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Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans’ History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Mary Pratt
Length of Interview: (00:55:55)
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
MARY PRATT, Pitcher
Women in Baseball
Born: Bridgeport Connecticut 1918
Resides:
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, June 11, 2010
Interviewer: “If we can begin with your name and where and when were you
born?”
My name is Mary Pratt and I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1918.
Interviewer: “Shat was your early childhood like?”
My early childhood, I would say, would be up until the time that we left Connecticut and
came up to Massachusetts because my dad had been working down in Groton,
Connecticut on the submarines and all of a sudden the war was over, so he became a
Certified Public Accountant and then came the depression, so I have been able to be a
part, in my lifetime, of going through those eras. :56 In 1926, I believe, we all came
back to where my dad was an only child up in Quincy, Massachusetts and there I went
into junior high school.
Interviewer: “Before high school, when did you first start getting involved in
sports? Was it any kind of sports or was it baseball first?”
Well, it was anything that the boys would let me join in and so I would go over, this was
down in Connecticut, I would go over into the back yard of the boys across the way who
had that familiar peach basket and they would let me shoot. It’s a thing that I will never
regret and even though I’m looking for the girls to get more leadership roles, but if it
wasn’t for the boys who gave me the opportunity and mother never said no as long as she
knew where I was she let me go right along and it was the boys, see I grew up in an era
where there were few opportunities for girls especially where I lived on the east coast of
the U.S.A. 1:57
Interviewer: “What was the appeal of baseball early on, not later, but early on?
What was the appeal of baseball?”
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�Well, it was just the fact that—when I look back I often wonder, “Why did I just all of a
sudden start pitching and playing with the boys?” I think I maybe just had a normal way
of throwing and maybe it just came to me naturally and as a result they let me play and
that continued right on until I’m getting out of college and still playing with the boys.
2:26
Interviewer: “Now you did graduate from high school?”
I graduated from North Quincy High School, the class of 1936.
Interviewer: “What happened after that? Where were you going after that?”
After that—I always had in my mind that I wanted to go on to college and I want to
become a physical educator. As I look back now, never realizing that I was going to be a
teacher and I didn’t really realize what were the hardships that I was going to follow
through because everything that I got in my undergraduate wasn’t going to be—it would
help me a little bit, but it wasn’t going to be the thing that enabled me then to teach that
whole vast area of physical education and in the end to be working in special needs. 3:14
Interviewer: “So, what university did you decide to go to?”
I went to Boston University and Sargent College, which is a unit in the university and it
was then over in Cambridge right next to the Harvard tennis courts. It wasn’t until the
fifties that the university took Sargent and we went on to the campus on Commonwealth
Avenue. I graduated from college in 1940 and was so fortunate that in 1941 I would get
a position for eleven hundred dollars, twenty-seven fifty a week, but I thought I had the
world with a fence around it. I had gotten a permanent job. 4:02
Interviewer: “While you were in college though, you started playing ball, is that
right?”
Well, I always remained active, but see I was still going through college where there was
not any collegiate competition for girls, but we did have a wide and a broad program
where I got introduced to lacrosse, to field hockey, to the things that I had never had in
high school because in high school it was just all intramurals. 4:34
Interviewer: “Now, did you play softball in college?”
Well, I played softball in college because in 1939 I got word that Walter Brown, who
owned the Boston Garden, wanted to do something in the summer and there had never
been much going on and all of a sudden I heard that he was going to sponsor a team and
then I walked to the Boston Garden and walked out to short stop and of course I was a
“lefty” and they said to me, “you know you can’t play short stop, you’re a lefty”, so I
went home and there was a gentleman who had just come off the last boat from Ireland
and there curling was quite similar to the way we pitched softball and I was always quite
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�determined, so I went out in the back yard and practiced with my father and pitched in the
Boston Garden in 1939, and in 1940 it was an honor to think that Walter Brown took us
down to Madison Square Garden and we played in New York. 5:32
Interviewer: “What kind of a team was that? Was it a women’s team?”
It was a women’s team and it really was not a league. Some places like New York we
heard did have leagues between New York and Connecticut, but this was just something
that Mr. Brown did. He actually made up a schedule—well, we played in a lot of
different places, but we were not playing in a regular league. 5:58
Interviewer: “In college you knew you wanted to be in physical education, beyond
that did you think in terms of being a teacher in a high school? What were your
goals at that time?”
It really wasn’t, it was just a thought that I wanted to teach physical education. I never
really knew what teaching was all about and I had to learn the hard way, but I just found
that through physical education I was indirectly teaching a child how to take care of
themselves and I hope that I was an example for them and that I wasn’t just teaching
them a lot of theory. 6:41
Interviewer: “Now, first of all you were a left hander and you were playing
shortstop and then turned into a pitcher?”
I was a lefty, a long arm they call it. Yes, because they told me that the extra step that I
would have to take to get my body in position to throw over to first would be the step that
I would lose the runner, so I took to pitching, but prior to that I had always played with
the boys on the playgrounds and so I always threw overhand, so they understood what I
was doing when I was pitching, but of course when I went to get into the All American it
was softball style pitching. 7:28
Interviewer: “We’ll get to that. Now, The Boston Olympets?”
The Olympets, the Limpets was the Boston Garden semi-pro hockey team and they had
the Boston Olympets, which was us. I played for two seasons there, 1939 and 1940.
They took the diamond and put it on a diagonal and they put a post down by first base
and as a lefty you could quite readily hit into the stands, but that would only go for a
single, but to hit it to left field was a long, long distance at the garden. 8:09
Interviewer: “You did finally graduate and got a degree, what were you thinking
you were going to do next? What were your plans once you got your degree?”
I got my bachelors degree. 1940, I just wanted to be sure I could get a position and at the
beginning I didn’t my first year, but I had taken up officiating and that filled the void a
little tiny bit and I went to one of the private schools, an academy there in Braintree and I
did their after school program. In 1941 I signed on with Quincy and continued my
officiating for fifty years because see, there were no opportunities for me to coach. 8:50
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�Interviewer: “1941, December, do you remember where you were on Pearl Harbor
day?”
Oh that’s right, not only did thoughts come back to what is it thirty years later I go out to
the Pacific and go to where I saw where the—the boat was still down there where it was
sunk.
Interviewer: “Do you remember Pearl Harbor Day and where you were?”
I remember it and I remember people were celebrating and I say the same thing, I was so
busy working and teaching school and being wrapped up in my officiating and then
starting to get in with my alumni associations that it never appeared to me that I was
losing out on everything, I was just constantly active, mostly in elementary and then
eventually they added the junior high and eventually I left the public schools and went on
to the colleges. 9:50
Interviewer: “We’re going to back up now, 1943, I think you got an invitation of
some kind?”
Oh, I got that nice call and Ralph Wheeler, he was the schoolboy editor for the Boston
Herald and he apparently had been contacted to see if there was anyone in this area who
had played a little organized ball. Dotty Green, who has now passed on, Dotty was from
Natick and she had played with me in the garden and she had already got out to Chicago,
so she must have mentioned my name and Ralph Wheeler asked me if I would want to go
out to Chicago and here I had been making twenty-seven fifty teaching school and I was
offered sixty dollars to play ball and to think that when I arrived in Chicago after getting
off the nights sleeper they could have sent me to South Band, they could have sent me to
Kenosha, they could have sent me to Racine and where did they send me, to Rockford
and I became a Rockford Peach in July of 1943. 11:02
Interviewer: “Now the Rockford Peaches, that was one of the original teams.”
One of the original teams and when they put me on the night sleeper and I got out to
Chicago I met Mr. Salls at the Merchandise Mart and Mr. Salls had been Mr. Wrigley’s
right hand man and he must have gotten me on another train and I landed at the 15th
Avenue stadium and I had become a Rockford Peach and sixty years later Penny
Marshall made a movie and it centered around the Rockford Peaches . 11:39
Interviewer: “I want you to go back to that day when you first walked on the field
as a Rockford Peach. Do you remember that?”
I was very humble because see, I had never really had much competition and who did I
run into? All the California girls and Canadians who couldn’t understand why I had
never had the opportunity to be in league competition, so when I got there in 1943 so
many outstanding girls from California and then in 1944 along come the Californians
who had also played a lot, so we on the east coast, I think, did well to be able to fit into
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�that style of play and to think that I was able to play for Marty McManus who had
managed the Boston Red Sox and Johnny Gottselig who was a Chicago Blackhawk
hockey player. 12:37 It was the start of a wonderful experience that I just never will
forget.
Interviewer: “What were your first games like? Did you start pitching right
away?”
I was pitching—I’m short and I wasn’t that great a hitter, so I didn’t get off of outfield or
first base, but as I look back on it, I don’t know how it was that I wasn’t kind of scared ,
but it’s just that I’ve always had enough interest in sports to know that you don’t do
anything by yourself and maybe that attitude came across to some of the girls that I
played with because some of the girls that I played against, pitchers, they were
outstanding, they had brought so much experience into the league, but I’ve always
listened and I knew some day I might coach, so I listened to those coaches and we had
outstanding coaches and I learned so much from them. 13:30
Interviewer: “In 1943 they weren’t pitching overhand and you had been pitching
overhand, is that correct?”
Oh, when I was playing with the boys on the regular playground, that was overhand
pitching, but when I played in the garden, that was softball style.
Interviewer: “How was it in 1943? How were you pitching in 1943?”
In 1943, when I got out to Rockford, I pitched—as I look back there were variations of
“windmill” and “slingshot” and I think I was just doing the traditional “windmill” where
as I noticed the Canadian girls, they used that same old “figure eight”, but I just watched
because whether I knew that I was going to go into a profession that maybe had the sport.
I had to wait a long time because they wouldn’t let the girls coach, but it eventually came
and all that helped me as I went along and finally got some girls into ASA competition
and into a world tournament. 14:44
Interviewer: “Now, I realize looking back on it you can make lots of recognition of
what you accomplished, but while you were playing in 1943, did you have any idea
that this was going to go on another year or two years?”
No, because they signed us to contracts every year, so in 1943 as I said, I’d just got
assigned to Rockford, but I was new and as I look back at it I didn’t have what you would
call a good record, but I think the coaches always used to notice that I was really
interested and if they wanted someone to coach down on first, I would go. In 1944 I had
the opportunity to get out on time for spring training and in 1943 I didn’t. The season
had been going for about three or four weeks. In 1944 I had a chance to go out to spring
training where we all trained together and I found out that I was again going to be
assigned to Rockford. 15:44 A few weeks into the season, Mr. Wrigley, although I
never met him, but I heard of the various rules and regulations he made. We belonged to
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�them, so if anything happened we were asked to go to another team and see, we were
playing a hundred and twenty-five games, so we carried four pitchers and when I was at
Rockford, all of a sudden I got word that I was being sent over to Kenosha because two
of their pitchers were hurt, but little did I know that I was going to go Kenosha and play
for Marty McManus, who had managed the Boston Red Sox and they played behind me
and that’s why I say, “you don’t do it by yourself”, and I won twenty-one games in 1944,
but I never had a good season after that. 16:31
Interviewer: “We’re jumping ahead here, so lets go back a little bit. Now, in the
early days, in 1943, there was more than just playing baseball, did you go through
the etiquette?”
Oh, we went—when Helena Rubenstein came in and we learned how to walk properly
and how to keep our hair nice. Many things weren’t popular then, but when I saw the
uniform—see I had just started to teach school, and the uniform was so much like the
uniform I wore when I was teaching. Four inches above the knee and just like in the
movie, it was the peach color and to think that I had the opportunity when I was at
Cooperstown to have Mr. Salls interview me, with some people down in New York, and
to hear him say, “Mr. Wrigley gave me a hundred thousand dollars to go around the
country to bring into his league girls that were ladies. I think that’s why we heard that we
were going to look like ladies, dress like ladies and act like ladies. 17:42 It made a great
hit with me because that’s the type of uniform that I was wearing. Now, they were four
inches above the knee, but as the years went on I noticed that they got a little shorter, but
it just reminded me how I had just started teaching and that I was going to be able to
combine this activity, that I had never had a chance to do because see—I came through
Sargent College when I then began to play lacrosse and I played against the British when
they would come over here and to think that’s become such a popular sport today, but it’s
just that I’ve been a part of being able to see the programs for the girls expand, but I’m
still looking for our girls to get the leadership roles, which I think they so deserve. 18:33
Interviewer: “I want to go into some of the details of how you were actually
recruited. Remember this is for the archives and we’re trying to get the exact
details. How were you actually recruited and then was there a contract that you
signed? How did you get your uniforms? Did they fit you? Walk us through that
process before you actually went out to play?”
As I said, we had played in the garden and Dottie Green, who was a catcher, a tall girl,
Dottie apparently had already gone out there and she said something that’s when I got the
call in school from Ralph Wheeler, but I had to wait until school finished because they
had started in May and I don’t know when I signed the contract. I must have signed it
before I left, but I’ve got it today with the sixty dollars right on it and I keep it along with
the rest of my memorabilia. 19:32 As soon as school got out they assigned me to a
sleeper and I went out on a night sleeper and I got out to the Merchandise Mart and Mr.
Salls, who was Mr. Wrigley’s right hand man--I never met Mr. Wrigley, he was the one
that met me and got me on another form of transportation and got me out to Rockford.
19:55 I know then that I must have signed the contract then because they made
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�arrangements, they gave me my uniform. We had chaperones and she would take care of
our uniforms and she would give us our paycheck each week and then when we were on
the road we lived in nice hotels and they gave us two dollars and eighty-five cents, but we
would go to McDonald’s, which was then Alexander’s and I could get my cheeseburger
and my French fries and a coke for twenty-five cents. I could send my money home to
save, so in 1947 I drove my first brand new car out in 1947 to Rockford. 20:39 They
treated us just so well—the movie, some people were upset because they thought the
movie was going to maybe portray things not exactly the way it was, but they spoke to
Penny Marshall and she assured them. She said, “I’m not doing a documentary, I’m
doing a story about something that happened sixty years ago, so I’ll take a few liberties”,
which she did, but I could tell it never spoiled it because that movie continues to be
shown over and over again. And to think that I was just a small part of it and because of
the way they ran that league I say it and I really mean it, “there’s nothing today in 2009
that yet will equate to what Mr. Wrigley did when he got together with Branch Rickey
and decided that maybe it was the time to do something”. 21:37 The boys were going
off in the service and so when I went to Rockford of course, Camp Grant was right near
there and they use to come over and tell us that we were making better money than they
were making. As I look back, just a—I was just in the right place at the right time and to
think as I go and talk to the kiddo’s about my experience and let them know it’s the
friends that I made all over the country and that’s what sports is all about. 22:03
Baseball’s America, so they took to that game that we were playing.
Interviewer: “Did you actually have to go through a charm school? Tell us about
that, what was that like?”
Yes, we went to charm school because we all trained together for the two or three weeks
that we were there and every night we would have inter squad games and one night
Helena Rubenstein’s ladies came in. Sometimes I smile because I think they kind of
portrayed it almost the same way in the movie, but it was just a case to think that Mr.
Wrigley had it in his mind that we were going to dress like ladies and look like ladies and
of course that’s the thing that I—people always had the impression that if you loved
sports you were masculine and that use to break my heart because I was always so fussy
about making all my lady like things. The league was great and I’ve heard some
California girls and some of the Canadians sometime complain that they always played in
shorts, they never played in a skirt, but see, it fit into the philosophy that he had and the
only thing that was difficult with the lefty’s, we had to pin our skirt over so as you went
by you wouldn’t be hitting your skirt. 23:23 I will remember us walking with the books
on our heads and them talking about the mascara and they played it up in the movie and I
can tell people that it was true. They had the best intentions and yet the Midwest and the
California girls and the Canadians, they had competed. Not us in the east, but I still think
that the part that we see where one of the players thought that she wouldn’t play if she
was going to have to wear that uniform and in the movie he says, “well, you’ll either play
with that or you won’t play at all”. I thought it was so great that when I came home and I
had girls ask me if I would coach, this was outside of school, and I asked them, “would
you wear the same uniform, the type that we wore?” I said, “I don’t care if you don’t
slide”, because we would get strawberries because we just had little tights, but they went
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�along with me, and my mother and I went down and we made those uniforms. In a world
tournament some of the girls from Japan happened to say to us when they saw us walking
out on the field, “what, you going to a dance?” 24:31 I thought, and I still feel that way,
girls must portray the image that we are young ladies and now as I see it advancing and
we see how skilled the girls are, six-two, six-four, when I go over to Harvard and I see
them playing BC, those girls can run like deer.
Interviewer: “Now, you mentioned that in your second time around you actually
did get a chance to go to spring training, but you missed out the first time. Once
again we’re trying to get this for the record because none of us were there, so tell us
about what happened during spring training? Give us a visual, what did you see?”
It portrayed a little bit like they portrayed in the movie, but we didn’t train there, we
trained in LaSalle and Peru in Indiana and what all would have been like the eight teams,
we all trained there like they depicted in the movie. 25:34 You really went through
spring training with the idea you didn’t know just exactly who you were going to get
assigned to and during the day there were all the skill drills and at night they would have
inter-squad games and after the inter-squad games, that’s when we would go in and they
came in from Chicago and showed us how to cross our legs and not to pile our dishes up
when we went out because—that’s one thing that I will remember, that we were looked
upon so highly by the fraternal organizations and there were a few girls that were a little
younger and they might have possibly with the Rotary Club and the Elks, want to get
there and pile their dishes, but I just thought it was so great to think that they thought of
all those extra things for us to do. 26:20 To be sure that we were in and night and gave
us an hour or so after the games and the chaperones were there to see that we did the right
things and I was never anyone who was too sociably inclined, so I wanted to carve my
scrapbooks and wanted to collect my articles, so when the games were over I would go
back up into my room, and we were on the road and I made those books that are all part
of my memorabilia today. 26:48
Interviewer: “Tell us about your chaperone, when you were with the Peaches.”
Oh yes, one of my chaperones was Marie Timm, a schoolteacher from Milwaukee, West
Allis, and she dressed just like we did. She wore the same uniform, but the next year
they went more like an airline hostess and they had the white coats with the red jackets
and after I went over to Kenosha I left Marie Timm, but I went and I had a new
chaperone who had met Marty McManus and that’s how she got the job with Marty. It
was then, when we were at Kenosha, that that opportunity came for us to go to Wrigley
Field to play for the service and four of the teams went into Wrigley Field and we were
the first people who played under the lights because they put all the portable lights up and
every time I recount all the experience I had, I think wasn’t it unique to have a thing run
so top notch and the fellows that would be at Camp Grant and it would be at the naval
station when we would be going down past the U.S. naval station going down to South
Bend. 28:04 To think that they kept everything so kind of high class and I think that’s
the reason why, coupled with the fact that Penny Marshal is so skilled, she had been able
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�to make that movie and it is shown time and time again and I was just a small little part of
it. 28:23
Interviewer: “After the spring training you went through and all the teams were in
one place, did you already know what team you were playing on?”
No, after the end of spring training they announced where we were going. A little bit like
they depicted it in the movie, but there was no question as to what uniforms we were
going to wear. I never heard anybody say anything and I’ve got the pictures where we all
assigned and the big buses all came and off we went to our towns. We trained in
LaSalle/Peru, twin cities in Illinois. 29:04
Interviewer: “What was the typical season like? How many games did you play?
Were they daytime?”
A hundred and twenty-five games and I shouldn’t do it, but sometimes I look today and
see how the boys are treated well. They can’t pitch nine innings and to think that we had
our strawberries and we were playing every night, so we must have got a few aches and
pains, but I think everybody will tell you that we were having so much fun and it was
such a unique thing even though the California girls and the Canadians all came in with
experience. 29:38
Interviewer: “Now, in the very early days what were the fans like?”
Great, Olive Little from Canada loved olives and they would bring her big bottles. They
were very good to us and of course the fraternal organizations always had us in for the
noon luncheons they were having. Even at the end when we had our first reunion in
Chicago in 1982 I think it was 1982, we had some fans even coming then, who
remembered what we had done and now as we’ve grown into an organization and we’re
now in Milwaukee—the last time we were in Milwaukee they must have gotten
Johnson’s Wax to put up some money. They took us on side trips to Racine and to
Kenosha and to think that so many of the Racine people came in to see their players.
30:33 Racine had been fortunate enough to be able to maintain their players, so when the
league got up to the time where some of the teams were dropping out, Racine still had
about eight of their originals, but it was a little—kind of shady because, but they had that
loyalty with the Racine fans and to think that years later the fans came back and
remembered us. We started with reunions every two years, now they’re every year and to
think when they start to make—they were trying to see if perhaps Cooperstown would
look favorably upon us, not to be inducted, but to be—and to think that when Ted
Spencer saw the names of all the girls that had played here was this gym teacher that he
had had in grammar school and Ted has just recently retired, so every time I go up to
Cooperstown I think how Ted would say and some of the others, “you’re the one that
flunked him because he didn’t have his white sneakers”. 31:40 To think that we did get
recognized in 1988, didn’t get inducted and I think some women took it—I think they
thought we should have, but no it’s a mans organization and by doing things in a nice
positive way, which we did, and to think we now have a statue on the side lawn and the
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�little display we had has been expanded to include the “Silver Bullets” that came along
after we had finished and Boston College and all those way back when, were playing a
little competitive softball. 32:17
Interviewer: “You were talking about the season then with the Peaches, but then
you moved on to Kenosha. Why or how did that happen?”
The Kenosha Comets, and that’s because we carried four pitchers and Helen Nichol, Fox
McKanda, one of the most outstanding, and Elise Harney, a girl from Illinois, they had
come up with some sore arms or something and so, we carried four pitchers and that’s
when I was told to go over there. In due time Harney and Nicky they were fine and we
carried on with four pitchers and one of the girls who is with me today at our second
reunion in Milwaukee, Rose Foldra. Rose, who had won a scholarship--they were
offering scholarships and Rose had won a scholarship, but somehow as things happen,
she met the right person, she got in his truck with him and out she went and to this day,
out to Carnation, Washington. 33:16 She only played the one year, but when the movie
came out she wrote me a letter and wondered if by any chance I remembered her because
we roomed together in Kenosha. To think the years have gone on and Rose today has
come to our reunion today in Milwaukee.
Interviewer: “Now, you said you roomed together, as a group then you would travel
by bus? How did you get from town to town?”
We went on the buses after our second year. The first two years we had our bags and if
you recall the four teams were all in a ninety mile radius of Chicago, so as I tell people
that when we were going through the streets of Chicago to catch the rapid transit to go to
South Bend we would all be singing, “Oh we hail from Illinois it’s just across the line,
we’re not too young, we’re not too old, in fact we’re in our prime, Oh we hit the ball
with might, in fielding we are fast, we are the Rockford ball club and we always dress in
class, so we never kick the gong and we’re always on our toes, not only in the ball park ,
but when we’re with our bows. Oh. We’re in bed by ten o’clock that is a dirty lie, we are
the Rockford ball club a model do or die”, and we’d be clapping and I always remember
the words. 34:35 It reminded me so much of my training when I was going to B.U.
because I had to go four months to camp to get a lot of the outside things and it’s a
wonderful life and as I look back, it’s the memories that I have and I can still remain
active enough to be able to follow through on so many places that invite me to come and
speak. 35:00 I stood in front of children , but I never stood in front of adults and to think
of the wonderful experience I’ve had and to be able to go to all these four hundred places
and be a part of Fan Fest.
Interviewer: “Let’s get again to the actual routines of a typical season let’s say, with
Kenosha. Before you traveled by bus?”
We were going by Inter-Urban and then we went by bus, so then we would drive on the
bus all night and then go into the town because most towns we went into, you stayed
there for three or four games. They didn’t like us going up to Lake Geneva and that to
10
�swim because they thought we should take care of ourselves. Many a time we had
workouts in the morning, especially when we were home, but it was conducted in such an
outstanding way and the fact that we were invited to the
elks and Kiwanis, I just thought it was—
Interviewer: “I want to get into the actual—so somebody that didn’t know anything
about your experience—you’re traveling by bus all night, you arrive in the city,
what happens?” 36:11
At five o’clock we would report—we would have been assigned to our hotel rooms,
because they all knew the rooms we were going to be in, and then we would head out at
five o’clock to have a batting practice and do infield and then we would play sometimes
double headers, but we most often played single games, but on Sundays we would play a
double header and especially in Racine. They would play in the afternoon because they
had an overhead structure like the little bit that was portrayed in the movie, but otherwise
we tried to play mostly the games at seven o’clock, so you wouldn’t be in the heat of the
sun. they divided the season in half and the winner of the first half played the winner of
the second and when I was in Kenosha we did happen to make the playoffs, but in the
first round they played a round robin and we lost out, but that’s alright because I could
call back to the school department to say that I’d be back on time because we were out.
37:13 We then started the reunions. A girl that had been a bat girl, and it had always
been her desire because I read things that someday she would be able to play, and it
ended up that she was the one to organize our first reunion in Chicago, which we began
to have every two years, but as girls passes on we have them just one year, but to think
that I would go to my first one in Chicago and there I would see Audrey Wagner, now a
Gynecologist and an Obstetrician. She had taken the money—she was from Bensenville
in Illinois and when we would go to South Bend you could just turn your head once and
you’d be through the little town, but she went on to medical school and when I saw her at
our first reunion she said, “yes, if I ever come to Boston Pratty, I’ll come and see you
because I fly my own airplane”, and that season, if she and her nurse didn’t get caught in
a wind pocket and got killed. Audrey Wagner, one of the most outstanding ball players.
38:19
Interviewer: “What would you say are some of the highlights of your time with the
original team, with Rockford?”
The highlights? I think the highlight would be what I did in 1944. I did win twenty-one
games and I did pitch a no hitter, but I still have to emphasize that you don’t do it by
yourself, your team played behind you. I’ve always felt that way and I think that’s why
when I went to Kenosha they readily accepted me, so it’s something, I can’t say it was in
my bringing up, but my love of sports let me realize, even when I went to teach, I can
teach a person to think, I’m not going to go out there and make the plays for you and I
think it’s that I was always just so wrapped up in how you do things and if you do things
the right way and if you think ahead of time and that’s what I try to get across when I go
to the schools. 39:18 It’s more than just winning games and having a good record. It’s
just the friendships that you’ve gained and the people that you’ve taught and now that
11
�I’m in my nineties I find that people that I had in school remember me. It’s very
rewarding although I wish I would have met the right fella and married, but I ended up an
old maid school teacher for forty eight years, but I taught at every level and then the last
twenty we were doing a lot as what is being done today to realize children, if their not
doing well academically there’s something wrong and we can’t be that authoritative
teacher that just says their going to---to find out that I worked physical education, motor
development, start to get that body going and it’s funny how that—you don’t become Phi
Beta Kappa, but you’re not flunking everything. 40:14 I think that’s what helped me so
much and I thought that last twenty years was great and today running into children who
are coming from disoriented families and to think, through the avenue of physical
education and where I don’t like to say it, sometimes the men are still just throwing out
the ball and I don’t think that’s what physical education is.
Interviewer: “I found something very interesting while I was doing some research
on your particular story and that is, all through this interview you talked about how
much you loved school and loved teaching, you loved school, but in 1946 your school
wouldn’t release you for spring training. What happened?” 40:59
I quit and I know my mother wouldn’t care, but I remember going to my principal and he
said to me, “Mary you wouldn’t drop your job”, so I said, “no, don’t you look up to
Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams?” I so admired the men—just the fact that they could
compete and so, I did, I asked for the time off and I believe it was 1945 and it ended up
that we didn’t get into the playoffs that year and I think the superintendent called my
mother and offered her the opportunity to ask me if I would want to come back. I can
remember my mother saying, “I know she would never come back unless you knew that
she was doing the right work”, so it was, I did go back, but in 1946 and 1947 I never gave
any thought of dropping my job then because I was twenty-two or twenty-three and I
thought they had deprived themselves of a lot of things to send me to college because
then it was four hundred and thirty-two dollars. 42:07 A hundred and forty four three
times a year and to think today forty one or forty two thousand, so they had a hard time,
but they stuck with me. My mother—they never went on to college, my father became a
Certified Public Accountant and all that, but it just—everything just worked out well, so
I’ve stayed very involved because of the all American. I just feel that’s part of what I
should do and I served two years, I’ve served two years on the board and because I got
Ken Burns, he decided he was going to do a documentary and these are the things that
amaze me. I’m just a little person from the east coast and the Californians and the
Canadians, they seemed to have more opportunities and it just show you that if you’re
doing the right thing how it ended up that Ken Burns asked us if we would take part and
the other day I turned on channel sixteen at home and all of a sudden I looked and I saw
this black and white film and it was Jackie Robinson. 43:16 Ken had decided he was
going to do his thing by innings and the era of Jackie Robinson and the All American he
was putting in the sixth inning and all of a sudden I looked because I had taped it myself
every Sunday and I bought the book, but I had never seen this and here is Dotty Green
and myself didn’t come out in color. I couldn’t believe it, I mean I looked so nice and we
were answering the questions and I thought, “I never would have thought all of this
would come, and someone will see me and “Mary I saw you on channel two”. To think
12
�he has always been doing all these different historic ones, but to think that we got
included in it and then to get on with Robin Roberts, it’s really been a wonderful life.
44:07
Interviewer: “I’m really curious and there’s something here we haven’t gotten to
yet. We haven’t gotten to something that I’m very curious about and that is that
with your love of school and you’re playing baseball, but there was a moment in
1946 when you had to make a decision. You had to make a choice and you even
went, in a sense, against the better wishes of your parents. Why? Why did you play
baseball instead of just saying, “well, I guess?” 44:35
Yeah, and well, I think my father saw in me what he didn’t see in my brother. We were
only thirteen months apart and my mother was fourteen when she left Kingston, Jamaica
to come to the states and to eventually meet my dad and then when they married to have
two children thirteen months apart. Whether she knew that I was doing the right thing—
you know, playing with the boys, she never said no, but as I look back, in her quiet way
and having come from a little bit of wealth down there in Kingston, Jamaica, her brother
was the Gores that did all the Gores cigars and all that, but she came on here after she go
tout of high school, Convent of Mercy she went to, so I think she was really overly
protective of me, she always mad my clothes and all that, but it’s amazing where, unless
she ever play Cricket, she was not adapted to sports, but she loved the Red Sox and at the
end she would go with me and go to all the games. 45:38 I always thought basketball
was my best sport, but I just took part in everything, but we never realize what our
parents have done until years later because see I taught at the end when I now just
recently was told there’s a hundred and fifty homeless children in Quincy and I can’t
believe it. My mother was there all the time for us. 46:00
Interviewer: “Once again I want to get back to this idea of the decision you made to
play baseball and actually quit school.”
Because I just thought it was so—I guess in my own way I thought that I might learn
something the might help me in coaching, but it seemed as though it was an opportunity I
would never have thought of and if I hadn’t played at the garden and Dottie Green, who
had already gotten out there and Maddy English, who’s now gone, she was from Evert
and she stayed at the all American longer than I did and she eventually came back and
finished up at B.U., but I have wondered that, it’s a good question when you ask it
because except to play catch with my father, you know, the boys would just ask—
somehow I think whether it’s because my mother, I still, I hope, acted like a lady and not
a roughian and that’s what keeps me going. When I talk to the kiddo’s to let them realize
what sports is all about. That it’s learning to get along with people and someone has to
win and someone has to lose. 47:16 I can get all these different stories and as long as
they know I take my ball cards and give them some ball cards and I’ve been to over six
hundred places and just recently a girl went to take an advanced degree at Syracuse and
she told me—she came to visit and saw some of my pictures and to think there is enough
interest that the other day she sent me her disc “Rosy at the Bat”, so I think we touch
lives in so many ways that we never think of and yet sometimes I get the feeling that
there are maybe some people my age where I am now living in a senior project, but not in
13
�assisted living. I gave my four-bedroom house to my nephew. 48:02 There are still
some people who would say, “that’s not something that a girl does”, and that’s why I stay
with it, to think that if we can get the girls coaching because the men tend to do a little
roughhouse because we are young ladies and to think that—I never met him, but that’s
what Mr. Wrigley was pushing for and that’s what was my background at Sargent.
Interviewer: “Now, you went on to play with Rockford again, right? 1946 to
1947?”
That’s why I think that they must have noticed—not to say that I had anything, but they
were then overhand pitching and it’s like little league. Those girls, when we couldn’t get
softball pitchers in 1943, 1944 and 1945 they started sidearm well, eventually it became
overhand and just like the boys at about forty feet and they throw in fast, but somehow
those girls that could throw hard and I don’t know why it was, it was only for the
summer, Rockford asked me to come back. 49:08 I don’t know, but there must have
been something in my attitude, or whatnot, that they thought that I was going to be an
addition to the club and I wasn’t going to get upset because some other people pitching
were maybe better than I, so I coached a lot, the coaches would coach on third, on first,
but I really—when I look back I think it was either something that came out of me
through my home that I was taught the right things and without them battering me, that I
did it and I think it came through. 49:47 When I was going to do my undergraduate
work, I never forgot that I was supposed to be a young lady and act like a lady.
Interviewer: “You also went to the U of M, the University of Michigan, the U of
M?”
No, the University of Michigan is what two of the girls—University of Michigan was one
of the girls when I went to Salem State.
Interviewer: “But didn’t you go to the U of M?” 50:12
No, I went—no, the University of Michigan, I’ve been out--Interviewer: “Where did you get your degree after that though?”
I stayed at B.U. and then I took the B.U. Harvard extension courses and I got fifty-two B
on my masters, but I was taking courses at U. Mass Boston and then I go into B.U.
because Sargent had now come on to the B.U. Campus.
Interviewer: “That was Mass, I’m sorry, I got the wrong M.”
I got my fifty-two year—I got my associate degree, but I didn’t go beyond to get my
doctorate because you had to be an administrator and that’s one thing I have regretted, I
never did get out of the trenches, but I have no regrets now. 51:02 I don’t think you do
anything better than working with children.
Interviewer: “1995 Boston Garden Hall of Fame. Tell us about that.”
Oh yeah, they not only were going to change the garden, they were doing some different
things, so they started to do a Hall of Fame and they had it—I don’t know where they had
it around, but the next thing I knew, I had been inducted into it, so I went in with Derek
14
�Sanderson I think, and I went in with one of the gentlemen who did maybe some of the
menial work around the garden and it was great because they had me come in and we
went up to those sky view seats where the company’s now all pay for the whole place,
and to think that I went down on the garden floor with Sanderson, and I forget who else
got honored and they got—I have a nice plaque and then as a follow up they started on
the very top floor opening up some of the exhibits of girls in basketball and whatnot and
as a result, school children started to come in and I volunteered to go in and take them
around on the—and see all the views of the upstairs of the—particularly hockey, but then
they took a tape of the closing of the Boston Garden and to think that I was there when
Woody Dumont and Bobby Bauer and Milt Schmidt were going off to fight for Canada
and that I was up there when I saw them go and I was there when Cunningham went his
two minute mile. 52:51 I just was so wrapped up in everything and I think a lot was my
father, he took me to a lot of those things, so it’s been a wonderful life.
Interviewer: “Do you want some water?”
No, I’m fine.
Interviewer: “Let’s wrap it up with—looking back you made several comments
about how this has had an effect on you, but personally, you personally, not in terms
of the whole league, how has playing in this league affected you personally?” 53:23
When you are talking this league you’re referring to the all American?
Interviewer: “Yes”
It has affected me to the point that I have—you know maybe I have accepted the way
they doing everything, but when I look back and I think that every bit of their interest was
to do the thing right by us. To have chaperones who would be there because see, in the
movie you see Tom Hanks in the locker room and I have to tell people sometimes
remember—Penny Marshall told us, she said, “I’m not doing a documentary, I’m doing a
story about something that happened years ago, so I’ll take a few liberties”, so when I go
I can tell people that Tom played a great part and I said we were told that he did it for that
reason because he was playing Jimmy Fox and the drinking took both of them, but to
think that I was part of that and combined with my background that I had at home and the
background of the wonderful teachers that I had when I look back at it now. 54:31 To
think of the background that I’ve got and to think that the highlight would be baseball and
that baseball is America and now I get asked—I’m going back to Bosox on Friday when I
go because two women’s groups that have been playing baseball are being honored and
I’m to go and sit at the table with them. 54:55 I just feel like I have something to offer
and they can see that I’ve taken care of myself and I I’ve made it to ninety and I’m on my
way to ninety one and to think that I can still go and talk in such a way that people think
I’m sincere. I answer the things that I get because I’m still getting—I do this Out and
About Project and they send me the blank of where they have been and I send them back
another blank, so I know that—besides some people who never send them, we are Out
and About and that’s how we’re preserving the legacy of the all American.
Interviewer: “Thank you so much.”
15
�Hope you got enough, so you can piece it together right because you ask nice questions.
Interviewer: “Thank you.”
16
�
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_MPratt
Title
A name given to the resource
Pratt, Mary (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pratt, Mary
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Pratt was born in 1918 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Throughout her early childhood and on through college she played baseball. Before joining the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, Pratt played hockey for two seasons with the Boston Olympets from 1939 to 1940. She got her start professionally in baseball with the Rockford Peaches in 1943. In 1944, she played for the Rockford Peaches and the Kenosha Comets and then in 1945 played just for the Kenosha Comets. From 1946 to 1947 she played for the Rockford Peaches. Throughout her professional career she played as a pitcher and saw how the rules in softball changed how the game was played. The highlights in her professional career were from her 1944 season when she won 21 games and pitched a no-hitter.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Boring, Frank (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
Baseball players--Illinois
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
2009-09-25
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