was quite a job in itself you know. Ray learned and did the electrical and the plumbing and I was right there to help with whatever, I helped with the roof and putting in the cement floors. So we built part, we built 4 rooms and it was like a little doll house. It was really cute, all we needed was utility you know. And then we added on 5 rooms and we didn’t move in until it was done and we did have it plastered. We did all the dry wall but we did get it plastered. (33:14) Interviewer: “At the beginning of that you mentioned that you had a book on how to build a house?” Yes, how to build a house. Interviewer: “Alright, and you just followed that.” Yes. Interviewer: “How did you pay for it?” Well I was working then again at that time American Motors. When I left South Bend, people from the South Bend from the dealership there got me a job again back in American Motors. So when I went back I had a job. So I worked there for several years and we were paid for it as we �went along. Because we didn’t have much money and they wouldn’t give you a loan. So then we paid for it as we went along. And we never owed a penny on our house. Interviewer: “Were you able to save any money from when you were a ball player?” (34:01) Oh yeah. I was a saver. I used to save you know. Well you could get a meal for a buck then you know after a game and stuff. Yeah I was a saver and that was one of the reasons that I could con my husband into letting me play ball I could save my money you know and you could save yours and we can add that 5 rooms on you know. So he was, he was a wonderful guy and very great so he went a long with it. Which was so...yeah. Interviewer: “Now did the league have a policy about married players? Were you treated differently?” Not really, except for riding the bus. I know Karl Winsch was our manager at the time and Ray came down and it wasn’t too long after that we were married and we were both one city to another and Ray was down there to visit and he wouldn’t let me ride with him. He said no, you can’t ride, you have to ride in the bus because of insurance and blah blah blah you know and so Ray had to drive by himself. I thought well come on. (35:02) Interviewer: “And then did you still have to stay in the team hotels with the girls and that kind of thing?” Oh yeah. Interviewer: “So he was on his own there?” Yeah, yeah. Interviewer: “Alright, now why did you wind up leaving the league? Because you finished after ’52.” Mainly because I had been married for 2 years and things, you could see that things were going to slow down. We weren’t going the way we did Ray coming over and driving back and stuff like that. So there was one time that we didn’t we had to wait for our bus and stuff and I thought I had been married for 2 years and it was time and it’s not fair to Ray and you are going to have to hang it up sometime. But then, so then I called it quits. But I went on playing since and I played with my two daughters until they went to college. I even played when they were in college, we played summer ball. You know, so I never quit playing. Actually I played quite a bit so. �(36:03) Interviewer: “Alright, so now so did you go, did you have continue to work or were you eventually able to just to stay home or…?” Well yeah, I worked for I guess about 5 years until when Janet my oldest daughter was born I had to you know. And I was working nights, and Ray was working days. Well you know how was it? He was working the nights and I was working the days. So Janet the baby, Janet the baby would sleep during the night when I would get home from work should we rearing to go you know. So I didn’t get much sleep. Well one day I was giving her a bath in the morning and I fell asleep giving her a bath and it scared the tar out of me. So I quit after that, I took a leave of absence, I quit. So then I didn’t work for, until the kids were in school. Then I worked part time in the post man’s office. I used to fill in for her some. Then the last six years I worked full time in the postman’s office and I retired from there. (37:16) Interviewer: “Alright, now as time goes on and you’ve got your daughters growing up, do your daughters play sports or did you encourage them?” Oh yeah, both of them played. Well Janet was more interested in music which she was a good ball player but my youngest daughter was an excellent ball player and she’s a phys ed teacher today. She was an excellent, she could have made the, actually they had a team in the Peoria after that we went down when I was coaching and we went down and played them and lost to them but I think we lost one to nothing actually. But Judy played in the, what was it? Applehorn. Irene Applehorn was signed down there and she said you know you should Judy try out for this team. Well you know, she was only 15 and I said oh she’s too young. Come on. But I couldn’t let her go, so. (38:13) Interviewer: “As you are kind of going forward in time there are starting to be more opportunities for women to be involved in sports and Title 9 comes into and stuff. Were you following that or paying attention to what was happening?” Not, not a whole lot. I mean, I mean we had more competitive sports. Although when my kids were in high school they just started a basketball and volleyball or something, there still wasn’t softball or anything in high school. But then when you went into college she played, the youngest one played volleyball and softball and then I coached at the college area she was in, close to Kenosha. And she, Janet went on into music. (38:58) �Interviewer: “Okay, back when you were playing in the league, did any you think about what you were doing as sort of pioneering? Or doing new things for women?” When I came home from the league I had, I had 8 balls one signed from every year that I played. I had a bunch of different program books from all the various towns. I had contracts; I had 2 uniforms, a jacket with that went on the league at the time. I take the uniforms and stuff like that so I had all that stuff and I threw it into a closet and forgot about it, you know. Well then when my kids got to be 7, 8 years old one time I dragged them out put the uniforms on them and took pictures of them you know. So they knew a little bit, I never really talked about it, but all the years I played nobody really…you know and then it seemed like we had our first reunion in 1982 (40:00) and when I got that letter it had a picture of a baseball player on it and it was just like they were calling you for spring training and you are getting your contract. I opened that letter and I was just so excited you know. That we were going to have a reunion. Well I went to the post office and I had, you had to pick your spot when you wanted to take your vacation at the beginning of the year and that was it. So I had taken vacation a different time already with Ray, and so I went up to them and said well you know this reunion is coming up and I am going to that reunion I have to have off. You know I have to change, and at first they said well that’s too bad you had your vacation picked out, we can’t do anything about it. I says, well then I quit. I would’ve quit too. No question in my mind. Well anyway, it didn’t take them too long after that. Then I found out that I could take off of work you know. So I went to that reunion and of course that was something else. And you would have to look at people they would have a little picture from when we played and we would say oh that’s who you are. You know, just like we knew it. Now we see each other more often. (41:19) Interviewer: “So you’ve really been involved in this sort of league organization to regroup since pretty much its inception. Now were you involved at all in the steps surrounding the movie?” Oh yeah, oh yeah. Actually we went out to Cooperstown (New York) for the unveiling of our display for the first time and that was something else. I think they said there was around 400 people there. The guy said he never saw so many people for something like that you know at the museum there. So that was really a thrill to do that. So then when they came and said they were going to make the movie oh my god we were like wow (42:00). You know so then they were going to have these try outs for the movie and they said whomever would like to try out for the movie if you can still play ball come to Smokey, Illinois. Well Anna Hutchinson who was a great pitcher and lived in Racine, we were pretty good buddies by that time said we can play ball, heck we can go down to Smokey. So we went down to Smokey and of course Madonna was there and other ball players were there and stuff. And what was really cute was I went up and asked Madonna for an autograph and I got a ball. So I got an autograph from Madonna and I didn’t realize that nobody else but the ball players could go talk to the movie stars you know. Well we �all had shirts on that we could tell so in the meantime I met this young man there and he was so elated that Madonna was there he just wanted to say hello you know (43:01). I said to him, I said “Gee I went up and asked for her autograph and I don’t think it’s any problem. Just go up and ask her she’s very nice”, you know. Well he starts walking up toward Madonna and there were men all around her within about 2 seconds they said “Where do you think you’re going?” You know, I felt so bad I thought oh my god I told the poor guy that you could go up and ask Madonna for an autograph. They just chased him away they didn’t do anything you know but so that was all of you know. But then they were looking for the way I understand it that we could play the part of the older players later you know, but you had to have the same eyes, the same hair this ball of wax and it didn’t work out you know. Then we heard that they were just going to take a few people extras to Coopersville. Well then our advisor said that I could that she had talked to Penny or somebody and said you know all these 49 people came out for the play offs. I think you should take them all (44:06). Well then they decided to take them all. So then Hutch and I got to go there for the movie. But what the sad part was that the reunion at that time was the same time as the movie in Florida. So that was the first reunion I was going to miss. You know, and that kind of broke my heart, but you have to make a choice and I think we made the right one, it was a fun time. We played ball all day and stuff like that. And she took hundreds of film you know and one thing that I thought was great was on the scene when they came back to the hall of fame but my friend there one day she forgot her glasses. Well they’re filming and all of the sudden they say cut and Madonna or or...what’s her name? Our producer, Interviewer: “Penny Marshall” (45:00) Penny Marshall, I’m sorry. She goes up and says you don’t have your glasses on. I mean, you know here’s this whole bunch of people and she had to go get her glasses on before they could start the film. She was just a stickler for…you know just oh just perfection. And then the thing that killed me was when we had to cut the ribbon to the hall of fame, it took us 2 days to get that right and we were there until I don’t know what time in the morning before she was satisfied, and we were all going home that day. We were pretty concerned you know but…geese, she was a perfectionist. But it was neat, we stayed in the motels there. And we got to see a lot of friends again, all my friends were there. So that was really, it was a good time. But like I told Penny one time, I said well I said it was a great time I talked to her but I wouldn’t want to be a movie star I says it’s too hard. You spend all that time doing it over and over you know so. Then Penny, she really put us on the map. (46:18) Interviewer: “Now if you look back over your playing career, what affect do you think getting to play professional ball, what affect did that have on you or what did that do for you?” �Well I’ll tell you, for me it made me more outgoing type of a person. I had more confidence in myself you know and I just figured it wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. So when we could build a house, we could do anything. Anything you want to do you can do in this life if you just work hard and keep working. Interviewer: “Alright, well you got a great story, you do a great job at telling it.” I was going to tell you about where I saw the movie. (47:05) Interviewer: “Yeah, do that, yes please.” After we were in the movie, then my daughter lived in Europe for 7 or 8 years in Germany, and we had been over there several times. Well we went over there, it must have been ’91 or ’92 when the movie came out and so Janet had a radio station or something and said you know about me being in the movie and that I had played in that ball. And so Frankfurt called us, called Janet, they must have gotten her number. And said that they had already shown the movie at the theatre in Frankfurt, and she said Piper’s her daughter and they said would your mother come to the movie and she can bring her family and she said and talk to the people afterwards after the movie you know, and we will bring the movie back. So we said, oh sure, so we went to Frankfurt and they took us all through the studio (48:00) and showed us a bunch of stuff and that and we went to the movie and we talked for a little bit afterwards with the people and stuff but the thing that I thought was neat is that my family over there got to get in on this movie thing you know because they didn’t get much news and stuff from at home you know. Where my other family, my other daughter was right there in Kenosha and she lived with me kind of. So then this reporter came over to interview us and Piper’s daughter. And my grandkids were pretty small then and I had brought one grandchild with me from Kenosha and so they, we were throwing balls and doing all kinds of things and they were pitching to me and we were hitting and she took all these pictures and everything and you know or movies and they put it on the TV and of course they made it sound like I was Tina Davis because I had (49:00) come from a farm and I had told her all that stuff. You know, but I had also told her that this was a composite; you know it’s not about me, it’s not about, it’s about all the players and everything and I had never liked that when one would take credit for it you know. So when she made the movie the tape, it made it sound like I was Tina Davis you know, and I was pretty embarrassed about that, I didn’t want to show anybody. And she did a really good job, so anyway later somehow she contacted me and sent me the tape. So I have a tape of that interview in the in Germany you know. So that was a thrill. And then too they took pictures and that and put them into the Stars and Stripes in an article about all the league and about my name. So we were somewhere with Janet and some guy walked up and said you look so familiar were you in the paper? You know, and here he had seen it in Stars and Stripes you know. I thought that was pretty great. �(50:01) Interviewer: “So when you are being interviewed in Frankfurt was this by sort of by the American military bases there and stuff? Yes there was from the military bases. She was in the military and actually she tried to contact me after she got out of the military and she called Dolly White and for some reason Dolly wouldn’t give her my address and stuff and we lost track. And I went she was supposed to move to Warsaw. So my husband and I were going up that way to see my brother and we stopped there and tried to find her name in the book and stuff and we couldn’t find her. I felt bad about that, she was a nice gal and she was really interested in the league and she wanted to stay interested you know and we just lost out on her. You know, so that was that was a real experience that I never would have thought I would have. Oh and I was on a marquee at a theatre. It said: “Joyce Hill a Western Leader,” you know and I thought oh my god. (51:00) Interviewer: “You’re a star. Did you have something else? Oh you have a…” Oh a friend of mine is from a neighboring place there and plays with the Kenosha Kings and he hits. He comes back every year from Australia he went over there to coach and its softball or baseball for the girls. So then after a couple of years the Australian girls came up here in Kenosha were in the World Series thing. So this summer since they’ve been back again in to play once again, and married a girl from Australia, she’s young. Oh they’re bringing 5 or 6 girls over from Australia and they are going to make a tour of Rockford and there’s another team, I don’t know much about it, we just found out about it at the meeting but they are going to play those girls. I met the head of it (52:02). It was Ron, you know my friend. Everything just sort of gels somehow you know? From one thing to another, so I had talked to Ron and he gave me a schedule and said that you’re invited to come to all these things you know the Cubs games, you know go see the Cubs. He said I’ll pick you up and take you and bring you back so that’s another thing these girls are doing which is just super. It call came kind of from the background of the All Americans. And I think that is one of the things that I’m the proudest of. You look out how these kids started in little league as little girls you know, and they are great athletes. That’s nice. Interviewer: “Alright” Oh in Milwaukee, yeah (53:00). They have a wall of fame and they were honoring some of the Wisconsin girls. One every year for awhile and they would have a luncheon and we would get up on a plaque. Now we have new owners in Milwaukee and they don’t do as much for us. So they just decided that they just said that they put all the Wisconsin people on a plaque you know. But that was really nice you know ...they gave us a Milwaukee blue jacket, it was nice yeah. It was nice being there. There were several of us that would go there. �So many things that, and it all evolved from the league so, it’s all tied together. Interviewer: “It is and it’s kind of good to see more things coming back around kind of getting more connecting women back to base ball, and more people playing. And you get to sort of be connected to them. Alright. Yeah right. One thing that I am really proud of, it’s my family. Two girls (54:00) and I have 8 grand children. Jan has 4 and my other daughter has 4. And most of them, almost all of them are really good athletes. Dance, you know and that sort of thing. I’m very proud of them. Next to the league that’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Interviewer: “Alright, well thank again for coming in and talking to us.” (54:24) �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_JWesterman Title A name given to the resource Westerman, Joyce (Interview outline and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Westerman, Joyce Description An account of the resource Joyce Westerman was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1925. She grew up there and played sports whenever she could. She was playing ball on a company team in Kenosha when she was offered a chance to fill in for an injured player for the Kenosha Comets in 1944, and then joined the league in 1945. She played for eight seasons, including stops in Grand Rapids, South Bend, Racine and Peoria, primarily playing catcher. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) WKTV (Wyoming, Mich.) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Illinois Baseball players--Wisconsin Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-07 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b89abfdde8eb0e3b2d427f9d0e37e585.mp4 772cfd10ed490a12676842267d5dc9ac https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fbe8bde51cf8d2bda2cddde31cc25030.pdf d32158bc2e6dff00da37d1a1c28e7d05 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW GLORIA CORDES ELLIOTT Women in Baseball Born: Staten Island, New York, September 1931 Resides: Staten Island, New York Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 6, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, March 12, 2011 Interviewer: “Gloria can you begin by giving us some background on yourself? To start with, where and when were you born?” I was born on Staten Island, New York on September 1931 Interviewer: “And what did your family do for a living at that time?” My father, he worked, as a carpenter in New York City and my mother was a homemaker with eleven children, you know, it was about all she had time to do. Interviewer: “Did your father have work during the thirties? Could he keep you fed?” Yes he did and he was very good at that. He had a good job and the money at that time was nothing like today, but it was sufficient for that time period. Interviewer: “How did you wind up getting started in sports?” Well, I was one of eleven children, I have five sisters and five brothers and my three younger brothers were very close to my age, so I spent a lot of time with them. My two older brothers, they were professional baseball players and I use to watch them all the time. One was a pitcher and he showed me how to throw different pitches. 14:03 Interviewer: “And did you get to play baseball with them?” I got to play with my younger brothers and our friends in the area. You know, just pickup games—choose sides and find an empty field where you could play and that was 1 �about most of it. We didn’t have anything for girls in that time period. Girls were just not allowed to play ball or be on boys teams and there were no sports for girls in the schools. Interviewer: “By the time you got to the high school level there were some girls sports and opportunities that weren’t there before.” Not at the school I went to, no, and I don’t think any of the schools on Staten Island had girls sports just yet. Interviewer: “What about youth groups or things like that?” Well, like I said, the boys, they belonged to the youth groups, the PAL, the CYL, and they tried to get me on their team because I was their pitcher. The same thing there, no girls were allowed. 15:02 Interviewer: “Ok, could you play other sports with some of these groups, basketball or softball?” Yes, they had basketball for the girls at the time at that was at the PAL center and I just got to meet these girls through my playing softball in the street. Someone that was managing the girls’ softball team asked me if I was interested in playing, so I said, “yes”, and that’s how I met some of my friends from the other part of Staten Island. Of course, we didn’t have a car and at that point we didn’t even really have bicycles, but you didn’t really get to see too many people out of your own area. Interviewer: “So, if you were going to go play softball with these people, how would you get to the games?” I did a lot of walking and if it was pretty far you could get a bus for five cants at the time, so that wasn’t too bad. 15:56 2 �Interviewer: “Now, as you were getting into your teenage years, you’re playing in different ways, did you know anything about the Girls All American Baseball League?” No, I had no idea of this baseball league, not until 1949. There were two touring teams that were touring the east coast and they came to Staten Island and they played a game at one of our baseball fields. It was advertised in the local paper, so a few of my friends and myself, we went to watch the game. Before the game started they asked if anyone was interested in trying out to come down on the field and they would take a look at you. Interviewer: “So, you went to this game without even expecting to tryout?” Definitely, just to watch a girl’s game that we never even knew existed. Interviewer: “So, how do they handle the tryouts? What do they do?” First he asked if anyone pitched with a baseball, knowing that not too many girls played baseball, so I told him I did, but like I always say, if he asked if anyone could catch, I would have said yes. It wouldn’t have been the truth, but I would have learned in a hurry. 17:10 Interviewer: “So, what happened at the tryout?” At tryouts he just had me thow a few pitches and he told me I’d hear from them and in a few weeks I did. I received a contract and I was told to go to South Bend, Indiana where they had tryouts for all the girls they picked up on these tours, so all the girls that tried out like I did, were in South Bend, Indiana in May the following year just before spring training started. The managers down there would watch us for whatever positions we played and they could choose what they needed to fill their teams. 17:50 3 �Interviewer: “Now at that point were their some people who were getting cut and didn’t get to make the team? If they got the kind of invitation you got were they probably going to play?” No, everyone was still afraid of being cut whether you signed any forms of any type, you were still eligible to be cut, but I was put on the Muskegon Lassies team and they put me on a bus to where Muskegon had their spring training and Max Carey was manager of the Fort Wayne Daisies at the time and that’s who we were having our training with. Interviewer: “So, you had the two teams training together?” Yes Interviewer: “Do you remember where it was you were doing that?” Cape Girardeau, Missouri Interviewer: “What was at Cape Girardeau?” Actually, not too much, coming from New York. One of the big rivers there, I believe it was the Mississippi and I said, “Wow, I get to see the Mississippi River”, and that was nothing I expected to do. 18:57 Interviewer: “So, what was it like for you? A lot of the women who joined the league came from small towns or the country or wherever, but come from the big city, so what sort of adjustments did you have to make when you left home and went out there?” Not really too much, I mean—see, New York City is five boroughs and Staten Island is more small town than the other four boroughs, so it wasn’t that much different. Interviewer: “Describe, a little bit, the experience in Cape Girardeau. What was it like? What was the weather like? What were the facilities like?” 4 �The weather was nice down there and we trained outside except for one day we had rain and we had indoor facilities to work in, in case of rain. You couldn’t do as much as you did outside, but it was sufficient. 19:53 Interviewer: “All right, now, when you were down there in training, were all the veteran players there too?” Yes, they were there already. Interviewer: “Were their any particular players or people who paid attention to you or game you some coaching or were you just all working individually?” Are you talking about before or when I got there? Interviewer: “When you got there.” Before, I had some pretty good coaching. When I got there they just, you know, had us work out with the veterans at our own positions. They would have us slight pitch to the veterans and that was kind of scary because these girls were good and I didn’t have any formal experience what so ever, but it worked out ok. After we trained for a couple of days we would have games against Fort Wayne and I was complimented by Max Carey at that point because he came up to me in the hotel after the game and he said, “I know a lot of you young ladies don’t know if you’re going to play or be sent home, but don’t you worry, you will not be sent home, because if they release you, I’ll pick you up”, so that felt pretty good. 21:07 Interviewer: “What pitches did you throw?” My brother taught me to throw a curve ball, a knuckle ball; I had a pretty good fastball, and once in a while what we always called a drop, which drops straight down, not break sideways. 5 �Interviewer: “Once you completed training in Cape Girardeau, did you immediately go up to Muskegon or what did you do next?” We went up to Muskegon and the season started. Interviewer: “Did you do any barnstorming along the way? Did you play games in route or just go on up north?” I think we went right up to Muskegon. We finished all of spring training and went right on up to Muskegon and the season was just getting ready to start. 21:51 Interviewer: “What kinds of rules and regulations did they have in place still for the women on these teams?” They had a lot more before I got there, thankfully, but we did have rules. We had to always appear in feminine attire in public and you weren’t supposed to swear or drink or smoke in public, which I didn’t do any of those things anyway, I was only eighteen and it didn’t affect me. There were rules to always be on good behavior, they didn’t want rowdiness and stuff like that. They wanted you to appear in public as a lady and that, you know. We always say they wanted us to look like ladies and play like men. Interviewer: “Did they have a chaperone for the team?’ There was always a chaperone, yes; in case a girl got hurt she would be there to take care of her. She took care of our housing for us and when we were on the road she would take care of the rooms and make sure everybody had their rooms and in the hotels they could make sure you met your curfew and stuff like that. You had a curfew after games, which was plenty of time. 23:04 On the road there wasn’t too much you could do anyway. Interviewer: “Did you like the chaperones? Were they good people?” 6 �Oh, they were fine, and some of them were ball players themselves, so they knew what we were going through and how to handle everything and they were like a second mother to us. Interviewer: “Do you remember playing your first regular season game?” No, because I wasn’t in the starting rotation, and I was always told that I was going to be ready to be the relief pitcher certain nights and I just never really got into the game. I must have gotten into five games in Kalamazoo because there was a record for five games. At that point we had moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Interviewer: “You were at Muskegon first, right?” Muskegon, and I guess they weren’t doing well as far as drawing crowds and they were looking for a new city to try to play in and they tried out Kalamazoo and drew very good crowds there. 24:12 I guess they talked it over and Kalamazoo became the Kalamazoo Lassies. They were still going strong after the 1954 season and we would have kept playing. We were doing very well financially. Interviewer: “What were the fans like? What do you remember about them?” They were great. You know how some people thought they would heckle and stuff like that, and that may have happened in the beginning, but like I say, I wasn’t there and fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, I missed a lot of that. I never met a fan that, you know, would heckle anyone or ridicule or make comments that we not complementary, but I thought our fans were great. 25:03 Interviewer: “And what kinds of people liked to come to the games? Were they older, younger, kids, men, women?” 7 �You had families coming to the games, you had men, you had young boys, teenagers and the young girls were very interested and their parents would come with them, so it was really a family atmosphere. Interviewer: “How long did you play or what years did you play?” I played the last five years of the league, 1950 through 1954. Interviewer: “Ok, and over the course of that time you moved around a certain amount? You mentioned having your team move from Muskegon to Kalamazoo, but did you play for other teams as well?” Yes I did, after we moved to Kalamazoo, it was a couple of weeks after that, I was told that Racine needed a couple of pitchers and that I was being sent up there because they were making trades for infielders, which Kalamazoo needed. That’s the way they, at that point in time, tried to keep the teams balanced, which would make for better baseball. 26:05 Make it more competitive rather than have one team loaded up like the Yankees you know, and they kept it pretty good that way. Interviewer: “Now when you went to Racine, was that when you really got to pitch more?” Yes, I was put right in the rotation up in Racine, so that was a good move for me at that time. Interviewer: “Do you remember any of the starts that you make or the games that you played when you first started?” I know I did pretty well—I pitched the—I started ten games after that, I had five wins and five losses, but that doesn’t really tell the story. I had pitched some good games, but I 8 �pitched against some pros, who were also very good pitchers, and I thought that was good for me at that time. 26:55 Interviewer: “Did you have good defense behind you?” Yes, in Racine I had very good defense behind me. In Kalamazoo we had a lot of rookies and I think the reason for that was, the man that took over was from the touring teams and he said that his girls on tour could compete in the league, so he picked up a lot of the girls that came up from the tour and made it into the league and he picked a lot of those up with me, someone who hadn’t played at all, but you know, it was just one of those things. It wasn’t a good offensive team basically and defensively we had some very good players. Interviewer: “But you would have some good infielders to spare to send over to Kalamazoo when they sent their extra pitchers.” Right Interviewer: “What kind of living arrangements did you have in these places?” We lived with host teams, with host families, sorry. That was a job for the chaperone. They would advertise for anyone who had extra rooms and would like to host a ball player and the chaperone would have to check them out and be sure they had the rooms and that they weren’t putting some of their own family member out. 28:17 I guess that was a big job for her, but in Kalamazoo I don’t think you could go wrong no matter who you stayed with. That was a fantastic town. Interviewer: “Now, was Racine different as a place to stay?” No, I stayed with a good host family there. The woman had an older son, he was in the navy and there was another ball player there at the time, so there were two of us staying 9 �at that house. I was just like—in Racine though it was harder to get around and you needed a car or had to know the bus routes and things like that. Interviewer: “When you were living in Racine, could you get a day and go down to Chicago or did you just pretty much stay there?” You pretty much stayed there. The only traveling I did was when we were traveling on the road. 29:01 Interviewer: “All right, and how did they get you from place to place when you were playing on the road?” Well, we used basically Greyhound buses or that type of bus to get us back and forth. When we got back to Kalamazoo, the following year, they had their own bus, so we had a little better bus ride because they took some seats out and put a refrigerator in and had it loaded with soda and then in the back they put a table and some of us liked to play cards. I liked to, but I couldn’t get to the back of the bus because I would get motion sickness, so I had to have the front seat. Interviewer: “So, did you spend the last part of one season with Racine?” Yes Interviewer: “Did they move you someplace else the next year? Then what happened?” 30:00 Over the winter Racine moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, so I reported to Battle Creek and I guess, maybe close to halfway through the season I was asked to go back to Kalamazoo and I said, “that’s fine with me, you want me to play here, you want me to play there, it doesn’t matter as long as I’m playing”, so I did, I went back to Kalamazoo. The next three years I stayed with Kalamazoo. 10 �Interviewer: “Now, while you were with Kalamazoo the second time, did you now get to start on a regular basis?” Oh yes, I was right—the starting pitcher right from the beginning. Interviewer: “What do you think was your best season?” My best season was my third season, 1952. I pitched twenty-four consecutive complete games. Interviewer: “Did you have a sore arm or anything else like that?” In the five years that I played, I never had a sore arm and never had any sores or problems physically. 31:04 Interviewer: “Twenty-four complete games, I guess back then you had major league pitchers who would do that kind of thing?” They did the same thing back then, they pitched the complete games unless they had to make a change, and today it’s just a six-inning game. Interviewer: “You held-up that much longer. Did any of the teams you were with manage to get to a championship game?” Kalamazoo won the championship the last year, 1954. Interviewer: “What do you remember about that season?” That was a very good team. The last two years they had, they might have even started the year before, they started bringing in some better ball players because two teams had dropped out of the league, so there were some good ball players around and you could pick-up good ball players and split them between the six teams that were left. We had Dotty Schroeder, which was one of them, and I’m trying to think, Fern Schollenberger played third base, I mean, these were girls that were excellent ball players. 32:10 Dotty 11 �Naum, she could pitch, she could play short stop, she was a catcher and she was just an all around good ball player. Dotty Schroeder was another excellent short stop and when I pitched against her in Fort Wayne I just admired the way she played and I was very happy to have her on the Lassies, so that helped a lot. Interviewer: “One of the things that characterized the league a little bit was that you had some people that were really good base stealers. They could get on base, now, what could you do to limit the damage? Did you have a pick-off move?” Well, there again, I was fortunate—before I came out to my first tryouts in South Bend there, three of my ball players from Staten Island were working out, two pitchers and a catcher, and like I said, my brother showed me how to throw the pitches and then I was just throwing the ball I wasn’t pitching. 33:14 The pitcher I’m going to talk about showed me how to hold runners on base and how to—there were two ways a base stealer could get a sign from you that he could go, and one was when you put your knee up off the mound or broke your hands from the glove and he said you have to learn to do both of them together because one or the other and their going to get a jump on you, so I learned that and I was very successful at holding runners on. To say no one ever stole, because they did, because we had some very good runners, but I learned that and he taught me how to follow through on a pitch, which is probably why I never had a sore arm. His name was George Bamberger who was the pitching coach for the Baltimore Orioles, was successful and also became a major league manager. 34:06 Interviewer: “He managed the Brewers.” The Brewers and the Mets. 12 �Interviewer: “You mentioned earlier something how you had gotten some pretty good coaching before you went off to spring training. Was that what you were talking about back there?” Yes-- I couldn’t have gotten better coaching, for pitching anyway. Interviewer: “So, did you have success at either picking runners off or holding them on?” Yeah, I had success at picking them off at first and I have to give my catcher the credit because they had rifle arms and by me getting the ball to the plate quickly and them having such good arms, we did throw a lot of good runners out. Interviewer: “So, did they learn maybe not to try to steal against you quite as much?” Possibly Interviewer: “Did you have much occasion to hit the ball?” Well, we batted, and we didn’t have designated hitters, so we got up and I didn’t have a great batting average. At one point in one season I was over three hundred and wow, it was even printed in the paper, but it didn’t last too long. 35:16 I could hit a ball, but I wasn’t a hitter. I could hit a lot of ground ball outs and I had my share of strikeouts, but I wasn’t a total flop. Interviewer: “Do you think that it helped you that you really learned to play just in baseball rather than softball?” Well, I learned softball first just playing in the streets and playing without gloves my hands took a little beating once in a while, but I think it helped because you had to teach yourself and learn as you went along. 13 �Interviewer: “But when you were playing with the boys, or whatever, was that always softball or was there a point when they were playing regular baseball?” Oh no, we played baseball and we would challenge other parts of the—of course there were a lot of younger people my age on the island at the same time in the area where I lived. It was very well populated and you could just go maybe two or three block and challenge another team and that’s when I had to pitch for the boys because I had the curve. 36:19 Interviewer: “when you played some of these other neighborhood teams, did any of them have girls playing for them?” No, when I see them now, or when I see them or when I seen “The League” when it first came out, actually when the movie first came out I would meet them maybe in the street or somewhere and they would tell me—especially one guy, he said he was so embarrassed when I struck him out because he didn’t strikeout that much, but now he says to his children and grandchildren, “she struck me out”. 36:55 Interviewer: “Now you played to the end—would you have kept playing if the league had continued?” Oh yes, I was just getting started at five years. I felt like I was just getting started and I would have played a good maybe five, six, seven years. I figured I would have at least that much. Interviewer: “How much were they paying you then?” Well, they started us out at fifty-five dollars a week and supposedly they had a maximum of a hundred dollars a week and after my third season, that’s what I was making. 14 �Interviewer: “Now, was that pretty good money at that point? Better than you might make if you were staying home with a job?” I was making twenty-five dollars working forty hours a week in an office in Manhattan, so fifty-five dollars was much better than that. Interviewer: “Now, if you hadn’t had the chance to go play ball what do you think you would have done in those years?” I did work in the off-season. I worked back in the city, but that became a hassle too because I had to take a bus from the island, a ferryboat, then the subway and the same thing coming back home and that could be like three hours traveling a day, so I probably would have looked for something right on Staten Island. 38:09 I did work in a supermarket when I went back to Kalamazoo and I could have done different kinds of job. I’ve worked in an office, I’ve worked in stores, and I would have found something. Interviewer: “In the last couple of seasons there, did you have any indication that the league was having trouble and that this might not go on forever?” Actually no, I thought just that they might build it up again and get another team and possibly build it up again. What was written in the paper about the league breaking was that they were just going to take a year off and try to find new cities and if they could find new cities it would be a novelty again in that city, and possibly draw enough people to support it, but it just never came about, so that was just the end of it. There was no discussion of any sort after that because they couldn’t find the cities. 39:08 Interviewer: “So, what did you do then once the league folded?” I went back home and I worked in a store on the island and my brother was stationed in Battle Creek and when he came home for the Christmas holidays that year with his wife, 15 �he told me that my good friend Dotty Naum got married and had a little baby. He said she would like for me to come and stay with her for a while, so I did, I went back to Battle Creek, I stayed with her because her husband was on the road a lot, and we use to go into Kalamazoo once in a while to visit the ball players because a lot of the players stayed in Kalamazoo and went to work there. Somebody said, “Why don’t you stay here and play softball? We have so many girls from the league on the teams”, and I said, “yeah, but I don’t have a job or anything”, and one girl said, “don’t worry, the sponsor will give you a job”, and that’s when I went to work in his store. 40:17 I was there for like a year and a half and I’d be getting calls from home like, “When are you coming home?” Finally I said, “I better go”. I was just going to go visit for a little while and eighteen months was a little more than that, so I went back home and I went back to work in the city, and like I said before, it just was too much of a hassle. Interviewer: “Then did you have a long term career or did you get married and have a family? What did you do?” I got married in 1959, so I didn’t have that long of a career. I did work a few years, until I became pregnant and then I gave up the job and stayed home to be a stay at home mom. Interviewer: “Where do you live now?” I live on Staten Island. Interviewer: “So, there are still some people there that you grew up with and you played ball against and all that kind of thing?” 41:08 Oh yes 16 �Interviewer: “Because you kind of stayed in the same place and some of the people were people you played ball with, did the people you knew, or worked with, did they know that you played professional baseball?” The people that I knew did and my sisters and brothers, if they had a friend and introduce me, they would tell them that I played professional baseball, and they would say, “oh, you played softball”, and my brother would say, “no, she played baseball”. They never heard of a women’s baseball league, just like I didn’t until they came to Staten Island, but it was hard for them to believe. Interviewer: “While you were playing, did you see yourself, or the league, in kind of way as kind of pioneering or doing something?” No, I didn’t, not at that point. I was having fun and I was loving it, and I never saw anything like that and I never expected what happened to be so big. 42:05 Interviewer: “As you kind of get into the seventies and the eighties and so forth, you get Title IX coming in and you get more emphasis now on getting girls sports and this kind of thing, did you pay attention to the news of that while it went on?” Yeah, because I became a coach for the girls at the Staten Island Little League, and I started with the ten to twelve age limit and then they had the senior girls and they would graduate and play from thirteen to fifteen and I would go on to that. I was coaching girls softball down at the little league for about twenty years. Interviewer: “And if you look at it now do you think the league itself, did it play a role, or set an example, or do we just realize now just how unusual it was?” 17 �We just realized since it’s taken off, like with the movie and everything, how important it was. We, like I said, all of us were playing there because we loved the game and we loved to play it. It was an opportunity, you know, that not too many people had. 43:15 Interviewer: “Did you get involved at all when they were making the movie and any of the event surrounding that? Did you get to do any of those things?” I did go out to Chicago when they had the actresses out there and we would—there would be about sixty of us out there and someone would be taking in field practice and some would be in the outfield and some would take batting practice and we did just a lot of different things. Then I was asked to go to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown when they were there, and my husband just had a hip replaced and he couldn’t travel and I said, “I just can’t leave him home alone”, so my neighbors were telling me to go ahead and they would take care of him, but it’s not the same. 44:02 Interviewer: “Have you gone out to Cooperstown since then?” Oh, I go back there every year. Interviewer: “What did you think of the movie its self?” Well, when they first told us who was going to be in the movie, especially Madonna, I said, “What kind of a movie are you making here?” They said they wanted to make it a comedy and they wanted to make it interesting because to make a movie about baseball wasn’t going to be that interesting because there is just so much you can do. They wanted to make it a comedy and they did a very good job doing that. Interviewer: “Did you think that any of the actresses you were working with got pretty good at what they were doing?” 18 �Yeah, some of them were pretty good when I met them in Chicago and they worked hard at it, as a matter of fact, they told us they were picked for their athletic ability before they were picked for acting, 44:52 Interviewer: “Rosie O’Donnell, Madonna? I don’t know.” Well, not Madonna, but Rosie O’Donnell was a good athlete, and a couple of the others, but Madonna was—she came and she wasn’t supposed to be in the movie, she was supposed to do the background music, and she got caught up in all of it and she loved it. Being a good friend of Penny Marshall, she said she wanted to be in the movie, so I watched her try to catch and throw while we were out there and everybody’s calling attention to her, “look at her, she’s trying to throw and she throws like”. She doesn’t know how, but we found out she was a very good athlete in itself. She took very good care of herself, but she just didn’t play ball, but she got someone to teach her and she got a very good job out of it. 45:47 Interviewer: “When you think back over your professional playing career, are there particular moments or events that kind of stand out in your memory, that come back to you a lot?” I just think of the people that we stayed with and the people in Kalamazoo like the family I stayed with. The woman was a retired schoolteacher and the husband was still working at one of the plants in Kalamazoo. They had two grown sons who were out of the house, so that’s how they had the rooms, and we just got so close to them that, you know, we visited them when they moved to Florida. They wanted to meet my mother, so I took my mother to Florida to meet them. People in Kalamazoo were always having something for the team, either some sort of a cook out or barbeque or stuff like that. They were always 19 �doing things for you. You couldn’t help but like the whole city and I’m sure that went on in the other cities, also. 46:55 Interviewer: “If you look back on it now, how do you think your time in the baseball league wound up affecting you? Did you learn things or grow? Did you change at all because you had that experience?” I’ll tell you, I got over my shyness. I was very shy and of course with ten siblings, you could talk to them all, but it was—like in school it was difficult for me to get up and read a book report or something like that and it helped in that respect. Interviewer: “And do you think you learned things about people and dealing with people different from yourself and that sort of thing?” Oh sure, you learned that there are so many different types of people in different—I use to make fun of the way the girls from the south talked and they use to make fun of me. I said, “I don’t have an accent, you do”, but it was nice to meet people from all different parts of the country. That was an education in its self. Interviewer: “Anything else you would like to put on the record here before we close out the interview?” 48:03 I can’t really think, I think we covered just about everything. Interviewer: “You have a good story and you tell it well, so thank you very much for coming in and sharing it today.” You are very welcome, thank you. 20 �21 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_GElliott Title A name given to the resource Elliott, Gloria Cordes (Interview outline and video), 2007 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Elliott, Gloria Cordes Description An account of the resource Gloria Cordes Elliott was born in Staten Island, New York, in 1931. She grew up playing ball with her brothers, and first learned about the AAGPBL when they played an exhibition game on Staten Island in 1949. She tried out for the league before the game, and was invited to spring training the following year. She played as a pitcher for teams in Muskegon, Racine, Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, and at one point pitched twenty-four straight complete games. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-08-20 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/efb17100d6dbe7c8aead118230005288.mp4 b2630dda90fb4fc8385e1e33475d20fe https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/796f4f4eb5159d98e805ae26dd794852.pdf 34586e5f0c539316dab09b0d9ce6cec0 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans History Project Interviewee’s Name: Terry Donahue Length of Interview: (51:37) Date of Interview: August 4, 2010 at the Reunion of the Professional Girls Baseball League Interviewed by: James Smither Transcribed by: Lindsey Thatcher, March 28, 2011 Interviewer: “Let’s begin with your full name and then when and where were you born? My full name is Theresa, T-H-E-R-E-S-A Donahue. I was born in [Millaville or Melaval] Saskatchewan, Canada. I was born on a farm, my father farmed. And that’s where I grew up. Interviewer: “And in what year, when was your birthday?” 1925. Interviewer: “Okay, born in 1925?” 1925. Interviewer: “Ah, same as my mother?” Okay. Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like?” I had wonderful parents; we had a happy home life. My, both my parents were very sports minded people. And I can honestly say that I can never remember not playing with a ball. My, in fact I remember as a very young child my Dad playing in a game, you know with his men. But I was very fortunate. I had one brother (01:00), 14 months younger than I was. He was very athletic and very good. So I had all of that on my side. Interviewer: “So as a young child you were playing baseball with who? Just your dad and your brother or did you have a team that you played with?” Oh no, my mother I can remember going out in the yard with my Dad and brother and my mother and Dad would knock us a balls and playing catch and so on. And of course as I got older I would play with the boys, my brother was very good and I tagged along. Interviewer: “So you were in a farm community?” Yes. �Interviewer: “Okay so when you were a kid where did you play baseball, where did you play?” Well at school, at school. And then my brother would go with a bunch of boys and I tagged a long and would play with them, so I have been involved a long time. (02:00) Interviewer: “You went to high school I take it?” Yes. Interviewer: “Okay, how was your high school experience?” Oh listen, I played on a girl’s team. And we had we used to have what you would call sports days and we would play at competition from other schools and so… Interviewer: “Was this baseball or was this softball?” This was softball. Interviewer: “Softball.” Softball, yeah. Interviewer: “What position were you playing?” Then I pitched and played the infield and that was in the school league and then I would play with my brother and his friends. Interviewer: “Do you remember Pearl Harbor?” Yes I can remember my dad and my mother talking about Pearl Harbor. Interviewer: “Did you have a radio?” Yes. Interviewer: “That’s probably where they heard it?” No television then. Interviewer: “Right.” But we did have a radio (03:00) and we played marbles and ping pong and you know and mother was always very, a doer. �Interviewer: “Your dad was a farmer?” Yes. Interviewer: “Oh okay. Did you have to do chores?” Yes, when I came home from school I had to milk my cow and I had to do the dishes. And you know after school you would come home and head out maybe in the mornings gather the eggs, you know? I wouldn’t trade that life for anything growing up; I wouldn’t want to go back to it. Interviewer: “How did you first hear about the All American Girls Professional Baseball League?” Well I was scouted from the city team to go in to and play with their league; they had a very good league in the city. Interviewer: “How did they know about you?” (03:59) Well one of the sports days the two teams from Regina and Moosejaw was playing an exhibition game, and just before their game we were playing in the finals. And I was pitching and the manager of the Moosejaw Royals saw me there and then I remember him contacting my dad saying that I would like your daughter to come in for a try out, I was 15 years old. So my mother said, no way you are going to school. Well my dad saw to it that I went in for my try out. And I made it. So then some arrangements were made that I would have to finish school and then when school was finished I could go into the city and play ball for the rest of that season. So school started. Interviewer: “Was this baseball, or was this softball?” (05:00) This was all softball, all softball. Interviewer: “Okay, was it a paid team?” No. Interviewer: “So you were just playing for fun.” And it was a very good league. Interviewer: “Okay.” �Very good league and that is where I was scouted by the All Americans. Interviewer: “Okay, so they, somebody from their organization saw you play?” In 1954 our Moosejaw Royal team won the Western Canadian Championship. And there was a scout there I think that it was Mr. Bishop and he asked me if I would be interested in coming down next spring for a tryout with the All American Girls and I think it was in Pascagoula, Mississippi. I said “Yes I would”. And of course I could hardly wait to tell my parents, because my mother was not happy. Interviewer: “What year was this?” This was in 1954. Interviewer: “’54?” No, ’46 I mean. Interviewer: “No, oh okay yeah.” (06:00) Yeah I went into Moosejaw in 1946, and I played 4 years there and in 1945 we won the western title. Then they asked me to come down in the spring of 1946 to come down to Pascagoula for a tryout. And mother wasn’t too happy but this is where the chaperones came in. I think mother thought that maybe I wouldn’t make it. But anyway I came down I remember on that train getting into Chicago and then going with this group from there to Pascagoula and that was how I was scouted. Interviewer: “What was you’re, you are coming from Canada, had you been to the United States before?” Never. Interviewer: “Okay, and then you went into the south?” Yeah, to Pascagoula. Interviewer: “What was that experience like?” My god, well somebody is, well they sort of talked different and I (07:00) was so excited about having the chance to make this league where I could play ball every day. I can remember telling my dad once my dream was if I could play ball every day that would be my dream come true. So I was so excited, that was 1946 when they were adding two new teams to the league. They were adding Peoria and Muskegon so they needed some new gals. �Interviewer: “Now you were used to playing softball?” Yes. Interviewer: “What kind of ball were you playing with your new position?” It was softball, fast pitched. Interviewer: “Okay, well I mean when you were getting into the Professional Baseball though?” It was fast pitched. Interviewer: “Right, but the ball was…?” 12 inch. Interviewer: “Okay” It started with 12 inch. Interviewer: “Okay, so the transition was not that big of a thing for you because you already had…” Yes, that’s right. It was the same size ball as we were playing with in Canada. (08:00) Interviewer: “But it changed later on though.” Yes. Interviewer: “We will talk about that a little later on. So a scout sees you playing in the softball league and now they have offered you this professional job, and you are going to be playing in the south.” They offered me to come down for a try out. Interviewer: “Right and you passed the try out.” Yes, I came down I passed. And I’ll never forget that day. There was it seemed to me like hundreds of girls there all trying and I didn’t know anybody. I remember I remember managers and people up there with their big pencil and paper and they would call your name and you would go out and they called my name and I remember I ran out to short stop. And they knocked me grounders and they got your flies and you had to go, and I was really on that day I was picking them up, but I got a dirty bounce and it cut my eye there. So the chaperone came out and �a nurse and they (09:00) said we have to have you get some stitches and I said “I’m not going anyplace until I’m finished,” I said “put a band aid on it and I’m going back out”. And I did, I was lucky because I did very well that day. And so, then allocation came and this huge room I had never seen a room this large and all of these girls in it, and we are all trying to make the league. And I can remember sitting there and trying to listen for my name. It wasn’t coming and I thought oh my gosh, I tell you when I heard my name I was the happiest girl in that whole building, because that meant I made the league. So that I will never forget and even talking about it I kind of get goose pimples because I was so excited and there were girls crying because they didn’t make it or they were being traded or so on and so forth, but I was happy. (10:00) Interviewer: “So let’s go back over the story, and let’s talk about it” Well I got to Pascagoula and we worked very hard for two weeks I remember it was so hot and coming from Canada you know it was cold there in April and I got down there and I worked very very hard, then came allocation day and I had never seen a room that big in my life and all of these girls there are all trying to make the league and so anyway they sent me out to short stop and all of the managers, there was one knocking balls as hard as he could, making you run for it and all of this. And I did really well, but I had a dirty bounce and it cut my eye, on my head (11:00) and took me off, the nurse and the chaperone says I think you might need some stitches. I said put a band-aid on it, I’m going back out and I’m going to finish. And I often thought, maybe they thought there is a gutsy kid. You know? I don’t know, but anyway I heard my name and I can tell you I was so excited. I was so happy I could hardly wait to tell my dad and my mother. So I made it. And then they told me I was going to be with the Peoria Red Wings I was pleased because that was a brand new team we were adding. So we were sort of, you know there were a few veterans on it, but I made this Peoria. Great team, great group of gals so… Interviewer: “How was your first season? You were a rookie. ” I was a rookie. Interviewer: “So did you play very much?” I did, really, for, I filled in a lot of places. You know there were only 15 girls to a team (12:00), and so you know if a girl was hurt or wasn’t feeling well I went in. And I can tell you one time, our catcher, our regular catcher broke her finger and our manager Leo Schrall came to me and said, “Terry have you ever caught?”, I said “Leo, I’ve never caught”. He said “Well you’re going in”. I said “Okay I’ll do the best I can”, he hands me this great big mitt and I said “Leo I can’t use that mitt”, I wouldn’t catch the ball it had this big great fat bit. He said “Well, what are you going to do?” I said “I’ll use my infield glove”. Well I’ll tell you I never forget that day, that day went 19 innings and it was April 19, 1948. I’ll never forget it because the next day was my birthday and my knees were mighty sore from catching. And the game was called at midnight �because the next day (13:00) was Sunday and we couldn’t play into a Sunday. That was my first experience of catching and I ended up liking the position very well and I did finally get a good glove. But my hand was mighty sore, with the infield glove but I loved that glove, I still have it. Interviewer: “You had mentioned earlier about playing utility, could you explain what that meant?” Well that meant, I could play any of the positions and fill in whenever a girl was not well or somebody was hurt. But I never pitched, and I never played first base. Interviewer: “Where did you stay your first season?” I stayed with a couple in Peoria, Mr. and Mrs. Turnball. I tell you I can’t tell you how good it, I can tell you I ended up calling them my United States parents, and I stayed with them all the time I played in Peoria. And I saw them until the day they died and passed away. They were just like family to me. (14:07) Interviewer: “What was the experience of being away from home I mean you had a good family life and suddenly you were out in the middle of nowhere so to speak… ” Oh, I had a wonderful happy life. But I was playing the game of my dream. And I, you know we were playing every day and if we weren’t playing we were out practicing, I loved it, I loved it. So I often think you know, some of the girls got homesick. I never got homesick because I knew I was playing, I was where I wanted to be. And I sent mother and dad the daily paper so they saw and read all the games. Interviewer: “That’s wonderful. You were making pretty good money for someone your age for one thing.” Yes, I should say so, and for that time. Interviewer: “So did you send money home, or how did you do that?” No, I built my little bank account in Peoria. I had my first contact for 50 dollars which was a lot of money in those days. I think a lot of us were making more money than our poor fathers, you know. (15:09) Interviewer: “What was your social life like the first year?” Well it was, you know there were a lot of nice guys watching our games and wanting to go out. I remember you know it was very tempting but we had to get the okay by the chaperone. And sometimes I wasn’t too happy with “You know, I don’t think you better Terry”, or you �know…well anyway yeah it was, I got to tell you the people of Peoria were wonderful. They would have us for lunch, the directors were, you know they would have a boat and take us up the, I forget the name of the place in Peoria but they were all so nice to us. You know, it was a good social life. We would play. (16:04) Interviewer: “Did you think, you made it very clear about how excited you were about playing professional baseball,” Oh absolutely. Interviewer: “and I realize this was a tough question because it was a long time ago, but were you thinking, you know this is what I’m going to be doing for my professional career 10 years from now, 5 years…?” You know, I never thought about it ever ending, I never thought about maybe someday I could never play this game. I was living; I guess for the moment, I don’t know I was so happy. But I never thought about that ending. I thought it was just go on and on and on. Interviewer: “When you got back home from your first season, was there any discussion with your parents about your future and what you were going to be doing?” When I got, after the first season I went back home and I took my dad a cap and they had the newspapers and dad and I would sit and talk for hours and they were on the farm (17:05). And after I got home and visited with them and saw family and friends I went into Moosejaw and got a job and then worked in there until the next spring and then I would come back down to the states. Interviewer: “Now, I want to get back. Where did you work?” I worked at a department store. Interviewer: “Did they know that you were a baseball player?” Yes and the manager was very proud, very supportive. Interviewer: “So there was a certain amount of publicity then about the team and you say that your parents, your father was reading the newspaper. Was there article about your team and things like that?” Yes, in the newspaper. Interviewer: “Okay, so you were kind of a local celebrity.” Yes, I guess you could put it that way. And Dad was very proud. �Interviewer: “So how did you know you were going to be playing another year, did they send you a later?” We would sign another contract. Interviewer: “Okay, so a contract was sent to you.” Exactly. (18:00) Interviewer: “Okay, now this time you could sign it on your own because you were 18?” Yeah you know, there was no question then. Even mother was approving. Interviewer: “So, what was the second season like?” Oh gosh, I could hardly wait to get back down, you know. It was just wonderful. I wasn’t a rookie anymore, and so there were rookies coming in. And I’ll tell you when they rookies came in I was the first one there to greet them because I was a rookie and I knew. The thing was that it was a new team that first year I played. So it wasn’t like going into a team where there were veterans, and you know there were…so the girls were really very nice. But I was always the first one there to greet a new girl coming in. (19:00) Interviewer: “What was the uniform like?” Oh my, well playing in those dresses and skirts was something else. Especially for sliding, but Mr. Rigby wanted us to look like young ladies, and play ball like men; and that’s exactly what we did. I’m going to tell you that because Peoria was the first year, the people thought that they would go out and get a good laugh and see this novelty of these women playing in skirts. We had a full house well they weren’t laughing when they saw how well we played, and I can say this because my landlady and landlord had never seen a game, I don’t think. They came out to have a good laugh, and they never missed a game after that. So, we won them over. Interviewer: “You mentioned about the dress and all of that, how difficult was it to play in that?” (20:00) Well, it was kind of a full skirt. I think it bothered the pitchers more than any of us. They would wind up and the pitchers and it was sort of pen over there skirt because it was so full. And actually we got used to it and it wasn’t so bad. �Interviewer: “Well some of them said that they made alterations because I remember one of you made a wonderful statement and said ‘I reached down to get the ball and all I got was dress’” Yes, well it was very full and it did bother the pitchers. Interviewer: “Did you make any alterations or anything like that?” I didn’t on mine. Interviewer: “Okay, so” And you know they gave us the satin shorts to where under the, but and then they gave us pads for sliding but they shifted and no one every used them that I know of. (21:00) Interviewer: “Oh okay. Wow. Okay.” But we did have the strawberries. And thank goodness for the chaperones, they were wonderful. Interviewer: “So you had a few strawberries yourself?” Oh, yes. Interviewer: “Oh my gosh, my gosh.” But you know, I don’t think anybody really minded. The chaperones were great and they. Interviewer: “They were responsible for cleaning the wound?” They were wonderful women, yeah. Interviewer: “I heard that it stung quite a bit though when they put that… ” Oh yeah, when they would put that stuff on it, it would sting. Interviewer: “Oh my gosh.” Interviewer: “Let’s get back to the second season.” Okay. Interviewer: “Did you stay in the same house with those two people that you said were so wonderful, did you stay in the same house the second year?” Yes. �Interviewer: “So they knew you were coming back.” Oh yes, I stayed all four years there. Yeah, and then I was just part of the family. You know you had to pay for our room (22:03) and go out for our meals. Well it got so they wouldn’t even take my money for my room. They were just terrific. They had no children, and they just took me over. They were wonderful, wonderful people. Interviewer: “Now you were staying by yourself or did you have a roommate?” I stayed, I had a roommate and she was traded, and then I stayed quite awhile by myself and then another girl came to town and needed a place and she came and stayed there also with me, and they liked her too. So, I think that most of the girls had wonderful places to stay and the people were so nice. Interviewer: “So the end of your second season, you come back home again, and you are working in the same place” Yes, yes, my boss was so good, he said “Terry anytime you want to come here again the doors open” Interviewer: “That’s wonderful.” So he was wonderful (23:00). So being a Canadian, to keep in shape I played girls hockey. So when I came down in the spring I was in shape. My legs were in good shape and I was ready to go. So that was a good advantage for me. Like the California and Florida girls they were in shape they played all winter. But I played girls hockey and kept in shape. Interviewer: “Tell us about your manager, how was your manager?” Our first manager was Johnny Gottselig, he was a famous hockey player. I don’t know if he was the first, maybe he was. Then we had several others and then we had Louis Schrall and he was from the university there. So we had good managers. They taught us a lot, you know Leo taught us the sliding. Interviewer: “I was going to ask that, because you came from a baseball background, you already knew how to play, but you never played professionally, formally, and some of the girls said that there were things that they taught you that either you had a bad habit from before, didn’t realize it was a bad habit, was there things that they taught you that you thought ‘Oh I should do it this way.’?” (24:16) I can’t recall anything. But when I played in Moosejaw and there was an excellent league and there was excellent coaching. I think that that was to our advantage too. We had very good coaching in Moosejaw. �Interviewer: “Now did your manager treat you like a woman, or did he treat you like a baseball player?” Oh, he was tough, you know. I think you treated us like a baseball player. I mean, he didn’t baby us, and we could take it. I mean we had to read the rules and we would get on that bus and he would question us. So I think you know he was, I think he was treating us more like a baseball player, which was great. (25:00) Interviewer: “How were the road trips?” Oh gosh. We would finish a ball game and shower and get on that old bus. And if we lost, we it was very quiet, and if we won we would still for a hundred miles. You know, I never ever heard anybody complain about the road trips. But I, you know we couldn’t wear slacks, we would get on the bus we would get in our jeans and traveling all night, but if we stopped we had to get out of those jeans and put on a skirt. We not even, I can remember several nights we’d stop and we would have to get on our skirt. And Mr. Rigley wanted us to look like ladies, and we did. Interviewer: “You were very young of course, the fact that you were doing a road trip all night. The next day, what was your day like? In other words you were on the bus all night you arrived and it’s the town you are going to be playing. Walk us through what you had to do, you went to sleep? Or you… ” (26:11) Well yes, we would get into a hotel. Like if we were traveling form Peoria to Muskegon, which is a long ways, we would get into the hotel and get a couple winks of sleep and sometimes he would get us out there earlier before a game for more running and so on, and sometimes we would have to go out for a work out in the morning. It all depended on how things were going. If we weren’t winning we would have to get out there and practice. But those bus trips and we look back on them now and they were fun. Interviewer: “Yeah, you had mentioned about the fans the first year, they come out kind of laughing and you proved them wrong. How were the road trips, in terms of the road trips going to other towns how were the fans?” (27:03) They were great too, I’m sure the same thing happened there. We always had good crowds. I think that it was 1948 we drew a million people, the league. And then in 1947 we trained in Havana, Cuba. Interviewer: “Tells about that.” �That was exciting. Interviewer: “Well you had never been out of the, well I was going to say that you had never been out of the country, but you are from Canada!” So we get into Cuba and we trained there. Oh it was hot. And we trained there very hard for two weeks and this was before Castro. I can remember one day they told us to bring sandwiches into the hotel because we were not going to practice or go out the next day because the army was walking down the streets. I can remember it was scary. Anyway the Brooklyn Dodgers were training there at the same time we were (28:00) and we outdrew them. They came over and they said “What is going on over here?”, and when they saw how well we played they couldn’t believe it. Dottie Kamenshek, was the first baseman for Rockford Beeches. They said if she had been a man they would have offered her $50,000 on the spot. In those days that was a lot, but that was a fun time. Interviewer: “You played against Cuban teams?” No, we played, we played, well we were playing against, you know our league. Interviewer: “Just like you would if you were in the states, okay.” Yeah. Interviewer: “I know a couple girls got recruited out of Cuba” Yes, yes. And we had a couple on the Peoria Red Wings. And they were fun, fun gals and in fact I think we have one Cuban woman here. Interviewer: “I think we have done her interview already” (29:00) Yeah and she’s very funny. Interviewer: “Yeah, so your trip to Cuba, you come back. Now you are in your third season, now isn’t it about this time that the ball changed? ” Yes, in 1948 we went to side arm. So it wasn’t side arm, some of the girls were still going the windmill; side arm came out in 1948. Then a couple more years and the overhead took over. Interviewer: “How about you, how was that transition for you?” Well I tell you; at that point I was doing more catching. I was talking about 1949, it was overhead, almost completely overhead by then. And I was doing more catching. And in the 1950, I signed my contract for 1950, and I did not sign it because by that time they had lengthened the �bases (30:00). Every two years they would lengthen the bases and make the ball smaller. And they changed the size of the ball 6 times, from the 12 inch to the…I think it was 194-, I didn’t sign the 1950 contract. As it was I had an opportunity to go into Chicago and I was offered a contract to play fast pitched in Chicago. Because I was doing more catching, I thought that’s what I would do would go into Chicago and play professional there in the fast pitched because I was afraid my arm wasn’t strong enough. And it was a hard decision to make, but a lot of the girls came in. I know in 1950 in Chicago, we had several, I was on the team, and Sophie Curry, and Joanne Wenners. There was a lot of us on the team. (30:51) Interviewer: “This is outside of the league?” Yes. So that’s why I didn’t sign the 1950 contract, because of the distance and I didn’t feel my arm was strong enough. And I had the opportunity to go into the city. But it was a hard decision, because you know it was such a good league. Interviewer: “This is a paid, this is also a professional team? I didn’t even know about this.” Yes Interviewer: “And it’s outside of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League?” Yes. Yes. Interviewer: “It was a fast pitched, professional women’s team.” Yes, well you know by 1950 the boys were coming back from service and people had more money and there were more things to do. So, I believe the, the attendance wasn’t as big as it used to be, so that was my decision. I think it was the right one, for the simple reason that I didn’t think my arm was strong enough and I was doing more catching. But it was a tough decision. (32:02) Interviewer: “How long did you stay with the fast pitched?” Two years, and then, but in Chicago you could get a job and play because we didn’t play outside the Chicago area. I got my job, and I was playing at night. And I liked my job so well that I finally just quit playing and so I played there, I worked there 38 years and then I retired. Interviewer: “I have to know, what, with the enthusiasm you had for playing baseball, what job could possibly replace?” �Well I think I finally realized that the time has come. I was Canadian, and it was….I thought I might play longer in the Chicago area. I got my job, and I was doing well there. And then in the contract if you were hurt, you were responsible, and I thought now well maybe it was time to make the change. It was hard. (33:04) Interviewer: “What job did you take?” I worked with an interior design firm, was a very very good one. We hired architects and designers and I was in the business end of it. I liked my job, I was there 38 years. Interviewer: “Where did you get the training to do something like that?” I went to night school because I never had the opportunity to go to college. And I got my job, went to night school and it all worked out, I was very fortunate because I love the people I worked with. But I got to tell you that I couldn’t go to ball game that first year, because I wanted to be out there. It was hard. Interviewer: “Did the, did your coworkers know you were a baseball player?” (33:58) No, I never talked about. Nobody knew that I had played professional ball. If I had told them they probably thought that I was crazy, so let me tell you, when that movie started all hell broke loose. Oh, phone was ringing, they wanted to interview, television and radio. It was incredible but very exciting. Interviewer: “What was your reaction to that?” Well we were excited, but I can tell you there was 50 of us girls, met all the stars and starlets in a hotel in [Muskogee]. We had to tell them about our experiences and help them throw a ball and so on. And of course Madonna threw just like a girl, and oh we thought, and we got very upset to think that they had a Madonna in that movie, because we didn’t have a Madonna in our League, and we told them so. And they said that they had her under their thumb and she had a very small part. Well anyway, it ended up that we got to like Madonna, she was a pretty good gal, a hard worker. (35:12) Interviewer: “Well the combination of her and Rosie O’Donnell, really made that part of the movie. They were perfect with each other and for each other.” Oh absolutely, Rosie O’Donnell had the best ability. She could throw and catch. �Interviewer: “Well someone told me that she actually knew how to play baseball.” Oh she did, but Madonna, forget it. Oh, anyway it was pretty exciting because we got to beat them all. Interviewer: “I want you to think about this for a moment, you have gone years and years working in a place that you love to work, baseball is way behind you, suddenly this movie comes out, did you think what is all of this hoopla about? Or did you just think well, I guess people think this a pretty big deal.” Well we were I know I was very excited to think (36:02) that this movie was going to tell our story, which is something we love doing. We didn’t know how it was going to come out. We were very worried until we saw it, but when we saw it we were very pleased. Because it wasn’t a documentary as you know, it was a… Interviewer: “A Hollywood movie” A Hollywood movie, I remember going to Rockford and to see the movie for the first time with all of the girls there and we had tears, we were really excited. And except for that movie nobody would have known about it. When that came out, and the people at work couldn’t believe it, that I had played professional. So it was pretty exciting, oh goodness gracious. You know we were being interviewed, we weren’t talkers and we would never, it was incredible. People just wanted, I said well if you want an interview come to my apartment because we were running around like crazy, we all were. (37:13) Interviewer: “What is your reaction now that several years have passed since that movie? It hasn’t, it’s still being shown on television, and people still talk about it. I teach at the University, I get kids 20 years old as soon as I say ‘League of their Own’, they say ‘Oh yeah, I love that movie’ they may have seen it when they were a little kid. When I tell my students that I am doing a documentary about it them…oh my goodness, they think I am…see you have kind of rubbed off on me, your fame has rubbed off on me a little bit, they think that is the coolest thing.” I got to tell you a funny story. One day I had gone to mass that Sunday and I fainted and they hauled me off to the closest hospital and this at home in Chicago. Of course, they were checking me, they had me they were going for the heart and I can remember one day laying there and this little Puerto Rican nurse came in (38:09). And she said “Oh you are watching a movie”, happened to be A League of their Own, and I was laying there and I thought this is great I’ll get to see our movie. She comes in and I say “I’m watching a movie”, and she says “Oh what is it about?” and said “Oh it’s about the women playing ball in the ‘40’s, and I said I was one of those women and I tried to help Madonna throw a ball. Well I saw the look on her face, she turned around and went out so fast and pretty soon another nurse came in. She said “Oh you are watching a movie” and I said “Yeah”. So I told her the same thing. They thought I was crazy. �Then two doctors came in, and they thought well there is nothing wrong with this woman, that’s all they had. That was so funny. Interviewer: “Once again I want to get back to what is your reaction to all of this?” (39:04) We were overwhelmed, we were overwhelmed, really. We couldn’t believe that we were getting all of this attention. Because anytime you mention that movie people go crazy. I think we were really overwhelmed and so excited. Interviewer: “How is it now? It’s been several years and you have had a chance to realize that this whole country, if not parts of this world think that this is an amazing period of time and what you did was really extraordinary” Well even now I don’t think that it’s changed much since the first time it came out. You mentioned to somebody that you’ve played and you know they will see my ring and I might be paying a bill or doing something. “Oh, that’s a pretty ring”, you know and we’ll get talking and I’ll say “Have you heard of A League of Their Own?” and you tell them that you’ve played they just get so excited. It’s incredible. (40:02) Interviewer: “What do you think about that?” Well, you know what I can say, what I think, I think I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to be able to play professional baseball with the All American League. I think that we were at the right place at the right time. I feel very fortunate. And to have played with such a great group of women, great group of women. I think that I’m glad Mr. Wrigley included the Canadians, and I think that we did prove that women can play professional ball as well as men; we can’t hit the ball as hard or as far but we can make all of those same plays and sometimes better, I’ve seen maybe a few. But, it is. I think we are very fortunate. Interviewer: “One of the things that is really impressive to me, is the number of you that have gone on beyond that period of time and have done, some of you became PhD’s, some of you worked, where does those few years fit into your idea of your life? It’s only a small part, but where does that fit in terms of your life?” (41:16) I think that playing in the All American taught me a lot. You know you are team player, you are team worker. You get along with people. I think that it did a lot for me and for all of us. I think it fit in very well. Interviewer: “Why did you come to the first reunion, why did you come to the reunion?” �Let me tell you, the very first reunion was 1982, in a Holiday Inn just east of Michigan Avenue in Chicago. And that I will never forget. We had to have name tags because some of us got heavier, some of us lost our baby fat, and that was a wonderful reunion. And every reunion was wonderful; but that very first one where we hadn’t seen one another for years and years was a great reunion. You know, I don’t say one was better than another, I think they are all great. It was so wonderful to see the gals you played, and it is just amazing how sometimes you can remember a play. I remember when I threw you out or something, so it’s been great. (42:35) Interviewer: “You have a family?” I never married. But I do have family which I love dearly and I’m going to be with them September 1, I’m going to celebrate my 85th birthday. They are having a big party. Interviewer: “How did your family react to the movie and all of the because before that they knew you were a baseball player, but not a big movie star?” (43:00) No, well my mother and dad of course on the farm, they never went to movies. By this time, when the movie came out my dad had passed away but my mother was living closer to my brother and his family and when that movie came out they gave all of my family a free ticket to go see this movie. And mother could hardly wait. When the movie was over she walked out with my nephew and she looked at him and said “I thought Terry played in a nice league”, because she mentioned Tom Hanks, so that was funny. So they were all very proud and very excited about it. Interviewer: “This is a big question, maybe you have thought about it, maybe you haven’t thought about it, I don’t know. But where do you think the All American Girls Professional Baseball League fits into the whole scheme of history, of American history?” (44:00) I think that it was an important thing at that time, because of the war I think that we did help people have a place to go and watch us play. I hope that it can continue. I think there are some young gals that are trying to get a team, I know I talked to them yesterday and I’m going to go and see them. But I hope it continues because I think there is a part. Interviewer: “What do you say to young people, when little girls come up to you and start talking to you?” Listen if you have the ability, and the desire and the love for the game, go for it, go for it. �Interviewer: “Any particular moments that you played that really stick out, what are the stories you tell while you are here at the reunion?” (45:01) I’ll tell you there is such a great group; we had such a great time but after one season there was three of us Canadians going back home. So we decided to go buy a car. We got $25 each and we bought this car for $75. And we took off for Canada. No, before we went on our last road trip we took the car into the mechanic, and said we just bought this car, we’re going to drive it to Canada when we got off our road trip. Just check it over, but we don’t want you to do anything to this car because we don’t want a big bill. So, we go off and come back from the road trip and we go back to the mechanics. “We fixed your car, it’s all ready to go”. We said “We told you not to do anything”. We said “Well how much is the bill?” he said “$2.50”. He put a new switch or something, you know. So anyway we took off for Canada. He said, “You will make it you don’t go more than 30 miles a day”. Well that was a fantastic trip. So that was one, you know, that was after the season. But, you know it was just things like this. You see them at the reunion and now we laugh about it. You know? (46:25) Interviewer: “Right, right. Any particular moments of the game that particularly stands out? Either a home run or did you catch something or is there anything you can remember?” You know, you hear this…there is no crying in baseball. I remember one night I was catching and a gal laid down a bunt, and I got the bunt and threw it to the first and it went miles over the first baseman. Do you think I had a tear? Yes I did. That was one. But I think catching the 19 innings, there were a lot of good moments. Peoria had never won a championship, but I can tell you we had a great team. Great team. Interviewer: “Who were the real challenges? What teams really gave you the biggest trouble?” (47:14) I think those 4 teams that started that always had good teams, like Rockford, Kenosha, Racine, and South Bend. They had good teams; I think they were the tough ones. Interviewer: “You know we are from Grand Rapids, all of us are from Grand Rapids.” Are you? Grand Rapids? I remember Grand Rapids. They were good too, the Chicks, oh yeah. Connie Wisniewski, the pitcher, oh she was good. She was one that went into Chicago later. But they were all good teams, they were all good. �Interviewer: “Well I want to just thank you so much.” You are all from Grand Rapids? Interviewer: “Yeah” (48:01) You never saw us play then, you are too young. Interviewer: “Too young for that I think yeah, yeah.” I remember Bill Allington who coached the Rockford Peaches had a movie and as far as I know that is the only one there is but one of the girls played it once at one of the reunions it was fun to see it… Interviewer: “Do you remember who it was that played it?” You know I can’t remember. Interviewer: “Because we are trying to find as much as we can for the film.” As far as I know Bill Allington was the coach of the Rockford Peaches, and I think it was the Rockford Peaches playing the Peoria Red Wings. I might be wrong about playing the Peoria Red Wings but there was, he had made a home movie at that time. I don’ think it was the whole game but I wonder who would know about it. Interviewer: “I’m going to start asking. But you said it was Bill Allington?” Yeah, oh he was the manager, of the Rockford Peaches. Interviewer: “Yeah” (49:07) Yeah. Interviewer: “We heard that there is a film of a whole game somewhere?” Well that could have been a whole game too. I can’t say yes or no, all I know that there was one, someplace along the way I saw clips of it, I’ll have to ask. Interviewer: “I’ve seen one which is a news feature at the time, so it wasn’t the whole game. But it was news, you know how the people would come out there and they would interview?” No, that wasn’t this. This was… �Interviewer: “This was a home movie, he…yeah” And there weren’t too many at the time. That would be a good one to get. Interviewer: “Yeah, absolutely.” I’ll certainly ask around too. Interviewer: “Please, I would really appreciate that. Did you go to the ball game yesterday?” Yes I was. Interviewer: “Tell us about that. What was that like.” Oh listen, the Chicago White Sox won. (50:00) Interviewer: “How was the baseball game?” Oh it was great but I tell you it was really hot out there. We left after the 6th inning. It just was so hot. Interviewer: “You guys were honored and brought out.” Oh, they were wonderful; we were honored and came out onto the field. They had a very good crowd, yeah. Interviewer: “Lots of applause.” Oh yes, all of these things are happening to us old gals, that’s what is keeping us young. Interviewer: “That’s wonderful. Just a quick question about, you said that it was difficult for you to even go to a game after you…” Yeah. Interviewer: “When did that change eventually? Did you go to ball games regularly after?” Yeah, after that I went there and I wanted to be out in it. And it was really hard. But I was going, I started night school, I was working, and I had made the decision that that was the proper thing to do. And as I look back I think I made the right decisions. Because even that league in the Chicago league, the boys were coming back from the service and the crowds weren’t so good either. Interviewer: “Well it worked out for you.” �It worked out, no complaints. And here we are. Interviewer: “You look beautiful, you do, you do.” Oh, thank you. Interviewer: “Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.” Thank you. And you are all from Grand Rapids? Interviewer: “Yup.” (51:37) �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_TDonahue Title A name given to the resource Donahue, Terry (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Donahue, Terry Description An account of the resource Terry Donahue was born in 1925 in a farming community in Saskatchewan, and grew up playing baseball with her family and friends, and softball at school. At the age of fifteen, she was recruited onto the Moosejaw Royals, a women's softball team, and was spotted by American scouts from there and went to the All American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1946. She played four seasons for the Peoria Redwings, starting as a utility player and winding up as a catcher. She left the league in 1950 for a softball league in Chicago, and stayed there to work for an interior design firm. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Illinois Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-06 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/06956280e40614b43b3b55d5d7f4f929.mp4 f2a6cac73b1e0613cc4deed266d76c37 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ee7204a431cc0405f065e7fe5a88a1d2.pdf fdd86f48f75c774251e7c78d76ebb60c PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WIMP BAUMGARTNER Women in Baseball Born: Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1930 Resides: Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 5, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, March 23, 2011 Interviewer: “Wimp, can you start by giving us a little bit of background on yourself? Where and when were you born, for instance?” I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1930 and the last of six kids. The other four were girls and in other words there were five girls in the family and one boy, but he died when he was eleven months old and I was born two months later, so that was it. Interviewer: “What did your family do for a living in those days?” My dad ran a grocery store and, of course, my mom worked in there with him and we lived above the grocery store. They moved a farmhouse over from where they built the Harvester in Fort Wayne. My grandpa moved houses, so he moved the farmhouse over there and my mom was the oldest girl in that family, so my grandpa gave it to the oldest girl, so that’s where we ended up, across from Zollner, Magnavox and Harvester. Interviewer: “Was your father able to keep his store through the thirties?” 56:03 Yeah, we got a lot of trade from the guys in the factory, cigarettes and ice cream. Mom and dad had a restaurant license and they served hamburgers and cheeseburgers. Stuff that—they would come in and get their potato chips and Twinkie cookies and all that good stuff. On the way out of the store they would get an ice cream cone to eat on the way back to the factories and I would have to go out in the yard and clean up their mess. 1 �Interviewer: “So, as long as the factories were going then you had business and you were ok. How did you get involved playing sports?” Well, the neighborhood boys. The boys lived close to where I did and of course I didn’t have any brothers, but we went back to Harvester Park, which was two blocks behind and they had a ball diamond back there and every night we congregated there, but we always had to be home by dark. That was it as far as—and oh, the men from Zollners, when they had the Zollner Pistons professional basketball team, before they moved to Detroit, they use to come over and shoot baskets at my basket with me, so we always had the big ball players coming in the store for their donuts and coffee and all that good stuff. 57:16 Interviewer: “Now, when you were playing—were you playing baseball with the boys or were they playing softball?” We played with any kind of ball we had. Interviewer: “With whatever they had, and did they have regular baseball bats or sticks?” No, my dad had a softball neighborhood men’s team, and Zollner put up a ball diamond across the street from our grocery store, which was between Zollner and Magnavox, and after work, or sometimes at noon, the guys would have an hour for lunch and they would be over there playing softball in the summertime, so I always had to run over and play ball with the big men. They let me bat, they let me run the bases, and I was at the height of my glory. 58:02 I got to know all the fellas that way. Interviewer: “Were there any other girls playing with them?” No, the other girls were outrun, I guess, I don’t know. Interviewer: “So, you’re sisters weren’t interested in this?” 2 �No, they was women or girls or something. Interviewer: “Alright now, do you remember when the women’s baseball team came to play in Fort Wayne?” They came in 1945, and of course, I went out to watch them and also, my phys-ed teacher at Fort Wayne Central, she went out and tried out and I went with her to the tryouts. I was just out there running around because I had no intention of playing with them or anything. We were on our way to the lake, so she went to the tryouts and then we were going to go to her cottage, her mom and dad’s cottage at the lake. So, we were out there playing around and she made the team, she was an underhand pitcher at that time, and I was her student in eighth grade, and of course I tagged her all over, and she was very, not demanding, but I mimicked her like kids do. 59:20 So, I’d go out and watch them play ball and I’d look at that and say, “geeze, I can do that”, you know, a cocky little kid, so when I graduated I tried out with Fort Wayne and, of course, they didn’t need an outfielder at that time, or anyplace else I could play, so they sent me to Chicago and up there, they made me into a catcher, and I was right where I should have been all the time. It felt real good and I got along good and I did pretty good because I went on the tour. Interviewer: “Alright, so you said you tried out for Fort Wayne, was that an individual tryout?” 59:58 No, this was a spring training deal. They put an ad in the paper you know, and the other softball players come and you know, we just performed in front of the manager at that time, that was Harold Greiner then, and he had a bar in town next to the softball diamond. Interviewer: “Do you have a sense of how many of those girls got sent on to Chicago or to the other teams?” 3 �I think there were three of us, and the rest got sent home, but I got to stay, I lucked out. Interviewer: “So, you go to Chicago and what team are you joining there?” It wasn’t a team; it was a whole big tryout. We were at a small hotel at the north end of town. They brought in four Cubans and Lefty Alvarez was one of those Cubans, of course none of them could talk English or anything. All they did was eat scrambled eggs and hamburgers and I don’t know what they drank, but that’s all they ate. I think that’s all they knew how to order. 1:05 Anyhow, from there we left on the tour. We had two teams, so there were a lot of girls there with fifteen or sixteen on a team, Chicago [Colleens] and the [Springfield] Sallies. I forget which team I was with first, but anyhow, midway through June they switched me to the other team, and I don’t remember which one I was with first. Interviewer: “So, you got to catch all the pitchers and not just one team?” Yeah, I ended up catching most all of them, yeah. Interviewer: “Now, as you were going along in that first season, how well were you doing as a player? Were you doing well as a catcher or as a hitter?” I did pretty well at both at that time, of course we were strictly overhand and it was new for the pitchers and new for batters and I was the first one that got to hit a home run on that whole tour. 2:07 I don’t know why I remember those things, but they must be important. Interviewer: “Do you remember who you hit it off of?” Heavens no, that was too long ago. Interviewer: “All right, now what was the daily life like as you were going on tour with these two teams?” 4 �Ok, we were all on one bus and we intermingle because, like I said, some of us switched back and forth on different teams. We got three dollars a day meal money, and usually if we were in a town, we were only there for one night or maybe two, so we always had dirty clothes to do. We always went out and ate at small restaurants, we didn’t have Burger King and McDonalds and that, so they just had mom and pop places, and what we had was trash food because we would very seldom order a meal. 3:06 If we were traveling—one time we were traveling from Saint something in Oklahoma, and we rode until about noon the next day to hit our next stop and it was continually that kind of stuff. We always stayed in air-cooled hotels, which was a nice little old fan up there in the middle of the room just barely going around and that was our air conditioning. Of course, all the windows were always up. We just moseyed around town and didn’t stay in the hotel too much because it was too hot. We did run into colored only drinking fountains and rest rooms and we had never seen that before, and it was in our face almost every day. Interviewer: “So, most of the players were from the Midwest and areas where they didn’t have the—or the Northeast or California?” Yeah, most of us were from the Midwest. 4:07 As I said, the Cubans were there and a lot from Michigan and a few from Indiana. Yeah, we had some from Redkey, down by Indianapolis and Ohio. We had some from Ohio and Illinois and that was about it, the Midwest and we didn’t have hardly anybody coming from somewhere else. Interviewer: “And if they were not coming up from the south, they wouldn’t have seen the segregation and all that kind of thing.” 5 �Mentioning the south and the ball players—every time we went in, I wouldn’t say every time, but a lot of the times we went in, they would ads in the paper that we were coming and they were to come out and tryout. Well, we picked up Sue Kidd in Arkansas, and she showed up with bib overalls on and I don’t want to make fun of Sue because she was a good player, but she was “back woods country, small town hardy”. I think all they had was a post office there with houses around. 5:10 Her dad was a Postmaster, but she showed up with a farmer haircut like the Amish, they put a bowl on their head and cut around it, but after she got on the bus with us , we were in Little Rock, she had to go back to Choctaw and pack her bag, and they brought her down the next day and she got on the bus and went with us. Her dad was all for it, he was a gung ho baseball man from way back. He always had ball teams and three boys. Sue had a couple brothers, Tommy and Buck, and they played good. After the first season I went home with Sue and we rode them hills back there. They were going to have a ball game the night we got there, because we traveled all day and everything, And they wanted Sue to pitch, so Sue pitched and they had—I had to catch because I was with her, and it was a fabulous time. 6:12 They come from out of those hills, I don’t know where those people come from because going down the road you don’t see too many houses. They are back in the hills someplace, but boy when they would have a ball game they would have a couple thousand people there and that was a lot of people back in the hills. Interviewer: “Now, when you were touring you would—you mentioned you were in Oklahoma, you were in Arkansas and those areas, and did you kind of go through the Southeast or Northeast? Where else did you go traveling?” 6 �We got to play in Natchez and New Orleans, in a ball field down there, at Pelican Park I think it was, and that was big time. The manager made sure we went to Antoine’s for dinner one day and we got three dollars a day for meal money and everything in there was about ten dollars and that was big bucks back then. 7:05 We had to go and we were all mad at him because we had to spend all our money on chicken and that was the cheapest thing on the menu. We managed that, we walked through the French Quarter and I mean, we got an education, all the way, you learn geography, you learn everything. You learn how they talk from down there and it was just—it was a good education for a kid the first time away from home. We never got to travel back in those days because our parents never got to go anywhere. We couldn’t because of the grocery store. Interviewer: “How much of an effort did they make to look after you? You had chaperone with you and so forth, but how did they keep track of you and keep you in line?” We had a couple on the tour that would kind of get lost once and a while, you know, run off or do something, but most of us, the first time away and we were all pretty young, so we didn’t get too wild. 8:09 We were half afraid to walk on some of those streets and at night we would play, but sometimes we would play day games, but we never wandered too far by ourselves at all because we didn’t know what was out there. Interviewer: “As you kept going, and get to Louisiana, do you keep going east and go all the way to the east coast?” Yeah, we went to Jackson, Mississippi, Baton Rouge and over to Alabama. We were in Tennessee; we played—the prettiest time I ever saw, even in major leagues, was in Memphis Tennessee. The have that red dirt down there you know, and the white lines on 7 �it and the green grass and the fence around it was green, and I don’t know why, but I sure do remember that park because it was so pretty. 9:11 From there we went back down to Mississippi. We backtracked and we went through Fort Smith Arkansas three times from three different directions, getting around to where we—the man got—a guy by the name of Frank Elve or Helve, he went ahead of us about two days or three days and he would go to these towns and have them book us. Of course he would have to talk to the chamber of commerce in all these towns and everything, but he kept ahead of us and he kept us moving, but glory, we went all over the country in three different times going in different directions. We were in Paris, Texas, Tyler, Texas and one of the big cities I think it was Austin-- Austin, Texas, that’s the capital, we were there because we saw the capital building. One other time, when we first started out, we went to Jefferson Missouri, and in Jefferson City, Missouri, the capital, they have this acoustic room. 10:15 It’s a great big lobby and the ceiling is real high and you could hear somebody whisper clear across the—see, I tell you, we got to see that kind of stuff. Oh, another thing too, in Joplin, Missouri we got to go through the Penitentiary. We were walking through the jail and them guys were just looking at us girls and we were scared to death to be in there. I know they were caged up, but we didn’t know the way they were looking at us bothered us because we had some fifteen and sixteen, I was eighteen, anyhow that was an experience. Interviewer: “Now, you didn’t complete that season with the touring teams?” No, I think it was in Mississippi, they sent a Piper cub down to pick me up and take me back to Peoria. We got back, Lenny Zintak was our manager and he came in the hotel room to tell me, “hey Wimp, I got good news for you. I’m sending you home”, and I 8 �thought, “oh God”, and I was about ready to bawl. 11:21 Then he said, “you have to go up to Peoria and be their catcher”, and I thought, “oh my golly”. We got to Peoria in this little old plane, I don’t even know who the pilot was, anyway, we got there and Peoria was playing over in Fort Wayne, my hometown, so we had to get back in this little old airplane and he flew me over to Fort Wayne. I caught that night and wasn’t introduced to the pitcher because I just got there in time for the game. They had a uniform that didn’t fit me, but I had to go out and catch anyhow, but that was fun. My mom and dad were there and I hadn’t seen them for two months, so they told me I was going to go home and I was homesick like everyone was. We sure did live through some things. 12:08 Then we got on the bus right after that and went back to Peoria and for two days I hadn’t been in a bed. We were traveling all night to get down to Mississippi and then they sent me someplace else up there and then I finally got to Fort Wayne and that was their last game of the series there, so I got back in the bus and we went back to Peoria. That was an all night trip and we got in about nine the next morning—that was living. Interviewer: “Once you got to Peoria, did you get a chance to settle down a little bit?” Yeah, they put me in a house, it wasn’t too far from the ballpark, and I had a room in there upstairs. A man and a woman who had two kids, nice kids, and I was within walking distance, so I could walk to the ballpark. I never did get on a bus and go downtown, I was afraid I’d get lost. Peoria’s pretty big and I didn’t know anything about it. 13:05 Interviewer: “So, were you their regular catcher then for the rest of the season?” 9 �I caught about the first three games and then Terry Donahue and I switched back and forth some. I was new and she didn’t have the arm I had, but she had more smarts than I had because she knew the girls better, so it worked out and I had a nice education on that. Interviewer: “So, you got to learn the hitters and learn what the pitchers could do?” Yeah, you only see then three days and then another team would come in or you would go somewhere else, so that was only for the month of August, because I got there at the end of July and the season was over on Labor Day and that’s when the play offs started. Of course, Peoria wasn’t in the play offs that year, that’s probably why they sent for me, but I couldn’t get them in the play offs, I know that. Interviewer: “So, what happens then when the season ends, that first season?” 14:05 That first season? Well, I didn’t have a car, I didn’t know anybody, so my landlord took me down to the bus station that night and I slept in the bus station that night and I took the bus to go home the next morning. That was an all night—well, we had to go up through Chicago because they didn’t have any buses go straight across the northern part of Indiana, so we had to go to Chicago, stay there half a day and I finally got home. Interviewer: “When you got back home, did you go back to work in the store or what did you do?” I was now eighteen and I could get a job, so I went down the hill to Magnavox. Well, that hill between Magnavox and us was all down hill and that’s where they had the soapbox derby every year. Well, when I was a little kid I had a buggy and I went and took the wheels off the buggy and put it on an ironing board and put an orange crate on 10 �top of that, because we had orange crates from the grocery store, and I made a little—I just steered it by rope with rope on one side and the other. 15:13 Of course back then you could do that. Anytime you could get wood with four wheels on it, you could run it down the hill, so I would play with the boys out there and I could beat them all with my buggyies, but I went down to get in the soapbox derby and they laughed at me and I had to go home and I bawled all the way home. They wouldn’t let the girls do anything. Something else too—in high school—I wanted to take drafting and stuff and I wanted to be an Architect—that was a boys class and they wouldn’t let me in—that’s the story of my life—boys always got in my way, but times have changed. Interviewer: “So, you took a job with Magnavox then for that winter?” Yeah, for the winter Interviewer: “Did you know you were going back to the league the next year?” Yes, Magnavox happily laid you off all summer, so I went back to Magnavox the next fall, and then the third winter I went to Fort Wayne Catering Company and worked there in the wintertime. 16:11 I would save my money to go to college. Interviewer: “So, the second season, how did that start?” Ok, I got to—I went to spring training with Muskegon. Interviewer: “And where was spring training that year?” Cape Girardeau, Missouri—that was—there were four teams down there. The fort Wayne Daisies was one, we were one, well, Muskegon was one. The Fort Wayne Daisies picked up Joan Weaver and the Weaver kids, all three of them and they hung on to them players I guess, they didn’t let them go. Then at the end of spring training I was with Kalamazoo—I keep saying Kalamazoo because Muskegon was with Kalamazoo, 11 �but I didn’t move to Kalamazoo. At the end of spring training they sent me on a South Bend bus. Evidently I was traded to South Bend somewhere in spring training and that’s how I got to South Bend. 17:18 You pack your bag and get on the bus. I looked at them and I didn’t know any of them, so—the veterans don’t talk to the rookies too much, so I just went back and sat back and then they put me in a house there within walking distance of the thing—the ballpark. Interviewer: “ Now, did you actually go to play in Muskegon or were you just assigned to them and then switched to the Blue Sox?” I was assigned to them after Peoria. I don’t know how I got from Peoria to Muskegon. You get a letter and that’s where you go. That’s where you report for spring training and we had to drive down—some of the other players from Pennsylvania and stuff were going through Indiana you know, so we kept track of each other, so I hitched a ride with some of them to get down to Cape Girardeau. Interviewer: “What was Cape Girardeau like anyway?” 18:15 Oh, I don’t know, it was on the Mississippi you know and the train tracks down there— the bog down there and they had a ball diamond down there and everything and I guess it flooded out half of the spring time, but we got inland a little bit more, but not much. We were right down along the river park and that’s where the main part of the town was. It was just a southern town, that’s all I can say, with a lot of railroad tracks and barges going up and down the river and that was something for us to see. Interviewer: “All right, I want to make sure we are kind of following the course of your career here, so you trained with Muskegon, but you did not go to Muskegon?” I went there—no, I got on the bus to South Bend. 12 �Interviewer: “You went to South Band?” Yes, they just told me to get on the bus with South Bend. 19:12 Interviewer: “Did you play for South Band that season then?” Yeah Interviewer: “Ok, was this 1950 now?” Yeah, this was 1950. Interviewer: “Now, who were the really good veteran players for the South Bend team at that point?” They had Marge Stefani, she was a real good player, but right now, I think this was the second year she had become a chaperone, so she was a chaperone when I got there. Bonnie Baker was a second baseman and she was one of the main players and the stars, more or less, of the whole thing. Shirley Stavroff was the catcher, she was the one that made me sit on the bench for a couple years, but she was better. She was a pretty fair hitter and she was from southern Illinois, I think. Jean Faut was the wife of Karl Winsch, and she was probably one of the best, one of the top three pitchers in the league. She had two perfect games in a row and all that good stuff. 20:16 I caught a couple one hitters from her later on when I started catching. When Stavroff left the team and I moved in and I was lucky enough to play the last couple years, 1953 and 1954 as a first string catcher. Interviewer: “Now, before that, would you just rotate occasionally?” Yeah, for a double header and I always caught batting practice to help the pitchers out with target and stuff. I would always hurry up and bat first and then I put my stuff on and start catching the rest. 13 �Interviewer: “Would they use you as a pinch hitter or put you anywhere else?” I pinch hit just a couple times, but they never put me in to pinch run. I just wasn’t that speedy. 21:05 Interviewer: “Were you a good defensive catcher?” Yeah, more so Interviewer: “What did you do to keep the base stealers from going wild? Because there were some women that were really good at stealing bases.” It wasn’t the catchers—how are you going to stop them, it’s the pitcher that they’re running on, but you usually knew who was going to run and who wasn’t going to run. I had a pretty good arm down there and I caught some and some you didn’t get, but it wasn’t too much one way or the other. I would catch some and not catch some. Interviewer: “You were kind of like modern baseball now, you do steal, you do run on the pitcher and if a catcher had a good arm you’re a little more careful.” I would shoot one down to first or third sometimes, just to keep them a little closer because that wasn’t so far away and you could keep them a little more alert to what they’re trying to do. 22:04 Interviewer: “And then did you have to call the games?” Yeah, and you pretty well knew what your pitchers could pitch and you knew a little bit how the batters were standing in the box. You knew some of that stuff and you would pick it up and, of course, Karl knew some, the manager, because he was a pitcher in the big leagues. He didn’t last too long, but during the war he did get to play. I enjoyed 14 �what you really learned about the game that fascinated me. I was one who wanted to know. Interviewer: “That’s good for a catcher.” It helps you out a lot. Interviewer: “You basically played, through your career, with the Blue Sox, or did you?” I finished up with the Blue Sox. Interviewer: “Did you play for anyone else along the way?” They loaned me to Kalamazoo for a month in 1950. Their catcher blew out a knee and I went up there and then they finally got a catcher traded in from another team and I went back to South Bend, that’s where you belonged 23:10 Interviewer: “Now, when you were playing in South Bend, could your family and friends from Fort Wayne come over and watch you?” No, but when we got in Fort Wayne I had the whole family there you know, and friends and stuff. I hit a home run in Fort Wayne one time and that was nice, and I don’t remember if it won the game or not. I didn’t get as many singles as a lot of people got, but I’d just as sooner get a double or I never did get a triple, I don’t think, because I’m not that fast, but I got a few home runs. Interviewer: “You had some power?” Yeah, if I hit the ball it usually went pretty fast from wherever. If it went in high enough, I don’t know, but my favorite place was down third base and the short stop area on the left side of the diamond. Interviewer: “Did you play for any championship teams?” 24:08 15 �Oh yeah, I fell into that, in 1951, 1952, we were loaded with good pitchers, Sue Kidd, Janet Ramsey, and Jean Faut, and I got to catch a little bit on that. In 1951 we won the pennant that year and then we went on to win the little series at the end, and we were champions of everything. Then in 1952 we had some—well, we didn’t have a lot of the old players because twelve of them—quite a few of them, I think six or eight, walked out at the end of 1951 and I got to catch in 1951 and 52. At the end of the season in 1951 and in 1952 we won both of them. Interviewer: “And one of those seasons you only had like twelve players left on your roster?” Yeah, we was the “dutiful dozen”, that’s what the newspaper said, and that was interesting. 25:07 Interviewer: “But you got the job done. All right, now you played until the league ended in 1954. Those last couple years could you tell the league was having trouble?” Yeah, they were having financial trouble. The caliber of the game was still pretty good in 1953, but the older players were getting older and they were leaving. If they started in 1943,44 and 45, a lot of those was getting out at 1950, 52 and 53, so they were bringing in a lot of rookies and people who had never played baseball before, of course you all had to go through that, everybody that got in the league went through that. It was just one of those things and in TV and everything and of course the major leagues took over the television, and people stayed home, they didn’t come out to watch us much. We finished the season, but you that was the end of the thing, we knew we weren’t coming back next year, so everybody took their uniforms or their shirt and jackets and stuff. 26:17 16 �Interviewer: “In the 1953 season, you did go to the championship series again and Grand Rapids won that year, but I think you were the ones that they beat, or else they beat Fort Wayne, I forget.” 1953 wasn’t us Interviewer: “Fort Wayne, all right, I’m getting my league history here—I’ve got to make sure I got that straight, but you had—the Blue Sox had a couple of good years in there, okay. Now, if the league had kept going would you have stayed with it a while longer?” Probably, but I don’t know. See, in 1953 when the season was over, and I knew we would have another 1954 yet. I started college in the fall of 1953 and then in the spring of 1953, when it was time to go to spring training, I saved all my skips in college and I didn’t skip any out, so I could go to spring training, so they let me go to spring training. 27:15 I had to come back and take finals, but I took off after a ball game one night in South Bend and drove down to Indianapolis, where I was going to school, and I got down there and slept a couple of hours and then I had to go and take a couple finals and then a couple in the morning and one in the afternoon. Then I had to drive back up to south Bend and that night I think I had seven errors in that ball game. I overthrew second base, I don’ know, I always threw to first base and I was so sleepy and everything I didn’t know what I was doing. Anyway, that was the end of school for that year and I got out of that all right. Interviewer: “All right, and then you had to get through the last season. where there fewer teams by then or were there other signs aside from smaller crowds? How else could you tell there were problems?” 28:14 17 �I think we started with six teams that season, but somewhere in the middle we lost one of them. I know we ended up with five, but I don’t think for the whole season. It was sad because, you know, I got to play in 1951, 52 and 53 regularly and it takes that long to learn the game and the people and everything else. Just about the time you’re ready to be a good strong veteran for four or five more years, four or five more years wasn’t there. That was sad, but you know, you met an awful lot of nice people and I can go all over the country now and visit former players for South Bend or any place since we have these reunions and things. 29:03 Interviewer: “Now, you went back to college after that was over and what did you get your degree in?” The same thing all the rest of them got it in. No, I ended up—I can teach English, I can teach biology, I can teach physical education, genetics. I took a lot of biology because I was thinking of going into being a doctor, but then I figured I wasn’t that smart. By that time I had a lot of biology, vertebrae zoology, en vertebrae zoology, so I ended up being a biology teacher, phys ed, health and a little bit of science teacher. Interviewer: “Where did you teach?” I started out in a little place outside of Elkhart. I went back up to live in south Bend because some the old players, Blue Sox, had a basketball team and I wanted to play a couple of years of basketball, so I taught in a little country school in Jimtown, we were the “Jimtown Jimmy’s”, but it was a country school and there were very nice families there, you know, just farm families. 30:23 We were just on the south end of Elkhart where the railroad went through and some of the colored lived on the south of the railroad, so we had those players, and those kids, along with the white kids, I had some 18 �real good teams, track teams, volleyball teams and basketball. We had a good little school, and I enjoyed that a lot. Interviewer: “Did you stay at that one school or did you move?” I was there for twelve years and then my dad died. He went to bed one night and never go out, and then I went back to live with my mom because I didn’t want her to have to move and everything, and then I worked at Leo High School in--just east of Fort Wayne. 31:09 My old superintendent in Jimtown now the superintendent down in East Allen, so he called on the phone up there during the daytime and the office lady answered and when he was in Jimtown he was the principal and then superintendent , well she recognized his voice on the telephone, so she came down to get me to tell me I had a phone call, so I went back, walking through the hall, and I said, “Who is it?”. She said, “It’s Roberts”, and I said, “What does he want?” She said, “you just tell him you can’t come”, so he wanted me to come down to East Allen, so I ended up in East Allen, and it was closer to home. I could drive every day. Interviewer: “Now, as you were teaching and coaching and doing all of this, did people know that you played professional baseball?” Yeah, because some of them remembered because Elkhart’s just a little ways from South Bend and Mishawaka, so they use to come and watch us play. 32:10 Then when we went back, we still had a couple games in South Bend because every year or two they would all get together and put on a little exhibition for the local people you know, because it was the newspapers that would kind of want us to do some of that stuff. Of course one night half of Jimtown came over to watch because they had seen some of it before. I just had a good life all the way through. 19 �Interviewer: “You become an educator, and you’re teaching in a period when they start to open up things in schools for women to do sports and this kind of thing, so were you connected with that?” Yeah, we started out; of course half the principals didn’t want the girls playing anyhow. When I started teaching, the first thing I said to myself, I said, “these kids are going to play”, so I had a real good principal though, that Mr. Sheets, he was the one that hired me, and he had three daughters and that helped. 33:16 He left and became the superintendent and then I had Mr. Jones and he had two daughters and that helped. I got those kids in the gym playing volleyball games and basketball games with just the little local schools around. We had maybe six games a year is all to start with and we were out there playing. I had a couple friends that I said we played basketball in South Bend and they were school teachers, so we played—I played Cynthia Sawyer’s kids in south Bend, they were on the west side of town and they would drive over. This is one funny thing, Cynthia Sawyer came over to have a track meet with her kids and a lot of them were colored and some whites, and then I had the same thing, so they came over in two cars. 34:08 All these kids getting out of these two cars and my kids were sitting out there in the grass waiting for them you know, because we had already warmed up somewhat, and those kids are getting out of the car and my kid, half of them were colored and these other guys got out of the car and they said, “my God they’re all black, what are we going to do?” They were scared seeing these city colored kids coming out there, but we beat them. You know, it’s funny how they acted sometimes. One time I had them up to the lake, my GAAA kids, and half of them were colored and they were sitting up there in the yard under the trees and the other white kids were out there on the piers and I said, “How 20 �come you guys are not out there swimming in the sun?” She said, “We don’t want to get a sunburn”. Well here dumb me, I didn’t even know they get sunburns, so it was an education having them and they were just good kids. I can’t believe how—see, I just lucked into all that stuff. 35:06 Interviewer: “Did you coach girls teams or women’s teams? As you were saying, the women were going to play did you do both? Did you coach boys teams as well as women’s teams?” No, you couldn’t get into the boys world, that’s all there was to it, no way under the sun. I had to fight to get the gym once a week afterwards. Then we had a bowling league and we went into town and went bowling, the girls. Then the boys were mad because they couldn’t go in and go bowling, because I wasn’t going to take them, they were boys. I’d take the girls because they wouldn’t let us in their gym; I’m not going to let them in the bowling alley. Interviewer: “Did this get a little easier over the course of time? Did people get used to having girls play and this kind of stuff?” Yeah, it took a while though, but finally you know, the kids I had come back from college and stuff and they had been playing a little bit in college and it just grew out. 36:09 Another thing, they finally got a women’s advisory board down at the IHASSA down in Indianapolis, well we had to run for that, so I talked to my principal about it and he urged me to go into it and to write a letter to all the principals around the area. Well, I did what I was told and I got voted on down there, so I was on that first advisory board and I think I was on it about six years or so. They finally made this one lady a cocommissioner, now that helped and now the girls were ready to play and this was in the 21 �late sixties probably that we finally go t noticed down there in Indianapolis. We were at the GAA was kind of the statewide and we had our own tournaments and then the state finally recognized that too. 37:05 They couldn’t hide it too much longer, so then title nine came in and we were off and running. Interviewer: “So when you were playing, did you think of yourselves at all as sort of pioneers or people who were opening things up for women?” We didn’t know we were pioneers until fifty years later. A pioneer only means you’re old I guess, I don’t know. Interviewer: “It means you’re first, but it does seem there’s a pretty good continuity here. You’re playing in this women’s league and you come back and you stay connected with sports and as a teacher you’re actively involved in getting more things for girls to do and building that up, and that’s drawing on your own experience at least knowing they can go do it.” Girls can do anything; just turn them loose, that’s all you got to say. They’re intelligent you know and they don’t take much guff from anybody anymore. They’re raised different today and it’s a different world. Just think, I got to be part of it. 38:20 Interviewer: “Now, do you look back over that whole experience of playing professional ball, what do you think the main effects of that were for you? What did it do for you?” It opened you up a little bit to fight for what you wanted. I was lucky enough, I had good principals and I was surrounded with good people. A lot of athletic women—you don’t know how to say all that stuff. I think it was the right time or I never would have gotten into that and if they didn’t move me into Fort Wayne I probably wouldn’t have even 22 �known they existed. I lucked out there and I happened to be the right age. I wasn’t too smart, but I sure knew when to take advantage of something. 39:16 Interviewer: “You managed to become a science teacher. I think you’re pretty qualified and smart. I would be willing to bet that anyway. Anything else you would like to add to the record here before we close out the interview?” Interviewer: “Were you connected at all with the League of Their Own movie and the beginnings of the players association?” Yeah, we got that notice in a newsletter, I think, that they were going to do all that stuff and we just needed—a couple of us decided—Sue Kidd was still in South Bend, she went along and Jean Harding went, a couple of them around. You got in a car and went to New York. Interviewer: “Cooperstown?” Yeah, but first you had to go to Chicago. There’s one good thing about that, in Chicago, I was trying to think of the area where we were. 40:18 Interviewer: “You were in Skokie.” Yeah Skokie. In Skokie we were out to this ball diamond and we all had red shirts on with big numbers on them you know, and everything and we were all working out, running around the field’ hitting fly balls, and throwing and catching and this big bus pulls out there along the side over there. Of course we had a fence around there and this big bus comes and it stops out there and these big guys, big burly guys, get off that bus and here comes a couple other women off, but they were far away, and these guys walk way around the outfield and they just stand out there. 41:08 We were watching them and wondering what they were there for and here comes Madonna walking down off the 23 �sidewalk and of course we were all looking at her. Rosy O’Donnell was there and she was already out there talking to us and everything. Gina Davis, we didn’t see her there. She never was up there. They had the little sister though, Lori Petty, she was there, so that was our introduction to-Interviewer: “Hollywood” Yeah, they came in and landed at the airport and she got off there and I guess nobody was supposed to know she was in town and she had all this rig-a-ma-roll with her, but she made a nice entrance. She was a pretty good ball player too, I mean, she was one of the better ones. Interviewer: “Did you have to teach her a lot?” Not all that, you could see she’s athletic when you see her dance and that and she could do about anything she wanted to. 42:14 Interviewer: “Some of the other players talked about going there and they said she was in good shape, but she didn’t know how to play ball, but she learned and she worked at it.” She wasn’t too bad and probably the best one, because she use to play some, was Rosy O’Donnell, but Madonna wasn’t too bad though. Interviewer: “You also went to Cooperstown and were part of the stuff they filmed there too?” Yeah, we went there and there was a thing that happened there the last night at Cooperstown. Penny Marshal wanted to finish up shooting, so we were there until about four or four thirty in the morning and we had to walk down this ramp you know, and this little room, they had a glassed in case right in the middle of the room, so you either had to 24 �go around to the right or the left as you came down the ramp. We came down that ramp I bet twenty-four times. Penny had to keep reshooting everything, so I always went around the back of the little ramp, so I wasn’t in the way of the film too much because I didn’t want to be--anyway I’m going around that back. 43:22 Anyhow, Gina Davis, the old Gina Davis, that took her place was going to walk around that way also, and she would see her sister on the other side and they would finally embrace when they saw each other, in the movie stuff. Well anyhow, were walking around this little thing and then we walk back up again and after she’d get partway up there, she had a little flask under her arm and she’d take a little nip out of that flask and then we’d walk down that ramp again and around that thing and sometimes if she had to hesitate back there she’s take a nip from the flask. I wasn’t too far behind her and thinking, no wonder we’re down here until four thirty in the morning. She had to empty that thing almost because she was real busy on it. 44:15 She was something else, I’ll tell you. She tried to catch a ball out there and she broke a fingernail and then she had to stop and the whole film would have to start over on that. She should have been the whole movie herself, I’ll tell you. That was the old Gina Davis. That was funny. Nobody else probably told you that one. Interviewer: “What did you think of the movie?” I thought it pretty well had a lot of truth in it, but a couple things—they never fell over the fence and came up with a hot dog in their mouth or something like that, but that was Pepper Pare, Pepper pare made some of that stuff, but that’s Pepper Pare, she always had to have her two cents worth in. There’s a lot of them that got to have their two cents worth in, but that makes everything. 45:15 Interviewer: “What do you think they did a particularly good job with?” 25 �In the movie, it was a pretty fair story because that little boy that was in the movie, we had a little boy on our team. Jean Faut had a little boy, little Larry, that traveled with us and we would pick on him somewhat, we tried not to because if you were picking on him the other girls would tell you to quit, but we teased him, and Jean, she really, she kept her cool, picking on her kid, but he was a nice kid and Jean was—you couldn’t beat Jean Faut, that’s all there was to it and Karl was alright. Sometimes it wasn’t so good having your husband managing you, and Jean had some hard times with that, but hey, that’s life. When you’re that close together all the time, twenty-four hours a day. 46:16 Interviewer: “It really does sound like a great experience.” Your whole life, you sit down and—I never talked about my whole life before, but the best part of it, one of the best parts, was playing ball. You can’t beat playing ball and meeting the people that you meet and learning the geography of the country and just doing what you could do. It’s a free country and you could just do anything. Nobody can stop you if you don’t want them to. Interviewer: “Now you get to come back to these reunions and having been through my second one now, they are really something. Had you been going to the reunions since the beginning?” I hit everyone, and one year we had one—we had a meeting in St. Petersburg and the same year we went to Cooperstown. I was all ready—I sent my money in down there to Florida and then two of the people I was going to go to Florida with decided they were going to Cooperstown. 47:23 Well, there goes my ride down to Florida, so I rode with them and went over to Cooperstown and that’s why I was in Cooperstown when they 26 �were doing some of that, but that was all right. I wasn’t on the board yet or anything, things that didn’t bother too much. Interviewer: “Unless we got something else here guys, we are done. We are done and thank you very much for coming and talking to us.” Thank you 27 �28 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_MLBaumgartner Title A name given to the resource Baumgartner, Mary Louise "Wimp" (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baumgartner, Mary Louise Description An account of the resource Mary Louise "Wimp" Baumgartner was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1930. She played in the AAGPBL from 1949 to 1954 as a catcher for Peoria and South Bend. She went to college in the off season, and after the league folded she became a teacher and coach for girls' athletic teams, and was actively involved in the promotion of girls' sports in Indiana. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Illinois Baseball players--Indiana Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-05 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d7c8e56a947cf14c227df7c95a40a7c7.mp4 f2007af960eb8ef03eb27a4ca67fb2b5 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cfb2f77e51df20e40bcaebd46ab1d604.pdf f4eb4baaa39ebb63af181aa15cc23b2e PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW KATE VONDERAU Women in Baseball Born: Fort Wayne, Indiana September 26, 1927 Resides: Albuquerque, New Mexico Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 5, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, March 6, 2011 Interviewer: “Kate, can you begin with a little bit of personal background to start with? Where and when were you born?” I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on September 26, 1927 Interviewer: “What did your family do for a living at that time?” My dad was a maintenance man for the Fort Wayne public schools and my mother was a bookkeeper, so they both worked. Interviewer: “Were they able to keep those jobs through the thirties?” Yes Interviewer: “So you had enough to eat, at least, growing up. How many kids were in the family?” There were three of us, I had two brothers, two older brothers, so I was the youngest and the only girl, which is an advantage you know. Interviewer: “How did you windup getting into sports?” 14:34 My dad was always interested in sports and I started with him and we would go out and play catch and I got interested in playing softball. I started playing softball with a sand lot team in Fort Wayne and I started that when I was about twelve years old. I played all through my teens with that team until the All American Girls came to town and they had tryouts, so I tried out with them and I was able to make the team and I started playing 1 �with them in 1946. I had to wait until I graduated from high school and I started playing with them. 15:20 Interviewer: “So did you first learn about the league in 1946 or had you heard about it before that?” I heard about it before that because Fort Wayne had a team and they started playing, I think it was, about 1943, so I had known about it before 1946. Interviewer: “Was that the team that moved from Minnesota?” They came from Milwaukee. Interviewer: “Milwaukee, I knew one of them did and Grand Rapids came form someplace, so 1944 or 45 in there someplace, not 43 right away.” Yes Interviewer: “You’re aware of the league, you were playing organized ball, was that a popular thing for girls to do?” Yes it was, there were a lot of softball teams in Fort Wayne, a lot of leagues and most girls of teenage were playing on some kind of organized softball team. Interviewer: “What position did you normally play?” 16:17 Fist of all first baseman and then we ran out of catchers, so I started catching and that became my position. Interviewer: “All right, now when you were catching in softball, did you do the things that baseball catchers will do? Do you try to call pitches or any of that kind of thing?” We didn’t do that too much in softball because our softball pitchers back in those days only had one pitch—to get it over the plate, so I didn’t have to call too many pitches. I 2 �just had to catch whatever they threw at me, so I didn’t have to do that too much in that day and age. Interviewer: “Now, tell me about the tryout then for the league. How did that take place?” I don’t remember too much about that really. They had a day when they had people come to a certain place in Fort Wayne and I don’t even remember what that place was. It was someplace in Fort Wayne, so I didn’t have to leave the city and we had, of course, throwing and hitting and that sort of thing and played practice games and they evaluated us form all of that and they decided whether or not they thought we would be successful in the league. 17:35 Interviewer: “Do you have a sense of how many girls were trying out then?” I don’t recall—I don’t recall at all. Interviewer: “Do you figure a few dozen or a few hundred or two?” Oh no, not a hundred, maybe a couple dozen at the most. Interviewer: “Were you trying out simply to get into the league or were you actually trying out for the Fort Wayne team?” Just to get into the league at that time, but I was then taken by the Fort Wayne team and I played with them and I played with Fort Wayne, which is my hometown. 18:28 Interviewer: “Was that the first place you played for?” Yes Interviewer: “Who were some of the veteran players on that team when you joined it?” 3 �Let’s see, Dotty Collins was on that team and Dolly Schroeder, I can’t remember too many of the others at that time, those are the two that come to my mind immediately. I guess they were the most prominent two. Interviewer: “When you joined, you mentioned that you had to wait until your high school graduation before you started to play, so you missed whatever kind of spring training they had that year?” No, I did go to spring training. I went to Cuba and I don’t remember what year that was that I went to spring training in Cuba. Interviewer: “Cuba was 1948 maybe?” 19:16 I went to Pascagoula one year and then I went to Cuba another year for spring training, but the dates escape me, I can’t relate the dates to the places. Interviewer: “Those we can track down, but do you remember what year was your first season then? When did you start playing?” 1946 Interviewer: “I think Cuba was a couple years later than that, 1948 or something like that. So, you joined the Fort Wayne team, do you remember your first game?” No, I really don’t—I remember one of the games—I caught Dolly Collins and she had a tremendous curve ball and I would start in one position and catch the ball and by the time I caught it I was two feet to the right of where I started in order to catch it, so she had a really tremendous curve ball. 20:16 Interviewer: “Now, did some of those go as passed balls or wild pitches? Would you lose some of her pitches? As a catcher would you miss some of them?” 4 �Oh no, not too many, not too many, I could usually catch up with it somewhere along the line. Interviewer: “There were a number of players in the league who were sort of notorious as base stealers. You get someone like Sophie Kurys stealing two hundred in one season and that kind of thing.” There was only one like that, and it was Sophie Kurys. Interviewer: “Right, now did you get much of a chance to throw batters out?” Oh yeah, a lot Interviewer: “Were you good at it?” Yeah, I was fairly good at it, and I had a pretty good arm and threw to second base on the line pretty well. If the pitcher game me time, I could usually get it there on time. A lot of times the pitcher didn’t give you time to do that. 21:10 Interviewer: “Were you a good hitter?” No-- in softball I was a really good hitter. I usually got two or three hits every game, but in baseball the ball was smaller and the pitchers had more control of the different pitcher, so I was not a very good hitter in baseball, which was too bad, but that’s the way it goes. Interviewer: “Were you a good defensive catcher though?” Yes, I was that Interviewer: “Even in this day, you can have a low batting average if you can do the rest of the job. How long did you stay in the league?” I was in the league about eight years, until 1953. 5 �Interviewer: “That’s a pretty good stretch there. Now at the time you joined the league, how much of the rules and regulations was on dress and behavior? How much of that was still in place?” It was the dress code, having to dress in dresses each time you left the bus, that was still in place, but the charm school was gone, I never had to do that, but we did have to follow the dress code pretty closely and we had to know fraternization rules, we were not to fraternize with the other teams and that sort of thing, so those types of things were still in effect. 22:34 Interviewer: “Did they regulate things like who people could go out on dates with or that sort of thing?” Yeah, the chaperones watched that pretty closely. Interviewer: “What did you think of the chaperones?” They were very good. The chaperones we had on the teams I played for were all very good, and I liked them a lot. We couldn’t have done without them. Interviewer: “What about the managers?” The managers were also ok. I played for Jimmy Foxx and he was about like he was in the movie, but was certainly a gentleman, but he wasn’t always as sober as he could have been, but he was always a gentleman. I played for Max Carey, I played for Bill Wambsganns, and they were both major league ball players and they were both very good, so I played for some good manager. I played for Leo Schrall in Peoria and he was a teacher at one of the colleges in Peoria, I don’t remember what the name of it was. 23:46 He was a very good manager, he was interested in teaching us actually—how to 6 �do things. The others assumed that we knew everything, so he was more a teacher than he was a coach, so it was very good to play for him. Interviewer: “What kind of living accommodations did you have?” When I played for Fort Wayne I lived at home, but when we were on the road, of course, we lived in hotels and when I played with, like Muskegon, the chaperones found us private homes to live in and the living accommodations were good. We were always very comfortable and the chaperones made sure of that, so we were very well supervised. They took good care of us because we were just youngsters and they watched us pretty carefully. 24:34 Interviewer: “How much did they pay you to start?” I would just guess, off the top of my head, sixty five dollars a week or something like that, which was a lot of money back in those days and especially if you’re living at home because you didn’t have any expenses. On the road, all your expenses were paid, so I didn’t have to spend a lot of my money, but when I lived in Muskegon I had to live in somebody else’s home and then I had some expenses. I always had plenty of money. Interviewer: “Did you save some of that money?” Oh yeah. And I went to school later and I went to school, and I went to school, and I went to school. Interviewer: “We’ll get into that a little later on here. Now, tell me about some of the spring training experiences. You said you made the trip down to Cuba, what do you remember about that?” 25:29 I remember that—that was at the time when Castro was up in the hills and people down in Havana were shaking that he was going to come down there and capture the city, 7 �which I guess he did eventually. The food was not edible as far as I was concerned and I lived on the pineapples they sold on the street corner. We were very popular with—the games were very popular and well attended and people really appreciated the way we played the game, so it was interesting, very interesting. Interviewer: “Did you also recruit players in Cuba?” Yes, we still have a few of them; well we still have one of them that’s here. Have you interviewed her? She’s-Interviewer: “Lefty Alvarez” Ah huh, Isabel ah huh, she’s interesting. I played with another one; her name was Marrero, Mirtha Marrero, I think, who was a pitcher, so when they announced, before the game they announced the battery, so when they announced the battery she was pitching, and they and they announced Marrero and Vonderau. 26:53 Interviewer: “Where else did you go for spring training?” Ah, Pascagoula, which was not too bad, but it was a little buggy and we lived in barracks and the weather was very hot, I remember that. We had trouble staying out in the sun all day long and we would get so sunburned we could hardly stand it, but otherwise it was ok. Interviewer: “In addition to sort of doing your training down there, did you do any barnstorming or traveling around playing?” Yes we did, we played there in Pascagoula and that area, and then we played games all over, way back up to our hometowns. If it was in Muskegon, we would play games all the way back up until we got there. 27:54 We did a lot of playing in states along the way. 8 �Interviewer: “How long did you play in Fort Wayne?” How long? I played with Fort Wayne several times. I would play with fort Wayne and get traded away and get traded back, so I’d say maybe four or five years with Fort Wayne. Interviewer: “What was the first team you got traded to?” Muskegon, Muskegon Lassies Interviewer: “Did they trade you before the season or in the middle of the season?” That, I don’t remember, I would have to look at my baseball card. Interviewer: “Were you sorry to leave home or were you looking forward to the adventure when you left?” 28:46 I was looking forward to being on another team. It was always an adventure. I remember getting traded to Chicago, the Chicago Colleens, and when I got to Chicago I had about five dollars in my pocket and I had to borrow money from one of my friends to get where I was going and where I was supposed to be. I was a little bit short. Interviewer: “Was it different playing in these different towns? Was Muskegon different from Fort Wayne or Chicago, either of them?” The game was pretty much the same. It was always different playing for a different manager, but the game itself was not that much different. Interviewer: “What about the surroundings and the people who came to the games?” That might have been a bit more different. Playing in my hometown, I think the people were a little more hostile than they were in other towns where I wasn’t that well known. It’s always hard to play in your own hometown. 29:48 9 �Interviewer: “They were hostile when you were playing for Fort Wayne?” Yes, because I was from Fort Wayne and if I made a mistake, that was pretty bad news because I was a Fort Wayne native. Interviewer: “Did you have a lot of steady fans there?” Oh yes, a lot of fans that came every day for every game we played and every night, so they were the same fans day and night after night, and they heckled you night after night. They paid to do that, so that was their privilege. Interviewer: “What kind of people went to the games?” Just ordinary, average, run of the mill people. Interviewer: “Were they all ages?” Yes, all ages Interviewer: “Men and women?” Yeah, yeah, and I think they were probably more—probably a little bit older because the younger people were gone to war, so these were all people who were a little bit older than they would have been had they been able to go to was, so they were a little bit older. 31:04 Interviewer: “In the late forties we didn’t have a was going on. You got Korea, but that started up in 1950 though, so you got a certain amount of that there too. Are there particular moments in your playing career that stand out? When you think back to playing ball, what do you think of?” Well, I think of the game itself I guess because I loved playing so much. You can stand any kind of conditions if you like to play, so—people talk about playing in those skirts, 10 �well, we didn’t care what we played in as long as we got to play so, it was the game itself and getting to play the game and the competition. It was just fun. 31:51 Interviewer: “What separated that game from the softball you had been playing before?” Well, the competition was better and a little more intense, and the game itself was a little more difficult. The hitting was more difficult and the bases were longer and the pitching was overhand, so the game was a little bit harder to play, but it was still just as much fun. Interviewer: “Where else did you play? You mentioned you were in Muskegon, you were in Chicago, and you were in Fort Wayne and Peoria. What was the team there?” The Peoria Red Wings Interviewer: “Did they last only a short time?” Oh no, they were in the—Chicago is the one that lasted only a short time, but Peoria was –they were in the league quite a while. 32:47 They weren’t one of the original teams, but they were one of the teams that lasted about eight years or something like that. Interviewer: “Now when you were playing for these different teams, did any of them make it to a championship series?” Yeah, we did with Muskegon we went to the championship. Interviewer: “Now, did you win?” Ah, I think we won once with Fort Wayne and we got to the championship series in Muskegon, but we lost the last game, but we did win once in Fort Wayne and I remember getting a watch or something for having won the championship. Interviewer: “Were you the regular catcher for the teams that you played for?” 11 �Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depended on who happened to be on the team at the same time I was, so I wasn’t always the first sting catcher, sometimes I was second. Interviewer: “As second string catcher, did you still get to play fairly regularly?” Oh yes 33:49 Interviewer: “You played so many games you probably had to.” Yes Interviewer: “How did the game change over the course of time that you were playing? Did they do different things with the rules and the size of the ball and things like that? How was it different at the time you ended your career than at the time you started?” I can’t remember that the game itself was all that much different. It was just the ball, the size of the ball that made it a little bit faster, but the other rules of the game didn’t really change all that much that I can recall. I just recall the smaller ball, but it was still the same game, just a little bit faster game. Interviewer: “Was it harder to catch in baseball than it was in softball? Was your job harder?” Yes, because the pitchers threw more different types of pitches and I had to call the types of pitches that they were throwing, so it became more complicated. 34:50 Interviewer: “Did you learn the batters and that kind of thing the same way they do these days, so you could now who hit what?” Yeah, yeah we did that Interviewer: “Did you have pitchers that didn’t like having you tell them what to pitch?” 12 �No, not really, they didn’t check me off all that much, but there were some who probably did. I had a couple pitchers that were maybe a little bit hostile, so if they threw me a low pitch I threw the ball back to them and if they threw me a high pitch I threw the ball back to her high, so I had to get even with her somehow. Interviewer: “Now, as these games were going on, was there—did the managers make much of an effort to signal to you, while you were catching, to tell you what pitches to call?” No, they didn’t do that too much, not unless we got into serious trouble. They didn’t do that a whole lot. 35:53 Interviewer: ―Did they do the thing where they come out to the mound and talk to the pitchers?” Oh yes, they did that occasionally, just like they do in the major leagues. Interviewer: “Why did you wind up leaving the league, why did you stop playing?” Well, I was getting injured quite often, more often than I thought I should. I figured that I had a few more years of my life to go and maybe I better preserve my body a little bit, so I could live the rest of my life, and the league was about ready to fold too at that time, so I just decided to stop. 36:34 Interviewer: “What was your last season?” 1953 Interviewer: “How could you tell the league was in trouble by then?” Well, the attendance had dripped an awful lot and they had started the traveling leagues, so the handwriting was on the wall and there wasn’t too much doubt that it was going to fold pretty soon. 13 �Interviewer: “Once you made the decision then to quit, what did you do next?” Then I went back to college and studied to be a teacher and I taught for about thirty years after that. Interviewer: “What level did you teach at?” All levels, I started in elementary and I taught at junior high, high school, and then to the university.‖ Interviewer: “What University did you teach at?” The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Interviewer: ―What were you teaching?” Physical education, along the way and when I got to the University I was teaching—we were training physical educators to go teach. That was basically what I was doing. 37:46 Interviewer: “As you were doing these things, teaching at these different levels, did people know that you had played professional baseball?” No, not really, no, not really, not until I got to the college level I guess, it never came up. Interviewer: “When did you start teaching at the college level?” About 1966 or something like that. Interviewer: “But there were people who remembered something about the league or knew that it existed?” No, because I was teaching in the Midwest. Well, I taught in Wisconsin, but people were not really aware of the league by that time. Of course it had died about ten years before that and they had forgotten all about it I guess. It didn’t really come up all that much until I guess, it was about the time of retirement was when it came up and they started talking about it, or when the movie came out, maybe that’s when it was. 38:46 14 We �didn’t really discuss it that much before that. It just never occurred to me, I guess, to discuss it and I never had the opportunity to discuss it. Interviewer: “Did you get actively involved in building up girls or women’s sports programs?” Yes Interviewer: “What kinds of things did you do at these different places you taught?” I was coach for softball in college, we didn’t do too much at the other levels, at the high school level, they didn’t really have competitive programs at that time, but at the college level I coached softball, I coached volleyball I guess that’s all. Those are about the only two things I coached. Interviewer: “And were you still doing that when the Title IX legislation went through and they began to expand things?” Yeah 39:45 Interviewer: “What was your response to that when it happened? What did you think of that?” Well, it was fine, I—one thing I didn’t like about it was—when I coached, all the people who came out for the sport, I taught them as much as I could as far as softball was concerned. I let them play, so they could learn how to play, but when the title nine started it was a different situation. You had to let the most talented people play, so you had to be focused more on winning and that wasn’t my type of thing. I wanted to be a teacher and teach them how to play and make sure they knew about the softball game rather than just work with the skilled people. 40:37 15 �Interviewer: “Now, while you were actually playing in the league yourself, did you think about how unusual this was that you were doing this, or of you yourself as being a pioneer by going out and doing something new?” No, I never thought about it, no, not until years and years later. When somebody told us we were pioneers, then we thought about it, but it never occurred to us. Interviewer: “You were doing it because they were paying you to play ball.” Yes, and we loved playing ball. I would have played without the pay, so it didn’t make any difference. They could have paid me half the salary and I still would have played, so we just loved playing and it was an opportunity to play, so played and that’s all. Interviewer: “When you look back at your career, what effect do you think it had on you? How did it affect you, just being able to go and play for those years and have that experience?” 41:36 I don’t really know how to answer that. I was a little bit more shy, I think, when I first started and it got you out among people and made it easier to meet people and talk to people and just that sort of thing. Otherwise, I don’t know what else to say about that. Interviewer: “do you think it gave you a certain level of confidence and the ability to go out and do things?” Yeah Interviewer: “When you were, say eighteen or nineteen, did you think you would end up teaching college somewhere?” No, it never occurred to me then, nope. 16 �Interviewer: “If you were asked to, and you probably have been asked to, to review the movie “A League of their Own”, what would you say about it? 42:40 What worked well? What did they get wrong?” Well, I think it was about eighty-five percent true, what they’ve done, and I was very pleased with it. They did a good job, but some of the scenes that they put in, I know, were for entertainment only, and just to attract people, so they would like the film a little bit better. It distracted from what we actually did, but I can understand why they did it. I still enjoyed the movie a lot and I thought they did a nice job. Interviewer: “What aspect of your experiences as a ball player do you think they did a good job with?” The games themselves, the coaching of the games and the relationships, like the two sisters, and the competitive part of it, that was good and I thought the whole thing, as a whole, was good except for—like doing the splits and ending up with a hotdog and the manager being in the locker room, that never would have happened, and those types of things. 43:58 Everything else, I thought was good. Some of the things they did, as far as the chaperones, were a concern—we use to play trick on the chaperones, but I think they went a little bit farther than they needed to go in the movie, but we did those types of things though—it was not too far off. Interviewer: “If you just think back again to the time you spent in the league, are there other particular memories or stories that come back to you that you haven’t mentioned yet?” 17 �No, I can’t really think of anything. You know, this is so long ago, fifty years ago, and a lot of things escape me and I can’t remember things as vividly as I once did, so I can’t think of anything else that would stand out at the moment. 45:03 Interviewer: “Well, you managed to tell us quite a bit, so thank you very much for coming in and talking to us.” Thank you. 18 �19 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_KVonderau Title A name given to the resource Vonderau, Kate (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Vonderau, Kate Description An account of the resource Kate Vonderau was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1927. She grew up playing ball with her brothers. She learned about the AAGPBL when the Daisies came to Fort Wayne, and tried out for and made the team in 1946. She was a catcher, and eventually spend eight seasons in the league, playing for Peoria, Muskegon and Chicago as well as Fort Wayne. She attended college in the off season and became a teacher after her playing career, starting in elementary school, then moving on to high school and college teaching, and coached college softball and volleyball teams. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Illinois Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-05 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/81a0480cc77717a3359e57c2844ecb8e.mp4 12b61f99188ef3d9178abfc7e4efcd9e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b3144a3e39a6acecd54dbe35543fff1e.pdf f58fcb3f0fc5c27fe3e58abd78f3e892 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW NOELLA LeDUC Women in Baseball Born: December 23, 1933 Resides: Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 5, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, May 19, 2011 Interviewer: “If we could begin with your full name and where and when you were born?” Noella LeDuc, Graniteville, Massachusetts, date of birth, 12-23-1933. Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like? Where did you grow-up and your family?” Well, it was a small town and I played baseball all of the time, most of the time. I had a ballpark across the street from my house and if I wasn‟t there the boys came over and got me. We would pick sides and play all morning and in the afternoon we would go swimming, come home and after supper, go play ball again and then go home and go to bed. 33:35 My mother and father always knew where to find me—at the ball field. Interviewer: “What was your early schooling like? How was school?” School was good and I went as far as the freshman year in high school because I heard about the girl‟s baseball. My freshman year I had come home from school and I had seen the boys playing across the street from my house and I wondered why they were playing there because they had their own field, our field was better though, so I went in the house and changed my clothes and ran over there again, to the field, and the boys came up and asked if I would hit some fly balls to them to get ready for the game. I said, “sure”, and I did that for about ten minutes and went back and sat on the bench. This man came up to 1 �me and asked me if I would like to play professional baseball and I said, “yeah, I‟m trying to because I saw it in a magazine”, and he said, “well, there‟s a girl eight miles from here that plays”, and he gave me her name and address and everything, which is Rita Briggs. 34:37 He said, “she‟s gone right now, she left for spring training and she‟ll be home in October. I‟ll give you her address and you can go up and see her in October”. I did that and the first time I went up there she wasn‟t home yet, she was a little bit late coming home. I went up the following week and she was there, and when I got there they were giving her a party, so she said, “I‟ll come and see you tomorrow, give me your address”, and she did, she came to see me the next day, which was a Sunday. She tried me out, throwing the ball, hitting and all that stuff and she said, “you‟ll make it”, so that‟s how I did. Interviewer: “How old were you?” I was seventeen when I started, yeah. Interviewer: “I‟m kind of curious because the man that told you to go and talk to her, was he a scout?” No, he worked with my mother in the mill. My mother worked in a mill and he worked with my mother. He introduced himself because I didn‟t know him. He said, “I know your mother because I work with her”, and all that stuff and then he told me about Rita and gave me her address and everything. 35:38 He had seen her play at the high school where she lived. She was on the boy‟s team at the school. Interviewer: “You said you saw the notice in a magazine?” Yeah, it was in the newspaper, newspaper magazine. Yeah, Dottie Schroeder was right on the cover and I said to my dad, “I‟m going to beat her dad”, and I did at times. 2 �Interviewer: “Oh my gosh, but we‟ll check with her on that one right?” Well, she is dead she‟s dead. She was a good ball player, very good. Interviewer: “So you met the woman who was already playing and she told you how to contact the league? Is that right?” No, she gave me a tryout when she came home and she said, “you won‟t have any trouble making it, and come spring training you‟ll go out with me and this other girl from Rhode Island”, and I went out with them and they tried me out again over there and they said, “you got it”. 36:37 Interviewer: “Well, how did you get there?” We drove out. Interviewer: “So somebody had a car?” Yeah, Rita Briggs, she had a car. Interviewer: “Your parents were ok with this?” Yeah, well, my grandfather was a priest, so when he heard I was going to play ball he went and checked it out and he said, “It‟s ok, she‟ll be all right”, because of the rules we had and everything you know. He said, “she‟ll be ok”. Interviewer: “I want you to go back to that first day of tryouts. You said you drove out there in a car, were you excited about this?” Oh yeah, I was a little nervous too because it was my first time being away from home without my parents, so I was a little nervous, but they encouraged me a bit, and Marilyn Jones, they said, “don‟t worry you‟ll make it”. Interviewer: “Take us back, what was it like to show up there? Were there a lot of girls out there playing?” 37:32 3 �No, first of all we went to the office and signed up and all this and that. They told me how much money I would make and all that baloney you know, and the next day we had to go to the clubhouse at the ballpark and get our uniforms and start practicing and all that, and Johnny Rawlings was my manager, and a good man, good man. Interviewer: “So, this was 1951?” 1951, yes Interviewer: “Now, by that time, was the league throwing overhand?” Yes Interviewer: “Did you have any experience playing overhand baseball?” Yeah, because I was with the boys all the time, I didn‟t have a problem with that, and the ball was a little bit bigger when I went in, just a little bit bigger than a regular baseball. In 1954 they went back to the size of a regular baseball and that was nice because I could get my hand on it good you know, but I didn‟t have any trouble with the ball they had, it was only slightly bigger you know.” 38:32 Interviewer: “So, what was the first season like? You‟re a rookie, right?” Yes I was a rookie, yeah, yeah, and another girl was young too just like me, seventeen and we got going in spring training and all that and then we got into the season, I was playing, I got a base hit and I got down to second base on this gals base hit and then another one came up and I had to—excuse me, that was wrong—they tried to pick me off at second base, they figured she‟s a rookie and she isn‟t going to—I was ready, so she made a bad throw and I made a beeline for third base and as I was running I dislocated my elbow and Johnny gives me the sign to slide, so I slide, I‟m a little bit too close to the 4 �bag, but I said, “I got to do what he says”, so I injured the ligaments in my ankle, so I was out for a little while on that, and I had to go to the doctors. 39:32 Interviewer: “The first season, you didn‟t sit on the bench? You were actually playing?” Yeah Interviewer: “Wow, and what position?” I was playing in the outfield, left field or right field. Interviewer: “That first season, you of course played for what team?” The Peoria Red Wings Interviewer: “What did the uniform look like?” It was white with a little red on it, the home uniform and the road uniform, I believe, was red, and we had a red hat. Interviewer: “How did you like the uniform?” Well, I would rather of had pants because when you scratch up your legs and I tore my knees open twice you know you—especially in South Bend, that was terrible. I had to slide home and I scraped this whole knee out and blood was pouring out, so they cleared the bench so I could sit and the chaperone would clean it up. Then they poured the methiolate on it and you know how that feels, whewee and a couple of the girls were blowing on it so it wouldn‟t sting so much. 40:36 They taped me up and I went out in the field again. I got that all healed up and the first thing you know I got this leg. Interviewer: “What was it like playing—now you played with the boys when you were very young, you played through most of your younger years and now you‟re 5 �playing in professional baseball. How was that? Did you feel like you were good enough? Did you feel like you were still a rookie? How did you feel?” Well, I felt—I was pretty proud to get there and I felt good about it. I was nervous at times because when you‟re young, seventeen, you‟re going to be nervous, but eventually that went away and I just settled right down and went with it. Johnny, he was an excellent, excellent man to work for, he was very good. Interviewer: “One of the things I‟ve asked everybody about is their manager. Did he treat you like a woman or did he treat you like a ball player?” 41:39 Like a ball player, and if we had to make a double play on anybody and someone‟s on first base and want to get on second they want to get out of the way. He said, “aim for the horn”. He called the nose the horn and he said, “If they don‟t dive they‟re going to have a black eye”, but they are going to move if a balls coming at their head you know. Interviewer: “The other question about managers is, several women have said that even though they knew how to play baseball, the managers taught them little professional tricks that they didn‟t even know about. Did you learn certain things from them like how to slide or run or throw the ball that was different than what you did?” Well, I really didn‟t do any sliding when I was young you know and they told you how to do that and we never went in with our bellies like that, never that way. It was feet first and they told you how to do it and sometimes you‟re going to get hurt you know like I did. 42:38 Interviewer: “How were the fans your first season?” 6 �They were nice they were nice, yeah. I remember one night I was playing right field and also, the manager‟s always teach you—you always know how many outs there are, where you‟re going to throw the ball if you get it, where the base runners are and all this and that. So, this particular night I was playing right field, so I said to myself, “well, I got a runner on third and if that balls hit to me, I got to get it in quick because she‟s fast”, so the ball was hit to me and my momentum carried me over the foul line a little bit, so I had to make a quick turn and make a quick throw home and I made a bullet throw and nailed her. You should have heard the crowd, “wow, what an arm, what an arm”, and that made me feel good, that was good. We had a pretty big crowd that night too. 43:35 Interviewer: “The first season, did a lot of people show up at these games?” Yeah, yeah Interviewer: “It wasn‟t until later that things changed?” Yeah, they got down Interviewer: “We‟ll get to that later, but I just wanted to make sure—the first season you had a lot of people show up?” Yeah, we had good crowds, yes. Interviewer: “Now, you had chaperones, but you were too late for the charm school right? You didn‟t have to go through all that?” No, they told us what we had to do. Interviewer: “What did you have to do?” Well, you have to be dressed properly at all times, you have to speak good to all people and not be nasty to them, and if anybody gets nasty with you, you just turn around and walk away, you don‟t get nasty. That‟s what they told us to do and that‟s what we did. 7 �Interviewer: “But you were wearing blue jeans all the time, right?” Well, when we could, we could you know. When you were living in your home you could, but if you went out, you had to put on a skirt, but one time we snuck out. My landlady had to go to the drugstore down the street, I had to get something, my medication and I said, “Oh, I‟ll just run down in my shorts”, and I ran down there and I ran back quick and Hazel said, “you better get out of here”, and I said, “yeah, I will”. 44:53 She was my landlady you know. Interviewer: “Let‟s talk about that, when you started with this league you had to have living arrangements, so what were your living arrangements the first season?” Joyce Westerman, who you are going to be interviewing tomorrow, I lived with her and Maggie Russo at Hazel‟s house. Maggie played a year before me and Joyce played quite a few years, she was a veteran. They took care of me too. They helped me a lot and I call Joyce my boss. She is a good girl, very good lady. 45:35 Interviewer: “So, you were staying in somebody‟s house, you had your own room or did you share a room?” No, I had a room upstairs because my landlady‟s mother use to live up there and she had passed away, so Hazel put me up there because they had this nice big room up there, and Joyce and Maggie lived downstairs. Interviewer: “How was your social life during this period of time?” Well, do you mean with men?” Interviewer: “Just anything, going out to movies or anything.” 8 �Oh yeah, after ball games or rained out games, we would go to movies and stuff like that, or go shopping you know, but I didn‟t have time for men. My mind was on baseball and that was it. Interviewer: “The money was pretty good though?” Yeah, it was not bad, I didn‟t think it was too bad because I use to send some of it home to my mom. I kept just enough, what I needed, and I would send the rest to her. I wanted her to have it and what did she do? She put it in a bank account, a good mama. She knew it was hers and she could get it anytime she wanted, if she needed it you know. 46:38 Interviewer: “So then you play your first season, do you come back home?” Yup Interviewer: “Were you finishing school?” I didn‟t go back, I had to go to work and everything because I had to help out at home a little bit, and if February my father died, so—no, no, that‟s a little bit too soon it was 1954 that my father died. Interviewer: “So, you had to work, and did anybody at work know that you had played professional baseball?” Yeah, because all I had to do is walk in the building and, “you got a job”, really. Interviewer: “So, how did you find out—did you already know you were going to play a second season or did you find out some other way?” They told us we were going to move to Battle Creek, Michigan the following year and that year we had spring training down in North Carolina, was it North Carolina or South Carolina? I don‟t remember exactly, but we had spring training down there with Fort 9 �Wayne, Indiana and Jimmy Fox was managing then. He was a good man, that man was a good man. 47:47 We had Guy Bush for a manager, he was with Chicago, he was a Chicago player, a pitcher. We‟re working our way back after spring training and we stop at Washington D.C to play a game and I‟m out in the field and looking around in the stands for my parents because they were going to come and see me. He comes up and pats me on the back and he said, “I‟m going to make a pitcher out of you Pink”, and I didn‟t want to do that, but I said, “I‟ll do it”. so a couple of the girls took me to the mound and they started showing me what to do and all that, and all of a sudden the clouds came and it was black and it was going to rain and I‟m looking for my folks. He said, “We‟re going to go because it‟s going to rain”, and they threw us on the bus and took us to Alexandria Virginia where we were staying and my parents couldn‟t find me, but they knew where to find me at the hotel, they knew where I was going to be staying. 48:45 They found me over there and I got a phone call, “we‟re here”, and they took me and Rita Briggs out to eat and everything and the next day they went back home. Interviewer: “They never got a chance to see you play?” No, my dad never got to see me play because when I got hurt in Peoria Johnny wouldn‟t let me play. He said, “you still have that cracking noise in that elbow and I don‟t like that”, and one of the girls said, “let her play, let her play, her mother and father are here”, and he said, “No, I don‟t like that cracking noise”. He used to work my arm and everything and he didn‟t like that cracking noise. I said, “Johnny, it don‟t hurt and the doctor said I‟m fine”, but he said, “No, you‟re going to have to wait a little while”. That‟s the way he was and he wanted to be sure you were healthy. 49:34 Interviewer: “Where did you get the name “Pinky”?” 10 �Rita Briggs gave me that. We were in Lowell Massachusetts, the season was over and we went to a movie and we were walking down the street looking in the windows. There were some things in there and she said, “I know what I‟m going to call you, I‟m going to call you Pinky”, and I don‟t know where she got it. I said, “Where you getting that Rita?” And she said, “oh, it just came into my head and that‟s the way it was with her. She was a good catcher, oh boy, could that girl catch. She was smart, yeah. Interviewer: “So, you‟re in the second season now, Battle Creek, you signed a contract and you went to Battle Creek and you lived there?” Battle Creek, yes I lived there. Interviewer: “Where were you staying that time?” I was staying with Maggie Russo and Josephine Hasham and we lived in a house with the landlady and we had the upstairs to ourselves. That‟s where we lived and we didn‟t have a car. I didn‟t have a car and neither did Maggie or Josephine. Rita Briggs use to pick us up when it was time to go to the ballpark and that‟s how we went. 50:42 Interviewer: “What was a typical day like? You get up and get dressed, what was the day like?” Mostly every morning we had to practice and in the afternoon we would go home and take it easy and about three o‟clock we had to eat before we went to the ballpark and we had to be there at four o‟clock, get into our uniforms and start working out again to get ready for the game. After the game was over you take a shower and go home, but first you get something to eat. You get something to eat and you go home. Interviewer: “Did you always know which team you were going to be playing?” Yeah, we had a schedule. 11 �Interviewer: “Were there some teams that were a little more difficult to deal with than others?” Yeah, Fort Wayne was always a good team and Kalamazoo always had a good team too. Interviewer: “Your second season you‟re no longer a rookie?” Nope Interviewer: “What position are you playing this time?” Well, I was playing the pitching and I was playing the outfield. I did two positions. Interviewer: “You did both.” Either left field or right field when I wasn‟t pitching and sometimes I did the bull pen and had to come in and relieve sometime. 51:53 Interviewer: “Any particular events happen in the second season that you want to talk about?” Let me see, no not too much. Interviewer: “Just a regular season?” Yeah Interviewer: “So, now it‟s the third season, 1953 right?” They moved us to Muskegon, Michigan and I lived with Maggie and Josephine again in a nice house and we were within walking distance to the ballpark there, so that was nice and we had a little restaurant to stop at to eat at after the game and before going home and that was good too you know. We had it easy there, but Muskegon wasn‟t too good for crowds you know. It was kind of down, so when that season was over me and Marilyn Jones went to Fort Wayne, Indiana, which I was happy about because they were the first place team. My roommate and Josephine went to Rockford. 52:57 12 �Interviewer: “You mentioned, just now, that the crowds in Muskegon were a lot smaller.” Yeah, they were a lot smaller. Interviewer: “Did you have any idea, at that time, what your future as a baseball player was going to be? Did you think you were going to keep playing—you‟re only eighteen or nineteen years old by this time, and did you think you were going to be playing into your twenties or did you already know that something was going wrong that it wasn‟t going to last?” Well, I was hoping it would last a long time, but I wasn‟t quite sure about it and when I went to Fort Wayne, For Wayne always drew good because we had a good ball club there, and I hit two home runs there. The first night I hit one and the next night a “grand slammer”, and that was beautiful, and I had a big grin on my face there. 53:46 Interviewer: “But the last year though, the forth season, were there any indications that things were going wrong?” Well, they were talking about it, yeah, they were talking about it and they said that we may not make it another year, so after our season was over, Bill Allington, he was my manager then and he was a tough man to work for and I‟ll give you an example. I was playing left field and someone yelled my name from out in the stands and I never bothered looking before, but this time for some reason I did and I just turned my head and all of a sudden I said ooh and I heard that bat you know and I said, “I better get this thing or I‟m dead”. I had to make a shoestring catch out of it, came up with it, threw it in and guess who‟s waiting for me when we got the third man out? He was waiting for me and 13 �he gave me hell you know and he said, “don‟t you do that again”. I didn‟t boy, I‟ll tall you I didn‟t. 54:44 Interviewer: “The final season is the fourth season and you said there was talk amongst the players that something might be going on?” There were rumors that it was going to come to an end and Bill when it came to the end—well, we were in the playoffs and we were in first place and we played against Kalamazoo in the playoffs, but Kalamazoo beat us out. They kind of whipped me because I use to beat Kalamazoo all the time, but this night they whipped me. I finally got them out in this particular inning and Bill comes waiting for me and said, “What‟s the matter with you? Didn‟t you get your rest today?” I said, “yes sir, I did”, and he said, “What‟s the matter with you?” I said, “they‟re hitting bullets off of me. I don‟t know, they just got me today”, and he said, “Can you catch?” I said, “no sir and I‟m not going behind there”, and he said, “you‟re all done for the night, you go sit on the bench”. He was a good manager though, he was tough, but he was good. 55:49 Interviewer: “That final season, you said you hit two home runs right?” Yeah, yeah Interviewer: “How did that happen and what was the first one?” The first one? I don‟t know, the ball was right down the gut and I just grabbed it and I hit it, but it was a line shot and I didn‟t think it made it over the fence and I stopped at second and the Umpire motioned for me to keep on going and a big smile came on me again and I want all the way around. The next night was a sweet one and I knew that baby was gone because they were high and long and I ran those bases so nice and that was a beauty. 14 �Interviewer: “Anybody on base?” Yeah, the bases were loaded, yeah; the second one had the bases loaded. Bill said, “gee, you got a little power”. When I was home and played with the boys, I use to hit a lot of home runs, but this was a different story, there was more pressure you know. 56:47 Interviewer: “You‟re playing on several different teams, and how difficult was it to transfer? You go from one team and now did you have a whole bunch of new girls or did they come with you? Was it more difficult working in a new team?” No, not really because you kind of get acquainted with everybody playing the teams anyway. Whenever we had to change teams Maggie and Josephine were always with me and we were roommates, so we just went along with it you know and a lot of the other players we already knew too, so it was not difficult. Interviewer: “During that period of time, you said that you wanted to continue playing baseball, but did you actually think that this was what you were going to do for most of your career or did you think you had to go to school or get a job? Were you thinking about your future?” 57:48 Well, Fort Wayne, when we got done with the season, Bill decided that for one month we go around and play against the men‟s teams, so we did and he picked a bunch of us players to go around, and we did it for a month, and we did good, we beat a lot of the guys, we beat them out. The last game we played it was my turn to pitch and what we would do—me and my catcher would go sit with the guys and their catcher and pitcher would go sit with the girls, and that „s how we did it. We were playing good and I was beating my own girls and the seventh inning I started getting tired after playing the whole season and this tour. I was getting tired, so he comes running out to me and he said, 15 �“What‟s the matter?” I said, “I‟m just getting a little bit tired, we played a whole season you know. These two gals are pretty hard to get, but give me a chance and I‟ll try to get them”, and I did, I got them. 58:53 I got them in a fly out you know and the next one I had no problem with, and we get to the ninth inning and the girls had us by one run, I think. We got some hits and we won the ball game and a guy came running to me and he said it was the first game he won all season and he said, “Will you play for me next year?” I said, “no I‟m going to play with the girls, I‟m sorry, but I would rather play with my girls”, but of course we didn‟t have any more team. After the winter was over, February my father died, this is when he died and in April I got a phone cal from Jeanne Geissinger and she said, “Bill wants to know if you‟ll go around and play the girls against the guys?” 59:52 They did that, I think, for four years, and I said, “I don‟t know if I can, I just lost my father and I have to take care of my mom”, and I said, “let me think about this and I‟ll call you tomorrow”, and she said, “ok”, and she was staying at Ma Kelly‟s, everybody calls this lady Ma Kelly, and I said, I‟ll call you tomorrow afternoon”, so I sat down that day thinking and thinking what I could do and I said, “no, I can‟t, I can‟t do this, I have to say home”, so I called her up and I said, “I can‟t go, as much as I want to, I cant‟ I got to take care of my mom”, so that was the end. 00:32 Interviewer: “Did you get a chance to play ball again after that?” Yes, I coached CYL softball. The priest called me up and he said, “We‟re going to start a CYL softball team and would you please coach?” I said, “I didn‟t think I would be a very good coach, I don‟t like to lose”, and he said, “Well, give it a try, will you please?” I said, “ok, I‟ll give it a try”, so I had these little kids you know and I had to make up to them and I had to control myself to help them and everything else. We did 16 �pretty good except I was the only girl coach and there were all men coaches on these other teams and they didn‟t want sliding in CYL you know, they didn‟t want the sliding. The girls learned it in school, so we were playing this game and one of my girls slid into third base and the coach on the other team, he started raving, “there‟s no sliding in CYL”. 1:40 I said, “I don‟t teach her to slide. I know we can‟t do it, but they learn it from high school and it just came automatically”, so he started saying—I said, “you‟re being nasty because I‟m a woman”, and he turned around and walked away. The Umpire said, “It‟s ok, the girl learned it from school, from high school and she didn‟t do it on purpose”, so anyway, we won the ball game and the guy apologized to me later. Interviewer: “Good, good, now the priest you said, asked you and did he know you played professional baseball?” Yes Interviewer: “Ok, sure, sure. What was the reaction when you got back from a season? What was the reaction of your friends and neighbors?” Well, I get off the bus from getting the train and then getting the bus to get home and I got my bags and everybody‟s saying, “up, she‟s home, Pinky‟s home”. 2:42 Interviewer: „So, everyone else picked up on Pinky too? So, what was just amongst the girls—?” Yeah, once it started it caught on. Interviewer: “My gosh, oh my gosh. The end of the league and you said you became a coach afterwards; did you talk about your experiences? Did people know that you were a baseball player ten years later, twenty years later? Did you spend a lot of time talking about the fact that you played baseball?” 17 �The people at home knew because every spring I was gone to play ball and they would ask me questions and this and that, and I would give them the answers you know. Interviewer: “Some of the girls we talked to literally said after they stopped playing they never talked about it and their kids didn‟t even know that they played baseball.” My father would talk and he would say that his daughter was a professional ball player and this and that. He was proud, but I‟m so sorry he didn‟t get to see me play. 3:42 Interviewer: “When did you, let me put it this way, did you ever think at the time that you were doing something extraordinary? People are telling you now that you guys did this amazing thing, did you think of it way back then?” No I didn‟t, I just went out because I loved the damn game you know. We played with our hearts, we played hard and we were tired sometime, but we played with our hearts and we went to win. Sometimes you lose naturally, you aren‟t always going to win, but we had fun, we didn‟t make much money, but we had fun. It was not like these big leaguers you know. I think that money is killing the game I think so. I think they love the money more than the game. 4:36. Interviewer: “When did you first hear about the movie, A League of Their Own?” Oh, they let us know about it. They let us know about it, yeah. Interviewer: “What was your reaction?” I was happy, yes, I was happy and everybody gets to see it you know. Interviewer: “So, you went to a premiere of it? Did you see it in a movie or you just went to a movie theater and saw it?” It was on television and everything you know. 18 �Interviewer: “You never saw it in a theater?” No, no Interviewer: “Oh my gosh.” No, when it came on television I saw it you know. Interviewer: “What was your reaction to the movie?” Well, I didn‟t like the clubhouse thing you know because that wasn‟t true. The men weren‟t in the clubhouse and Jimmy Foxx was never like that. He was a great man and a gentleman all the way and that‟s the only thing I didn‟t like. Everything else was good you know. 5:33 Interviewer: “What I heard from everyone else, and I felt this myself, it kind of captured the spirit. It had some things they call Hollywood and what not, but overall it was pretty accurate in terms of the spirit of it.” Yeah, there‟s some of this make believe stuff, but when I heard that Madonna was going to be in it I was she was going to kill it on us you know because you know how she is. She‟s going to kill it, but Rosie O‟Donnell kept her in check and she‟s the only one who knew how to play ball, Rosie, did you know that? Yeah, I got to know Rosie a little bit when she wasn‟t too wild after while before she---you know a little bit. Interviewer: “Did things change for you personally after the movie came out? I mean, would people react to you different?” Yeah, they want to touch you and everything. They like to touch you and they want to talk to you and all that. 6:30 I like to talk to little kids and I like to help them. Interviewer: “What—some of the girls I talked to said that in many ways the movie kind of brought back the glamour and the fun of the game and a lot of them and not 19 �really forgotten that period, but they had not talked about it. Did the move have that effect on you too, that other people somehow treated you differently?” Yes they did, we were professionals, and they want to talk to you and ask you questions and everything, oh yeah, and it was nice. It was nice to have people talk to you like that you know. It made you feel good. Interviewer: “Looking back on it now, what do you think that period of your life was like for you. I know you did other thing and a lot of you have gone on to do amazing things, so this was just one small part; it was four years of your life. Where does that fit in terms of your life as you look back on it?” 7:35 I think it was the best years of my life; I really do, outside of having my daughter and everything you know. Those were my best years; I loved it so much, and we had so much fun. It was great and we made a lot of nice friends too. The fans were wonderful and in Fort Wayne I use to have kids come to me all the time and it I had bullpen work for relief, they would come down and sit on the bench with me, these little kids. If I had a chance to give them a ball I would give them a ball or maybe if we would crack a bat and the bat isn‟t too bad, I would say, “put a little screw in here and it will be good and you can still use it you know. They would say, “oh boy Pinky that‟s good”, and I like to make kids happy. 8:28 Interviewer: “I know at the time you are playing you‟re not thinking about these sorts of things, but now, where do you think the league, in terms of the big picture of baseball and America, where do you guys fit into all of this?” Well, I wish we were up there a little bit more. I think the men took everything away from us a little bit. It‟s only fight that the fans went back because those guys went to 20 �fight for our country. That‟s only right and that‟s how come we went down, but I wish we could have stayed up, but it just didn‟t go that way and that‟s the way it went you know. Ted Williams was my favorite player and I use to go watch him play all the time. I wish I could have been like him though. 9:23 Interviewer: “You‟ve had a chance now, especially at reunions and you go to events and what not, what kind of a message do you want for the young people that come to you, what do you want to tell them about your experience as a ball player?” Well, I tell them that I had a good life and I loved it very much, played my heart out, and met a lot of beautiful, wonderful people and what more can you want you know, that‟s it. These lovely little kids come up to you loving you, that makes me feel good. Interviewer: “When did you first start coming to the reunions?” This was my first one. Interviewer: “After all you just said about how wonderful this is and this is your first reunion?” 10:21 You know, I had a few injuries. I injured my legs a few times and sometimes I had money problems and I couldn‟t afford it, so my daughter, she paid for all this. Interviewer: “So this had got to be one of the great moments, huh? There are a lot of amazing women out there.” Joyce Westerman, you are going to have her tomorrow, and of course me and her were buddies and I roomed with her. We lived the first year, with me and Maggie, and we haven‟t seen each other in a long time and boy, we were hugging like crazy the first night and we were crying and hugging and everything else and the girls said, “they‟re crying”, and were taking pictures like crazy of us. 21 �Interviewer: “Well, let‟s hope you get a chance to come to other ones.” “We‟ll be going to San Diego Interviewer: Oh good, my mom lives in San Diego, so maybe I‟ll bring her to the next reunion.” Yeah, good, that‟s good Interviewer: “That would be good. That would be really good and I want to thank you very much. This had been a wonderful experience to sit down and talk to you. This was delightful. 11:39 22 �23 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_NLeDuc Title A name given to the resource LeDuc, Noella (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource LeDuc, Noella Description An account of the resource Noella Le Duc was born in Graniteville, Massachusetts in 1933. She grew up playing baseball with the boys, and when she was sixteen, a friend of her mother's introduced her to one of the AAGPBL players, Rita Briggs, who arranged a tryout for her in 1951. She played in the AAGPBL from 1951 through 1954, first with Peoria and later with Muskegon and Fort Wayne. She was primarily an outfielder, but also tried her hand at pitching and catching. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Illinois Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-05 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6390b6ed5e3a255bb26e5a513cbd21ac.mp4 5dd06c9db3f1a577407316e5feb4a10f https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3b9207659543fdf5e5b7c0c57be308a3.pdf 21b331ebd729a85848593beffd549975 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans History Project Interviewee’s Name: Mary Moore Length of Interview: (36:56) Date of Interview: August 7, 2010 at the Reunion of the Professional Girls Baseball League Interviewed by: James Smither Transcribed by: Lindsey Thatcher, November 18, 2010 Interviewer: “Alright, today is August 7, 2010 we are at Detroit Michigan at the reunion of the All American Professional Girls Baseball League and talking this morning with Mary Moore of White Lake Michigan. The interviewer is John Smither of the Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project. Now Mary what we are going to do here is basically just follow your story. And we are going to begin at the beginning. So why don’t you tell us where and when you were born?” I was born in Detroit Michigan. Interviewer: “In what year?” 1932. During tough times, the depression era. Interviewer: “And what did your family do for a living in those days?” Well my dad was a jewel die maker and well after when we moved out to Lincoln Park Michigan when I was about 5 or 6 years old, that’s where I actually grew up and graduated, Lincoln Park High and that was our main resident area. He worked for General Motors, Cadillac division, Ford Street in Detroit. (01:10) Interviewer: “Now how did you get involved in sports initially?” Well probably like most of the women, I mean well you know, I played out in the fields with the boys Lincoln park you know, well it wasn’t very populated. There were a lot of fields out there where we lived at that time. We were like the only house in fact; there was one other house on the lot on one side of the street and maybe one or two on the other side. So there were a lot of fields out there and we would take them and cut the weeds down and make our own ball field. And of course if you get it to the white field we were out and we didn’t have enough players but it was always something to go out to the field with the boys. I had an older brother that had a paper route. Detroit News and it was a weekly paper. And so I would help him on his paper route to earn money. So I was the one who always would come up with bats and balls and the equipment. So if the boys wanted to play ball or any sport be it football, basketball, they had to come get me first. So, so I was never left out. (02:23) �Interviewer: “Alright were there other girls that would play too, or was it just you?” No there was hardly, I can’t even remember any girls in the neighborhood basically so, and if there were they were down the street or quite a ways away, or they just weren’t interested. Most of them weren’t anyway so. Interviewer: “Now at your high school were there girls teams and girls sports?” No, not heavily in high school back then. I graduated in January 1950 and in our senior year (03:00) we were allowed to take one hour of gym. And then we had to share the basketball court with the boys and we’d take half the court and they would take the other. But we had no organized sports at all for the girls. Interviewer: “So how did you wind up hooking up with the All Americans?” Well like I said I had been playing ball with the boys there was that and always we had a Detroit Tigers in Lake who played short stop for the Tigers oh back when he lived about 3 miles from us and he would come out and play ball with us and he would pick the ball up and I would learn how to judge fly balls and things like that. And basically teaching the guys but you know I was watching and doing it too and he would take the students to the Tiger’s stadium to the ball park and at that point I got a baseball and autographed a little autographed book like Hank Greenburg (04:00), Dick Wakefield, George Kell, and all those guys back in the late 40’s. So I still have the autograph book but I did have a fire in my place and I did lose the baseball. And so I mean, you know I was a great sports fan and but it started in when I graduated from high school oh my high school English teacher, Mrs. Nelson, put me in touch with another lady who had graduated. I hadn’t heard anything about it, I mean it wasn’t widely known around you know, especially in big cities. So she put me in touch with Doris Kneel who was already trying out. So we went down to Crown Recreation in Detroit. There were a lot of girls from the Detroit Michigan area. In fact Michigan has more (05:00) girls in the League than any other state. And so that’s where they would go to practice in the winter time. So I went down there because I needed the practice. From there one of the girl’s fathers was a scout. And Helen Filarski then took me in down to South Bend with her for the tryout of the spring of 1950. Jobs were hard to find back then. You know you graduate from high school and then there was really nothing. I mean I was willing to sweep floors or do anything but there weren’t jobs out there, kind of like today. And so anyway Helen took me to South Bend for tryouts. We were there for 2 weeks. And of course I hadn’t really played anywhere for ball or anything (06:00) but I was you know, quite athletic. And so after two weeks of spring training, of course they had a second baseman there, I can’t even remember who it was now. But they sent me down to Chicago for 2 more weeks of training. And there we had a lot of girls trying out. They picked 15 girls for the Springfield Sallies team and 15 girls for the Chicago Colleens team and… Interviewer: “We’ll get back to that in just a moment I want to go a little bit back and talk about the try outs and training. Were you, you went to South Bend. What was the set up there? What were they trying to do to South Bend when you went there initially?” �Just I guess, see if I they make the team or how good you were. I guess you know, they invite people you know that maybe that [?] father might have saw playing ball and they said you know we need a good player and they say go ahead go and try out you know. (07:08) Interviewer: “And what would they have you do when you were trying out?” Well it’s kind of funny because all these Veterans down in Detroit in Rockville asked, what position do you play? I said well any place, you know, you know they got, anyplace you want me to I could play you know out in the scrub games you know I could be taught infield outfield whatever, well you can’t tell them I can just play anywhere, so they wouldn’t think you were any good. You got to tell them you play someplace. So they go over to all these Veterans, my friends and so they say well third base that’s a really hot corner, I said well I don’t know about that. Shortstop then you would really have to arm and move around; well I don’t know about that. First base, well you really have to stretch and dig them out of the dirt, better not tell them there. Outfield you really need a strong arm, and really you know move, well I don’t know about that. Why don’t you tell them you play second base…so I did. I told them I played second base but I hadn’t. So I get there and I watch you know, and I thought how hard can this be? Well it was a lot harder I guess than I thought it was. But anyway I was out there and the manager says (08:30) “How old are you?” and I said seventeen, “Well then act like it, don’t act like an old lady. Move!” I thought ok. So but I must have done something fairly decent because like I said they sent me on to Chicago for two more weeks to make me hit on a different team they didn’t need me there in South Bend so. Interviewer: “Now when you went to Chicago how many other women were trying out at the same time as you were?” Oh, probably about a hundred. (09:00) Interviewer: “And out of that hundred they were going to take…?” Thirty, two teams. They were going to be a traveling team kind of like the farm hunt system team and so we had fifteen each team. And we had to make our way on a bus and sat by the chaperones and managers and so we toured all over the country you know, playing games. We went to twenty one states and Canada in three months. And we played seventy seven games of the ninety game schedule we got rained out the rest. And we played Yankee Stadium before a Yankee game, we met Joe DiMaggio, Casey Stengel, Phil Rizzuto, Whitey Ford, and all those guys were playing and of course if we had known that now, I mean we’re there to play, we’re in our uniform. We had nothing to do to get autographs or having no idea how big (10:00) this thing really was you know. So I mean, we just played our game and then you think about it now and you think wow, you know. We played on Yankee Stadium. It was quite a thrill. We were also playing in Washington D.C. Griffins Stadium and all along the way places. We would tour so after the 1950 season and I got drafted by Battle Creek. �Interviewer: “Let’s go back again into a little bit and let’s talk a bit more about that barn storming season there. First of all explain again, you have there are two teams, and the two teams, tell us who the two teams were?” Springfield Sallies and Battlecreek Belles. Interviewer: “Ok.” Oh no, I’m sorry. Springfield Sallies and Chicago Colleens. Interviewer: “Right, ok and you were with…?” I was with Springfield. (11:01) Interviewer: “You were with the Sallies, ok.” In fact my baseball card says Springfield Illinois, instead of Lincoln Park Michigan. Interviewer: “Well, alright. How did they manage this physically, with moving you around the country like this? So you’re riding around on a bus, you’ve got your chaperones your manager with you and so forth, and then what do you do when you go from town to town? What’s the routine?” Well most of our games were at night, and so we would play a night game for two hours and shower and get back on the bus and basically travel to the next town, maybe try to sleep on the bus. And the day was ours if we didn’t want to try to sleep or catch up on your laundry, and do something like that. But you know, you would have a lot of time. So when we were in New York though we were right in the city (12:00) and we were able to go at night, and you know a couple things like that basically traveling at night, and they were small towns so they didn’t have many entertainments or anything like that. But most of us were quite young so we really weren’t into going out or anything like that. We had a, we had to be at the ball park for two or three hours before the game for the warm-up. You play a 9 inning game and you get done and you are a little tired. So then we get back on the bus and travel to the next town. Interviewer: “And did they have any particular rules or regulations regarding your conduct or your dress or anything else like that?” Well that was strictly enforced. We could not wear blue jeans, shorts, slacks, or anything out in public. You had to be in a skirt (13:00) and a dress. If we were on the bus in the middle of the night and we stopped at a rest area, we could get off, nobody there, but you aren’t allowed off the bus unless you got a skirt on or a dress so we used wrap around skirts so you just had to hurry up and put that on then you could get off the bus. They had strictly enforced, well all the rules were enforced. Like we had bed check every night, if you were caught out after bed check well you would be fined or sent home. This one girl she didn’t go out after bed check, she went to the vending machine, and she got caught and she got fined and it was paid. All of that was pretty big money back then. Well they could’ve sent her home, and if she disobeyed really bad they could �be sent you home because along the way on this tour (14:00) we were kind of on a farm system there were try outs at these towns. Now if they found someone that they was doing better than you, who you got to go home and pick up this other player. So we didn’t want to do anything to be sent home so we obeyed them. And you know things were different back then anyway. I mean discipline was pretty much normal for most families. You know, times have changed a lot now and things have got a lot more lax and federal government won’t let teachers discipline the students and just all kinds of things that have changed so I mean you know it wasn’t even hard for us because we were brought up that way. Interviewer: “Ok, now at this point did they make any effort to teach people how to dress or do things with their hair and make-up and stuff or was that long gone by then?” That was gone by the time we started, but we did know the rules and stuff (15:00). You didn’t disobey that, if you did it would be bye. Interviewer: “Ok, what as you were touring around these different places, what kind of response did you get from fans? Did you draw big crowds?” Oh yeah, we kept up a good attendance. We had a PR man and I’ll give his first name Murray. He would go he had he would go to these towns and he had newspaper articles and every time we would get into, we would take turns of being on the radio broadcasts because there was no TV wasn’t anywheres around yet or it was just starting. So they had good press, and also during this firestorm tour half the proceeds would go to a local charity at that time. So you know, people were very supportive, it was something new and different. So they were coming out, because like I said with gas rationing you can’t go too far (16:02). And so depending on what town it was, how many people, sometimes two, three thousand sometimes maybe less. But we had fans and they were very appreciative of grand ball we played. Interviewer: “And what about when you played in Washington or New York Stadiums? Was it, before a game; was there a crowd there already? Yeah there was quite a few yeah, that was a big deal. Yeah that was before the Yankee games there was a lot of people coming in. I don’t know if it was if they knew about the game. I’m sure they must have but it was a lot of people. Interviewer: “Alright, so you kind of go and you do that for three months. With fifteen players on the team you are playing most of the games right?” Oh yeah, about every game. Interviewer: “Alright, how did you turn out as a second baseman?” (16:59) I guess very decent. I was involved in a lot of double plays and the first year I led my team in almost every category, hits, runs, RBIs [?], home bases. I was involved in a triple play and I got it unusually, there was no force outs, they were all tag players. And there was two girls on, the �first and second a girl would bat hit the ball out to the outfield, a base hit, the girl on second tried to score, well they threw the ball on then and run her down and tag her out. Well meanwhile the girl on first rounded second going on towards third. Well when they got the other girl tagged out they started to run her back and the girl that hit the ball she was heading towards second so I was standing on second as they both came to second I just pop pop and one side and the other and they were all out. So… (18:01) Interviewer: “Alright, well that’s pretty good. Ok, so if you were leading your team and hitting double bases, were you stealing bases yourself?” Oh yeah, yeah I had quite a few stolen bases. Interviewer: “Ok, had you known anything about base stealing before you had joined the league?” No, not really. Just watching the major leagues and stuff like that so… Interviewer: “Ok, were there particular tricks to it that you could use or could you read certain pitchers or…?” Well yeah. It depended on who was pitching, how slow they were, or what their rules were you know… Interviewer: “How many pitchers would a barnstorming team have?” Let’s see, maybe about six I guess. I don’t know. Interviewer: “Ok, so if you are always playing the same team than you probably learned those pitchers pretty well?” (18:56) Well yeah, we had bets back and forth. If I get ahead of you tonight, you owe me a milkshake. You strike me out, ok I’ll owe you one. Interviewer: “Alright, of the people you were traveling around with are there some they you became particularly good friends with, or just stand out in your mind as being really distinctive characters or really good players?” Yeah there was, there was several. There was a lot of them that were international, we had Cubans, we had a few from Canada, and all over the states so. But we had a lot of good players, too many to mention. Interviewer: “Ok. Alright, so you get through that first season. What happens when that season comes to an end?” �Well you go home and you look for a job for the season, which again wasn’t really easy to find but I had a high school girlfriend that was working in a small (20:00) automobile shop so they happened to need some work so I got a job there, I sort of wish I hadn’t but it was work you know. And, but towards the 1951 season started, January 30, 1951 I had a puncture accident. I kind of messed my hand up a little bit, making Packard rings. You dart on and I kind of just jerked it back at me and I got in the way and it got all my fingers. I didn’t get them all but it messed up the others too. So that was in January and I did go to spring training in ’51. Which they ended up not taking me, they didn’t want to be responsible. You can’t reach the ball with your glove you kind of automatically reach with your bare hand (21:00) and they were afraid that if I line drived or something like that that I would get my hand torn open again, it was still pretty tender. I went to therapy like 3, 4 times a week just to be able to go to spring training. The doctor said that most people would still be kind of carrying their hand in a sling, and I said, well I have to play ball. But any way they did call me up towards the end of the season. They had other injuries and of course my hand was a little better. So I went back and played a few games in ’51. Interviewer: “And who did you play for?” Battle Creek. Battle Creek drafted me after the 1950 season. I played second base there also. So anyway that as in ’52, after leaving my team in 1950 it’s a little bit more difficult now and the ball, to throw the ball and to grip a bat when some of the muscles don’t work. So I wasn’t feeling as well, but I did go back in ’52. I played. Two weeks before the end of the season I was sliding into second, Fort Wayne, twisted my ankle and Joe Fox [?] my manager carried me off the field. So I was done for the ’52 season. So in ’53 when I got the call back I just didn’t go back. I got another job. So then I was disappointed in myself because I knew how well I played the first year and now I’m not batting any good, I guess fielding was ok but bat hand was suffering, and I figured that really I was just keeping somebody else from playing and they should have a chance (23:00) and of course not knowing it was the end of 1954 anyway it was the end of the season. So after that you’re supposed to sit out five years before you go back to amateur softball after playing in the professionals. But because of my injury one of the softball teams got my reinstated after two years so I was able to go back and play fast pitch in softball. Interviewer: “Did you go back to Lincoln Park for that or did you go somewhere else?” Well Lincoln Park for, well you know I went back home and lived for a while, but I played all over Michigan practically. Over eight or ten different teams throughout the year so we won a state class A championship one year, and class B one year, class C. So then I played softball, now softball I played whatever position, whatever they wanted, catching or outfield or infield. Wherever they gave me I would play so. (24:09) Interviewer: “Now when you were playing softball on these teams, did people know that you had played professional baseball?” Probably not. I mean you know it wasn’t a well known thing. Even at work I didn’t really tell them that I had played ball, that’s not true everybody played ball. So when the movie came out �they asked why didn’t you tell us? I says because I did tell you, you just weren’t listening. But that was my quite experience. Interviewer: “Now after you left the league, did you stay in touch with any of the players or any of the friends you had made?” Oh yeah, yeah, I had a real good friend Jo (Joanne) McComb from Pennsylvania. And we visited back in forth (25:00) for oh years. You know I would go there and she would come to my house and meet my folks and meet her folks, stay in touch, and stay in touch with a lot of the others. But not quite as close as that. Interviewer: “Now as the League’s, the former players began to get there together and create a players association, this kind of stuff before the Penny Marshall movie came out, were you connected with that? Were you involved in any reunions or anything like that?” Oh yeah, there was you know the first one. There was probably maybe two that I’ve might’ve missed all through the years and that was probably because I was taking care of my father, so but like I said all but probably two. Interviewer: “And did you, were you involved with any of the things that are around, connected with the movie?” (25:57) Yeah we went to Smokey Illinois for 1991 for try outs about sixty some were there and it was about forty three, forty five went out of Cooperstown for the filming of the movie and so I was there. We had a fan for the other movie, we’d stop and take a picture and walk in the hall of fame. To give credit when we were at our reunion game I was the one that slid it home. Shirley Burkovich was trying to tag me out but I was safe and she was a little mad but then I was playing left field at one point and I had to help out on a rundown play between second and third, they didn’t throw me the ball but I was running back and forth and when they zoomed on the bench I was the first one that they zoomed in on and hand out players. We were there in Cooperstown for eleven days for that five minutes at the end. So we know and appreciate why movies cost so much putting us all up and everything like that, for that five minutes. (27:10) Interviewer: “Ok, you mentioned going to Smokey for try outs. Now you were already a player, who was trying out there?” Well, they wanted someone that was active enough and in good enough health to be able to do some of these things and we were kind of like helping the actresses you know showing them trying to show them how to throw the ball, how to catch the ball, throw it and things like that. So when they said they didn’t want somebody they couldn’t move them around. Interviewer: “And how did that go? How well did the actresses learn the job?” �Well some of them, pretty well. I mean a couple of them were already pretty athletic. Betty and Rosy O’Donnell (28:01). Madonna, she needed a little more work and some of the others. She had her little dance steps kind of tone and all but they said she was one of the hardest working ones and she got banged up and got hit the head with the ball, she was batting and different things like that. And so she, I think, personal opinion as long as she wasn’t the star in the movie she was ok. And we were a little apprehensive when we found out she was going to be in the movie and Penny Marshall assured us that she would do good and it would be ok. Debra Winger was actually supposed to play the part of Geena Davis and we don’t know why Debra Winger backed out. We heard rumors that it was because Madonna was going to be in it. But you know that was just a rumor, who knows? Could have been just a conflict with her schedule, it was a great movie (29:04). Interviewer: “Were you happy how the movie came out?” Yeah I figured it was probably about 85% accurate. There was you know some Hollywood in there you know, we certainly didn’t treat the chaperones like that poor lady and managers didn’t come drunk or you know into the dressing room unless everyone was fully dressed and there were allowed to come in or we would go out there so, but that was they had to make it funny and that it was. But Penny Marshall, she was great and so were the actresses. Some of them actually come to our reunions out there in California. There were about five of them last night we were out in California so it’s really, it’s really nice. Interviewer: “Kind of an unusual thing for a movie. Most movies don’t have that, quite that amount of standing power or effect on things.” (30:03) Yeah. Interviewer: “Now also, as you started to go into the reunions you got involved in actually recording short interviews with the other players. Tell me a little bit about that.” Well I always had my camera with me and I snapped pictures so the association asked if I would be willing to I guess the board had talked about you know to start to preserve history. And they asked me if I could do a few interviews and I was like “Yeah I always have my camera with me”. So I started doing about 5 to 8 interview of all the ladies, and I’ve got about 184 of them done now. They are about 5 to 8 minutes kind of, you know not as lengthy as we are doing here but about how we got started, who they played for, their managers, the chaperones, and kind of what they’ve done since and things like that. The short version maybe of the what’s going on now. (31:07) Interviewer: “Sure. But it’s also very valuable because you got started a lot earlier before we or other people did, so you’ve got stories of people that aren’t recorded anywhere else.” Yeah because a lot of them are gone now. I do have short interviews and sorts. 31:22 �Interviewer: “And as we move forward with this project we will track down physically where they are located and that information will go up on our website and so our project here, but basically so we’ll make sure that people if they find us can also locate where those are because they are going want to see as much as they can certainly. So alright… Well if they can’t, I mean I’ve got copies of them. Of course they are on VHS and I’m not sure, the longer I’m there they will deteriorate but… Interviewer: “We’ll make sure that all that is digitized by somebody so we’ll still have it certainly. Now as you look over your time while you were actually playing what do you think the effect of that experience was on you? What did you take out of it or learn from it they stayed with you?” (32:07) Well a lot of it would be like friendships I made. And you know it taught you to not be not be afraid to be out in public, playing in front of 2,000 people who aren’t bashful and people. Of course the discipline was always there but that always helps too. And just…almost everything you know. Without that I don’t know where half of us would have been. It gave us the opportunity to be able to go on to school, a lot of them did. I never did, my parents couldn’t afford it so I wasn’t able to attend or continue but there are others that really had beautiful opportunities to be doctors and teachers. It was a wonderful experience and you can’t even put into words. (33:09) Interviewer: “What did you end up doing? Did you have a particular career? Or did you just do different jobs?” Well I worked at the Michigan Bell for 35 years. I was central office supervisor. And that was inside the central office where the wiring and everything, way back before all this technology. Ladders about two stories high and we would be running wires about a block long and dragging them inside, there was a guy connecting them outside people’s houses soldering and having a tool pouch on I was the supervisor of the ladies who did that so… Interviewer: “Did it help you just to go out there and be a supervisor having worked with a lot of people?” Yeah I think so yeah. Just being out there I mean being on a ball field on a base is kind of like directing traffic half the time you know and you just kind of take charge a little bit you know, I mean play towards the outfield, you call a play and tell them where to throw the ball and this and that, you are just kind of out there taking charge. Yeah so I believed that helped a lot. (34:22) Interviewer: “Alright, now you played a lot of softball. Did you do any coaching at any time?” �Yeah I did I coached a couple times the Wyandottes, some younger girls. And I coached one of our teams that had a well class C I think championship and after that I kind just played so… Interviewer: “Alright, and did you kind of follow the growth of women’s sports? Title IX? Just adding more teams and things in the ’70’s and ‘80’s?” (34:58) Yeah I did quite a bit. In fact I played been playing slow pitch up until this year up in Warfield. I was their pitcher and I kept telling my young kids as long as I can catch it or dodge it, I’ll play it. But this year I was so busy with our reunion and fundraising and going to meetings and this and that of course I still bowl and golf, I just really didn’t have time to play ball this year so. The first year I haven’t played. Interviewer: “Alright, now back to when you were actually playing. Did you think of the league being this pioneering or significant or was it just playing ball?” You know, it was just playing ball at first but I mean when everything else comes out the movie and everything people keep telling you, you know thank you for this and that you know, then it kind of registers. But originally I was doing what I loved to do (36:00) and you were getting paid for it like a job so that didn’t really register until things just kept getting bigger and bigger and getting fan mail from all over the country, kids and not just kids adults you know. Veterans and stuff like that write wanting autographs, it’s just…it’s just awesome, it’s amazing. It just blows my mind that people are still so interested in wanting all this stuff, our autographs and pictures I just think it’s great. I just hope it never dies. Interviewer: “Well we are doing our best to make sure that it doesn’t. Alright, you actually got a good story and have done a good job telling it to us. Thanks for coming in and talking to us today.” Thank you. 36:47 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_MMoore0575BB Title A name given to the resource Moore, Mary (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Moore, Mary Description An account of the resource Mary Moore was born in 1932 and grew up outside of Detroit, Michigan. She played ball with the boys in vacant lots in her neighborhood growing up, and met some of the Detroit Tiger players who lived in the area. She was recruited into the AAGPBL in 1950, and played second base that season for the Springfield Sallies barnstorming team. Their season included games played at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., and at Yankee Stadium. She was drafted by the Battle Creek Belles for the 1951 season, but an offseason injury kept her from playing that year. She returned to the league in 1952, only to have another injury cut short her playing career. After baseball, she worked for Michigan Bell for 35 years and continued to play and coach softball. When the league began holding reunions, she recorded short video interviews with 184 former players, coaches and chaperones, which are now archived with the league's collection in South Bend, Indiana. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-07 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/41d087b9127acdcb485509201188988e.mp4 fed9d551737081ab7fe135202a35fe0a https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/04969cfe6d881664277b8640c995c541.pdf ebbab5520f98cfdacb2f9e24102d7444 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veteran’s History Project Interviewee’s Name: Mary Froning Length of Interview: (43:24) Interviewed by: James Smither Transcribed by: Lindsey Thatcher, April 14, 2011 Interviewer: “Okay, let’s begin with your full name and where and when were you born?” My full name is Mary Froning O’Meara. I was born in Minster, Ohio 8/26/1934. Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like? What was the family situation?” I lived with my mother and father in this small town in Minster, Ohio. It was an all German community and I went to an elementary school and high school there. I lived across the street. Actually the whole town is Catholic and a big church down the block from myself. In my early childhood, I have also a twin sister, so my twin sister and I went to (01:00)Minster grade school and Minster High School. The eighth grade through grade school and four years at the high school. Interviewer: “Now, were there any organized sports for girls at the Catholic school?” Actually it isn’t a Catholic school. Interviewer: “Okay.” It was run by the state. We had the only school in the state of Ohio that was run by the state of Ohio. We had nuns, we had priests and instead of saying religion they called it ethics in school. But, anyhow, back to your other question is, we had the CYO organization, which was the Catholic Youth Organization. In which I participated in when I was in the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th and through high school and that was the only sport I could play. (2:02) Interviewer: “What was the sport?” It was softball. So I played that, the first coach I had was a priest, and from then on it was different coaches. Interviewer: “Now did you play with your sister also, play ball?” Yes, she also played. Martha played second base and I was short stop. �2 Interviewer: “Is this water for…” No, I’m okay. I’m fine. Interviewer: “The, okay, I went to Catholic school with the real uniforms and the white socks and the little patch and the whole bit, you didn’t have to go through that, huh?” No. Interviewer: “The softball you played was part of the school curriculum?” No, this was different, it was a club sport. You didn’t have to pay to get in. You just tried out and make the team (03:00). It was just something for the girls to do. I loved softball, so I tried out for it and made it when I was in the fifth grade. Interviewer: “Wow! So each year, each school year, where would the baseball played during that period of time? During the summers only?” What do you mean, the baseball? Can I have some water? Interviewer: “Sure, Tom, can we have….here is the water.” Okay… Interviewer: “Alright, Tom? Playing during the summer for 5th grade, 6th grade, all the way through every single summer through…” Except when I was scouted to play in my junior year. Interviewer: “Wait a minute, I don’t want to get there quite yet. What I am trying to get across, what I want to get across, is that when you are playing that regularly, especially as a young person, you are going to get better. The more you play, you’re going to get better (04:00). So, was there a lot of competition between you and your sister about?” No, Martha and I, I mean it was good practice, because we could go home and throw the ball. Actually, when I was playing probably in the 8th or 9th grade, I knew I was better than practically anybody else. So I could run fast, I could throw, I had a good arm, I could hit. And so when we played other teams, when I came up to bat and I could make home runs and outrun them. And my sister Martha and I would make double plays, so that helped us. I had my friend Kay Horsema in left field and she played at that point. Interviewer: “Were your parents supportive of this?” Yes. Interviewer: “I was going to say the equipment…” �3 They would come watch us play. I had two older brothers, I should say one older and one younger than me. (04:58) As for as playing sports, I loved it; I mean it, I could probably have been on the boy’s baseball team in high school. Being a girl, there was no way to do it. So instead of that I became a cheerleader. And that’s what we could do; we could be a cheerleader for basketball and football. Interviewer: “Now, had you heard about the women’s professional, Professional All American Girls Baseball Team, when you were in school?” No. Interviewer: “Okay.” If we are going to get when I was recruited, I was a junior in high school. I was playing on a Sunday afternoon, softball. And, apparently in South Bend, they do have a Board of Directors. So one of the board of director’s mother lives in Minster, Ohio, he was coming by apparently (06:00), and a week later, he sent me a contract. My dad and I looked at it, my mother looked at it and he said it’s not softball, this is baseball. And I thought it is in South Bend, Indiana. I had never been there and I should say the other team that was there was in Fort Wayne which is only seventy miles away. I never heard of them, I never did. Nobody wrote it in the paper, what small town that we had. The Dayton Daily News did not pick it up. So in so far as knowing what to do, they sent me the contract. I looked at it and said I will certainly try out. That is in 1951, this was in March. I went in to Spring Training in May in South Bend. There must have been probably, I would say, about a hundred trying out (06:59), there were four positions. Being rookies and with the manager which was Karl Winsch to play ball. Interviewer: “Now, how did you get there?” By bus, my first Greyhound bus ride, that was wonderful. I went from Salina to South Bend, Indiana. Interviewer: “You were sixteen?” I was sixteen years old. Interviewer: “How was that trip, what were you thinking about?” Nothing, you know, here I am on the bus going to play baseball. That’s all I could think about, meeting different people, and the person actually the board of directors, the gentleman that did it. I stayed with him for the first couple of days. And the other hard part was getting on a trolley to go to the Palin Park, is where we played. That was hard. Where I was coming from you were in a car or you were walking, or riding a bike, right? That was enjoyable too. Because South Bend was quite large at the time it had a hundred and fifty thousand people and you’re looking at my home town which had 1,500. �4 (08:18) Interviewer: “Now, where was your twin sister in all this?” My twin sister was at home, she also tried out, but when the tryouts came, she did not want to play ball. She wanted to become a nurse, so she went home and did that. She did become a nurse. Interviewer: “Okay, so she did.” Yes. Interviewer: “But you had the opportunity- you wanted to play?” I wanted to play. Interviewer: “But, the thing I am a little confused about is the, you had been playing softball since fifth grade…” Yes. Interviewer: “And now you are being asked to, by this time the league had hardball. Right?” Oh, yes. Interviewer: “Oh, Yeah.” By the time, it came in 1951, it was overhand pitching and the size of the ball was ten inches and the pitching mound was fifty-five feet and the bases were, I think at that point seventy or longer (9:17). And so this was the first time in my entire life, so what I did first was I had a baseball from my brother and I started throwing the baseball and that helped. So when I got there before the try outs I knew how to hit, I knew how to throw and we would hit, Karl the manger, would hit the flies to us in the outfield. They called me, well they really called me flash, fearless running over fences and stuff. So I tried out in South Bend and there were quite a few people there. They took four, and I was one of the four, (10:01) so. One of the high points of my life; here I am I am going to be really playing I get a uniform that is a skirt, I can slide, a uniform that’s a skirt which I normally had pants on before. I looked at it and I said “Gosh, look at that uniform, it looks wonderful!” It did. We had socks and stirrups and baseball caps. Interviewer: “All of the girls that I have talked to about the uniform said that they had to adjust it in some way; did you have to do that with yours?” Yes, well actually when I came there you would try one on and they also had a seamstress, so if it was too long you know, which I wanted a mini skirt like anyhow…she would adjust it to your size. So we had two uniforms, we had one on (11:00) the road and one at home. So they would �5 have them dry cleaned after you left to go on a road trip and when you came home it was waiting for you. Interviewer: “Now you move, during the season you moved to South Bend?” Oh, yes. Interviewer: “Where did you stay?” I stayed, all of us stayed with people in homes. I was in a house with other rookies. In fact Lois Youngen, Dolly Vanderlip, and another girl I can’t remember her name. We stayed with a lady by the name of Mrs. Kelly. So there is where we stayed and after we played ball we came back and we stayed with her and then we went on the road and when we came back we would stay with her. She was paid, I don’t think we paid her, I think the League (12:00) or I think we did pay her. Interviewer: “So it was rent. You were basically renting a room in the, yeah. So how was the first season rookie?” The first season I sat on the bench. My manager Karl said: “Mary, I want you to learn this game”. In 1951 the South Bend Blue Sox won the world series so there was no way, every position was taken care of and there was no way that I could get out there unless somebody broke a leg. But what they did do was to, I would pitch one inning. So I would hit and I would go to first base on my way out, so that’s okay because I was fast. I also sat on the bench and he said “I want you to watch what you do and what signs I give you so that when you are up to bat you know what it is”. The other thing I would do, which I don’t know (13:00), is I would sit on the bench and they did smoke, I would hold their cigarettes when they were on the field and they would come back and they would have it. It was very interesting the first year, it was hard. It was so different from softball because you had longer bases and actually you could steal without having to worry about the pitch going over home plate and stuff so that was my first year experience. Interviewer: “Now once you had your first season, did you return back home?” I returned back to Minster. I finished my senior year at Minster, Ohio and I graduated and at that point they let us know when to come for spring training. So that was, we played 112 games a year so spring training was at, sort of like at the end of April. I graduated May 22 (14:00), I went back for graduation and then I continued on with the team in 1952. Interviewer: “Now, when you got back from your first season and you were back in school now, was anybody talking to you about the fact that you played professional baseball?” No because they had no idea what I was doing, no idea. Even my, my mother and father used to come to Ft. Wayne to watch me play, in 1952. Because that was where we did play and it was �6 only 7 miles away so they saw me play. My brother came with his wife and they saw me and Martha did too, my sister. But as far as people in Minster knowing that I was a professional baseball player and that I was getting paid, not very much but it was enjoyable. They had no idea. What is (15:00)_ summer and do? I played and was a professional baseball player. And that’s what I am. Everyone in South Bend knew about the girls, everybody in Ft. Wayne knew who the girls were. Everybody in Michigan knew about the girls: Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Battle Creek they all knew who we were, Racine, the other teams. Everybody in the city knew. Because what they did they had post scores, they would be on radio in South Bend, they would be on the radio and they would interview you. And I had my photograph taken and they would put the photograph in the store downtown in South Bend and they would have the schedule on us, and people would come out and watch the South Bend Blue Sox play. And that was how there was advertising. Interviewer: “How was your second season?” Second season, okay. That would 1953. I got better. I hit home runs inside the park homeruns. Interviewer: “But the team is giving you a chance to play now?” Oh, yes. Because a lot of them at that point, a lot of ones that had played all along… Interviewer: “The veterans?” Yes the veterans. They went off to (16:30) school to further their educations, you know teachers. Or they went back to work, or…and I was only 17, I mean I didn’t have a job I wanted to play ball. Interviewer: “So now you have gone from being rookie, into playing in the regular lineup?” Yes, and I did this for 3 years. Interviewer: “Now was there any sense, I realize you were 17 or 18 years old, but was there any sense that this was going to be your career, baseball?” I never really thought about it. The thing that I thought about was “Here I am, playing baseball. I do get money to play”. As far as the going back to school, it never entered my mind. Because every, after the season was over I would work I stayed in Kalamazoo one season and worked, and another season I stayed in Rockford. So every season after our season I did work. Interviewer: “Now your sister already knew what she wanted to do?” Yes. Interviewer: “She wanted to be a nurse?” �7 Yes, a nurse. Interviewer: “Now was there any discussion either with your sister or your parents about what you were going to do? Besides play baseball.” No, I mean there wasn’t (18:00) very many opportunities in 1952 when you graduated to do as far as, you could get married, you could go to school to become a nurse, you could work in the factory, or you could further your education and become a teacher. Now those were your choices. So at that point I said “I don’t want any of those choices, that’s not me”. So I just kept playing ball and then when I was in, actually in Rockford working there. My friend who flew for TWA, called me and she said “Mary, I want you to come and I want you to interview with 3 different airlines, I would like for you, if you would like to do this, come up to Chicago and interview”. So at that point afterwards I think it was 56? No 55 and 56 that’s when I went. I was interviewed with the airlines was something else. I go up there I was to be at a certain time in Chicago. At midnight all the interviews took place with the airlines (19:30). My first one was with TWA, my second one was with United and the third was with Parody airlines. So I had a certain time I was interviewing with this young man, and he was asking me what I did before I came and what my education was and why I am here and all of that. So I started to tell him about my career before I came and I told him I played professional baseball and he stopped right in his tracks. He had no idea that even in Chicago; we weren’t written up in the paper in Chicago that I had played professional baseball. And at that point we had no baseball cards so I couldn’t prove him that I had played. So he said that’s really nice. So he said “I’m going to set you up with another interview and I want you to come back, but first of all I want you to go to charm school”. So I had to go to charm school for a week, for the make-up and for the walking and everything to be in the airlines. So I did that for a week, I came back and also what helps too, is that you are interviewed by different people, not the same person (21:00). So I was interviewed by a different person and I made it. Interviewer: “I know that when you started out your first year, the charm school for the League had already stopped right? So you had didn’t have any of that kind of…?” No we had none of that. Charm school I think was ’43 when we first started. We had one of the ladies to look like ladies, no short haircuts you always had to wear lipstick, you always had to be, you couldn’t smoke you always had to wear dresses, no slacks no jeans. You had to set yourself as elegant. Interviewer: “In your first couple of seasons, how were the fans?” The fans were great. Actually in South Bend I would say there may be about 2 or 3,000 people who would come. The majority were night games. And the fans all the ladies wore dresses all the men had suits on all the men had hats on, nobody ever had shorts on they were always dressed like men and women. �8 Interviewer: “The, you said that you had sometimes 2 or 3,000 people show up?” Yes we did, and these were night games. You always started at 7 or 7:30. We always had programs you could buy. The programs were 25 cents, no programs were 10 cents. To get in was 25 cents. So it was very, people loved us they were very (23:00) came out, everybody was happy to see us play and would ask for our autograph. And after we played we all went out for dinner. Or if we had a road trip after we would eat and then get on the bus for the longest trip on the bus was from South Bend to Rockford that was a long one. We would arrive in Rockford in the early morning. People were walking going to work. And Karl would, we were all on the bus and Karl would open the door up and say “Come on out and watch us beat the Peaches”. And they would laugh and people would say “Oh no you’re not”. So that’s how we got fans too. But everybody loved the Peaches so they had a big following that really nice for them, same as in Kalamazoo. They also had a big draw they had a brand new stadium and ball park to play in. Interviewer: “What were the road trips like?” Road trips were fun I mean you would be tired from playing the game, 9 innings of ball and then you would get on and you had to put your dress on and your skirt on and sit there and you got some sleep but not a lot, so actually if you did arrive (24:30) say in Rockford, you would go to the hotel and you would nap for awhile and then you would get up. A lot of it was like “Where am I today?” and then we would be like, “Oh, we’re in Rockford”. We’d get up and we had practice, and if we did lose games we had practice every day after that. We would have, Karl, we would have meetings in the morning Karl would give us our signs for the game for that night I should say. Interviewer: “By signs you mean the special stuff they would do with you?” Yes, the special stuff that would they said, right. Actually if you stepped out the box you would look at him, I was very good at bunting. I could easily be the first or second to enter and I had lots of people enter behind me, and I loved to steal bases. Interviewer: “I only played Little League but my claim to fame is that I hit a homerun on a bunt.” On a bunt? When you were 5 years… Interviewer: “The other team was over throwing and everything. I didn’t know what I was doing I was just, I was a fairly decent pitcher but I couldn’t hit for anything.” That was a lot of people’s problems. You could catch, you could run: hitting takes an eye. We had several, several women (26:00) who were just very good hitters, excellent. Interviewer: “So as of the third year, the fourth year were the fans, were you still getting more people? Because I’ve heard from some that there were less people. �9 Yeah, actually it dwindled. Remember the war was over in ’45. All the baseball players, the Major League baseball players came back. So they drew more in Chicago and they drew more in where they had the major leagues more. These teams had started probably about 1952. I remember we had one set in Minster Ohio and everybody went over to witness it, Howdy Doody was on. so the TV came in ’52. In ’53 there was still a lot of people enjoying our League because it was still a League. In ’54 it started to dwindle, but not too many people, by not too many people I mean we still had 5 or 600 people and that was when we the League started to disband. It had gone 12 years, there was no more new interest. Interviewer: “Now what was there discussion amongst you about what is going to happen next year (27:30)? Are we going to be working anymore?” No, actually when I left, I received a letter in 1954…’55 I should say, that the League was disbanding and there would be no more professional baseball. Interviewer: “What was your reaction to that?” I was sad. It was something I had done over the summers. Why quit now? That was, there was no more baseball. So I decided to pursue my other life. Interviewer: “Now you then got into the airlines, you have continued on. Now, did you ever talk about the fact that you were a baseball player when you were employed by the airlines?” No, I did not. Because at that point nobody knew it, I could say “Yes, I played professional baseball”; well I proved it one time we were on a flight going from Chicago to Syracuse and we actually got off the flight, I remember we had 108 inches of snow, and the snow banks were umpteen feet up in the air as we came in (29:00). Now I’m flying on a Conveyer that seats 40 people, we have 1 pilot, and we have no flight engineers, so when we go down everybody has their own individual room. So the guy the pilot thought that he would be pretty smart and he was going to throw us a snowball. Well he did, that was completely wrong. Because I picked up one, and he never knew what hit him. That was the, at that point I couldn’t say “Well, I played professional baseball”, you know that’s why I just about gave it to him. But, no I never talked about it. I was never recognized in my hometown of Minster Ohio as being a professional baseball player. The only time that I was recognized in Minster, we were they have parades during Oktoberfest so my friend Katie and I were in the parade for being recognized as baseball players. Interviewer: “Now when was this? Was this in the late ‘50s or ‘60s, much later?” It was later, yes much later after maybe 20 years. Interviewer: “Okay, almost every one of you that I have talked to that they just didn’t talk about it (30:30), they didn’t tell their kids about it or anything like that. But at some point �10 you went back to that period of time because did you go to that first reunion? I mean, how did you get back acquainted?” The first reunion was in Chicago in 1980 and that was really wonderful. Interviewer: “So you went?” Oh yes, absolutely. Interviewer: “I guess what I am trying to get at is that you have gone all of these years …” Without speaking about baseball, that’s right. Because nobody knew us, nobody knew what I did. I mean I graduated from high school and they said “what are you doing this summer?” I’m going to play ball. “Oh okay”. Nobody came out to watch me nobody from Minster came out to watch me. It was like you must have done something bad. No, I didn’t do something bad, I played baseball; and so when they made the movie that’s what really, really helped us. Then people recognized what we did. And the people in my hometown did and they had parades for it like I told you about. So that was wonderful and I told my family I played ball and they knew I played ball because I coached them into how to play ball-softball, that’s what I played. And my son was a baseball player and they knew that I played. And I was on the city league (32:00) and the girl and I was playing fast pitch softball and I started to bunt and she said “Where did you learn that?” I played professional baseball. “You played professional baseball?” So that’s how it came about so as you know and everybody A League of Their Own movie helped us. Interviewer: “What did you think of the movie?” I thought it was great. Actually I met, I was there in Scopie? _, I was one of the 50 or 55 that went there for a part in the movie. We met other people that were in the movie. We met Penny Marshall, I threw softball with her, they had baseballs and softballs, and well they had baseballs. But I threw ball with her and Madonna was there and she was sort of off limits so I got her autograph but she came in her big Cadillac with body guards. Well she was famous; she made a lot of money. So Penny was very grateful that she was in the movie and then before that she had made big, so Tom Hanks is a tremendous baseball player and he loved being the coach. “You mean I don’t have to get skinny?”, and anyway so it was the idea that he was [Jimmy Fox?]. Anyway, her daughter was in the (33:30) movie I met all of the players I mean Penny, Rosie, and these people really are why we became famous. And that’s why the movie was, everybody was crazy for it. Interviewer: “How did your life change after that movie came out?” Actually I was playing softball and the ladies I taught how to play softball knew that I had played professional baseball and they had an idea, but they didn’t know really what I did, they knew I played for the South Bend Blue Sox so when the movie came to Madison I was there and I was �11 interviewed by the people from the TV station about they interviewed me. I knew that at that point they thought “Wow, she lives in Madison and she played professional baseball”. Interviewer: “This is going to sound like a stupid question but why do you come to the reunions?” I actually come to the reunions to see my friends. The majority of my friends played 51-54. I do know some of the ladies that played at the beginning of the League and it was (35:00), so I come because I enjoy being with the people and being interviewed by people. It is very nice the reunions are very well organized, the people are very nice. And you see different kinds, I had never been to Detroit so we come and I enjoy it. Interviewer: “Now you mentioned a son, so you did eventually get married?” Yes, I got married in 1958. Interviewer: “Okay.” So in 1958 after I flew for the airlines for a time before and during when I was flying. We got married in 1958 and I could not go back and become a stewardess, it was not allowed. So after marriage you could not fly, if you wore glasses you could not fly, you had to be a certain height a certain weight, oh yes there were lots and lots of restrictions. So I got married in 1958 and we moved to Madison and I raised 4 children, 3 daughters and a son. Interviewer: “And you said earlier that they knew about your baseball career, but did you let them know early on or is it something that they found out on their own later when the movie came out (36:30), your kids?” Oh they knew before when they grew up and realized that I also organized my son’s baseball and they knew that I had played baseball and other coaches asked me to do this for them. But nobody knew that how many teams there were how many players had done this and when we did this in ’43, nobody knew that. So it was, I mean it as we could say again, when the movie came out everybody knew. Interviewer: “What do you make of all of this superstardom? I mean think about it for a moment, there are baseball teams all over place, and there are fans. But I have never experienced the kind of adoration that the public seems to have for your group. You see it little girls coming up to you, you see the public ‘Oh!’ of course they always say A League of Their Own and you are right it is the movie that really made that known, but what do you think about this whole hoopla, my gosh?” I think that, even when I was on a plane coming here, sitting next to the guy “What are you going to do in Detroit?” “Well I’m going to a baseball reunion”. “You mean A League of Their Own?” “Yes, that what I mean”, and everybody around me turned around (38:00) to see what I looked �12 like and what I did. So I explained to everybody what I did, I played ball. I think the majority is when people come to our reunion and the look at us and say “Now you actually played baseball, not softball?” “Baseball.” and they admire that, little kid’s do. All the little kids do, actually I coach little kids, they didn’t know I played baseball but they knew I knew baseball and that was the idea behind it. I knew what to do. I knew what to do when I coached my son’s team, that’s what they asked me to do. I had two kids that I coached and played softball, these ladies, their daughters played and they came up and asked me if I would coach them and teach them how to play softball, so I did it for 15 years. I told them we’ll have practice on Tuesday and play on Thursday, they did and they enjoyed it. Interviewer: “I know that the questions I have asked of all of you that during the period of the time that you played it was for the love of the game it was the fun the camaraderie, and never really thought (39:30) that it was going to go anywhere beyond that. But now people are saying to you, I am saying to you that this was an important part of American history. Now I’m, pretty sure none of you thought ‘hmm, I’m going to play baseball and be a part of American history.’ But how do you, I mean you have to accept the fact that people are looking at this, you are put in the baseball hall of fame, Ken burns did a documentary out baseball and said here was this amazing period of time, how do you react to this, this realization that you are part of American history ?” Yes, which at the time we were playing we had no idea that we would be recognized in the baseball hall of fame and that we were a part of history. And the part of history never entered our minds until they said okay we will make a movie about you. You are the pioneers of baseball; and then it hit us. That we did do something that was great. Interviewer: “How do you look back on that period now. I mean you get a chance to reflect about this. You’ve had a full life, you have had kids you have a husband, this is just a small segment?” A small segment. Yes that was like, I was growing up. I was 16, I had I didn’t have to go to school anymore I just played ball and I actually made (41:00) money. I knew eventually up ahead that I would have to go on with my life with school or get a job or something but at that point, when I was playing I never thought about it. I never could, because I didn’t think that we were the pioneers of baseball, It was when I was playing softball in Minster, I’m not a pioneer of softball however I am a pioneer of professional baseball and that’s what is great. Interviewer: “Does that, looking back on it did those 4 years have a major impact on the person you became?” Well, no I don’t think so it was a lot of discipline which I had to have because I was quite proud in high school. The idea was that it was a lot of discipline and Karl was a very good manager and, no I think in the 4 years that I played the enjoyment of playing a sport 4 years was �13 wonderful. An organized team and I didn’t think I was a pioneer of baseball I was just an All American that played ball. Interviewer: “Thank you so much, wonderful wonderful.” Thank you. (42:33) �14 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_MFroning1123BB Title A name given to the resource Froning, Mary (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Froning, Mary Description An account of the resource Mary Froning O'Meara was born in Minster, Ohio, in 1934. She played on softball teams run by the local Catholic Youth Organization while in school, and was recruited into the AAGPBL in 1951. She played outfield for the South Bend Blue Sox from 1951 until the league folded in 1954. After baseball, she worked as an airline stewardess for several years, and then married and raised a family, and continued to play and coach baseball and softball. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank(Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Indiana Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-08 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/71f5b60d70673a09dbede19ead918b42.mp4 87c7beb1afa3b92be3dc8df0bdcfcd3e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4ec3ce5a7399af1d8f98be0ee376aef1.pdf c26cbf6ecb0d4926a633784494254574 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW JOAN HOLDERNESS Women in Baseball Born: Kenosha, Wisconsin, March 17, 1933 Resides: Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, August10, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, February 6, 2011 Interviewer: “What is your full name and where and when were you born?” I was born on March 17th, 1933 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Interviewer: “And your full name?” Joan Holderness Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like?” I can recall that my dad played a lot of ball and my grandfathers both played and they used to go out to the lake when I was a little tot, so I played ball all the time. I had a bat and a ball and they had those flat gloves and I can remember doing that as a little kid. The first time I heard about the league was when my mother took me to a ball game of the Kenosha Comets with a friend of hers, and man, I just loved that. 43:11 Interviewer: “About how old were you when you saw them?” I was probably in the fifth or sixth grade. From then on I wanted to be one of them, but my mother was very strict and I didn’t go to any more ball games until I got into junior high and I use to go down and watch them practicing. We could sit in the left field free as fans, so I got to meet several of the ball players and they would play catch with or me. 44:05 In 1947 I was fourteen years old and they asked me if I wanted to be their batgirl. They didn’t have batgirls, so I got a uniform and I was a batgirl, and of course, I was with them in town I’d see them. 1 �Interviewer: “So, you were going to school and then during the summer is when you would be a batgirl?” Yes Interviewer: “Did they pay you?” No Interviewer: “But you got a uniform?” Yeah, in 1948 they started a farm system for the league and they played in Chicago and my dad agreed that he would drive me down there once a week to play. They had four teams, so I got to play. 45:14 I played shortstop and I really loved that, but we had to drive all the way to Chicago and there were no Interstates or anything, but you would get there and get into the game right away. I enjoyed that for the whole year in 1948. In 1949 they invited me to go to spring training in Indiana, so I went to spring training and I ended up getting a contract and my dad signed my contract. 46:01 Interviewer: “Because you were underage.” Oh, yeah Interviewer: “How old were you?” In 1949 I was sixteen, but my mother wouldn’t let me travel. Half of that year I couldn’t—I could go to Racine, and I think that’s the only place she would let me go, so how are you going to get on a team when you can’t go on the road, so it was tough for me to get on the team and on a position. They liked me and they were very nice with me. Anyway, in 1950 I played quite a bit. They use to put me as a pinch hitter a lot and I played right field once in a while, but they had established some players that wouldn’t give up their spots, so it was tough. 47:08 About in July of 1950 Grand Rapids needed a 2 �player in right field and I guess—Johnny Rawlings was the coach and he had watched me when I was practicing with them and I had a good arm and so they wanted me to go to Grand Rapids. Well, Grand Rapids was in town playing at Kenosha and when they were leaving Kenosha they went to Racine, so they brought me up to Racine with my mother and my mother was sitting and talking with the chaperone. Then they brought a girl down that I was going to room with and they met her mother and so my mother finally let me go. 48:11 Then I got to play all the time, but every night in right field, so I really loved playing for them. I really enjoyed playing with the Chicks. And that was a lot of nice girls. Interviewer: “What was your—now you’re living in a house or something during the season? You’re not living at home anymore right, for the Grand Rapids Chicks? Where did you live when you were playing for Grand Rapids where were you living?” We were first in a home with a family and we just had a room. We couldn’t cook there or anything. We could wash clothes, but we couldn’t cook or anything, so it was just a place we could sleep. 49:08 We had twin beds and it was a nice place, and nice people. Interviewer: “Was that your first time living away from home?” Oh yeah Interviewer: “By that time you were maybe seventeen or eighteen?” That was in 1950, so I was seventeen. We ended up getting an apartment and that was nice because we could cook and everything and it didn’t cost so much. I couldn’t go to a lot of restaurants because I wasn’t old—if they had any booze they wouldn’t let you in and they always had the best cooks. 3 �Interviewer: “How were you as a hitter?” How was I? I don’t remember striking out, but I think they got a couple places where I struck out, but I don’t remember striking out. 50:17 I wasn’t a three hundred hitter or anything, but I was good at meeting the ball. Interviewer: “How about strawberries? Did you slide into bases at all?” Not real good. Too many legs you know, but I did all right, I didn’t like sliding. Interviewer: “Did you think, at that time, that you were going to continue playing baseball as a professional? You were sixteen, seventeen, years old, were you thinking about playing?” 51:15 I played 1951, but I felt like the league was kind of busting up. Kenosha let their team travel all the time and a couple tournaments they were going to different teams and Grand Rapids was losing their fans. They just—they had other things to do then. They had gasoline and they could go where they wanted to go, but we had some nice crowds for a while, especially in Grand Rapids. Rockford was a nice place and Fort Wayne had good fans. 52:11 Interviewer: “What were your plans in terms of—were you going to go to college or did you think going into the work world or were you going to get married? What were you thinking about?” Well, I was planning on going to school, but I never did. When I went back home I had to go back into school and some teachers didn’t like that I left early to go to spring training and when I came back they wouldn’t let me make up my studies, so I had problems with them. I ended up—I didn’t graduate when I was supposed to graduate, so I was disgusted with that, so I ended up going back and getting a job with the 4 �government. 53:06 Then I didn’t want to go back to play ball anymore. It was hard to get a job with the government and I worked at Great Lakes. Interviewer: “Did you make the decision not to play anymore?” Yeah, they called me the next year, but I decided not to play. I couldn’t because I didn’t want to leave that job and my dad had signed for me to get a car, so I had to pay for the car, so I couldn’t quit the job. Interviewer: “Did you miss it?” Well yeah, I did miss it and the first couple years I really did, but after that-Interviewer: “How did you find out that the league had folded? Do you remember how you found out?” 54:07 Well, the last year I played a lot of the teams were busting down you know. They were running out of money and they were losing money and they just quit. The girls had to go to other teams and it was just traveling, traveling. Buses bothered me; I got tired of bus rides. I didn’t ride a bus for a long time, many years, I was sick of them. Interviewer: “After you quit the league, did you ever talk to people after that, years later did you ever talk about the fact that you played professional baseball?” Not really, we didn’t discuss it. No, sometimes I would see the girl that I was living with. She got married and she would have a child, every year she would have a child. 55:14 I would see her and I was bowling quite a bit and I would meet several of the girls that were ball players and were bowling, so I got to see some of them, but I really didn’t—I loved playing baseball, and I’ve been a Cubs fan all my life. I just—it was done you know. 5 �Interviewer: “Now, you’re at a reunion after many, many years, what prompted you to come to a reunion?” Oh, to see people. I went to the first one in Chicago and to see everybody again was really great and we had a lot of fun. 56:10 We got to play golf and whatever, so it was fun Interviewer: “What was your reaction to getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame?” Oh, I thought it was great that they accepted our league. At the time I was a computer worker with the government and I built a database for the league and I helped Cooperstown to get all the names up, and that was nice to find everybody. Interviewer: “Did you go to the Hall of Fame?” Oh yeah, I’ve been there two or three times. Interviewer: “Did you go there when they actually had the opening ceremony?” Yeah Interviewer: “What was that like?” 57:04 That was super and when they opened that curtain, oh, we were all excited and I took a lot of movies of that. Interviewer: “Did you see the movie, A League of Their Own?” Did I see it? Oh yeah, I’ve seen it a lot of times. Interviewer: “What did you think of that?” I thought she did a great job. There was a lot of Hollywood stuff in there, but I thought she did a wonderful job, and everybody I talk to about it today, people say they have seen that movie so many times, not the players or fans, just people. Interviewer: “I’ve seen it maybe five or six times myself.” 6 �It’s on TV quite a bit, so they really enjoy that movie. Interviewer: “Do you think the movie, the movie itself when it came out, did that get you thinking more about your time in baseball or were you already thinking about the baseball anyway?” 58:14 At the time it came out I was president of the association, so I was pretty excited for everybody and I think Penny did a wonderful job. I met her in Chicago and I met a couple of the stars, Rosie and Madonna, they were there, so I got them, but I thought Penny did a wonderful job with it. She had a couple of our girls there helping her. Interviewer: “Were you at all surprised at the big—this huge outpouring of affection for your league that didn’t really happen before that, right? Before the movie?” 59:13 They didn’t know about us, they just—of course the girls were from all around us, east and west, but the league itself played right in the Midwest. People just didn’t know about us, they just didn’t know about our league. Interviewer: “Were you surprised at this? It’s big, and you probably didn’t think it was going to be this big when you were playing ball. Were you surprised at how big it’s become?” I think I am, yeah, I think it’s wonderful, especially for kids, they just think it’s wonderful and they wish they could play. It’s surprising they are so happy. Interviewer: “Do you think that the fact that you played, that the league played, had an affect on young people, on young girls? Do you think there was an inspiration from what you did?” 7 �Perhaps, yeah and they realize that women can play in sports and I think that helped a lot of people. Tennis was wonderful for women and they just went for everything, soccer, it’s great, and a lot of ball players are out there, I just don’t see them that much. I don’t see them anymore, but I know there’s a lot of them playing ball. :55 Interviewer: “Were there any particular games or events that happened during your playing that stand out? A home run or stealing a base?” No, I didn’t make it—I had a triple once and I got to third base and I couldn’t go any farther. I told John, “I guess I wasn’t breathing when I was running across there”, but he was motioning me to go home and I couldn’t make it. That was in Fort Wayne and that was funny, but he was mad that I didn’t go. Interviewer: “How did the manager treat you?” Every manager I had was very good. Johnny Gottselig from Chicago, he was a hockey player and I never thought about him as a baseball player, but he was nice. 2:00 Interviewer: “Did the managers treat you like a woman or did they treat you like a ball player?” Both I guess, yeah. John was wonderful, John Rawlings. I’d be in the field and he’d be standing—you know when you’re warming up prior to the game, and he would hit a fly ball and then he’s hit two ground balls to right field and he’d put his bat down near the ground and that’s what he wanted, for me to throw that ball right at that bat and man, I would make him move it because I had a good arm. He thought that was funny, the way I could hit—that I could throw that ball so well, but I could do anything for that guy, he was great. I really enjoyed playing for him. 3:03 8 �Interviewer: “Some of the other girls said that they knew how to play baseball from playing on their own or playing with neighbors and things like that, but the managers taught them specific things that professionals knew. Did that, did they teach you certain things that you didn’t know before, on how to play better?” Well, I think John did if we were in the infield or whatever, he would—don’t take steps and things like that or how to be in position to flip. My dad taught me a lot about throwing from the field, my hand close to my head. I had a good arm. 4:00 Interviewer: “Were you playing the standard baseball when you played, or was it the larger baseball?” It was overhand when I played, but it wasn’t down to a nine inch, which they ended up with I guess. I think we were around ten or nine and three quarters or something. It was a good fast ball and it was—I thought it was a good game because it was fast. Interviewer: “What did you think of the uniforms?” The uniforms didn’t bother me, but you know, it was kind of wide at the bottom and I’d cut mine down a little bit. I had long legs, but I didn’t flip them out you know, but they were ok, and they never bothered me. 5:12 Interviewer: “Looking back on that period of time, how do you feel about that period of your life?” Oh, it was great, I was making about ninety dollars a week and that’s more than my dad was making. When I think about when I went to a job with the government, I wasn’t making nothing, it was terrible, but I spent over thirty years with the government and by that time I got up a little bit. It was good money for a lot of the girls. A lot of them—a lot of my friends went to school and it was great. 5:58 9 �Interviewer: “Did you help support your family when you were playing?” Yeah, not that I wanted to, I was saving money so I could go to school and they needed money for taxes, so in a couple years I lost it, so anyway-Interviewer: “How do you like the reunions?” The reunions? Oh, they’re great, but we’ve lost so many girls now. Especially the last couple of years ooh. When I was the president you know, I think I had gotten over five hundred and seventy some players in the league, but we couldn’t find about a hundred and thirty people, so I don’t know where they’re down to now. 6:57 Boy, it was tough finding them. Interviewer: “We’ve had the same problem trying to find you to be able to get an interview with you, so I understand. It’s important that we get these, and I’m glad you sat down with me. I did a wonderful interview with Beans Risinger and a couple of weeks after that she went to Oklahoma and she passed away, but I got calls from Cookie, I got calls from others saying they were so happy I got that.” 7:34 She was a wonderful gal. Interviewer: “She was a wonderful gal.” She was a good pitcher too. Interviewer: “Yeah, and tall too.” She was taller than me, that’s for sure. Interviewer: “Were there very many tall girls like you? Because you’re big.” I’m about five ten, but I Beanie was over six foot. Another girl from Duluth was about six two or three. Barbara Rotvig, she died of Cancer when she was thirty-five years old 10 �and she was like a big sister to me. 8:11 I was the oldest in my family and I have two sisters and a brother, but she was my big sister. She was a great pitcher too. Interviewer: “When you first started in the league you were very, very young and you were mentioning the chaperone. Were you carefully watched because of your age?” Oh yeah, especially when I went to Grand Rapids. If you wanted to date anybody, she had to know and when you couldn’t go to these restaurants, you ate at the huddle house or something. 9:14 Interviewer: “You can’t go where they serve alcohol, right?” Yeah, it was terrible. We didn’t—the girl I was rooming with, she was only a year older than I was, so we had to be careful what we were doing. She had a car and she was from Chicago, so we had a good time. Interviewer: “Whenever I get together with you, because I was in Milwaukee, we were in Milwaukee doing interviews too, and you hear certain stories. What’s your story? What’s the one you tell?” 9:55 I don’t really have any stories. Interviewer: “Well, you hit a triple once you said.” I can remember when I was at Kenosha, John would put me in as a pinch hitter and I would get a hit and win the game and the fans went crazy you know and that was wonderful. Two or three times that one year, so I remember those times, but it was a lot of fun for me to play because I really enjoyed baseball. My brother didn’t like to play ball. 10:51 11 �Interviewer: “You played, you said, with your father, right? Did you just play catch or batting too?” With my father, sometimes he would take me out and he would throw and if we would go to the park he could hit a ton and I couldn’t find the ball you know. Yeah, he spent a lot of time with me hitting balls. My mother was a pretty good athlete too and they didn’t have a lot of organized leagues in Kenosha when I was a kid, but they did have about four teams for the city and I ended up being a pitcher for softball and my mother was in the backyard catching for me, but I don’t remember her going to the games. 11:53 My dad would go to the ball games when we were in town, and my grandfather, my dad’s father, he would come to the ball games if I was there. It was nice, but when you’re out there you’re worried about if you’re going to throw the ball away or something in front of them and I would worry about that. You know a lot of my friends were there and it was embarrassing if you did something wrong, but I really enjoyed playing ball. 12:39 Interviewer: “Thank you very much.” Well, thank you. 12 �13 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_JHolderness0369BB Title A name given to the resource Holderness, Joan (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Holderness, Joan Description An account of the resource Joan Holderness was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1933. She learned to play baseball from her father, and after the Kenosha Comets came to town, she started going to their games and became their bat girl, and was recruited to join the team as an outfielder in 1949, even though her mother would not let her travel farther than Racine for road games. The next year, she got to play full time, and was traded to Grand Rapids. She left the league after the 1950 season and took a regular job at the Great Lakes naval base in Illinois. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-10 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a1f0d8924cc4ac4b737e6cba28c3dbe0.mp4 aadf31649def986beaca16c9b1f5b0d3 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e6d13f4c9fa4eedeba1919ed7f9903a7.pdf 6f12354613c0b869974d8ba337e56589 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW JERRE DENOBLE Women in Baseball Born: June 11, 1923 Resides: Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 8, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, April 7, 2011 Interviewer: “Now Jerre, can you start by telling us a little bit of background on yourself? To begin with, where and when were you born?” I was born in 1923, June 11 in Oakland, California, at 131 Chestnut Street. I even remember the address. Interviewer: “What did your family do for a living?” My dad was a truck driver and my mom was a stay at home mom because in those days women didn’t have jobs, they stayed home and had babies. Interviewer: “Did your father keep his job during the depression?” No, there were three express companies, Mayflower, Bekins and my dad’s was Market Street Express and they lost business, so he had to go to driving--become a teamster and drive for other companies. Interviewer: “But he still had work?” Oh yeah, we were very fortunate in that respect. We didn’t have money, you know, he would save tires and cut the rubber and sew it to our shoes, so we could get around, you know. 16:57 Interviewer: “When did you start playing sports?” 1 �I guess since I was able to walk. My daddy—we had two boys, but he made a tomboy out of me. My brothers were into music and stuff like that, so I started playing ball from the time I was a tiny thing I guess. I’d say about ten or somewhere around there. Interviewer: “Whom were you playing with?” My Daddy--we had a long driveway and boy, he’d pepper that ball in and I’d—he’d say, “it’s all right, if you’re going to learn to play ball you got to catch them”. Interviewer: “When you were playing, did you have a regular baseball or a softball?” Well, he had a—I guess it was kind of like a softball. Interviewer: “Did you have a glove?” Ah huh, I had a five-finger Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth and it had one web. 18:00 Interviewer: “When did you start to play on teams?” I was about—we had to lie about my age—I was about fourteen and you’re supposed to be sixteen and the other girls, they were about ten or eleven years older than myself. I played for a while with just the amateurs, and then the manager, Ollie Fisher from J.D. Craig’s, he was a world champ three times in a row, and he picked me up and I started playing with him and from then on we just kept going—industrial leagues and about four nights a week is what we played, different teams you know. 18:45 Interviewer: “What position did you play?” Well, in softball I was playing second base, but when I converted over to hardball, the girls complained about bruises in their hands, they were a little too hard, I ended up in left field and it didn’t do too much damage except hit the home plate. 2 �Interviewer: “Ok, now when you were playing softball, how far would you travel? Did you stay in California? City to city, Visalia, down south, wherever and whoever, yah Interviewer: “What kind of audiences did you have?” Fairly good, and of course most of the out of town ones were like country, and you didn’t have a big attendance because the population was less you know. When we played the cities like Alameda or San Francisco, we even played against men down at the Oakland ballpark. 19:50 We had a great pitcher, her name was Willie Turner, a little blonde bomber from Stockton or some place like that. We had real good pitchers in those days, Betty Evans from Portland, Oregon. Interviewer: “Now, were you playing in the leagues during World War II?” Yeah doing that and working sixteen-hour shift in the Glass House. We were making those big floats for the Submarines and stuff like that you know. Between playing ball and working, we didn’t get much rest. Interviewer: “I wouldn’t think so.” Three or four hours sleep a day. Interviewer: “How much were they paying you?” At the Glass House? Interviewer: “Did they pay you for the softball?” Well, I got hired in to play ball, but I wasn’t tall enough to work there. You had to be five feet ten and weigh over a hundred pounds, which I wasn’t, so they hired me in to play ball, but I worked my way in. 20:55 Taught myself, watched the girls pack and how they flip the bottles and when they realized I could do it they built pallets and then 3 �they started lowering the—and hiring people my height, but we were the first Guinea Pigs, you might call it, because the men had all those jobs and when the war broke out they took the men out, so they had to replace them with women and women aren’t as tall as men, so they had to make all these adjustments you know. We had fourteen departments down there and I worked twelve of the fourteen, all different jobs. Interviewer: “Now, did you like working there? Did you enjoy working there?” Yeah, to a point—it was rough, but I liked almost all the jobs, yeah. 21:47 I spent forty years there, so—I eventually worked up to a supervisor’s job also. They made me a supervisor over the teamsters and the warehouse men and that was the toughest thing I ever did in my life. 22:01 You didn’t boss them, you asked them, but I made a lot of friends and they’re still my friends. In fact, they’re better friends to me than the women. Interviewer: “When you were playing softball, did you play on military bases or did you entertain soldiers?” Yes, I also coached the women’s WAVES in Alameda. Interviewer: “Did you play for audiences on the bases?” No, it was mostly practice and I guess they played out of town because I didn’t travel with them because I had a job, but when they were stationed in for a month or whatever because they were stationed in Hawaii and all different places, so it was hard to travel with them. Interviewer: “When you were playing with your softball teams, did you ever go outside of California?” 22:59 No, we stayed within the county, Alameda County mostly. Interviewer: “How did you wind up with the All American?” 4 �Well, I didn’t know a thing about it, but Dottie—Dorothy Stolze, I called her Dottie, I grew up with her. She lived about three houses up from me and we played softball on the same team. How she found out, I don’t know, but she approached me one day and said, “Jerre, they’re going to have tryouts in San Francisco and they’re going to send a scout out. Let’s go over and tryout for baseball”, and I said, “I don’t know if I want to”. I had a job and I had a lot of years and built up seniority that I didn’t want to lose, but she said, “Let’s give it a try, we made out basics”, so I did, I went over with her and there were like five hundred gals that were there. 24:03 They hit balls to us and grounders and fly balls over our shoulder and did about everything they could do, but have us stand on our heads. They didn’t say nothing to us and about two weeks, I guess, later I got a letter from Max Carey stating to go get a Passport and my birth certificate, and that we would be receiving a ticket for a flight, to Havana, Cuba. That’s how we found out we were going to play ball. When we got to Cuba, we went to the training and it was quite a conversion. Conversion over from softball-- base lengths, pitching and everything different, but I liked it and we adjusted, but I was sent to Grand Rapids, Michigan. 24:57 Interviewer: “Lets back up a little bit. Tell me a little bit more about spring training in Cuba. When you got the invitation to go play in the league, did you agree right away or did you have to think about it?” No, I just went to it. Interviewer: “I guess you told me before we started the interview that you weren’t sure you wanted to go.” I was hesitant, but once—if fact I didn’t really want to go and my supervisor he told me, “Jerre”, he said, “We’ll give you a leave of absence, you won’t lose any time on the job, 5 �we’ll stop your time and then when you come back we’ll start it again”, and I said, “I don’t know”, and he said, “it’s a chance of a lifetime you’ll probably never ever get again”, so I went. That’s the reason that I went, because they said they wouldn’t give me my seniority back, which they did in the end. 25:50 Interviewer: “Now, what was it like to play in Cuba?” It was fun. They called us Amazons because the girls over there are very, very frail, very feminine and short. Here we are throwing like sixteen-pound bowling balls and they throw that little tiny thing, and we’re out there playing ball like mad—they just didn’t believe it. They would follow us around, oh my goodness. I got pictures you should see, I mean it was like playing a game. They would sit up there in the bleachers and follow us outside the gate—it was fun. In fact, on April 29th, when we got there, I think it was a day or two later, we were in the Sevilla Biltmore, which is right across from the presidents palace, and they, Castro, tried to assassinate that president, Batista, and we heard these firecrackers going off and everything, and we thought they were celebrating the fact that Americans were there, that we were there to play ball, and we found out it was the revolution they were trying to get started and they were trying to get rid of that president, but it was exciting. That’s all I can say. 27:05 Interviewer: “So you complete that, and then where do you go next?” Do you mean from Cuba? Interviewer: “Yes” We came over here and there’s a lot of difference you know—I don’t know—I don’t really know what to say. Interviewer: “Well, did you go to Grand Rapids?” 6 �Yeah, we went to Grand Rapids when we got back for there. I had one heck of a night my first night, I didn’t miss hardly a thing. We went twelve, I think it was twelve, innings, and I got a clipping on that, twelve innings, no runs nothing. I don’t remember how I got on, but anyway, I scored the one and only run and it showed me coming across the plate with a big old grin across my face. I really don’t remember if I got a hit or what, but anyhow, I made the run. 28:01 Then I got a phone call the next morning and I thought I had a hell of a nice game, and I got a phone call the next morning that I had to report to Peoria. I said, “What did I do wrong?” I had a good night you know, and I still didn’t know why I was traded. I believe they started with their team in Peoria in 1946, I believe, and this was 1947, so apparently they needed a left fielder, I don’t know, but I thought, “Oh my God, what did I do wrong?” I really hurt my feeling, but you learn to adjust to it. We were housed there by the Berglands and I believe he was the director or something of the association, and there were four of us that were housed there. I was pretty nice. 28:57 Being away so many years and I got there this week and I couldn’t believe there’s only two of my roommates left—they’ve passed on you know. It was funny, the only way I knew them was through this—it was 1947 since I’d seen them or heard from them. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for my little twelve year old niece on the computer, she saw the movie. She said, “my great aunt used to play ball. I’m going to see what I can find out”, so she got on that computer, got a hold of Carol and started talking to Carol and then Carol sent me some literature and I had no idea the league was still going on. I thought when I hung my spikes up it was over, but it wasn’t, it’s gone on all these years, but it was great getting back. 29:55 The people are just 7 �fantastic, yeah, we’ve had so much fun here I hate to go back to California, believe me I do. Interviewer: “Well, the league is going to California next year.” 30:29 Yeah, that’s—I’m looking forward to that. That’s about eight hours from where I live. I live up in the bay area and that’s down south, but I’ll get there if the lord’s willing and I live that long. Interviewer: “Now, did you only play in the league that one year?” Yeah, I came back and I was going to teach the WAVES in the industrial league how to hook slide. I sure did, I hit third, I hit the sack and my ankle went skewed and turned absolutely, completely around and snapped off at the ankle. The front was in the back and the back was in the front. I started out with a cast to here and then to the knee and ended up with a walking cast for months, so that kind of put the end to it. I never thought any more about and I didn’t know they were still playing or I would have been there, if I had to crawl. If I’d of known they were playing. 31:16 Interviewer: “So, did you go back to your job in California?” Oh yeah, I went back and I worked at it for forty years, and then when the state or the government passed the law that they had to have equal pay for rank—see what happened, they were picking these boys up out of school, off the street, and bringing them in and we would teach them how to inspect bottles, how to pack them and they become our crew leaders in a month and we’re there twenty-eight years and we’re still teaching them and they’re moving ahead. Anyhow, the government decided that they should start making women supervisors, so I did make supervisor, but like I say, it was out in the warehouse with the teamsters and the warehousemen, and boy that is tough. 32:07 Boy, they’re 8 �unionized let me tell you, but yeah, they did call me in and did offer me a job in the plant which I knew that part of the department back and forward. Back in Florida I worked twelve out of the fourteen departments, but I decided I had enough, so I quit or took my retirement, early retirement, at fifty-eight. I was home about five weeks and my mind— I’ve always worked and I went to the bar one day and Joanne Weston, the Big Bomber, the roller derby queen, was in the bar. I walked in there and was going to order a drink and she said, “hey, watch the bar for me, I got to run over to the bank and I’ll be right back”, and I said, “I don’t know how to tend bar”, and she said, “if they want a drink, just ask them what goes in it and if they don’t know, they don’t need it” 33:07 That’s how I started tending bar for thirteen years. Yeah, and then I finally hung it up. Here I am again. Interviewer: “How do you think your experience in sports, the time you spent playing organized ball, softball and baseball, how do you think that affected you or helped you in your life or help you to do other things?” Well, it taught me a lot of self-respect mainly, and it gave me a little more confidence in myself. I was very shy and it kind of gave me a different look on life. I was a little more forward and able to speak up and speak my mind, which I never did before. People would say something and I would cry, I was real backward you know. 34:12 I’m not now, but I was. Interviewer: “Did you ever think of yourself as any kind of pioneer, whether it was in sports or in your job?” Not really, not really, it was just something we had to do. Interviewer: “Did you ever see the “A league of Their Own” movie? 9 �I sure did and I was just so excited I couldn’t see straight. I went out—in California it sold out immediately, that film, because we’re ball minded anyhow, and you know I went from pillar to post and couldn’t find one and apparently someone had passed away and my niece down south in Sacramento, she went into a thrift store and she found a tape that hadn’t even been opened and she called me and sent me the tape, so I have the tape. 35:09 I couldn’t find it at all at home, it really sold, and just about everybody in California has one. Believe it or not, everybody that had it remembered then that I played and I had so many letters from young kids wanting autographs and things. I won’t send an autograph unless it’s on a picture because to me a name is nothing unless you have a face to go with it, so I go down and have that Copymat and have these eight by tens made. I have a nice picture with me picking up a bat. I have them made and then I autograph them and give them to them. I just feel that way about it. What’s a name on a piece of paper if you don’t know who it is? You know yourself, you write an address down and a name, but I’ve been trying to get cards made. 36:13 I’ve had so many requests, but the one that broke my heart was this young fella wrote me and said, “I’m getting married in September and my wife to be saw your movie and went absolutely crazy. Would you please get a congratulation card for our wedding and autograph it? We’ll cherish that until the day we die”, and you know I even sent Carol a letter and if she can get the whole league or whoever would be available to sign one for them. You know that’s the kind of letters I would get in the mail and it makes you feel so great that people are acknowledging you. I mean little kids, I’m eight, I’m ten, I’m twelve, and it really does something to you. 37:17 10 �Interviewer: “Well, it also makes for a good story, so I would just like to thank you for coming in and telling it to us today.” This has been a great thrill, really and truly. Just getting back again and being around all the old friends, and believe it or not it’s like I never left after all these years. The funny part is though they got a story going around that it’s my great, great grand child and I haven’t been married and it’s my great, great niece and I have a picture of her and she’s adorable. She sent for a uniform and she chose white and she had a picture taken in it and she sent me the uniform, so I called her and I said, “Claissa, my uniform wasn’t white, it was khaki”, and she said, “well, I like white”, and she did take a beautiful picture. This kid just turned thirteen and you would swear she was twenty, a beautiful girl. Everybody in the league—all the kids in the league said that she should be a model and I said, “she already is sweetheart”, but that’s how I got in was through this little kid you know. 38:25 We’re trying to bring her in as an associate and get the younger kids down south into it. 11 �12 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_JDenoble Title A name given to the resource Denoble, Jerre (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Denoble, Jerre Description An account of the resource Jerre Denoble was born in Oakland, California in 1923. She learned to play ball from her father, and while she was a teenager she started playing softball in an industrial league. A friend encouraged her to try out for the AAGPBL, and she joined the league in Cuba for spring training in 1947. She was assigned to Grand Rapids, but after scoring the only run in the season opener, she was sent to Peoria. After playing one season, she went back to her job in California. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-08 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/17114e18c67f0d9cecc0d8807b0e65e9.mp4 f431b2f42b08a727037ee572400ac60d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/92c8cf0a53f5a8d748c2e575d0bfbaaa.pdf 53619c66253afeef71e5004a43ba3880 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW JOYCE BARNES McCOY A player in the first year of the league 1943 Women in Baseball Born: 1925 Hutchinson, Kansas Resides: Interviewed by: Gordon Olson, GVSU Veterans History Project, September 27, 2009, Milwaukee, WI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, September 16, 2010 Interviewer: “Now Joyce, before we get into talking about that first year of the league let‟s put some background information on the table. Tell me, if you will, when and where you were born and a little bit about your family, your parents, and that sort of thing.” I was born on a farm south of Hutchinson, Kansas. My father was a farmer and my mother had an uncle that had been in the oil business down in Louisiana and he became ill and couldn‘t work any longer, so he bought this farm and he needed somebody to run his farm, so that‘s where I was born, was on this farm. Interviewer: “And what year was that?” 1925 Interviewer: “October?” October 18th Interviewer: “October 18th 1925. Your parents‟ names?” Edward J. Barnes and Ethyl Amy Chase. 2:06 Interviewer: “All right now, we‟ll jump right into your youth. At some point you start playing ball. You obviously enjoyed playing ball and how did it come about— because it wasn‟t always what young girls did at that time, out playing ball.” 1 �I had two older brothers, a younger sister and a younger brother and those days were kind of hard times. You didn‘t have a lot of money, but we were happy and we played and we played ball. Interviewer: “What kind of equipment did you have to play?” Not very fancy and I didn‘t even have a ball glove until I was in grade school and got on a ball team. Interviewer: “The ball got batted around and you would stick it back together?” Yes, we played with whatever we could find. Interviewer: “If the bat broke you tapped it back together. You developed some skill at the game though?” 3:06 Well, when I was in sixth grade we moved to—we had lived in a little settlement close to the city of Hutchinson and then we moved farther out into the country and I went to a little country school and I guess I was the biggest girl in the sixth grade, so the teacher just decided I was to be the pitcher and that‘s when I really got started. Interviewer: “Kept playing—did you play in any kind of organized teams or leagues during that period of your life?” No, we played against the other grade schools, all the other little country grade schools. Interviewer: “And they would bus you I guess, or take from one school to another.” By car Interviewer: “By car from one school to another?” Yes Interviewer: “that can get to be some pretty intense rivalry once and a while?” 2 �Yes it was, I had some cousins in another grade school and they were pretty competitive. One of the girls was older than me and she was a little better. 4:16 Interviewer: „You had to establish who was in charge there. Ok now, you play ball and you‟re getting pretty good at it. At what point did it go--?” When I went to high school the girls couldn‘t compete, they were not allow, they thought it was too strenuous for girls to play ball and I know, I was a freshman in high school and my oldest brother was a senior and the basketball coach told him that he sure wished I was a boy. Interviewer: “What was permitted for the girls?” Well, we played tennis, we could play some tennis and we had one year of physical education and that was all and we had intramural, but we couldn‘t compete with other schools. 5:05 Interviewer: “Did you play any version of basketball?” Yes, when I played there I had to play the girls rules, but when I was out in a—I was in a country school where they had—the goals were outside and we played in the dirt and we played boys rules then. Interviewer: “I think for some of the people that will look at this interview, we may have to explain just a little bit what girls rules were. Can you do that?” The forwards played—they had a line at the half court and the forwards played on the front and the guards played on the back part and guarded the forwards of the other team. 5:52 Interviewer: “So the guards could only come up to half court and had to pass the ball into the offensive zone really.” 3 �When I was a freshman in high school they had a tournament in a little grade school called Willis, which was east of my high school and the teacher, one of the teachers wanted me to come and referee the game, so they let me out of school and I went over and refereed the grade school game and if a person, a girl, had a hold of the ball and the other one came up and put their hand on it, that was a foul. Interviewer: “Didn‟t have to touch the person, just touch the ball?” Just touch the ball, that was a foul. They didn‘t have any-Interviewer: “Certainly no type guarding or anything of that sort.” No, no Interviewer: “And that form of basketball persisted for quite a while actually in some states I know. Before they finally decided girls could stand a little more strenuous activity.” 6:57 When I was out of high school I went to work at the American Optical Company as an optician and there were several women about my age and we rented a junior high gym and we played boys rules and one night a Catholic Priest came in and he said, ―can I bring my young boys over to play a game with you?‖ We said, ―sure, come ahead‖, so they came over a few times. The first night they came we were there practicing and I said, ―they probably want a basketball‘, so I dribbled to the halfway mark and threw the ball and it went through the hoop. Interviewer: “That‟s known as intimidation, that‟s what that is.” Well, they came a few times and one night we went to play them and here came the priest by himself and he said the nuns found out they were playing against the girls, so that was 4 �a no, no, but I did join a—we had a group of girls that—I think the Adla Hale Business College kind of sponsored a team and I played against them some. 8:12 Interviewer: “You continued—were jumping ahead, but we‟ll finish this thought. You continued in sports after you had played as a professional baseball player for a year?” I wasn‘t there a year; I was just there a short time. I read an article in the Hutchinson News, I was still in high school and Fred Mendel was a sports writer and he said that Phillip Wrigley was starting this professional women‘s softball team, so I wrote him a letter and he answered me, Ken Sells was—and said they wouldn‘t have any coaches or scouts in my area, but they would pay my transportation and that was during the war and my mother didn‘t want me to ride on the train by myself. 9:09 I wrote him another letter and they said your mother is welcome to come, but we won‘t pay her expenses, so we got on the train and went up there and-Interviewer: “Up there being Chicago?” Yes, to Chicago and we went to the Wrigley Building and Ken Sells interviewed me and he said, ―well, we‘re going to put you with the Kenosha team and they‘re in Rockford right now. He said, ―I‘ll be off work at five o‘clock‖, and he took us up to a room that had a lot of beds and he said, ―you better go to bed and rest‖, and I thought my mother needed it worse than I did and he said, ―I‘ll come and get you and put you on the train to Rockford‖, so then we went to Rockford and she met—there was some older man that was kind of a scout and then she met the coach and the chaperone and she decided that I was safe, so she went home. 10:10 5 �Interviewer: “I wonder if that older man was Johnny Gottselig, he did a lot and represented Wrigley in a—it wasn‟t a tight well run organization at first. They were just putting it together.” It could have been him and that team coach, manager, was--he said he had been in Topeka, Kansas and I can‘t—I‘m having a senior moment and I can‘t think of his name right now, but he didn‘t stay any longer than I did. Interviewer: “he decided his future wasn‟t managing a women‟s baseball team?” Well I don‘t think they gave me took much of a tryout. They let me pitch. I went to the field and they gave me an outfit and shoes and their little dresses and things and I practiced with them and we went to South Bend, Indiana and played and see, there were just four teams, and we went to Racine and I think I pitched at Racine, but then I was there three weeks and they paid me forty dollars while I was there and then they finally— some young woman, she was older than I, came and they decided they wanted her instead of me, so they-- 11:42 Interviewer: “You got your release.” Yes Interviewer: “How old were you at this point?” Seventeen Interviewer: “Seventeen years old.” I was a roommate of Audrey Wagner. She and I were—she was just a little bit younger than I, maybe not quite a year. Interviewer: “When you say roommates, where did you stay?” 6 �We roomed with the Hill family. Mr. Hill had been a circus performer and he had been in an accident and both of his legs were broken, so they had a house and they rented out rooms. There was a lady, a corset sales lady, and she took Audrey and I to the picture show one night and they also took me to a beer joint. It wasn‘t a very good place and I wasn‘t use to that sort of thing. Interviewer: “That‟s all part of growing up.” I got kind of sick, of course Audrey, she was a German and used to drinking beer and it didn‘t bother her. 12:46 Interviewer: “So that was one of your first introductions to drinking beer?” Right Interviewer: “The league is responsible for so many things.” We sure had a good time. There was a lady from Canada, she was twenty-four years old, Kay Bennett, and she roomed in the same house and she looked after Audrey and I and kept us out of trouble. Interviewer: “Now you said you pitched, had you been playing, like in high school, on summer teams or anything like that?” Well, just on summers teams, pitching. Interviewer: “So you had experience as a pitcher?” Yes, when I was thirteen years old, I take that back, when I was thirteen years old , still in grade school, I could run so fast—they had ten players on the softball team at that time and they had a roving short which played in-between the outfield and the infield and I covered that whole area. 13:39 Interviewer: “You were what they call the short fielder.” 7 �Yeah, and I covered that whole area because I could run fast. Interviewer: “That also means you probably could throw pretty well because that‟s the other job of the short fielder. Cover the ground, get to the ball and in some cases even throw people out at first if they‟re not hurrying down to the base.” Correct, and I played every position but catcher. Interviewer: “Let‟s talk about the game that you got introduced to during that time that you were part of the All American Girls because it‟s not quite softball. They were starting to move away a little bit weren‟t they in terms of the length of the bases?” I don‘t think so, not when I was there. I think it was what I was used to playing on. Interviewer: “Ok, ok.” And the ball was about the same. Interviewer: “The leadership of league, Wrigley and those around him, grappling with just what they wanted to present as entertainment and trying to sort out if it was going to be baseball or softball or how it was going to be distinctive.” 14:58 They were still doing softball. Ms. Harney, she pitched more like I did—they didn‘t do the ―windmill‖. Interviewer: “So how did they—if they didn‟t do the “windmill” how did they?” You just threw it. There at home, my catcher, she‘d take her glove off and she had a pretty sore hand. Interviewer: “So even though it was underhand, you weren‟t allowed to come up and throw sidearm, strictly underhand?” Well, in the league there they let them throw sidearm I think. 8 �Interviewer: “So can you throw a breaking pitch just drawing back and throwing like that?” Well, I had a little bit of stuff on it. Interviewer: “Ok, ok.” I know some of them couldn‘t hit it. Interviewer: “That‟s what matters. 15:50 Well, another way—one more question, a little bit more about that, is that the best quality softball you ever encountered at that point, hitting better?” Yes, they were all good players. Let‘s see, Mary Lou Lester was the short stop, Shirley Jamison played, Janice O‘Hara was the first baseman, Peewee Westerman was the catcher, she was younger than I was and he let her—and Helen Nicole from Canada, I think they pitched her so much that she had a sore arm. Interviewer: “Which is not a good thing. A sixteen year old catcher, she had to know what she was doing back there.” She was good. She‘s no longer living. Interviewer: “Catchers pretty much run the show when they‟re out there.” That‘s right. Interviewer: “That‟s a lot of responsibility for someone that young.” 16:44 Audrey Wagner was a catcher, but they had her in center field. She didn‘t ever pitch when I was there. Interviewer: “So you had to be able to play more than one position?” Yes Interviewer: “Did you play other positions?” 9 �No, they just had me pitch, that‘s about it. Interviewer: “Ok, how about the field itself, was it a pretty good place to play?” Yes, it was a nice field. Interviewer: “Well groomed?” Right there in Kenosha, the Hills lived right on the lake, but after I was married we drove up there and it had all changed. The field that I played on in Kenosha is not there. Interviewer: “That happens unfortunately.” Right Interviewer: “I went back to a field that I once played on and there were forty foot trees and it wasn‟t that long ago.” I think they built houses in there now and the parks all gone. We would go down to the lake and Mr. Hill, he got his lawn chair; he had to watch after us. He said, ―you have to be careful there‘s maybe glass out there, so watch where you –you know people were careless. Pauline, what was her name? She was from Chicago, she‘s go out there and get on that pier and just dive in that cold water. I‘d step in there and my legs would hurt it was so cold. 18:05 Interviewer: “She was more used to it. How about the fans, did you have good crowds come out to watch the games?” Yes Interviewer: “Did they heckle or people questioning whether it was appropriate activity for women?” 10 �Yeah, we had a lot. I think we felt, I did anyway, more patriotic at that time, so when we went out on the field, the first thing we did was march out in a V for victory for the armed forces, that was more my idea. Interviewer: “That‟s how you started every game? With the national anthem?” Yes Interviewer: “That‟s a good point. You‟re seventeen; to what extent were you aware that in a way you were part of the war effort. Did you think about that or did they talk to you about that idea.” Not so much that, I thought about it, I thought our purpose was to entertain the troops and the defense workers, that‘s my idea. 19:15 Interviewer: “Did you have any perception at that point that Mr. Wrigley was also concerned that they were going to cancel regular, not regular, men‟s professional baseball?” Oh no, no, no, we were—not to do that. Interviewer: “That‟s not something he chose to share with all of you.” No, that wasn‘t my idea. I‘m not a women‘s libber, if that‘s what you want to know. Interviewer: “Well, that‟s a part of it—yeah, that‟s an interesting question because those who choose to look back now, see you in that role, those of you who played professional baseball.” That wasn‘t my idea. Interviewer: “Ok, it was just a chance to play ball?” Yes 20:05 11 �Interviewer: “It takes a certain amount of gumption for a girl in Kansas to just sit down and write a letter to Mr. Wrigley and say, “I want to come and play baseball or softball for you”. Did you tell your mother you were sending the letter?” She knew it. Interviewer: “Your mother supported you in all of this?” Yes, my dad, he was a fan of baseball. When we were in grade school the Phillies and the Athletics came, Connie Mack was there. Vince DiMaggio was in the outfield for one of the teams and daddy took us to the game and we saw all that. Interviewer: “After the seasons were over they would often do that and if you lived in Hutchinson, Kansas that was your chance to see major leaguers.” Mickey Mantle was from Oklahoma and he played on a Joplin minor farm team and we had a farm team and I quite often saw him play. He played shortstop. 20:58 Interviewer: “At that point. Did you have an inkling that this was a pretty good ball player even then, in the case of Mantle?” Yes, yes we did. 21:06 Bob Swanson was the pitcher for the Hutchinson team and he said he struck him out. Interviewer: “Well, he did strike out once in a while.” A friend of mine, Lauren Arnold, he said he played on the—and he said, ‗I made up my mind I wasn‘t going to let him get a hit off of me‖, but he said, ―I walked him‖. Interviewer: “One way to do it. So you‟re time on the team was how long?” Three weeks Interviewer: “Three weeks and then they decided they wanted a different pitcher, what did you do?” 12 �Well, I went into Chicago and I went to a game there, women played, and then I didn‘t tell my mother I was doing this, I left Chicago and I had an aunt in Jefferson City and I got on the train and went to Jefferson City. If my daughter would do that I‘d be frantic. My brother was there, my aunt worked in a bakery there and I didn‘t even know my aunt‘s address, but I knew the bakery‘s address, so I went there and they happened to be working. I‘m very adventuresome. 22:21 Interviewer: “so you stayed there for—“ A couple of weeks and then my brother and I got on the train to got home. He had to go into the service. He was going into the V12 training and so, what‘s this drummer, Gene Krupa, he was going to put on a show in a Kansas City theater, so we got off the train in Kansas City and went to that show and it was really fun. Interviewer: “A little hard to go back to the farm after those experiences?” Yes Interviewer: “But you did and---“ We didn‘t live on a farm, we had four acres and we had a milk cow and chickens etc. My dad helped—it was hard to find jobs and he helped build the first nine holes of Prairie Dunes golf course. He said he needed a job and they said they were building this golf course, so he went over there and Claude Morris was the foreman and he said, ―well, you‘ll have to get you a Social Security Card‖, and it was in 1937 and he said, ―I can do that‖, and he went to work. 23:35 I was trying to think who the fella that laid out that course—the Carey family, the Emerson Carey family was big in Hutchinson and they started Prairie Dunes. You probably heard of it haven‘t you? Interviewer: “Yes, it‟s a well known course.” 13 �This fellow would come and he‘d drive out there and his big Pontiac car and he‘d say, ―Claude, I‘d like to have one of your men ride around with me, we want to look the sand hills over‖, and he said, ―ok‖ and he said, ―I‘ll take Ed Barnes‖, and my dad was really thrilled about that. He got to drive all over. Interviewer: “Get to consultant on the layout of the course a bit.” He was the waterman and they watered at night. He worked at night and he‘d walk the course and the pro lived there above the clubhouse and his wife would come down, she knew about what time my father would pass the clubhouse, and she would usually meet him with a cup of coffee and a piece of pie or something. 24:33 Interviewer: “Nice to be appreciated a little bit. Ultimately within a relatively short period of time, you‟ve gone to Chicago, tried out, very short tryout, been in the league, you‟re out of the league, you‟re back home. Tell me what came next?” Well, I had to finish high school. Interviewer: “It‟s remarkable to me that you young women were doing all that, so you went back and finished high school?” Yes Interviewer: “Did you continue in sports thereafter?” Just sandlot stuff and I played a lot of basketball. Interviewer: “Softball?” Yes, a lot of softball. 25:28 My class, we had intramural sports in high school, and when I was a freshman we won the basketball and we beat all of them even the seniors and we won the softball too. I have a little—it has Pepsi-Cola on there and a little softball and the year and I‘ve kept that. 14 �Interviewer: ―That was your trophy. How about other aspects of your life, you married at some point?” Well, after high school, my parents weren‘t wealthy and you had to pay tuition to go to college, so I went to work at the American Optical Company and we made army glasses. We put out a hundred pair a day. 26:30 Interviewer: “The army would outfit the soldiers.” And the families and we would get orders from Fort Sill; see it was in Hutchinson, American Optical Company. Fort Sill and different ones, Fort Leonard [Wood], I think, was in Missouri. I worked in the finishing lab and I enjoyed that work. Interviewer: “You stayed with them?” I worked until, even for a short time after I was married. Interviewer. “You married in?” 1947 Interviewer: “1947 and your husband had been in the service? Was he in the service?” He went into the service before the war started. He was six years older than me. I didn‘t know him until after he had come home from the service and that was in 1945. Interviewer: “Where did he serve?” He was a fourth class—see they started training pilots in Corpus Christi and he was the fourth class to go through Corpus Christi and they could choose if they wanted to go into the navy or the marines and he chose the navy because he thought he‘d have a good bed and good food. 27:33 They sent him to Alaska and on his way to Alaska, he was to fly sub patrol-- 15 �Interviewer: “They were concerned about submarines.” The Japs had sent some torpedoes in you know. When he got to the state of Washington they sent him out on a Coast Guard station and they had two fellas get in a plane and one fella tied a rope around his waist and he had a bomb here, we weren‘t prepared for war, and they flew out along the coast and if they saw a sub he was supposed to open that door and kick the bomb out. Interviewer: “Bombs away!” He said it was—those fellas really—it was frightening, it was frightening, but young fellas don‘t have the fear that the older ones do. 28:33 Interviewer: “Young women obviously don‟t either.” He said that was really a dangerous duty he had up there because there was so much fog. You had to fly by instruments because of the fog and also the mountains. You had to know so you didn‘t crash into a mountain. Interviewer: “You didn‟t have all of the devices they have on planes now.” They had seaplanes and he told one story about a pilot and his co-pilot, they went down and the pilot got—hypothermia sets in and he was gone, but the co-pilot, they were able to rescue him, so it was dangerous. Interviewer: “Yes, and all part of the war effort and all contributions in all different ways. Did he stay in the military then?” No, after he served eighteen months up there they sent him to—taught him to fly off a carrier, it was a Jeep Carrier, I don‘t know if you know what that is or not, it was a smaller carrier and they took tankers and destroyers, they took care of them. 29:55 Interviewer: “Now, they sailed as part of the—“ 16 �They went in the south Pacific and he flew a Wildcat, which is a F4 fighter plane, and he strafed the islands, Guam, Tinian, and I‘ve got his log book, the first flight he ever took, and strafed those islands before the landing crews went in. They also had torpedo bombers and there were two on that plane, he was alone. One reunion we went to they were talking and he said he was chasing this Jap Zero plane and all of a sudden he lost it and pretty soon the shells began exploding around him and he said, ―I knew that plane was around there somewhere‖, and he was looking for it and this other fighter pilot said, ―our own ships were shooting at McCoy‖. 30:54 Interviewer: “That‟s kind of discouraging.” He was in that terrible typhoon and it bent the flight deck down over the bow of the ship, the weight of the ocean came over, so they had to go into Hawaii. He served nine months there and they sent him to the south part of—in the desert of California and he was an instructor and then he flew a Hellcat, which is a F6, it was a little faster plane and he was an instructor there. He was just lucky to get home, he didn‘t get his discharge though until 1956. Interviewer: “He had a long commitment to the military.” He didn‘t serve any. Interviewer: The reserve? Some of the reserve?” Well, he didn‘t—he thought he would get into a—the first year we were married he went to Kansas City and took a physical, we had a Naval Air Station there in Hutchinson and they thought they could form a group there and fly. 31:57 They wouldn‘t pay him, so he said he wasn‘t flying. 17 �Interviewer: “Ok, that makes some sense. Did you continue to live in Hutchinson, Kansas?” No, we lived in Partridge; it‘s a little town southwest of Hutchinson. Interviewer: “Same area though?” Yes, the same area. Interviewer: “And it‟s still there?” Still there and we lived—our road was named McCoy, it was a mile long and on the north side of the town. We had a quarter section we lived on. Interviewer: “Did anyone in that area know that you played professional baseball?” Yeah, they found out. Interviewer: “How did they find out?” Well, I guess I told them and they had a museum there in Hutchinson. 32:45 The way they found me—the curator of the museum in Hutchinson knew that I had played and Dottie Key and her husband came to Hutchinson for a big –we had a big showing at the mall. Jack Banna, he had played, he was a Hutchinson man and he played for the Dodgers and he won a game in the World Series for the Dodgers and we took our memorabilia into the mall, so he introduced me to Dottie. Interviewer: “Now, was this before or after the movie?” This was after. 1996. Interviewer: “There was a period of time in there before the movie where not too many folks knew about the league and the women who had played and you just kind of went on with the rest of your life, right?” 18 �Right, my nephew lives here in Milwaukee and he read an article in the newspaper in Milwaukee and he sent me the paper and said, ―Aunt Joyce, those girls you played with, they‘ve got an association‖, and then I met Dottie Key after that. 34:02 She came from, they have a big complex out on the west side of Hutchinson where they have tournaments and teams from all over the country and she came and was a guest there. Interviewer: “Ok, you saw the movie then and do you have an opinion of the movie?” Yes, I saw the movie and it was a movie. Interviewer: ―Parts of it you like and parts of it you don‘t like?‖ Those girls, they were supposed to be sisters, and they lived on a farm. Interviewer: “The Weavers?” I don‘t know who they were, but they had never been on a farm, they didn‘t even know what a cow looked like. They didn‘t tell that in the movie, but that‘s right. Interviewer: “A farm girl would know.” Yes, and we didn‘t have a drunk coach either in our dressing room. 35:02 Interviewer: ―You know, that‟s one aspect of the movie that an awful lot of you commented on. That was too Hollywood. How about since the movie, people are aware again of it, how has that affected you?” Oh, they think I‘m an icon I guess. Interviewer: “Do you enjoy that?” Some of it and they asked me to come and throw out a pitch at this complex there and I never experienced anything like that. The officials, officials of Hutchinson, the Mayor and some of those were there, so they introduced us and when they introduced me I stood 19 �up and the whole grandstand was alive and yelling and hollering, so I took my hat and waved at them and then they started in again. All the umpires and things, they took their hats off and I had to autograph everything. I had my picture taken. 36:10 Interviewer: “Well, overdue recognition I think.” It was a little bit overdone. Interviewer: “Well, but it was time to recognize that very unique experience that you women had during and after WWII. I think that‟s what people were doing, saying, “we almost forgot and now we‟re glad we didn‟t”.” Well, I didn‘t really think I was that great. Interviewer: “Since then have you done other kinds of activities? Speak to groups, talk to young women who want to be in athletics, any of that sort of thing?” Well, a young girl in Haven, Kansas was doing a history project on women in baseball and she got in contact with the league and they said, ―well, the only one we have in Kansas is Joyce McCoy‖. 37:03 She lived in the little town of Haven, which is about fifteen miles from me, so she came to see me and we had a good time and she did a good job and she went to the University of Maryland and then finally she went to the Smithsonian Institute with her--she just graduated from high school and she‘s in college this year and she‘s quite a baseball player. My goodness, she can pitch. She can throw the softball sixty miles an hour and they say that‘s equivalent to ninety miles and hour with a baseball. Interviewer: “She‟s pretty close.” But she does that windmill. 20 �Interviewer: “You do get a little more speed on the ball that way. Do you see yourself as a roll model?” No, not really, I play golf and I bowl, I‘m too old to play baseball now. 38:02 Interviewer: “you still stay active in sports? It sounds to me like sports have always been an important part of your life?” My granddaughter and grandson were swimmers. My granddaughter was pretty good in swimming and her times are still in the high school there in Wichita. Interviewer: “It‟s in the family.” And then her children—my great grandson is thirteen years old and he‘s a wrestler and a football player, baseball player and in wrestling he went to the University of Missouri in Columbia, he lives in Parkville, and he got third in the state and he‘s thirteen years old. Interviewer: “Now, do they all know that grandma was a ball player too?” Yes Interviewer: “Do they like that?” Christopher, the next little boy, he was only two years old and I was the only one who could pitch to him right so he could hit the ball. You know they thought he was little and they would throw the ball and it would go down like this. 39:02 You have to throw it straight so they can hit it and he‘d hit the ball when he was two years old. Interviewer: “Grandma‟s still teaching?” Yes Interviewer: “Great and thanks for taking time to talk to me. I really appreciate it and gentlemen you‟ve been sitting here, anything occur to you that we didn‟t cover that we should cover? 21 �Thank you Interviewer: “Thank you very much.” 22 �23 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_JBarnes Title A name given to the resource McCoy, Joyce Barnes (Interview transcript and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McCoy, Joyce Barnes Description An account of the resource Joyce Barnes McCoy was born in on a farm south of Hutchinson, Kansas on October 18, 1925. She played softball with her siblings and then played various sports throughout grade and high schools. One day while still in high school she was reading a Hutchinson News article in which read that Phillip Wrigley was looking for girls to try-out for women's softball teams up in Chicago. After one correspondence—Mr. Wrigley paid Barnes' way to the tryout in Chicago. She started and ended her professional career by playing with the Kenosha Comets in 1943. She played as a pitcher while there. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Olson, Gordon (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Wisconsin Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-09-27 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4f756576e9bef9696fff35ca45191409.mp4 081e4dedef53289564557edb3db6e1dd https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/62f61dba861decd0c5a90df5972bf191.pdf 8bf969ebebb9b042568af5728381d18f PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University All American Girls Professional Baseball League Veterans History Project Interviewee’s Name: Jeneane Lesko Length of Interview: (43:08) Date of Interview: August 4, 2010 at the Reunion of the Professional Girls Baseball League Interviewed by: James Smither Transcribed by: Lindsey Thatcher, March 23, 2011 Interviewer: “Today is August 4, 2010. We are doing an interview with a former player from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, Jeneane Lesko currently of Kirkland, Washington. The interviewer is James Smither of the Grand Rapids University Veteran’s History Project. Now Jeneane, can you start by giving us some background about yourself. To begin with, when and where were you born?” I was born in 1935 in Springfield, Ohio. After I was 6 and my parents divorced then I spent a lot of time traveling. So I kind of have the traveling bug so the All American League was kind of a good place to land in my early years. Interviewer: “So how did you first get involved with sports?” Well I was always well during the war I was always imitating (01:00) the soldiers. They used to, when were living in Texas at one point they had parade guards in the parking lot and I would go out with my little toy rifle and do all the movements they were doing with the gun and I used to practicing much of the day. So I started that way and ended up in the way and ended up in the tree shooting the enemies with a play rifle, in my early years. So I was always a tom boy always running around and doing things that were very active and I just sort of just fell into sports and loved it and always played with the boys and participated as much as I could with all the boys that were playing out in the fields and the sand lot all that sort of playing ball. Interviewer: “Which sports did you play then? Oh I played, as a child growing up we had our basic sports were basketball and baseball for the men’s for the boy’s teams. So I would be practicing with them and I was always hanging out with the varsity team and of course they wouldn’t let me play (02:00) because I was a girl but I would give them competition enough that they let me participate in the practice and warm up the pitchers and that sort of thing. So I got a lot of practice and I got really good at throwing the ball and catching the ball and I didn’t ever play a particular position until I graduated from high school and I finally played on a softball team in Lima, Ohio which was nearby and that was the only team that I had ever played on and there I was playing short stop. So I certainly wasn’t a pitcher, where I ended up in with the league as a pitcher. Interviewer: “Now did you know anything about the league in high school or that kind of thing?” �I didn’t find out until I was a senior in high school and there was an advertisement in the largest town nearby where I grew up, Lakeview Ohio was Lima so you know in the Lima Newspaper there were little article saying there were going to be try outs in Michigan and so I decided that I would try to go up there. We had a local fella that had (03:00) ten sons who had played in the town’s team that I was a bat girl for and he encouraged me to go and I knew nothing about pitching but he did and he showed me how to pitch. I could throw a curve and my changeup was a knuckleball so if and when I got it over the plate it was hard to hit but I had a real control problem that first year so I was not a varsity pitcher until second year. Interviewer: “Now why did you become a pitcher if you were a short stop originally?” Well I was left handed and I didn’t think that I had a chance to try out as a shortstop because I was left handed. When I got to try outs I found out that these girls were really good ball players and in my town there was no one that could come close to being as good as I was. So I didn’t realize that there were women out there playing ball who were so tremendous at the game so I figured I had a better chance at (04:00) pitching because they carried about four or five pitchers on the team so I just said, well I’m a pitcher and I could show them how hard I could throw and they didn’t ask me to throw anything else so the Grand Rapids Chicks picked me up and Woody English was my manager, we didn’t call them coaches we called them managers. Interviewer: “As you were contemplating going into the league and you decided that you had a better chance as a pitcher, did you do anything to prepare before you went to the try out?” Yes, my friend Jack Hudson, he was about sixty five years old at that point, would come to my house and we would mark out how far it would be to pitch the ball, and we were doing 60 feet with a regulation baseball. I didn’t realize that they were playing with a 10 inch ball and they were throwing it like 56 feet in the beginning that first year. So it was a big change just in the size of the ball when I got to the league. I think when they changed the regulation baseball the second year I did much better and I had good control because that was what I was used to playing with. But yeah, he showed me how to throw those pitches and we would practice for about a month and half before I had to go to spring training so. (05:14) Interviewer: “Alright, now where did they do the spring training that year in ‘53?” They did it in Michigan; it just slipped my mind where I’m sorry. Interviewer: “Was it Battle Creek maybe?” Yeah that’s right, it was Battle Creek, right. Interviewer: “So how do they run the training then? Did people come in to try out?” �Well I came in on the field it was just covered with women and I think there were about a hundred women there trying out. And they had coaches I presume, you know, coaches from all the different teams. I was only eighteen and had never left my state before alone. And I had driven up there by myself and here I was in an unfamiliar place. Yeah, I was very very shy because I kind of been in sports and sort of, that’s what I did I played sports, I was really a Tom boy. (06:04) Interviewer: “Okay, so then when you drive up, you get to Battle Creek where were they doing the try outs was it a gym or a field…?” Yeah it was a ball field and it had, you know I don’t remember exactly where it was but it had a stadium and the stadium was covered and it looked like you know a miniature professional baseball league, that’s what it looked like and now I know that you know a lot of smaller towns had those kinds of fields in that day. Interviewer: “Sure, so you get there and then do they just check you off, tell you where to go? What actually happens there?” Well they put us into groups and then they would have us do certain things, run, they would have us run to bases, and they would have us slide, and they would have us doing all these different things. And pretty much the movie kind of showed the story there of what it was like at spring training. A lot of gals just all throwing a ball just trying to outdo each other to make it on the team (07:02). Yeah and then they did actually informed us who was to go to what field. I think that quite a few of the girls did make it because at that point at that year in fact in ’53 a lot of the girls that were a lot of the good players had gone back to play professional softball in Chicago leagues. So they had a need for a number of players that year. Interviewer: “Okay, did Chicago leagues pay better?” Well I believe it was the Bloomer Girls that were playing at that time and some of them had played in that Chicago league from the beginning and these were some of the girls that were playing in the very beginning and there were some differences of the opinion with some coaches and there were some problems and so they just quit. And I wouldn’t surprised that because the league was sort of declining at the time, which I at the time knew nothing about that they probably weren’t going to get paid as much so they probably left for that reason. (08:00) Interviewer: “Alright, so there is openings up, you make the team and which team do you get assigned to?” Grand Rapids, the Grand Rapids Chicks and that year 1953 they won the pendant. We had a terrific ball club so there was no way that they were going to let me do very much pitching that first year. If we get way far ahead or way far behind they would let me go in and play. I found �some of the news clippings because we had tremendous news coverage from the local papers and support from the people from the town and I was able to acquire some of those and it was just really funny to read some of the clippings. He would leave me in there, you know, I would be walking and walking and they would be walking in and he just left me out there to just humiliate me and make me realize that I had to get the ball over the plate I guess. It was hilarious to read thinking back. But one thing I always had, I always had confidence that I could do it (09:01) even when I threw it wild I had confidence that the next was going to be right over the plate and eventually the next year when I came at the beginning when I started college that next year so my first year out of college I came back and I went into a game that was a double header game so it was only a seven inning game but it was like the 6th or 5th inning and they put me in and the bases were loaded and there was only one out and I managed to get us out of the inning and when I went up to bat and I actually hit the ball and the score, the running runs scored so I actually did something well so immediately I was made a starting pitcher and I lived up to it, I was not wild that year at all. And I was a starting pitcher, so it was great. Interviewer: “In that first season when you were wild, would you get hit much, would they just duck or… ?” Oh I had one really bad experience with that. This one gal and I have been trying to recognize her ever (10:00) since and I haven’t been able to determine which catcher or which team it was we were playing at the time but I threw the ball and it was a really hard fast ball, right at her head and she hit the dirt and I was, and she got up and she started coming after me at the mount and I started backing up I had no idea what was going to happen next but my teammates come up off the bench to try to protect me and then of course the umpires came out and broke it all up but I was nervous the rest of that game because she scared me, I thought she was going to be after me after the game. Interviewer: “Now, could they hit your pitches? Or were you wild enough that they had a hard time with that?” Oh that first year I don’t think I got close enough to plate to let them try to hit it. It was you know, I could throw it but it wasn’t coming close to the plate very often. Then they just waited for me to walk them it was very humiliating. Interviewer: “Alright, but you didn’t get cut or anything? You stayed with the team?” (11:02) Oh no no no, he had great confidence in me and I was left handed pitcher and that was a great attribute because we only had like 3 or 4 left handed pitchers in the league, so they weren’t used to seeing the ball coming at them and breaking way. And you know for the lefties that came up so it was, I had a very good curve ball, they weren’t hitting that. You know, if they hit anything it was because I put it right down the middle, I was still not able to spot pitch it well enough was the only reason that, I still had a winning record. I had 8-6 that year. �Interviewer: “Winning record, I guess left handed pitchers who can pitch well are just a valuable commodity.” Yeah. Interviewer: “And still are.” Still are. Interviewer: “Alright” That’s right. Interviewer: “Let’s go back to that first season a little bit. What was life like for you there with Chicks that first year?” Oh it was really an experience, because like I said I had never been out of the state except in my really younger years (12:00) when I was traveling with my mother. So to be driving out there on my own I remember when I was really thrilled that I was going to be, you know getting a check for playing baseball, getting paid to play I was just thrilled to death, so actually you know doing that and doing some work through college I was able to pay my way through college without any problem. And I had never really had a real steak, so the first thing I did was to go out and order a big T-bone steak. I can just almost taste it I remember how excited I was to have my first steak. So yeah I lived with a couple there they were a Dutch family and I had one roommate and we had a curfew. We had to be in and we had to tell them if we were going to be out and where we were going but I was kind of a, I was kind of a… I’ve never told this on an interview before but I used to go with the police department that would, that raided the houses on at night you know, and they would come to ball games (13:07). We had a lot of police that would come by and they were detectives and so they ask me if I wanted to go along with them this one night when they were raiding a house and they took me on the raid and people were jumping out of the windows and I was sitting in the car and I was just scared to death of what they were doing but it was really fun experience and you know at that age it was quite exciting. Interviewer: “Alright, what kind of relationship did the team have with the fans at that time do you think?” Oh it was great, it was great. We had a lot of support they were always there cheering for us. Even in the, because it was in the last two years and we didn’t have the seventeen thousand like they did at times in the earlier years but we had a good following there were always people in the stands. It wasn’t like it is today when the girls try to play baseball and there are only six or eight people that bother to come to the games. I’m sure it’s hard to play today when you don’t have anybody coming to your games. (14:08) �Interviewer: “Well the women’s softball series had made it onto ESPN2 at least, so they are getting there.” Yeah, yeah. Interviewer: “Yeah, now how did the more veteran players treat the new ones when they came in, do you remember what kind of reception you got?” Oh, if it hadn’t been for the veteran players the pitchers, I wouldn’t have probably have made it as a pitcher. Because Woody English had played short stop for the Chicago I believe they were the Cubs then and he, he wanted a championship team and he didn’t pay much attention to us rookies at all. So every time I would come to field in my rookie year he would say, my name was “Des Combes comes”, my maiden name so he would say “De Combes go run in the outfield”. Every time I would come on that’s where he put me “Go run in the outfield”. So everybody was having batting practice (15:00), pitchers didn’t have to learn to bat so all I could do doing during batting practice was run back in forth across the field in the back, which was and the field was like a football field so it was wide open and it was like the left side of the field and I was just run back and forth back and forth. And you know, he never even told me why you know, but then Beans Risinger who was one of the very good starting pitchers and Alma Ziegler was one of the starting pitchers at the time and they took me under their wing and showed me how to wind up and that sort of thing you know I had no idea how to stretch and wind up, I had no idea. You know, I think I even got called bulk several times for it, because I didn’t know how to do that. So it was really their help and their tutoring that taught me how to really be a pitcher. Interviewer: “You also had some other rookies on the team too, you had some new players?” (15:57) Oh we had rookies yeah, we had some other rookies that were playing. Yeah and some other gals that had been out there, they did a lot of trading you know. They tried to keep the teams even, the skill levels even. So that when people came to the games they were exciting and they did a very good job of that. So there were always moving players around from one team to another. But in Grand Rapids they had a few people that just stay there and were there all of the time. I think that was pretty true throughout the league, they would keep four or five of the really star players who were good draws for the clubbing because they had this connection to them and the rest of the people would get rotated around a lot. Even in that two years we probably had four or five people that would change from one year to the next. But yeah, but we had a lot of pitchers and they all were very, very friendly, all the players they, they just accepted us immediately. There was no difference between the regular infield and outfield; they were very willing to work with the younger people. (17:02) Interviewer: “Okay, now how much of the sort of rules and regulations of league were still in place? You mentioned that you had a curfew at the home that you were staying at. Did, �was there still a chaperone, were they still telling you or giving you a list of do’s and don’ts or was most of that gone by then?” Well I had probably one of the best chaperones in the league. She had been a former player, Dottie Green, and she was tremendous. You know, what they did in the movie to the chaperones was just sad to all the players because the chaperones were just our best friends; they were like your mother or your grandmother away from home you know. So, I loved the chaperone she was just wonderful to us. And they weren’t strict about going around and checking to make sure you were home or any of that. But they were strict when they told you the rules and they gave us a little booklet of what the rules were and told us that was what we had to do. Well in that era back in the ‘40s and the ‘50s you did what your parents told you to do. You didn’t try to figure out how to go around it when you were you know, a teenager, so us younger players we toed the line pretty well, I got a little risqué in that second year you know, went out once or twice when I wasn’t supposed to be out but that’s basically it (18:18).You know I was pretty conforming to the rules but there were older gals that were doing things, but you know they didn’t bother the players that much. But the thing that they did that bothered me is when I went I had very, very long hair all the way down my back and I had never had my hair cut and I had to cut my hair. Well I didn’t know what to do with my hair so I figured well I’ll go to the barber shop. I don’t know if they have beauty shops but all I knew was that people go to the barber shop. So I went to the barber shop and he just about scalped me, and you had to have your hair below the cap and mine wasn’t. So I kind of hid I stayed away from as far as I could away from Woody English because I was afraid that he would call me on it, until my hair grew out it kind of stayed that trend you know. I just stayed out behind the infield he would yell at me from there what to do that first year so (19:15). Second year I let my hair be normal and it was okay I wasn’t shy about it by the time the first year was over but my hair was a problem. But they didn’t force you to wear makeup like they showed in the first year. We never had to wear makeup. But when we got on our bus to go on our trips away out of town, we had to wear the skirts. We all rolled our jeans up and we had our jeans under our skirts and we all look like we were about two hundred pounds because our because they were these flared old skirts they used to wear so they were stuck way out here and of course your pants were pushing the skirt way out but you could get in and out of them because it was an elastic top you could just slide it in and out, it wasn’t too difficult. And we always wore our body socks and shoes because we didn’t have to wear heels or anything. We did have to wear heels, I have a picture of us going we had to go to this specific building to get our checks. We had to be all dressed up, we would go as a team, and we had to be all dressed up we had to have on heels and I have on heels there. But if we were out on the street and kind of as a group we had to dress up like that. But normally, day to day just a skirt would do. (20:32) Interviewer: “Okay now the ’53 season was the year that Chick’s actually managed to win the League Championship. Is there anything that stands out in your mind about that season or the last part of it or the final games?” Well I do know that Beans was pitching that game and it was a close game and know that Alma Ziegler came up and was talking to her trying to encourage her you know “You can do it”. Alma Ziegler was about as tall as I am now so and Ziggy is about 6’ 4”, I mean Beans was about 6’ 4”, �so they look like Mutt and Jeff out there on the mound, the little one telling the big one what she should to do. I can recall seeing that scene and she did win that game and won the championship. Interviewer: “Now Alma was another pitcher, wasn’t she?” Well she was, but she played second base all the time. She only pitched when there was real need. But the thing about Alma was she was the oldest player on the team, she was a spark plug she was always the captain, very quick. She wasn’t a good hitter at all, she was very small but she could place the ball and get on base, but she couldn’t throw by that time. She might have thrown the ball better when she was younger but when I got there she couldn’t throw the ball very well but she threw it so slow that after they had seen like Beans or one of us that threw it really hard people couldn’t hit her. So Woody would put her in, you know, I mean anytime, she could throw the ball to the plate all the time. There was nothing on it because it was just kind of floating up there. So people would miss it because it was so slow. (22:13) Interviewer: “Alright, when that ’53 season comes to an end and so forth, so have you started college after that?” I started college, yeah. Interviewer: “And where did you go to college?” Ohio Northern University and I was always in all the sports and captain of the basketball team and I played softball there a lot so I had gotten a lot of softball when I was playing in college, team play. Interviewer: “And how did the level of play of the college softball teams compare with the Professional Baseball League?” Well softball is a different game you know, so it’s…you know they could play we had some good players, we had some, we had some good athletes in college. It wasn’t quite like how it was in high school. In high school it was a small school so we didn’t have a girl that I could actually play catch with. Nobody else would even want to play catch with me so it was a really small community. But in college you are going all over the state you know. In college we had some good players, it was competitive. It was okay softball. But it was softball and not baseball, it’s a whole different ball game. Interviewer: “Was there an overlap between the academic year and the baseball season?” (23:30) Right, yeah. I had to miss spring training because I was still in college but I was there when the games started, the season. But I would always miss when they would take team pictures, that was �bad. I have the team picture I think it was the ’54 team picture but in ’53, or the opposite, anyway I only have one of the two years that I was in the League that I’m in the picture. Interviewer: “Okay since you missed the training in ’54 you came to the team and now they had gone to the regulation size baseball, and now you sort of had your control back and do you think that surprised the manager to see you actually go up and there do it right?” He didn’t seem surprised at all. And he didn’t have any lack of confidence in me at all either. I mean, he was impressed I’m sure, but he never changed. He wasn’t the person who at least my experience with him, he didn’t mingle with the players. He wasn’t your friend; he was somebody who you just said “yes sir” to sort of. He reminded me of my father. So it was and I wasn’t used to be around a man telling me what to do because my father wasn’t around when I was growing up that much, so. I was a little shaken by him. I didn’t really know his history. I didn’t know who he was or who he had played for. I really hadn’t watched baseball except for the Cleveland Indians was the only club I followed, so I had no idea who he was. He was just a guy chewing tobacco up there spitting onto the field to me and I wasn’t too impressed by him but I was afraid of him. (25:12) Interviewer: “Did he change at all how he treated you as that season went on and it was clear that you were pitching up to that regular level?” Oh yeah, you know he didn’t make me go running anymore. I was treated like I was a regular ball player then. But he still didn’t care if I hit. I would say “Can I please practice, will you please show me what I should do here? How can I improve my hitting?” because I wasn’t a good hitter. He said: “Oh it doesn’t matter, you aren’t supposed to hit. Just hit the ball, get in here and get your arm covered up, save your arm”. He was really concerned about the pitchers saving their arms, keeping their arms warm and so he was not concerned at all about the fact that I couldn’t hit the ball. Interviewer: “Did they have you bunt, or was that a…?” I bunted a lot. Yeah, I made a lot of outs. But I batted 126, which not many professional ball players stay in the League long batting 126. (26:13) Interviewer: “Except if they are good pitchers.” If they are good pitchers they can do it. Interviewer: “When you were playing, particularly that last season, so you are starting fairly regularly and pitching a lot of innings. Were there particular teams or players that gave you a lot of trouble?” �Oh yeah. It was the Ft. Wayne Daisies that were the star teams during those years and they had the Foss and my memory is starting to leave me, and they had the three sisters that were, if you can help me out with the suggestion of the names. I played half the league with them I played in Allington’s All-stars. I played on the children’s team with a lot of those gals from the Ft. Wayne Daisies. Jean, the Weaver sisters, Jean Weaver and Betty Foss was her sister and they were the best hitters in the league. I mean they were 300+ hitters so when they came to the plate, yes I was a little bit afraid that I might not throw it past them but I constantly kept that in mind. “I can throw this ball past them”. That’s was what really kept me going. I have always been good at focusing on one thing and so I was good at focusing on where the catcher put the glove (27:42). And that was all I would do, that would be my aim was to put that ball in the glove. I was never aware of anybody in the stands or anything anybody was saying, it was just me and that glove, always, so I really really enjoyed it and was really sad when the League folded. I had no idea that the League was having financial problems and that that it was going to fold until it was that spring and Catie Horstman was one of the gals from Ohio who actually only lived 10 miles from me but I didn’t know it in Ohio. So she, when the League quit Bill Allington was the manager who was in the League for 11 of of the 12 the only one that was there all those years. And a very, very good teaching coach so I was happy to be able to be playing with him those, I played until I graduated college I played in the touring team he got 12 girls, there were 11 girls and him so there were 12 of us and 2 vehicles, two cars and a station wagon. Toured around and played men’s teams. We had a great time and we had a lot of those really good ball players. So I had a really good opportunity to play but anyway I really enjoyed those years and sorry to see it go but I wanted to a professional so from there I took up golf and played professional golf for awhile. (29:12) Interviewer: “Alright, let’s go back to the Barn starting business. Where were you going and what kind of response did you get? ” Well we had a booking agent in Omaha, Nebraska. And he booked a lot in that area. Iowa, Nebraska, in the Midwest in that area. And some up in Minnesota and in the areas we had played and we played at St. Paul and we would play in minor league ball clubs or we would play town teams we would play anybody that he could schedule us a game with. So we were constantly in our cars driving hundreds of miles all night long to get to the next game. And we tried to, you know we played at least 5 nights a week, and double headers many times. So it was on the road constantly trying to get to the next game. You know we would take whatever we got from the gate and split it. I don’t know how much Bill Allington took but he would, he would pay for the scheduling of the games he would take some and we would split all the rest among the players. We would end up with 2 or 3 dollars sometimes. Then we would have to pay for our hotel and get our own food out of that, so it didn’t pay anything but nobody wanted to leave, nobody wanted to stop playing. It was the only opportunity to continue to play, and I was fortunate to be one of the eleven that went. �(30:38) Interviewer: “How successful were you on playing the men’s teams? Did you beat a lot of them?” Well, we, Bill had a really good idea and it really worked. And that was that we exchanged batters, pitchers and catchers and then we would play them head on. We would play regulation baseball and regulation baseball field and it worked great. I mean it was like split (31:00) 50/50, I have the records of the games and we won as many as we lost. And depending on the, I was always pitching against these all-star girls who were on the team but we had some great pitchers with us so it was really even and nobody gave anything away, it was a fight. We wanted to win, they wanted to win and it was a competitive game. And really drew the crowds and when we were pitching against the man pitcher and catcher, and of course most of their relatives are in the stands came to see this just hoping that these guys would strike out which they often did. I think I struck this catcher out like four times in the game, he just fell apart and people would just laugh in the stands and just really give him a hard time. And then after the game we would all go out and just have a great time. We had really great relationships with the town and the teams that we played. (32:00) Interviewer: “Then how did that stuff come to an end? Did it kind of just wear out its welcome, or you all got tired of it?” Well I left, I played for three years and that last year they had to get people who were not in the league to play because they couldn’t get enough All Americans to go back out and play. And I went overseas to teach so I wasn’t playing anymore. But they got some pretty good players in various locations but that was the problem, they weren’t part of the All Americans and I guess Bill decided to let it go. Interviewer: “Alright, now so you became a teacher, so did you major in education or did you have a particular field?” Well when I started in college I had this big plan, I was going to be an atomic scientist but I kind of backed down off of that and I decided to be a teacher. Of course most everybody in that era was either going to become a teacher or a nurse (33:03). And so I decided into going into teaching. I had a math degree and a physical education minor so I taught physical education in Puerto Rico, and Europe and the Philippines for the Air Force, dependent children. Interviewer: “So you…?” I let the baseball go, I never even turned my head back to see it. It was just like well now that part of my life is gone now I am going to be a golfer. So I made sure that every Air Force base I went to had a golf course and I practiced and practiced and practiced so when school was out I �was on the golf course and I got lessons from pros and I went back to California about nine years later and went to a country club and got my established hand and cap and turned pro and played for like 4 years on and off until the money would run out and I would go to work for awhile and I would go out on a tour and play a few more tournaments (34:08). Then I met my husband, got married and had three children and that was the end of my professional career. And then they started getting the All Americans back together with the Players Association and were talking about making this movie and my kids were all small then. So when they asked us to come back and if we wanted to be in this scene in the movie, I said, “Oh I can’t do that I have these little kids to take care of”. So I had no idea that it was going to be Gina Davis, and Tom Hanks, and I would have gotten there somehow if I would have known that. But it was too late then so I didn’t make it to the movie. Interviewer: “Now did your friends and people know that you played ball?” My children didn’t know it, my husband didn’t know it, no one knew it. Well my sisters knew it because they were involved when I was doing it of course but no, none of my family knew it at all I never mentioned it, never thought about it very often. But I played on softball teams you know, I went back to playing softball. And I went into real estate and we had our own team and I played all over the field, anyplace I wanted to because I could still play real well you know so I’m still playing senior softball, I play first base so I don’t have to run very much. (35:28) Interviewer: “So even your husband didn’t know? When did you meet him?” No, I met, I was playing golf and Marilyn Smith, who was a pro at the time said well go and take lessons from this guy in Los Angeles and he will help you with your game, so I did and my husband was practicing his golf there and wanted to play professional golf so that’s where I met him and three months later we got married. Interviewer: “What year was that?” Let’s see that would have been about ’65, something like that. (36:03) Interviewer: “That’s a good good space of time after the league had ended and you had stopped that. So that was just some miscellaneous thing that you had done when you were younger and not a really big deal…” Right, just part of my growing up experiences. Well then I was traveling all over the country that was something I always wanted to do I always had this drive that I had this agenda, of things I wanted to play professionally to make my living, and I wanted to travel, those are the two things, �and I wanted to leave the place that I was born where there was always nothing ever to do. So I have been living an exciting life ever since. Interviewer: “How do you think the experience with the League that affected you and kind of filled in some pieces of that?” Oh, that defined who I was, that really defined who I was. I had gained so much confidence in playing and learned so much from the teamwork and the friendships and camaraderie that was involved in that playing in those years. It totally defined me, I was not afraid to do anything. I rode all over Europe on a motor scooter by myself; I camped out under bridges with a blanket to see the country (37:22). I went there I had no job when I went to Europe so I bought a motor scooter and toured around all summer on that motor scooter I had never been to Europe before. So really I had no fear. It really, it taught me, and that travel taught me a lot about life, to appreciate it. I appreciated the fact that I had that chance so much and that there were so many people out there doing something that I liked to do it gave me a lot of confidence in who I was. I no longer felt like I was an outcast because I liked to do these things that boys liked to do it was like something is wrong with you if you do something like that if you go out and play, but the boys that you play with if you play as well as they do they don’t care if you play with them. It was the adults who were being judgmental about the fact that I was the only one doing it. But the people in town really liked me, I worked hard in that little town and I got to know the people that were running the restaurants and the business, I worked in a little restaurant and the fella who owned the big expensive restaurant across the street, my sisters worked for him, so he knew what a great athlete I was. So when I was just deciding to go and do baseball he called me over and said “You know,” he was a golfer and he says “you know, you could play professional golf” he said “if you want to learn to play golf instead of play baseball I’ll sponsor you so you can learn how to play golf “. I said “Oh no. I don’t want to play golf, no, I don’t want to chase that little ball around. I want to play baseball”. So I had a choice then, and I chose the baseball (39:01). But then that thought never left my mind…well maybe I can play golf. The strange thing was when I went to Puerto Rico they had no left handed clubs so I had to learn how to play right handed, so I did. I still putt left hand but I played right handed but I have had opportunities cross my path and I am one of those spontaneous people that I just do it. I don’t think about if it was a good decision or not, I just do it. And I’m glad I have because I’ve really lived a really, really full life. Interviewer: “On a little bit larger scale, where do you have the sense that where the League fits in terms of the larger history of women and sports, do you think you did something valuable or feel like you helped show what women could do or helped set up thing to come later or was it just something that happened and is disconnected from Title IX and the things to come later? (39:59) �Well I don’t think anybody knew who we were until the movie came out. So, we didn’t think we were anybody special. No matter who you talk to, we said that we played for the love of the game because we loved to play the game. And constantly we would go as a group someplace and people are telling us “Gee if it hadn’t been for you there wouldn’t have been any Title IX”, well that’s not true. Billy Jean King probably did more for Title IX than anybody and women’s sports. But in retrospect all history is based like that on what people did previously, so we have kind of inherited that position and I think that since we have inherited it we have done more for it consciously than we did before; I mean I don’t think anybody had any thought of women in the future while we were playing. But now the position that we are in we support other girls in sports we are always all out going to schools, not all of us but a good portion of the women have been in sports all of these years in one capacity or another as teachers, instructors, or coaches they all have added to it throughout their lifetimes. (41:17) Interviewer: “Alright, is there anything else you would like to add to the record here before we close out the interview?” I just want to go on the record and say that the All American Girls Professional Baseball League if hadn’t been for those women in the ‘40’s who stuck through all those changes from fast pitched softball to bring it into being baseball the way that they have, there wouldn’t have been a League because fast pitched softball was pretty ordinary sport at that time. But women to play actual baseball is what people give us credit for (42:00). It was an evolution just like men’s baseball was an evolution of softball as well, most people don’t know that but it was, but the fact that we did that is really motivating a lot of girls today that are playing in Little League to want to play baseball. And I think that baseball is a much better game than softball. Because it is a smaller ball and girls have smaller hands and it is easier to throw and it is so much more thought into the game of baseball because there is so much more time there is much more strategy and it is much, it’s a whole different game but it’s a very exciting game when you are playing, it might not be an exciting game to watch but it is very exciting to play. And I hope more girls, I am a very big advocate of women’s baseball and involved with the women’s baseball in the United States now and I traveled with an Australian team that comes over here all the time so I get to travel to Australia so I am really involved in Women’s baseball. Interviewer: “Well it makes for a really great story, so thanks for coming in an telling it today.” Thank you, thank you very much. (43:08) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_JLesko0503BB Title A name given to the resource Lesko, Jeneane (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lesko, Jeneane Description An account of the resource Jeneane Lesko was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1935. She grew up playing sports, practicing with men's baseball and basketball teams. She was playing for a softball team in Lima, Ohio, when she was recruited into the AAGPBL. She was a pitcher for the Grand Rapids Chicks during the last two seasons of the league, 1953-1954. Because of the larger size ball and the shorter distance between the pitcher's mound and home plate in the women's league, she had control problems as a pitcher in her first season, but still went 8-6. During the final season, when the league changed the rules and played the standard men's game, she did even better. After the league folded, she joined a barnstorming team made up of former league players, and stayed with it for three years. After that, she became a teacher and a professional golfer, and has actively supported women's baseball. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-04 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b8fd1bbd0fa463a5aa10108b00ad5c2a.mp4 06d61d88545864e9d65d52d0d53eec8e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c59b2669d7199bfb9db74883eed6c3bf.pdf fd9f8b72445acd162eb9b6038fdc7674 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW GINGER GASCON Women in Baseball Born: Chicago, Illinois, 1931 Resides: Elk Grove Village, Illinois Interviewed by: James Smither Ph.D, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 6, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, February 10, 2011 Interviewer: “Ginger, can we start off by you telling us a little bit about your background. Where and when were you born?” I was born in Chicago in 1931. Interviewer: “Did you grow up in Chicago?” I did, I grew up in Chicago. Interviewer: “What neighborhood did you live in?” We lived in a few different neighborhoods, one on the west side of Chicago, but the one I remember the best is the one near Wrigley field, near Hawthorn school. I think we moved there when I was about eight or ten and we stayed there until I was eighteen. Interviewer: “What did your family do for a living?” My dad was a truck driver and he use to drive paper goods to northern Minnesota and Michigan and come back and deliver down to the Chicago Tribune building. My mother was a housewife and she was an Irish immigrant. 42:48 Interviewer: “Was your father able to keep that job through the thirties?” Whatever he did he was on “Papa Works Again” and he use to bring home Blueberry pie and whatever his main work was I don’t know, but that’s what it was to keep the fellas going and that was good Interviewer: “Jobs were not always easy at that point.” 1 �Not at that point. Interviewer: “How did you get involved playing sports?” I happen to be the only girl in the neighborhood of all boys and that was from age ten on, so if I didn’t play with them, I wouldn’t be playing with anybody. I started out on the playgrounds and I played ball there and I was pretty good. I was one of the better ones that always went off to the division meeting and everything. Interviewer: “Were you playing in organized leagues?” No, remember I was ten or twelve years old, but I had an uncle who was a cop and he was a policeman on the gate at Wrigley Field and I only had about a six block walk down there. 43:46 When he would see me, he would say, “come on, get in”, so I got to watch Phil Cavarretta, Andy Pafko and those fellas and I just kind of fell in love with it from playing—we started out with sixteen inch and fourteen inch. Interviewer: “So, you’re playing softball in the street?” Playing softball Interviewer: “You were there in 1945, the last time the cubs were in the World Series?” Yes, I think so, but I don’t remember going to that World Series. Interviewer: “You might have been in school by then?” Yes, I think I was in school. Interviewer: “It might have been a little bit harder to get in.” Yeah, but when I was in school during WWII, they use to let some of us out of school to go out and collect tine and things during the day and that was kind of fun to go around the neighborhood and do things like that. When I got one of my first jobs I was the only 2 �girls in that district with all boys that delivered newspapers and that was nice because some of the boys were a little lazy and they would ask me to take their route for the day and I would make a few dollars there and I kind of liked that. 44:47 Interviewer: “All right, now at what point did you start to play more organized ball?” Fifteen, sixteen and there was a team, they were all farm teams for this all American league, and I played on the North Town Debs and there was the south group of girls that played too and when they created the Sallies and the Colleens, I went with the Sallies and some of my friends went with the Colleens and we toured the United States. I know you’ve heard that before, all the various cities and states. Interviewer: “Right, so let’s back up a little bit to that first stage. How did you wind up joining that first team?” Joining the first team? They picked you, they looked for the best athletes and they picked you. Interviewer: “How did they find you or where did they locate you?” On the playgrounds, it started on the playgrounds in Chicago. Interviewer: “So you weren’t playing in an organized softball league or anything like that?” 45:44 I was on a girl’s team in Chicago, but it was just eighth graders or something like that. Interviewer: “But they were actually scouting the neighborhoods to go find people.” Scouting the neighborhoods or they would here about and go and ask the athletic directors and we did tryout for that, that’s right, we did tryout for those farm teams. Interviewer: “Once you’re on one of those teams do you just live at home?” 3 �You live at home and go out three or four nights a week and on the week-end and play each other in various parks in the city. Interviewer: “What did your family think about that?” They didn’t mind, they liked it and I was always very active and I had my paper route and everything. I had two younger sisters, so they kind of looked up to me because I would take them out to places with me, to different and various places. Interviewer: “All right, were they paying you at that point?” Let me see, when is the first time I got paid? On the traveling team in 1949. Interviewer: “So, the first level of team you’re just playing?” Yeah, you’re a farm team and you just show up and play. 46:47 No money involved, just your skill level and all that. Interviewer: “So, did you do that for one year or two or?” Probably two years, I played for two years. Interviewer: “How do you get up to the next level?” That’s when you tried out, they had tryouts for the All Americans and that’s when they picked you again from that group, so that’s how some of us got in. Interviewer: “Where were they doing the tryouts?” At the various parks around—in Skokie, the tryouts were there and see, Wrigley Field had already had all the girls back for the first stage and now this comes five years later and then the coaches came and looked at us and picked and put us, after we traveled and di that for the year, they picked us to come to whatever teams and you probably heard that story from other girls. The balanced the teams by skill level and whatever they needed. 47:48 4 �Interviewer: “So, what was the year then that you started playing with the traveling teams?” 1949 and in 1950 I came back and played with Chicago for a year, underhand fast pitch with the Bluebirds and then I went back in 1951 to the Grand Rapids Chicks and finally I settled in and played another three years with the Bluebirds because I could hold a day job and play ball and I had two salaries. Interviewer: “The Bluebirds, was that a semi-pro softball team?” It was a pro team also, you paid to get in and we got paid. I started out with that team at about a hundred dollars a week and went up to a hundred and a quarter. See, the all Americans was fifty five and seventy five, but holding the day job was the bonus because you had a double salary and that’s when I started saving money for college. Interviewer: “Let’s go back to the farm team experience. Were there basically just two teams that played each other or were there more?” There were four, but I can’t remember the other two. I remember the Debs and the— you’ll hear it from one of the other ladies, the team she played on. She was a southsider and I was a northsider. 48:54 Interviewer: “Did fans come to these games?” Oh yeah, the parks were full every night. Are you familiar with Chicago Thillens Stadium on Devon and Lincoln Ave? The Thillens check cashing trucks? I don’t know if you remember seeing them running around? They sponsored us, so they gave us the money for uniforms and people came into the park at night and I think they were paying a quarter or something. Interviewer: “How do things change then when you join the traveling team?” 5 �When you join the traveling team, that’s the fun. You know you’re traveling to different cities and meeting different people and you’re on the bus singing at night. It’s just the excitement and the camaraderie of having all these friends around you all the time. You think about high school and when high school days were over, that’s who your friends are. Most of them don’t go to college and we had that extended into our twenties and we still meet. I can’t think of any other group of people who still meet from when they were in their teens. I just think we have been terribly lucky in that manner. It’s been a wonderful thing. 49:55 Interviewer: “I think the closest you get, maybe in some cases, is with military veterans. Men who served in the same unit, they have reunions, but in a way it parallels a little bit because it’s a distinctive experience more than just going to school someplace.” It’s a shared experience. Interviewer: “Right, and you’re at that point in your life that you’re becoming who you really are too. That’s a very consistent thing that we’ve had in this. Explain a little bit for people who don’t know very much about it, how did the traveling team thing work? Who was on it, what happened?” There were scouts with the All American, Max Carey and those fellas, they would go out to the major cities in America or the ones they decided they could get some interest in, and they would talk to the Chamber of Commerce and their press men and their sports people and they would arrange for us to come in at certain dates, and they did it very well because they started out in Chicago and went down to Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. 50:56 Crossed over to Virginia and finally got back to New York and over Pennsylvania, 6 �so it was just play a game or two, get on the bus and go to the next town and play a game or two. On Sunday it was two games, we use to play two games on Sunday, but we stayed in different hotels and met different people. I remember in Michigan, Battle Creek, when these fellas would carry our luggage to the hotel, you know from the bus into and up to our rooms, we played music because we liked the rhythm and blues music and they use to hangout in the halls with us and that was a lot of fun. It was almost like you were dating groups, but it wasn’t really. Interviewer: “Did you go to New York City as part of that?” Yes, we stayed in Newark, New Jersey and we got on the train. I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but we had Mirtha Marrero and Isabel Alvarez and it just so happened I had Spanish in high school, so I was the only one that could talk to them a little bit, so I took them on the train from Newark into New York. 51:57 We went to the Palladium because Mambo was popular at the time and then we went to the Empire State Building and of course once they saw the guys at the Palladium they were in a different kind of world than the rest of us, so I left them to go to the john and said, “don’t move, I’ll be back”, and when I came back they were gone. They were gone for hours and hours and I had to call back to the chaperone and say, “I lost the girls, they left me”, and so I got back on the train by myself and they finally showed up, but that was kind of harrowing because I felt responsible for them, but I couldn’t control them. 52:36 Interviewer: “Where did you play in New York?” We were playing in Newark, New Jersey and that was in 1949 and they played in New York in 1950, they played in one of those fields. Interviewer: “At some point they played in Yankee Stadium.” 7 �We didn’t, the 49ers didn’t, but the 50ers did. Interviewer: “What other places you stopped at stands out in your memory or have particular stories connected to them?” 53:03 When I think of Oklahoma, I think of the soil and the weather and how it was different and some of the other states. Virginia, the natural bridge and the places I saw that I wouldn’t have seen in my life, stood out to me. Ball playing, it was just exciting to play at night and to have the fans come. They always hung around and wanted autographs, but we couldn’t talk too long because we had to get to the bus and take our showers and get onto the next bus. I can tell you a story about the Cuban girls when we would come to the showers they wouldn’t shower with the rest of us, so they wanted to shower last and they did. So, we’re sitting on the bus starving, hungry and we wanted to get moving and they come lumbering along like this after making us wait forty-five more minutes. Oh, you would say things to them, but you couldn’t say too much, but that was kind of funny. Different cultures and different ways of getting things done. 54:09 Interviewer: “Did you always play each other or did you sometimes play local teams?” We always played each other when we were on tour because you took the girls that they were going to use later on to see who worked out after these games and take up to the other teams, so it was always each other and we never played outside of that. Interviewer: “Aside from the Cubans, were there particular players in that group who were particularly distinctive or were troublemakers or leaders or anything like that?” 8 �Well, not any of that really, but different ones had different personalities. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Maybelle Blair, there were girls like that, younger, that were very funny and talked loud and did funny things. 54:57 Interviewer: “Now, was Toni Palermo in that group?” Yes, she was in that group also, right. Interviewer: “She would have been one of the youngest ones.” Yes, she was maybe sixteen when I was seventeen or something. Interviewer: “What did they do to look after you? You’re taking a group of teen age, largely teenage, girls, I guess some of them were a little older, how did they look after them?” Well, the chaperones were always there. Wherever we stayed they were ever present in the hotel and they just in general watched out for us because if some of these boys want to take you out on a date or something, you would have to go through the chaperone. That lightened up though because when I was in Grand Rapids one of the reporters from the Grand Rapids Herald and I went out to dinner one night. His name was Scotty something and I don’t remember the last name, but he was telling me about the morgue. You know what the morgue is don’t you? Newspapers that they keep, so if somebody dies they go into that file and pick it out, and that was something I never knew before and something I learned from Scott. 56:00 Interviewer: “Now, does the traveling team season end before the regular one does? Was it a shorter season or did you finish at the same time maybe, what do you think?” We finished in late August and what did our girls have, a 160 game schedule? 9 �Interviewer: “Something like that.” It was something like that, but I don’t remember. Interviewer: “The playoffs for the league were a little bit later than that. Would any of the girls from the traveling teams be called up to the regular clubs or would you just stay together the whole year?” We stayed together the whole year and then they sent you to the club. No, they waited until the season was over. They didn’t pull anybody out that I recall. We picked some up on the road though; we picked up Sue Kidd in Choctaw, Arkansas. Interviewer: “Was that a common thing? Would they try people out as they went from town to town?” 56:57 I only remember that year picking her up as one particular person, but maybe they did, maybe any of the girls that played in the fifties, maybe they picked up more than one. Has anyone told you a story so far that they picked up someone? Interviewer: “ I think there were some maybe they identified and may have joined a little later. I think Sue Kidd did kind of get on the bus and go with them.” She got on the bus and went with them, that’s absolutely right. Interviewer: “Alright, they did that and once that season comes to an end—had you finished high school yet or were you still in school?” No, I hadn’t finished yet, but then you’d go back to school and once you were eighteen and out, you went back two months to the job, if you had a job. Do you know what the salaries for factory jobs were at the time? Interviewer: “Nope” 10 �Forty a week—we got more playing ball, and some ladies will say they made more money than their fathers. It’s kind of amazing isn’t it when you think of it? 57:56 Interviewer: “Although if you think of modern pro athletes in a lot of sports and so forth, that seems less surprising, but then, baseball players were not paid as well as football or anyone else.” Well, back in the seventies, I knew a Jimmy French who was with the Washington Senators when Ted Williams was the manager and these guys would get about fifteen a day for meals when they were out and they all lived on hamburgers so they could save money and it’s kind of interesting, I was down in Florida one time on vacation, and in a bar. I came with two friends, and we wanted to go to the games, the spring training games, and we found out where the fellas hung out, so we went in the bar and I was kind of looking for Jimmy French because I had met him on the farm in Pennsylvania--Eastern Ohio, right next to Pennsylvania and I said, “Anybody here know Jimmy French?” And one of the guys said, “Hell, who doesn’t know Jimmy French? He’s the only one with a masters degree in finance”. 59:00 He ended up working on the San Francisco stock market. That was kind of rare I guess for athletes to be going to get a degree and then playing ball, and they only had to play ten years to be pensioned, so every year—I don’t know if he still gets ten thousand a year or what, but that was back from the early seventies. Interviewer: “Now we’re going to go back to your story. Did they want you to come back the next year?” Yeah Interviewer: “But you decided not to.” 11 �I just decided I could make more money because I wanted to go to college and my family didn’t have any money to send me, so—and I think because I’d had a paper route and I was used to picking up spare money, I kind of knew how to do that, so when it was available to me, it would be foolish not to take it, that’s the way I looked at it. Interviewer: “So, you got the double salary while playing in Chicago and working, right?” Three years, right Interviewer: “You did that in 1950 and then in 1951 you go back to the all American?” 60:00 Yeah, I go back for a year because this team was moving on and another team didn’t want to pick me up until the year after, so that’s what I did. It was because I was rookie on this team and this team was the Chicago Queens, they won the championship that year. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. Have you heard of the Weaver sisters? Interviewer: “Yeah” They were on that team and I was the youngest one on the team and one was pitching and one was playing shortstop. They could hit—they came out of New Orleans Jacks teams, so I had people like that around me with high skill levels, and some of the best pitchers in that league. Connie Wisnwiewski came to that league, and I know her because she came to the Grand Rapids Chicks, and she got a higher salary than the rest. It was like three hundred a week, which was very high and she made her own rules, she had a limousine drive her around, but then she bounced back after that, so I wasn’t the only one that did that. 1:01 Interviewer: “Normally what position would you play when you were playing?” 12 �Center field when I played for the Bluebirds, center field for the Grand Rapids Chicks, and second base when I played for the Sallies. Interviewer: “Was that just depending who else was on the team, where to put you?” Well, the coaches put you, they place you and you could be an infielder or an outfielder. Interviewer: “Now did you play any positions beside those two?” No, pretty much those two, and I liked center because I was pretty fast and I could cover the other people over on those ends, so it worked well for me. Interviewer: “Did you have a good throwing arm?” I threw people out at the plate from center field. Interviewer: “Could you hit?” Fairly well, not real good, but I was a pretty good base stealer when I got on. I hear Toni saying she was on base a lot and that’s kind of amazing to me, but you know and he said, “don’t let the truth get in the way of anything.” 2:00 Interviewer: “She was on base all the time, she said.” According to her, yeah and you got to love her. “What was your average? Were you batting three hundred? Because we know that girls that batted three hundred and you weren’t one of them.” You know who they were don’t you? Doris Sams, the ones they named, people have already named the better players right? So Doris Sam’s, Connie Wisnwiewski, and I can’t even think of the others right now, but-Interviewer: “She may have walked a lot.” That could have been, that might have been. 13 �Interviewer: “Alright, so as someone who ran bases a lot, did you have problems with strawberries and all of that?” Yeah Interviewer: “Did you find ways of dealing with that? Could you slide in a certain way that was less harmful?” No, when you hit the ground you’re going to land on the same spot the next time and you remember that because it’s not comfortable. Interviewer: “What kind of treatment could they provide for you?” The chaperone came out right away and rolled you over and first cleaned it off and then the Mercurichrome and of course, we never complained about anything because they would take you out of the line-up and I did not want to be taken out of the line-up. 3:08 The ball player today, when they get a hangnail they don’t play and they get all that money. Interviewer: “Well, they want to protect their investment, right?” It cracks me up Interviewer: “So, basically you’re situation in Chicago changes, but you still want to keep playing, so did you have to go tryout for the all Americans in 1951?” No, when I said I wanted to come back they said, “oh good”, and they put me on a team. Interviewer: “Alright, what do you remember about the season in Grand Rapids?” I remember getting on base in Grand Rapids and sort of outwitting the Cuban pitchers for stealing. I knew their little slow moves and whatever and throwing people out, and then the people I met, so that was the best for me. 14 �Interviewer: “Were their some pitchers that were harder to run on than others?” 3:59 Yes, tough to run on Interviewer: “Who was tough?” Well, Jean Faut, of course, and I can’t think of any right now, I’m just not pulling them up. Interviewer: “And their pitchers that you really didn’t like to have to bat against?” Well, you couldn’t control it, you did your best you know, you never gave up, never give up. Interviewer: “Where did you live when you were in Grand Rapids?” In a home with somebody, and I don’t even remember the people's name right now, but I lived in a sort of a boarding house situation once too. Interviewer: “Do you remember which field you were playing at? South Field by the high school or Bigelow Field south of town?” I think it was Bigelow Field. Interviewer: “They played there for a couple of years and then it burned down. Were the crowds good in Grand Rapids at that point?” 4:55 Yes they were, that was five years in and they were still good. It was the last two or three years that they weren’t so good and I don’t if it was a novelty and it was wearing off with people, but it was kind of sad to see it go. Some of the girls, what you call the all stars went on to play in other places around the country with Bill Allington and things like that, so that was good. Interviewer: “They did a little more barnstorming for a while anyway.” 15 �Yeah, a little more barnstorming, but that’s all that was left. I remember that wrestling came into popularity then and girls roller skating came into popularity, so I don’t want to call the American public fickle, but they tire of things after while and the guys were back, so that was a big thing. Interviewer: “That’s right because when the league started the minor leagues were pretty well shut down, so in these smaller towns and so forth, they didn’t have anything going on. 5:50 Sometimes—let’s see, it was when you’d go down to Florida and Max Carey was down there and he’s invite some of us girls to the track to bet on the dogs, he always wanted fifty cents, he was going to go in on it with two or three of us, kind of interesting huh? Interviewer: “So you play basically with Grand Rapids for one year and then what do you do after that?” After that I go to college. Interviewer: “Where did you go to college?” I went to Northeastern Illinois State in Chicago, a city college. Interviewer: “And what did you study?” Education and Psychology Interviewer: “Then what did you do with the degree once you had it?” I was an elementary teacher for six years and then after that I was a counselor for twentyeight years. Interviewer: “Where did you work?” First in Chicago and then after a year the Department of Defense started in New York and came across the country all the way to California, and they were interviewing for jobs in 16 �Europe at the army schools, so they picked me in Chicago and I went over to Europe for two years and taught in Germany. 7:00 When I came back form there—you could look for placements over there is you were deciding to come home and I found one in Parma, Ohio, so I was there for two years and then I decided I wanted to work on my masters and then I came back to Chicago. So, my career is in education. Interviewer: “Aside from getting you some funding to start college with, what kind of effects, do you think, playing organized ball for the all Americans and the softball league, what sort of effects did that have on you?” Well, the camaraderie is just so much you know, I think you’re so lucky to get that in your life, but also, you’re around all these other women of talent, you supported each other, you had role models because the girls that came before us were certain role models you know. That Wagner lady, Audrey Wagner, ended up being a doctor and things like that. The role models—“there isn’t anything you can’t do, at least give it a try”. 8:07 I don’t think a lot of kids grow up with that, you have these other things that lead you to it, these other opportunities and that’s what I think is the important thing, the opportunity and then to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. Interviewer: “When you were actually playing with the league, did you see yourself at all as any kind of pioneer and really doing something significant in moving women’s sports?” No, just doing what I loved to do, being physical in space and doing it well and all the other benefits that I’ve suggested. 17 �Interviewer: “Then in the seventies and in the eighties as women’s sports really start to pick up and title nine comes in and so forth, did you pay much attention to that?” 8:52 Yeah, I remember people in—all the PE teachers in the school were into this Title IX thing and all of us ladies were and I was a counselor in school, so we were always politicking for that to come into being, because it made a difference. Look at our athletes today—all as a result of Title IX. I know all the little particulars and the politics of it— not that many girls care and not that many girls want to come out and they’re taking space from the boys, but I think that gave America a boost now too. Our female athletes and all the things they’ve won, we beat China in the Olympics, things like that. Look at the women athletes in anything today, how good they are, and they have the same training, they do the workouts. What we did was calisthenics and running, we didn’t do weight work and you know how strong that enables you to be, so that’s why the women are so good today. The women’s teams are as good as us or better, but the interest is not there because you see, it’s society, it’s always the men with the bib basketball and the big baseball and it’s understandable, that’s where the money goes, that’s where everything is. 10:03 I always thought sports in America was a great outlet for men in a progressive nature. Let’s use their testosterone and I always thought, this is good because people aren’t fighting in society themselves or fighting on the streets, they’re getting rid of it in some other way and they’re getting rich too Interviewer: “That’s true and we’re not like the European soccer fans where all the violence is in the stands.” We have our heroes, we sure do. 18 �Interviewer: “Were you involved in any of the stuff leading into the creation of “A League of Their Own” and all that?” Yes, right from the beginning. People that remember people, remember where they live, “oh, she’s here”, and I got a call from Shirley Jamison, one of the first, and she was a tiny little lady the first three, four or five years and in fact that was the first pictorial section that came out in the newspaper, she was in that picture and of course years later, Isabel came out in one while she was a pitcher. 10:58 Shirley called me up and said, “I know where she’s living”, and then they told me . I went to Cooperstown in 1988 and it all kicked off from there. Interviewer: “The people you worked with and your friends, did they know you played ball?” I never told them, never talked about it. Interviewer: “Even while you’re kind of lobbying for women in sports?” Yeah, isn’t that interesting, it was just that part of my life is the way I looked at it you know. Parts of it were wonderful for me and gave me an impetus to do things. I can tell you a story—kind of an impetus to do things—I saw a movie when I was younger Roz Russell played Amelia Earhart in the movie and what was I, in my teens when I saw that or ten years old? Anyway, when I was forty years old, some kids in school came and asked me if I would sponsor a flying club, just asked me. I said, “Oh sure”, so that summer I said, “Oh my god, I better get a pilot's license, so that’s when I went to get a pilots license because I wanted their respect, I wanted to know more than them, so they would—just didn’t have someone who was just kind of a face to their thing, I wanted to know the stuff. 12:06 Then I flew for five years on a regular basis and the guys that 19 �trained me said, “Ilene, you keep coming out, why?” I said, “I love being in the air, it’s marvelous”, because he said that most women get their ticket and you never see them again, they just want to say they have a pilots license. I didn’t know that until the instructor told me that’s what most of the guys do it, but I guess we ladies are a little more serious about it, we’re just glad to be there in the first place. 12:34 Interviewer: “And do you think that having gone and just done the stuff you had done by taking on new challenges, it was no big deal to go fly?” Yes, exactly, plus I had that interest since I was maybe fifteen or sixteen. If Amelia Earhart can do it, I can do it. That’s so funny isn’t it? People need role models, boys and girls both need role models and I had my role models in the girls that played ball and that movie. In fact, that was the first role model to me, before I went with the girls to play ball, you know, for something to do or that looks interesting, that I want to try. Interviewer: “Well it makes for a good story and I’ll point out to you, you took longer than fifteen minutes to tell it.” I did? How long did I talk? Interviewer: “I don’t know.” A half hour, my times up—I’m usually worth a half hour. 13.23 Interviewer: “You’ve done really well, so thank you for coming and talking to us.” Thank you. 20 �21 �22 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_EGascon1135BB Title A name given to the resource Gascon, Eileen "Ginger" (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gascon, Eileen "Ginger" Description An account of the resource Ginger Gascon was born in Chicago in 1931 and grew up playing softball. She played on softball teams used by the AAGPL as farm clubs while she was in highschool, then joined the Springfield Sallies for the league's barnstorming tour in 1949. She played professional softball in Chicago in 1950, then played for the Grand Rapids Chicks in 1951. She played both center field and second base. She later became an educator and was actively involved in promoting women's sports. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-06 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/82be56c12f2ff214c99e365924dbd6cf.mp4 2b54ebc2f7edf90455e33a5a90f72a78 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3b3dfd3a41d2ec800e073fd3a5ad0f2e.pdf 9c3dc36a9e0f9fb6284809dcac80dd25 PDF Text Text ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW HELEN LaCAMERA Women in Baseball Born: September 30, 1931, Quincy, Massachusetts Resides: Edgewater, Florida Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 5, 2010, Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion. Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, February 21, 2011 Interviewer: “Helen, can you start by giving us a little background on yourself. To begin with, where and when were you born?” I was born September 30, 1931 in Quincy, Massachusetts. Interviewer: “What did your family do for a living at that time?” My father was an auto mechanic and my mother was a sty at home mom. Interviewer: “Was your father able to make enough money through the thirties that you could get by all right?” Yes, we didn’t know any better, that it was the end of the depression, so we did fine. Interviewer: “Did you live in the same place while you were growing up or did you move around?” We moved around, but all in the city of Quincy. Interviewer: “What kind of education did you have?” I just completed high school. Interviewer: “When did you start getting involved in sports?” From my eighth grade gym teacher, Mary Pratt, I had her in Junior high, as they called it then, and she was the one that got me started in playing in the park league and CYO softball and basketball and then she was instrumental in getting me a tryout to go to the league. 1:15 1 �Interviewer: “Ok, now had she already played in the league before she was a teacher or was she doing them both at the same time or how did that work?” Basically, she was doing both. One year she stopped and she came out to play, but she went back to teaching, so she’s been teaching for forty-eight years one way or another. Interviewer: “You actually got a chance then to play organized sports, to a degree, not just pick-up games out in the street and that kind of thing?” Through her, yes Interviewer: “Now, did you just kind of play with the kids in the neighborhood and things too?” Pick-up with my brother, and I would just kind of tag along with him and if they needed an extra player, I was it, whether it was tag football or baseball or whatever, so that’s how I got the interest in sports. 2:10 Interviewer: “What position did you play?” Third base and shortstop in softball, but Dotty Schroeder was the shortstop at Fort Wayne and nobody was going to replace her. Interviewer: “You had a good arm then, could you throw?” Yes Interviewer: “Were you a good hitter?” A good hitter in softball, not good in baseball Interviewer: “Tell me a little bit more about the leagues you were playing with before you got into the All Americans. The CYO, what was that?” Those were the church leagues around the city of Boston and then the park league played and then we played in the tournaments through the northeast and played against the 2 �Raybesto’s in Connecticut and went out to Pittsfield, Mass and played against the different teams in Worcester for tournaments, so you got a little more experience that way. Saw Bertha Reagan and she really caught your attention pitching. 3:21 She was a thirty nine year old grandmother at the time and you would just stick your bat out and hope that she’d hit it. Interviewer: “When you went and played some of these games in the tournament, did you get much of an audience or following?” They were fairly good, you know a couple hundred or three hundred people depending on where it was held. We had a field in Quincy that every Friday night we played and we drew a good crowd there. 3:55 Interviewer: “How much did you know about the All American league before you tried out for it?” Nothing, not a thing, and Ms. Pratt never talked about it like most don’t, unless she said, “we’re going to take you to a tryout”. Interviewer: “So that was just kind of out of the blue?” Right Interviewer: “Even though she’s coaching softball and doing all this kind of stuff, and she has this kind of professional experience, she wasn’t using that or telling you about it at that time?” No, but she taught us—if you didn’t have the basics, you learned the basics the right way, how to play the sport, truly. Interviewer: “What was the tryout process? Could you do that in Boston or did you have to go somewhere else?” 4:52 3 �The outskirts of Boston, and a scout came and there were three of us girls from our team that got to tryout. Jean Buckley was one of them. She came out and she was with Kenosha and the other girl was still in high school, so she didn’t choose to go. Mary Dailey, I believe, was in that tryout, and Marie Kelley, maybe. Interviewer: “About how many altogether were trying out do you think?” I really don’t know there—once we got through with that and they said, “you can go to South Bend”, and we went there and there were four hundred girls trying out and of the four hundred, forty of us were chosen, and then five to each team that for whatever they needed, pitchers or infielders and that’s how we were selected. Interviewer: “So, the league was doing a kind of tryout for the whole league than?” Right 5:54 Interviewer: “How did you get out to South Bend?” They provided us with a train from South Boston you know, to South Bend. Interviewer: “Did you go out by yourself?” No, I went with Jean Buckley and probably Mary Dailey, I can’t remember at the time, but there were probably six of us from that area you know. Interviewer: “But just people who were trying out, you didn’t have other people along?” No Interviewer: “Had you ever taken a long train trip?” No Interviewer: “So, what was that like?” 4 �An experience, I said, “I thought if you went fifty miles from home that was a big trip, and if you ever got to go to New York City, well, you thought you were on the other side of the earth”, but they met us at the train station and they treated us really well. Interviewer: “What was the tryout process once you got to South Bend?” Well, I think it was April, and it was cold, so the put the four hundred of us in an armory and you just threw the ball back and forth and they eliminated two hundred people the first day, and then they divided it by infielders, outfielders, so you did your fielding for the infield and throwing for outfielders and that’s how they got to sort of eliminate everybody you know. 7:19 Interviewer: “Did they also have you hit?” I don’t remember ever hitting. I don’t know if outfielders did, but infielders didn’t. After that we got on a bus and went to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and we were from five thirty in the morning until twelve thirty at night on the bus. Interviewer: “What year was this that you were ding this?” 1950 Interviewer: “They had their spring training in different places in different years, so we kind of put that in sequence. What kind of facility did they have there?” A rainy one, and it rained for three days and it was like mud, but they had a hotel and there were probably two or three to a room and they provided breakfast and dinner everyday for you, so basically you had two a day when you were practicing. 8:18 Interviewer: “About how long did that time down there last?” 5 �I’d say three weeks and the Racine Belles were with us, so then we started barnstorming coming up—Indianapolis, playing games while we came north until we got to our home city. Interviewer: “As you were going along and doing the barnstorming games, was that getting much response from the locals? Did people come out to see you?” Yes, but it was cold and I give them credit. It was freezing and I got a sore arm out of that one, but other than that, the people, they were welcoming to us all the time. 9:09 Interviewer: “Your destination was?” Fort Wayne, Indiana Interviewer: “So, you’re with the fort Wayne Daisies. Who were the stars on that team?” I would say, Dottie Schroeder, I mean, that was the main one, Dottie Collins was a pitcher, Maxine Kline was another great pitcher, and Vivian Kellogg was a first baseman, Evie Wawryshyn, second base and they gave me third. Interviewer: “How many rookies were on the team? Did they have five?” I think the five Interviewer: “Do you remember your first game?” 10:00 I do, it was Memorial Day weekend and they called you up and lined you up on the third base line and they said my name and I said, “I made it, I belong”, and it was one of the nicest things that has happened. Interviewer: “Do you remember how you did in that game?” I probably walked, and stole a base. I don’t think I got a hit. 6 �Interviewer: “What made it harder to hit since this kind of evolved from the kind of softball you were playing?” I wasn’t used to curve balls and sliders and all of that you know, so I mean, I was fairly good in softball but, “A good field, no hit” that’s me. Interviewer: “At this stage, were they pitching overhand yet?” Overhand 10:59 Interviewer: “Overhand, all right, and the softball you had done, was that underhand fast pitch?” Yes Interviewer: “You have to get used to the delivery and then they mix up the pitches.” Right Interviewer: “That’s not really fair.” I’m looking for a lot of walks. Interviewer: “How did your team do that year?” We went to, they called them the finals, against the Rockford Peaches, and we went to seven games and we lost in the seventh game. Interviewer: “Over the course of that season, are there particular games or things that happened in individual games that kind of stand out in your mind and come back to you a lot?” No, it was just the whole experience of—even when I had to sit down when Betty Foss came, it was just exciting to be there and see, which I thought, was the best brand of ball going at the time. I had never seen so many good players all in one place. 12:00 7 �Interviewer: “You said you had to sit down when Betty Foss came, can you explain that?” Well, she came from Cape Girardeau, Missouri and she was five nine or five ten, she batted left and I think that probably her batting average was like four twenty five, so I said if mine was one thirty one, I could see why I sat down, but when someone got hurt, like Evie Wawryshyn, I would go in and play second base and in the late innings I would play defense for Betty Foss. She was an adequate fielder, but she was a better hitter than fielder. Interviewer: “Now, do you think that the fundamentals that you learned back home in Quincy helped you there?” Oh, definitely yes, I learned the basics and I learned to think—if the ball came at me, what would I do? Wait for the ball to come and then say, “What am I going to do?” And that was from my coach, she did a wonderful job. 13:04 Interviewer: “That paid off for you. Now, in 1950, where was the league in terms of all of its rules and regulations and stuff that the players had to abide by?” Still you had to wear skirts and you weren’t allowed to smoke in public or anything like that, and to behave like a lady because you represented the league. Interviewer: “When you got to South Bend did they give you etiquette training that year?” No, I think that was more in 1943, 44 and 45 when they learned from Helena Rubenstein, but it was still in effect, that you behaved. Interviewer: “And then you had a chaperone for your team? Who was your chaperone that year?” 13:57 8 �Doris Tetzlaff Interviewer: “Tell me a little bit about her.” She did everything from doing your uniforms to make sure they were the right fit and telling you not to fraternize, but everybody did, but she just did everything. If you had a strawberry she fixed it and she was a “jack of all trades”, and an assistant to the manager. Interviewer: “What could you actually do for a strawberry at that point?” She put something on it and you just suffered through it until it healed. You learned how to slide better, and we use to go to the lake and practice in the sand, learning how to slide so it wouldn’t hurt. Interviewer: “Where did you live while you were playing there? Did you stay in someone’s home?” 14:52 Yes, there were two girls to a home as a rule and you paid them five dollars a week to live there and then when you went on the road you stayed in a hotel and they gave you three dollars a day meal money, and as I say, we traveled by bus at night to get there after a game and I couldn’t say enough about it, it was just wonderful. Interviewer: “What were they paying you at that point?” I was paid fifty-five dollars a week as a rookie. I said that if I went back to work—I wasn’t making that when I went out to work, so I would have played for nothing, they didn’t know it, but I think most of the girls would have. They just loved playing and being there. Interviewer: “What was fan support like in Fort Wayne?” Great, I was “Boston Blackie” at the time, “Park your car in the Harvard Yard”, they’d call from the stands you know, so we had good rapport with the fans. 15:57 9 �Interviewer: “Did you have a sense as to how many people would come to a game on a good day?” I would say anywhere from nine hundred to maybe on a good day fifteen hundred, I don’t know, and maybe in the earlier years they drew more, but like I say, in 1950 I thought that was great because I had never played before that many people at all, so I thought they were a good crowd. Interviewer: “Of the other towns that you played in, were there any that you particularly liked to go to or didn’t like to go to or were they pretty much all the same?” No, they were pretty much—I enjoyed every town for reasons, but they were all good and the fans were great to you, so I didn’t really have a favorite, just that you were seeing some other part of the country, which was nice. 16:57 Interviewer: “Now, the people in Fort Wayne, did they use the players at events or for promotions or other thing? Did you get involved in the community in any way?” Not really, the president was Van Ohman who owned the hotel there, so you didn’t really have any, till the last when we were leaving he gave us a banquet at the end, but we didn’t do any special events that I remember. Interviewer: “How long then did you actually play in the league?” Just that one-year Interviewer: “Why did you stop playing after one year?” I went home and my parents sold the home and I went to Florida. I didn’t want to stay there, so I went home to my girlfriend’s and her parents. 18:00 I went for a weekend and I stayed with them five years until I got married. Why I didn’t go back is, I had met 10 �my future husband. I got the contract to back, but I said it was a tradeoff really, so I had two wonderful children and two grandchildren, so I had the best of both worlds, I think. Interviewer: “So, you weren’t really looking to make playing ball a career for yourself?” Well, I didn’t know, I didn’t think so because until you got to South Bend you didn’t know if you were good enough to play, so I was, more or less, taking it one day at a time, one year at a time and I would have loved to have gone back, but somebody got in the way. 18:53 Interviewer: “Did you try to follow the league after that or did that now work if you were on the east coast?” After I got through playing there, I went back to Mary Pratt and played softball again. Even when I got married I was still playing and until I had my first child and I said, “I guess that’s it”. Interviewer: “So you are able to continue on some level and just because you leave the league it doesn’t stop all that?” Oh no, I said, “It’s the love of the game, whether it’s baseball or softball”. It just draws you back to it one way or another. Interviewer: “Did you have a professional career of some kind after that? Did you go to work again or did you just raise your family?” No, I worked in an office until after I got married and I was expecting my first child and at that time, when you were expecting, you stayed home and took care of your children. 19:56 I didn’t go back to work until—my husband was a barber and the barber business went downhill in the seventies, so I went back to work, but I love to drive always, so I 11 �said, “well, if I go to an office again, It’ll just put the clothes on my back”, so I became a school bus driver. I had my summers off and when my kids were off, I was off at the same time, so it was good. Interviewer: “At the time you were playing, did you have any sense that you were doing something significant or pioneering or anything like that?” Had no idea and you went home and like most, you didn’t talk about it until the movie came out. I said, “my goodness, that was something wonderful”, I thought, that you got acknowledged and even my son said, and blames my daughter, “You haven’t been to Cooperstown?” 21:00 He’d get so mad at her and he said, “Your mother’s in Cooperstown and you haven’t even gone to see it”. I can’t get over the enthusiasm of the people you know, they come and we sign autographs and they wait so patiently in line and they say, “thank you and excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you”. They don’t want to interrupt what you’re doing and I said, “It’s just wonderful and I say thank you to them, because if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have been where we are now”, I believe that. Interviewer: “As things changed for women in sports, the Title IX developments in the seventies and eighties and so forth, were you following that or paying much attention to it?” Yeah, I was, we, Mary Pratt and I, say we were born too soon, but I said I think it’s wonderful that girls now can get a scholarship to play softball or golf or to swim, I said it was a long time in coming. 22:05 I don’t know if there’s still parody, but it’s getting there and it’s ten thousand times better than when we started. 12 �Interviewer: “I think that has something to do with why people appreciate what is was that you did. I mean you did not have all these structures in place to help you and people didn’t think that women actually went into playing baseball at all. Now, for you personally, what do you think the overall effect of that experience was on you, getting to play professional ball for a year?” 22:38 I just think it made me a better person, really. You learned to live with everybody, I don’t mean that it’s hard to live with anybody, but I said, to have Cubans like Lefty Alvarez, and different cultures and you get along and you were a team, you weren’t just individual. When they said they would go into Cooperstown as a team rather than individual players, I think that’s the way, because the song says it all you know, “All for one and One for All”, and if you didn’t have that I don’t think you would have the uniqueness of the league truly. 23:22 Interviewer: “It’s really a remarkable experience and I would like to thank you for coming in and sharing some of that with us today.” Thank you 13 �14 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Oral history Baseball players--Minnesota Baseball players--Indiana Baseball players--Wisconsin Baseball players--Michigan Baseball players--Illinois Baseball for women--United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-02 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-58_HLaCamera Title A name given to the resource LaCamera, Helen (Interview transcript and video), 2010 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource LaCamera, Helen Description An account of the resource Helen La Camera was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1931. She grew up playing sports with neighborhood kids, and started playing organized softball in eighth grade. Her coach, Mary Pratt, had played in the AAGPBL, and arranged for her to try out in 1950. She was invited to spring training following the tryouts, and became the third baseman for the Fort Wayne Daisies. She played for one season, and then returned home, got married, and continued to play softball for several years. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) Video recordings All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives Baseball for women--United States Baseball Sports for women World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Baseball players--Indiana Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-05 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives