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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.
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�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?”
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�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?”
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�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?”
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�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.”
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�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?”
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�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
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�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
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�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?”
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�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
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�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,
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�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.
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�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.
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�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
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�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
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�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
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�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
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�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
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RHC-58
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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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
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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)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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