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Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Mary Lou Caden
Born: Oaklawn, Illinois
Resides: Hot Springs Village, Arkansas
Interviewed by: Gordon Olson on September 26, 2009 in Milwaukee, WI at the All
American Girls Professional Baseball League Reunion.
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer March 24, 2010
Interviewer: “I like to start with some basic background information. Where your
home was, where you were born, a little bit about your parents and family and then
we will ease on into baseball.”
Ok, I was born in Oak Lawn, Illinois, which now is just a suburb of Chicago and my dad
was a harness maker. He had a shop in the stockyards and he made leather goods-saddles, bridles and we boarded his rented horses out on the farm. I had seven brothers
and I was the baby and the only girl and I wasn’t spoiled—I had to fight my way through
life. My dad got killed in an accident when I was five and we moved to the city. There
were four brothers at home plus me and my mom. I was never much for feminine things
because of having all the boys around, so I more or less learned how to do everything that
a boy should learn how to do. My mother taught me how to cook, embroider, sew and
things a girl needs to know and I swore when I grew up I would never iron kitchen towels
again, which I don’t do. I competed with my brothers in sports in the neighborhood. We
didn’t have equipment like they have now and we would come home from school and
change—put your school clothes away and put on your play clothes and find a vacant lot
and go play ball or whatever was in season.
Interviewer: “And the popular kid was the one with the ball, right?” 2:14
Right. The brother closest to me, the seventh son, he wasn’t too athletic, so he was
always kind of like the last one picked for a team and he always complained to my
mother, “why doesn’t she go play with the girls?” He felt bad about that.
Interviewer: “You were picked before he was?”
Yeah, so my mom told me, she said, “you better go find someplace else to play, Tommy
feels real bad about this”, and I could understand when I got older you know, but I started
going up to the park and I had a glove, my sister-in-law got me a glove or my brother did,
and I went up to the park and started playing with the fellas who were practicing. Pretty
soon I got to play practice games with them, but I couldn’t play in the park league games,
they didn’t allow girls, but I got enough practice games in and I really enjoyed it. 3:15
Interviewer: “How old were you about?”
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�I was about fourteen.
Interviewer: “The park had a league for boys, but nothing for girls?”
They had volleyball and dancing and stuff like that.
Interviewer: “Not your favorite activities.”
No.
Interviewer: “You’re about fourteen at this point, so how do you get from there to
playing on a team? What was the transition?” 4:45
The athletic director of the park had a couple of girls ask him about playing softball, so
he got the advertisements in the paper and he got enough girls come out to start softball
teams, fast pitch, but I still played with the boys whenever I got a chance. The Chicago
Daily News hired Rogers Hornsby to go out to the parks and conduct baseball clinics.
When he came to Marquette Park I was out there with the fellas. They told everybody to
be sure to show up because they got a big shot coming to teach you how to play and
being the only girl, I got a lot of attention and a lot of publicity in the neighborhood.
Rogers Hornsby was a friend of William Wrigley, who started the girls league in 1943,
now I’m talking 1946, so he went back and told Wrigley about the fella in Marquette
Park that had girls playing and they contacted this fella, his name was Lenny Zintak, and
they got him to organize farm teams. 6:03 He sent out notices to all the parks for
tryouts. They had tryouts on the north side of Chicago, a tryout on the south side and he
had over 120 girls show up. He picked out the best and he had four teams, two on the
north side and two on the south side. We played twice a week; we played anywhere they
had lights, sometimes we would play on a Sunday afternoon if we could find a place with
lights. 6:31
Interviewer: “You couldn’t play on Saturdays because the boys were all playing?”
Saturdays were usually real busy with other activities, so he tried to keep it one week
night plus Sunday afternoon. We got a lot of experience and we had a lot of fun doing it,
we had chaperones, the same as the league did. In fact, my chaperone picked me up
because I was only fifteen and I couldn’t drive and another gal from the south side was
only thirteen, she picked her up, and that girl went on to play one year with South Bend,
but her mom thought she was too young for all that traveling, so she brought her back
home. 7:24
Interviewer: “I bet that was hard for her.”
Yea, it was. I got an offer to go to Cuba spring training in 1947 and boy I was in seventh
heaven when I opened the envelope and read this. I showed my mom I was going to
Cuba and she looked at it and said, “that’s in April”, and I said, “Yea” and she said,
“Well, you’re in school until June”, and she wouldn’t sign, so that was the end of that.
Interviewer: “How old were you at this point?”
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�Fifteen, so old fashioned family—you live in my house, you follow my rules and we did
that. I played every year in the farm system and got a lot of experience. I started out
playing shortstop and then I broke my ankle, never did learn how to slide right, and I
played outfield and when they went to side arm and overhand pitching, Lenny switched
me to pitching because I have a strong arm. 8:25
Interviewer: “You’ve been a shortstop for one thing, so you had more experience
throwing overhand than maybe even some of the underhand pitchers had.”
From playing outfield too. I graduated high school in 1949 and had an appendicitis
attack, so I was able to hold that off until after I graduated. I had a job at the First
National Bank of Chicago while I was still a senior in high school, because it was a part
time job at the bank and I had to wait until I could be covered by hospitalization to have
my appendix taken out, because we didn’t have money or a doctor and that was in 1950.
9:12 I managed to play the tail end of the season in Chicago in 1950 and then my
manager, Mitch Skupien, was contacted to come up and manage the Grand Rapids
Chicks, so he came over to the house. He was Polish and I’m Bohemian and he could
talk to my mother and they understood each other and he said, “ma, I’m going to take
Mary Lou with me to Grand Rapids, she’s going to pitch for my team”, so mom said,
“ok, go ahead”. Even though I was of age, you still waited for your parent’s permission
to do these crazy things, because a girl playing baseball was crazy. 9:52 I went up to
Grand Rapids in 1951 and I played there in 1951, 52 and 53 and they traded my contract
to Fort Wayne because they had dropped down to four teams and they wanted to try to
even off the teams. They sent me a contract and they said, “we pooled the players and
you will now be playing for Fort Wayne and you will be making sixty dollars a month
less”, and I said, “not on my boat”, because I had a good job at the First National Bank, I
was a bookkeeper.
Interviewer: “The rest of the year and the bank gave you release time all summer to
play baseball?”
I had a real terrific boss, he was sports minded and I’d leave in April and come back at
the end of September and it worked out fine for three years, but when they wanted to cut
me sixty dollars, I was making more money at the bank and being Bohemian that meant a
lot to me. 10:57 I said, “no way, I’m retiring”, and I didn’t play in 1954, which was the
last year the league survived.
Interviewer: “By the end of 1954 there wasn’t a lot left.”
They weren’t making—they were losing money.
Interviewer: “Let’s back up a little bit and use that outline to talk about some
specifics. Among other things, what’s your recollection—you did some spring
training before the season started. First of all, where did you do the spring training
and what was it like?” 11:34
The first year we trained in Battle Creek, Michigan I think.
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�Interviewer: “So it started a little bit later—we think of spring training now as
almost a winter activity.”
It was April and I had the distinction of being the only Grand Rapids Chicks that gained
weight at spring training. We met for breakfast, they brought sandwiches and milk to the
ballpark at lunchtime and we met for training table in the evening. Well, a lot of the girls
didn’t eat oatmeal; they wanted eggs and stuff, so I said, “Aren’t you going to eat that
oatmeal? Pass it down”. At dinner a lot of them didn’t eat salad, so they would pass
them down and I gained ten pounds and Mitch, the manager, he said, “how did you sneak
out for hamburgers and milk shakes and stuff?” I said, “I didn’t spend a penny, I didn’t
spend a penny”. 12:40 My teammates knew it.
Interviewer: “There was other food to be had and that’s good. They put you
through a pretty rigorous spring training then. You were up for breakfast and then
out on the field. You stayed at the field at noon?”
We stayed at the field at noon and I think we had an hour break. We sat in the bleachers
and ate our lunch and then we started out again. I worked pitching, naturally, and then
we would all do calisthenics together in the morning and then we would break for infield,
outfield, pitching practice, and then the pitchers would run and we would shag fly balls
while the outfield was throwing in to first, second, third, you know, with the regular
fielders and stuff, but we were kept busy all day long. 13:34
Interviewer: “ The coaches you were dealing with, these are former major leaguers
in a lot of cases?”
Major leaguers.
Interviewer: “Men?”
Yea.
Interviewer: “They had experience with baseball and coaching, so they gave you
pretty much the same routine, pretty much, that you would expect to find in
professional baseball at other levels.”
True, and the next year, 1952, Woody English was our manager. They started out the
season, because English accepted a contract from Muskegon, Michigan and they brought
in Jonny Gottselig, who was a former Blackhawk hockey player and for some reason he
wasn’t going to stay the whole season, so they brought in Woody English in 1952. 14:25
Woody was great, he was really great, I mean he knew baseball and he was a perfect
gentleman. People ask us about the movie, A League of Their Own and Tom Hanks, I
think Woody and what a perfect gentleman. He would walk out to the mound when I was
pitching and when I was in trouble and he would say, “M.L. how are you feeling?” He
was real concerned like a father would be and when they had Tom Hanks portraying this
drunken manager, it was such a slap in the face for fellas like Woody who really did their
job and gave a hundred and ten percent. 15:06
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�Interviewer: “You’re not the only former Chick that talks that way about Woody
English. He did his job—he was a professional too. He had a good career and then
he continued to conduct himself as a professional.
I have a letter at home—after the 1951, my fourth year, I won twelve games before I lost
one. I had a hard time winning number thirteen, so my record was 15 and 5, so in 1952,
when I got my contract, I got a little raise, but it wasn’t much and I talked to Woody and I
said, “I think I deserve more money than that”, so Woody said, “I’ll tell you what M.L., if
you win fifteen games, I’ll give you two hundred dollars”, so he wrote it out and signed it
and I still have it, it’s precious. Well, I won twelve and I lost thirteen, so I didn’t make
the two hundred. 16:03
Interviewer: “It sounds like maybe your teammates didn’t give you a lot of
support.”
Well yeha, it proves out because on my baseball card I had a nice low earned run
average, so it wasn’t a hundred percent my pitching, I had a little help losing.
Interviewer: “Yea, you can get beat one to nothing and pitch really well that’s for
sure. Do you remember your first contract and how much you got paid?”
My first contract, I got three forty five a month and then on the road, they paid our hotel
and we got dinner money, I forget what it was. 16:46
Interviewer: “Do you remember your chaperone?”
Dotty Hunter, absolutely.
Interviewer: “Was she good?”
A wonderful woman yes, 1952 we were playing in Battle Creek and you would swear it
was December—it was cold and I was pitching that night, so I lathered myself up with
red hot, sweatshirt, uniform and I went out there and I sweated up a storm warming up,
pitched a game and in between innings—the rest of me was freezing—my arms were
burning, but the rest of me was freezing. Well, I caught a cold and I kind of sluffed it
off, but it settled in my kidneys, so for I think maybe a week after I pitched, I started
feeling kind of groggy and I would sit in the dugout and fall asleep. 17:50 Dotty Hunter
came up to me one time in the locker room, I was sitting there waiting for the players to
shower, I wasn’t in any hurry, I was tired, I didn’t do anything, but I was tired. Dotty
Hunter said, “M.L. you’re not drinking are you?” I said, “no, I don’t feel good”, and she
made me go to the doctor the next day and I had to give a urine specimen and they found
out that I had a cold that had settled in my kidneys, so they gave me prescriptions and
took me to where I was boarding. I was living with a widow, she had a son and a
daughter and I was boarding there. They told her that I was sick and I medicine and she
said, “I’ll take care of her”, and she nursed me just like a mother would. 18:40 She
made me get up in the morning, drink juice, clean up, eat soup, all soft good stuff, made
me take my medicine and stuff like that and after about a week my mother called because
I hadn’t written to her every day and she didn’t know what was the matter, so she just
told her I was sick, but getting better. She knew something was wrong and Woody said
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�to me, “you know, I was worried about you, I didn’t think you were the type that would
do something like that”.
Interviewer: “He knew something was wrong though. That was the case with a lot
of the players, wasn’t it? They lived with families?”
Oh yeah, we all did, all the cities. I know in the movie they showed all the girls living in
a boarding house, but no, that wasn’t true. Some places there would be four girls that
would stay with one family, sometimes a widow would have a couple extra bedrooms.
19:51 The ball park people, in different towns, would interview people that were
interested in putting up the girls and they picked out people that were suitable and could
pass the muster, so it worked out real well.
Interviewer: “So that was a good environment and made your mother a little more
confident that you were in good hands.”
Absolutely and I will tell you this, the gal that was my chaperone in Chicago in the farm
system, convinced my mother she had to come and see me play ball. They came down to
South Bend and South Bend had a pitcher, her name was Jean Faut, she was top notch
and about a week before we had played South Bend in Grand Rapids and I was pitching
against Jean Fout. I’m up to bat and Jean Fout throws a fastball inside and I jump back,
the next pitch she throws a curve inside and I’m thinking it’s a fastball and I’m not going
to look chicken again, so I stood there and it whacked me in the inside of my thigh, so a
week later I’m down in South Band and I’m scheduled to pitch, so I come out with the
catcher just before the game started to warm up and I was black and blue and purple and
green 21:13 and my mother’s sitting up in the stands with out chaperone and she sees
that and she says, “my god, you would think she would wash her legs”, and I didn’t know
this until I came home in September when the chaperone came to see me and told me
about it. Then she said to her, “those guys in the black, what team are they on because
they all got the same black?” I had to kind of explain baseball to her. 21:48 My mother
was forty-three when I was born, so by the time I was twenty, she was sixty-three and
there was no sports in our lifetime and there was no television, so she didn’t have the
opportunity to learn about the game of baseball.
Interviewer: “But her daughter was playing and she went to see it.” 22:06
Oh yeah.
Interviewer: “You mentioned Umpires and this is a good chance to ask you about
the Umpires in the league a little bit. How good were they and did you have any
problems with them?”
They were mostly pretty good, but we had a few that were kind of borderline. I disagreed
with one guy and I got fined ten dollars for my disagreement, but Woody paid it for me.
He said, “I know you can’t afford it, I’ll take care of it”, but it was just a call, third strike
or a ball four and I lost it, so I kind of disagreed with him.
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�Interviewer: “When you say kind of disagreed, it sounds like maybe you got in the
Umpires face a little bit.”
Well, I walked up and I said, “why did you call that”, and he told and I said, “you’re full
of---“, and that was it. 22:59
Interviewer: “Take a seat. Do you remember the first game that you played when
you went up to Grand Rapids?”
Yes I do.
Interviewer: “Tell me about it.”
Well, I was nervous actually and I didn’t want to seem to cocky, being the new kid on the
block, but we had a lot of players that were very supportive, Connie Wisniewski, Doris
Satterfield, Alma Ziegler, Inez Voyce, Corky Olinger, short stop and when I was
warming up and when I came out you know, “Ziggy”, she was the captain of the team,
she came out to the mound and said, “ok M.L. let’s get ‘em”, like there was nothing to it
and I kind relaxed a little and as they started striking out and grounding out easy
grounders, I kind of got a little confidence and we won the game and I felt real good, but
I didn’t feel cocky. 24:09 I just felt good because the team had played good too. I
remember one game I lost and I thought, “I’m going to kill everybody before this night’s
over”, they were bootin’ the ball all over the place and “Ziggy” walked over and handed
me the ball after we finally got one out and she said, “hang in there M.L.”. You know
teammates, everybody has good nights and bad nights and it just happened that five
teammates had a bad night on the same night. 24:38
Interviewer: “They don’t go out there to deliberately miss the ball.”
No, but all and all I felt really good about it and it gave me a lot of confidence that my
teammates were behind me.
Interviewer: “What kind of a hitter were you?”
I could bunt. I really could bunt. I use to practice bunting at home. I would have
anybody I could find throw a ball so I could practice to bunt and I forget who he had
come up to teach us how to bunt. I know we had Maury Wills come out one time to
teach us how to run bases.
Interviewer: “Really?” 25:21
In Grand Rapids, I think that Woody English got him out. I’ll never forget that because I
saw Maury Wills one time at a fan fest and when it came time for the audience to ask him
questions, I asked him how he felt about base runners today and I asked him, “were you
ever uninjured?” He said, “no”. I said, “I know you were hurt a lot”, and he said, “You
played hurt”. 25:55
Interviewer: “You played hurt because you’re sliding around out there without---“
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�If you didn’t play, there was somebody waiting to take your spot, so if you wanted to stay
in the game, you played hurt. Charlie horses, and all the gals that did a lot of sliding., but
being a pitcher, I didn’t really have to slide, but I could run bases, I was a good base
runner. I did learn and to this day I’m amazed at girls in baseball. I’ve gone out to watch
quite a few games. Fast pitch, softball, and baseball and you get there early and you sit in
the stands and you watch them practice or play. We were impressed with the idea that
you watch your opponents to find out what their weaknesses were. Lenny Zintak taught
us as kids, Mitch Skupien enforced it and Woody would always say, “did you see that she
couldn’t hit a high ball in batting practice?” You learn how to keep your mouth shut in
the dugout and pay attention to what was going on. 27:12 Today you go to a game and
watch and the girls are talking and laughing and talking to people in the stands and I
don’t know how they do it.
Interviewer: “Today you go to a game and watch major leaguers and they’re not
paying attention.”
They’re blowing bubbles and it’s kind of pathetic and especially with the men, they’re
making big money. They get caught off base and I don’t want to criticize athletes, but
give me a couple million and man I’ll show you stuff. If you’re watching a pitcher, you
can pick up their weaknesses when they’re in their stretch position. What are they doing?
Are they lifting the back heel, are they bending their knee, are they twitching their
shoulder, what are they doing signaling their going to throw home. They don’t watch
that anymore. 28:11
Interviewer: “They don’t seem to.”
I can’t blame the athletes, I blame the coaches and I blame the guy paying those salaries.
If you work for a company and you don’t do your job, the boss says, “hey, straighten up
and live right or else we got somebody else waiting for your job”, but now days they get
so hooked on the publicity and all the crazy stuff. 28:36
Interviewer: “They market them like they were in Hollywood.”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “What’s the best game you ever pitched? I’m sure you remember it.
You had several good ones.”
I can’t really pin one. Any time I won a game, I felt that was the best one, but I don’t
think there was one more than any other. I had a one hitter and I never had a no hitter. I
had a one hitter and it didn’t really phase me and when the game was over they said,
“Hey M.L. you had a one hitter”, and it was no big deal. We won and that’s what
counted. 29:22
Interviewer: “Did you pitch in the playoffs? That’s a different atmosphere.”
Yea, I think we played Rockford, in fact, White Taylor owned the team and White Taylor
also owned the only factory in the United States that made wooden propellers, it was
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�Flowtorp Corporation and he flew me and whoever would have been a relief pitcher
across the lake from Grand Rapids to Rockford because we had a game that went
overtime and I was due to pitch the next night and I think it was like eighteen hours on
the bus from Grand rapids around the lake to Rockford, so we got a plane ride across.
30:09
Interviewer: “One of the few times that players were delivered by air in the league.
I know the Flowtorp propeller company because I’m from Grand Rapids.”
Are they still in business?
Interviewer: “No, but they were through the period you’re talking about. They
made those wooden propellers, you’re absolutely right. Did you have any
interactions with the owners of the Grand Rapids Chicks?” 30:37
No, not really.
Interviewer: “How about the community? Did they expect you to go out in the
community and do any kind of appearances?”
The people were great. A lot of people would invite us over for dinner and when we had
a rainout or something, I think it was the Phillips family, they owned a jewelry store in
Grand Rapids, they had a cabin on the lake and the cabin was always available for us to
go. We would go out there fishing and have cookouts on the sand. They were really
good to us. The fans were always good to us. 31:19
Interviewer: “You had some pretty good crowds in Grand Rapids too. You would
have played at South Field, but also out of Bigelow.”
Well, Bigelow is the one that burned down. I’ve still got a picture of me and Janie Crick
climbing through the ashes looking for our uniforms and our gloves. Our stuff all burned
up and we never got a penny out of it. We had to buy our own spikes and our own
gloves.
Interviewer: “You had to get reoutfitted in a big hurry.”
I don’t know - they got uniforms from somewhere.
Interviewer: “Somebody told me, I think, that the uniforms they got had longer
skirts on them than you guys were use to, so they were difficult to play in until you
could get them tailored a little bit. That was in 1953 or something?” 32:09
No, that was—I think it was 1951.
Interviewer: “Yes, it was earlier—I was thinking it was later, but you’re right and
the story is that Bigalow was a good size field and the grandstand basically is what
burned.”
Yes, actually your clubhouse is under the grandstand, so it all burned up.
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�Interviewer: “Uniforms and everything and you had to replace your own
equipment?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “That’s not right.”
No.
Interviewer: “How about rivals? Did Grand Rapids have any particular rivalries
with any other teams?”
Well, I always thought that South Bend was more or less our rival because it seemed to
me that they played the toughest, but it was hard to tell because a lot of the girls had
been in since 1943 and when you’re talking 1951, that’s a long time. These girls had
played together, got traded, transferred, so there was a lot of friendship going on between
them. 33:25
Interviewer: “They knew each other.”
Yeah, and you couldn’t really sense the rivalry in their actions before and after the
games. It was just during the games—everybody was business.
Interviewer: “You’re a pitcher—I got to ask a couple of questions because during
that time you were playing, pitchers had a reputation for sometimes doing a little
extra to make the ball twist and bend the way they wanted it to. Do you have any
knowledge of people working it?”
Well, you couldn’t help that, that was just nature. 34:00 You had to be careful because
if your fingers are wet that ball could slip too, so you had to know what you were doing.
Interviewer: “I forget who it was now, but someone once suggested to me that there
was one team that may have put the balls in the ice box before the game, so when
you hit them—“
That’s knowledge to me.
Interviewer: “There were suspicions?”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “You didn’t do that?”
Nope.
Interviewer: “What pitches did you throw?” 34:33
My best one was my fastball because I threw straight overhand. If you throw a fastball
overhand and you hold the seams, when it comes off it’s going to hop. You talk about
curve balls—if you throw a fast pitch directly overhand and you pull down, that ball
comes in like this.
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�Interviewer: “It gives you the impression of actually rising, it’s not, and it’s holding
its level better.”
You see it coming and it’s going like that. That was my best and I threw a heavy ball, I
threw a heavy ball.
Interviewer: “Ground balls.”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “Curve Ball?”
So-so, but I had a good changeup, a good changeup, but like I say, I relied on my
overhand fast pitch, it really did the job.
Interviewer: “Some people still argue that it’s the hardest pitch to hit in baseball, a
good fastball,” 35:27
I think so, because a lot of those girls, they started out pitching fast pitch underhand and
then went to sidearm, then went three quarter, and we came along and we had been
playing overhand, so we had the advantage of the experience of that pitch and they
weren’t used to that.
Interviewer: “It makes a difference.”
Sure.
Interviewer: “Who among the hitters you face do you remember?”
The toughest? I would say the Weavers.
Interviewer: “They were models for some of the players in the movie, right?”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “The sisters.” 36:20
Well Jeanie Fout, for a pitcher, she was tough when she was up to bat. I really can’t
think of their names right now. I’m seventy- eight and we’re getting a little short minded
besides short winded.
Interviewer: “You’re confronting what I heard from some of the others about these
tough hitters. Faut, people do recognize her as pretty much all around, she could
pitch and hit. How about on the “Chicks”, your own team mates?”
On the “Chicks”, Connie Wisniewski and Doris Satterfield—they were tough. Connie
had pitched for many years, but then when they went directly overhand, she didn’t want
to hack it and Sadie was just a natural hitter. Sometimes I would pitch batting practice
and boy you could be throwing them up there three quarter speed, you know for batting
practice you’re supposed to, and they were whacking them and sometimes I would get
mad and really line on in there and they would whack it. 37:47
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�Interviewer: “The good ones can.”
Those girls were really good.
Interviewer: “Once again I’ve heard others say the same thing. For three years you
played and then you didn’t want to take a pay cut and you moved on as they say.
Did you continue playing ball though?”
Oh yes, softball in the Park District in Chicago. I played with a team that was sponsored
by Tava and we won the championship three years in a row and they asked us to move to
a different park. They wanted some fair competition. 38:28
Interviewer: “As an overhand pitcher, you had to move to a different position or
were you an Umpire?”
I went back to shortstop for softball. My first husband died in 1970 and I got remarried
in 1972 and in, I think, 1974, it was Sunday afternoon and my husband was there, I have
three daughters, and I hit a long ball trying to stretch it into a home run, but I had to stop
at third base and in the next game I made the third out and as I walked over, my oldest
daughter said to me, “Ma, you better sit down, you’re red in the face, you look like your
going to have a heart attack”, so my husband just looked at me and shook his head. It
was about a hundred degrees, it was the middle of July, so after the game I thought, “I
better hang ‘em up” 39:29
Interviewer: “Here’s your sign. Were your daughters ball players too?”
Well, they tried. I coached the church team and they tried, but I thought I was going to
have a nervous breakdown, so we didn’t play the second year. The two youngest ones
are great swimmers and the youngest got into field hockey in college and liked it.
Interviewer: “They’re athletes, just not ball players.”
They all wound up being swimmers, which I was never a swimmer, but I did take
lessons. 40:15
Interviewer: “That’s good, that’s good, so you retired from baseball and finally
from softball. Did you continue working at the bank during that time?”
I left the bank in 1962 and I went to work for the Chicago police department as a
fingerprint technician. I was working at first National Bank in downtown Chicago and
there was an ad in the paper for people to apply for a position with the Chicago police
department, so I went to the address and as long as I was a Chicagoan and I worked
thirteen years in a group—I didn’t realize that was city hall’s address and I picked up an
application for the job, filled it out and later I got a postcard to report to a high school
where they were running tests. Ten thousand people took the exams at four different high
schools in Chicago, so I took the exam on a Saturday morning and a month later I got a
card saying that I had passed the test and that I was chosen to be one of twenty-five
people that would go to the police academy to be trained. 41:44 I went to the police
12
�academy, we had to go to the board of health for a physical exam and they had a
policeman, two policemen train us in how to read and classify fingerprints and after six
weeks at the academy we went to the first district headquarters where the records were
and we started classifying and searching fingerprints and I worked there twenty eight
years until I retired. 42:15
Interviewer: “Did you crack any big cases?”
I wound up as supervisor and I worked nights from eleven thirty at night until seven
thirty in the morning because that worked out the best with my children and I didn’t have
to worry about a housekeeper because I was home all day. I slept from six until ten at
night and to this day I can get along on four hours sleep.
Interviewer: “It’s what you get use to I guess.”
Yes, I identified a lot of fingerprints on big cases, but nothing spectacular, but my boss
was a great guy. I was lucky—in baseball and in my jobs, I had great bosses. At the
bank I had a boss that loved sports and at the police department I had a great Lieutenant
who became a Captain and then became a commander of a district and he was a
fingerprint expert. I don’t know if you ever remember reading in the paper where a fella
killed a bunch of nurses—Wayne Gacy—no, Richard Speck—well, my Lieutenant went
out to the scene and he lifted a fingerprint form the outside window where Speck had
tried to get in—came downtown to our files and manually searched the files and he had
found Richard Speck’s fingerprint card. 43:48 At the same time someone called from
the Cook county Hospital where Richard Speck had gone for treatment because he got
hurt. I don’t know if it was an intern or a doctor that recognized him back from the all
wanted and called the police. At the same time my Lieutenant was going to his office to
notify them 44:17
Interviewer: “They matched them up and they had him. I do remember that case.”
He was the greatest—when I first got on the job, I was still married to my first husband
and I had marital problems and I had to get off of nights and work days, so he was a
Lieutenant at the time and when I asked him he said, “well, I can’t do that”. We worked
civil service and you couldn’t play favorites, so I said, “well, I’ll have to resign”, so he
explained to be and he said, “well, if you resign get your name reinstated on the civil
service list and when there’s an opening we give a call and you can turn it down twice.
The third time, your name comes off the list”, so I got called twice and the third time he
called me I had already separated from my first husband and I made arrangements for
someone to take care of the kids. They came over and slept nights and I said, “If I can
come back nights, I’ll come back”, and he said, “Well, I can guarantee you six months”.
Well, six months came and went and I stayed for another twenty-four years. 45: 40 I got
remarried, Commander Degee retired and I went to his retirement party with my new
husband and after all the speeches he came over to our table and he said to me, “are your
six months up yet?”
13
�Interviewer: “He remembered.”
Yea, I introduced him to my husband and he sat down and talked to us for about a half
hour and it was great.
Interviewer: “That’s great. It’s nice to be in those situations where you have that
good relationship.” 46:14
I can’t understand how people can gripe about their jobs.
Interviewer: “You had good ones and that’s a good thing. I want to ask you a few
things about after your playing days. Did people know you played in the league?”
When I coached the girls at church, I use to say, “when I played ball”, and it was no big
deal—you know how kids are. Two of my brothers were real proud of me. The
companies they worked for had magazines that came out monthly and they were always
putting in stories about their kid sister and the neighborhood—I had the newspapers from
Grand Rapids sent home and as soon as my mother got them she went to the butcher shop
and showed them to the guy at the butcher shop and she showed them to the guy over at
the Kroger store, so when I would come home in the fall and go shopping for her they
would say, “tell us about this game. Your mother showed us the paper”, but outside of
that, not too much. A few times when I would be going out on a date with somebody
from the bank one of the guys would say, “hey, watch out for her, she throws a mean
fastball “, and they would look like, “what’s he talking about?” 47:31 I didn’t want to
get into it , so I just let it go. It wasn’t until we got accepted at the Hall of Fame that
more people found out about it, neighborhood papers ran stories and then after the movie
came out, I had moved from Chicago down to Hot Spring Village Arkansas, so the movie
came out and all of a sudden it’s playing on television and people from my church would
call me up all hours whenever that movie was on. “Your movie is on”, they would say
and hang up. 48:18
Interviewer: “It’s nice to be recognized though and remembered.”
A couple of months ago, in July in fact, there’s a fella that lives in the village, he played
in the negro league, so one of the reporters for the village paper interviewed him and he
said to Bill, “how does it feel to be an ex major leaguer?” Bill talked to him and he said,
“you know you got a woman here that played in the girls league”, so this fella called me
up and he said, “Bill McCreary told me all about you and I would like to interview you”,
and I said, “Jeff, they’ve had my story in the paper three times in the past. I’ve been here
nineteen years and people are tired of reading it.” 49:04 He said, “I’ve been here seven
years and I never saw your story. I want to do it”, so he did a nice interview and gave me
a DVD and a VHS tape, the whole shot. My State Farm insurance agent cut the articles
out and put them in a folder and laminated them. On the front it says, WE SAW YOU
WERE IN THE NEWS—real nice. I go to the store and people say, “You’re the ball
player”. It works to the good. We have a community near us where three hundred
people got laid off. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Weyerhaeuser Corporation,
the timber company.
14
�Interviewer: “I certainly am.” 49:47
They laid off three hundred people. They closed down their operation in Mount Pine, so
I wanted to do something to help and I was talking to Jane Moffet, one of our ball
players, and Jane said, “why don’t you ask the girls to send you gift cards to Wal Mart?”
So she spread the word and the girls helped out. I have one daughter that was working
selling radio advertising, she called me up and said, “Ma, I got a two hundred and fifty
dollar bonus check”, and I said, “good, send it to me, I need it for Mount Pine”. She sent
it to me—I raised three thousand dollars, gave out gift certificates and the people that
didn’t show to pick them up—we went to Wal Mart and bought food and a fella from the
food pantry came with his trailer and picked it all up, so people in the village read the
article that I was doing this and they helped by sending me gift cards in the mail. “Here’s
another gift card for you from Wal Mart”. 50:49 I’ve heard that people go to Wal Mart
for everything. They can get gas, they can get food, and they can get medicine, so we
gave out Wal Mart gift cards. It worked out real good.
Interviewer: “It didn’t hurt at all that you had some recognition to lend to it.”
This time I bought ten baseballs and I had as many girls as I could find sign them and I’ll
auction them off when I get back and raise money for the food pantry when I get home.
It works out and it helps to have a little publicity once in a while. 51:20
Interviewer: “It does if you use it properly. That’s the key to the whole thing too.
Do you enjoy getting recognized?”
I use to be kind of--, but now it’s old shoe. Maybe it’s because I’m old.
Interviewer: “do you get cards or letters from young girls once and a while?”
Yeah, I got a box full. I’ve been saving them since I moved to the village. I had a bunch
in Chicago, but you know when you move you get rid of a lot of stuff. 51:51 Since I’m
living down there, and that’s nineteen years now, I started saving them and on the
envelope I write that I replied and the date. I got a request from Germany for a picture,
baseball card and what not, so I had to go to the post office for something and I said to
fella, “how much does it cost to send something to Germany?” He said, “What are you
mailing?” I said, “maybe something like a birthday card and some pictures”, and he said,
“three dollars and something”, and I said “ok”. If they don’t send me a stamped
envelope, I don’t send it back because that could get kind of costly. 52:39 I got cards
from people saying, “will you please sign these two blank cards”. I don’t sign anything
blank. I sign a baseball card, one card, and send it back to them. A lot of them buy our
cards and send them to us. They send us three cards, they bought them, fine, and I’ll sign
them and send them back. They have a son or a daughter and that’s fine. 53:05
Interviewer: “Those that want the blank cards, they’re buying and selling
autographs.”
We were advised not to sign anything blank.
Interviewer: “I’ve heard that from people in sports and all over, don’t sign the
blank ones.”
15
�We get requests from different outfits. There’s some catholic school, I think it’s up in
Maine or Connecticut and they had a friend who knew a girl ball player and she donated
a couple of pictures and they auction them off to raise money, so he got a hold of our
addresses, I don’t know how and asked of we had any memorabilia we could donate for
auction. Every once and a while we get something like that and I check it out and call
them up. 53:57 If they don’t leave their number, I call up the chamber of commerce in
their city and check them out, but usually they’re on the up and up.
Interviewer: ‘When you look back, what do you see, the league you played in and
all of that, do you see it as part of the changing perspective that our country has
about the role of women in society? In other words, were you a pioneer?”
Yeah, looking back we were pioneers, because it was an awful long time after our league
folded before any women got any recognition in sports, so in our own way we were
pioneers, but like they will all tell you, we would have done it for nothing. We got paid
for doing something we loved. 55:00 That’s why we have a hard time assimilating with
sports figures today, but it’s just the way things are. They won’t let women play in the
major leagues, but I for one can understand it. I don’t think women should try to
compete against men. You might have a woman that’s five ft. seven and a hundred and
seventy pounds, muscular and all that and you have a guy that’s five ft. six and one
hundred and fifty pounds playing short stop, but there’s a different mentality, there’s a
different physical structure completely and I was always against teams touring and
playing against men’s teams. It’s not right. 55:53 If they could have a league, like
they’re starting all these baseball leagues now, women play against women—that’s
beautiful. That’s the way it should be and there’s a place for women in sports and it is
not competing with men. If you’re going to compete with men in baseball then let’s—
you know when a woman has a baby and the guys say, “there’s nothing to it” and we say,
“Well, why don’t you try carrying one?” “Be reasonable, he’s built different than you
honey”. Don’t try to compete with them on that and don’t even try to make a
comparison. I feel the same way about sports, there are sports for women, women
golfers, women tennis players, women swimmers, basketball, fine, but play against
women. 56:43 Show your competition the way it should be shown.
Interviewer: “It seems to make a lot of sense.
To me it does.
Interviewer: Any of you guys think of something else? I would like to know more
about the Grand Rapids championship season. They actually did win the
championship in 1953. Was that season any different than any other or did you just
get lucky?” 57:12
I think we just played harder. If I remember right, we had a lot of injuries in 1953. I
don’t know if Corky Olinger was back, I know that she had broken her ankle—we had a
lot of injuries in 1953, but everybody was clicking as a team, plus woody was a great
manager.
16
�Interviewer: “How did you do when he flew you out to Rockford?”
Good.
Interviewer: “You were ready to pitch the next day.”
Yeah. I got a lot of ribbing about it, teacher pet and all that good stuff.
Interviewer: “If you win the game, that’s what matters.”
Interviewer: “Thank you very much.”
17
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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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
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
Identifier
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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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/.
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RHC-58_MCaden
Title
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Caden , Mary Lou (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
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Caden, Mary Lou
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Lou Caden (née Studnicka) was born in Oak Lawn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She grew up in the Oak Lawn area and started playing softball with the neighborhood kids and transitioned to playing for local teams. She played as a short-stop in her amateur career and eventually was contacted by Mitch Skupien in 1950 to play for the Grand Rapids Chicks. She played for the Grand Rapids Chicks from 1951 to 1953 when she was traded to Fort Wayne and due to a pay cut decided to quit baseball and return to her job for National City Bank. During her time with them she played positions such as pitcher and second base.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Olson, Gordon (Interviewer)
Publisher
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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--Indiana
Women
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2009-09-25
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/490e1497047331e64d3437312e50baae.m4v
927e1623046c85ddc5c33a69177edc9a
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c7dfc7381049ee5a58128fc11b5ebdd3.pdf
15cb008424c9d04bd19243d22c5f4fd6
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All American Girl’s Professional Baseball League
Veterans’ History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Maybelle Blair
Length of Interview: (00:38:58)
Interviewed by: James Smither, PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, September 27,
2009, Milwaukee, WI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion.
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, May 8, 2010
Born: 1917 Longvale, CA
Resides: Palm Desert, CA
Interviewer: “ Maybelle, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself. To
start with, where were you born?”
I was born in Longvale, California, which is right next to the LAX Airport.
Interviewer: “What year was that?”
1927
Interviewer: “Wow, you would never know.”
Absolutely not.
Interviewer: “At that point, what did your family do for a living?”
My father was in charge of a park in Englewood, California. He started it off with the
CC Camp and he was very fortunate to get the job and my mother was a housewife. 1:01
Interviewer: “How many kids were in the family?”
Two.
Interviewer: “Was your father able to keep his job through the thirties?”
Yes, absolutely, that’s what saved us because we did go through the depression and we
were very, very, very poor.
Interviewer: “At what point did you start playing organized sports or even
disorganized sports?”
Oh, probably when I was about nine years old, because my brother, whom I worshiped
and was seven years older than I, loved baseball, so naturally, guess what? Little sister
was right behind him and followed him every step of the way and he would tell me to go
home, but when the boys needed to have somebody at their batting practice, that was the
1
�time that I could play and I could go and shag the balls, which was very fortunate, I
thought.. 1:49
Interviewer: “Did you play in pick-up games and things like that too? Did they let
you play at some point?”
Oh yeah, when they needed an extra person, guess who got to play and out in right field
naturally, but at the time it was fun though.
Interviewer: “How did that translate into your playing organized softball? When
did you start that?”
I started probably playing organized softball, probably in 1942. We had little industrial
teams or local teams that they had, I joined that and that was a lot of fun when I was still
in—actually grade school I guess. 2:31
Interviewer: “How old were you, do you think, when you started?”
Probably twelve.
Interviewer: “Did you have a favorite position?”
Yes, second base.
Interviewer: “Could you turn a good double play?”
Oh my, they would hire me today if I was able, but I loved every minute of it, it was a lot
of fun and the double play was great.
Interviewer: “At this point, whom were you playing against?”
Just little local teams, like some market or some department store or something like that.
We had little leagues. 3:06
Interviewer: “How would you get to the games?”
My father would take me and my brother would go along begrudgingly because he didn’t
want to see sister play, it was boring.
Interviewer: “Now, at some point do you move up a level in terms of the league that
you’re playing in?”
Yes, they started opening up a real good semi-pro league in Burbank, California and I
was able to go and play in that league. I was real fortunate to be able to do that and that
was quite exciting for me.
Interviewer: “What year did that start up for you?”
Probably 1942 or 43, right in there.
Interviewer: “So it was about the same time that the All American Girls League
was forming up in Chicago.”
2
�Right, I was still in high school and that’s when that took place.
Interviewer: “Were most of the people that were playing in this league about your
age or were they older?”
Some of them were older, the ones that took off to play in the all American and there
were some that were a little younger, both ways, but I was probably one of the youngest.
4:15
Interviewer: “Now you’re playing with this league, how far a field would you travel
to play your games now, still local?”
All over, and then I started playing with the Pasadena Ramblers and that was a traveling
league during the war and we use to go and play the service men and all over the place.
We went to San Diego, we went to northern California to all of the forts and all the bases
and that was quite a lot of fun because the guy’s got a big kick out of it and we really got
a kick out of it and that’s what we actually did, we went to play them and they had
planned a trip for us to go overseas to play the teams and at that time the war had picked
up and they said no, that it would be too dangerous for us to go, so we stayed home. 5:01
Interviewer: “How does it work? You arrange that you’re going to an army base
or a navy base or someplace, how do they orchestrate that and look after you?”
What they would do was, they would send a bus after us wherever we were or hire a
Greyhound bus or there was another bus line, but I can’t remember what it was at that
particular time, and they would charter that for us and take us down. We would go into
the barracks where the women were and we would get dressed and all that we had to
prepare for and after our ball games they would feed us dinner and the bus would take us
home.
Interviewer: “Were you playing men’s teams or women’s teams?”
Men’s teams, they were all men’s teams. 5:45
Interviewer: “How did the male players react to that?”
Well, they couldn’t believe it, that we could beat them. They thought, “oh god we’ll kill
these women”, but they couldn’t beat us because they weren’t professional ball players, I
mean good ball players, some of them were good ball players, but we would just cream
them and when we did, they couldn’t believe it. Everybody in the stands, all the rest of
the soldiers or navy or sailors or what have you, would just scream and holler at them,
“you sissy, you can’t catch”, you know it was really fun. 6:18
Interviewer: “Now, the All American Girls Baseball League, they had their skirts
and all this kind of stuff. What kind of uniforms did you have?”
We just had shorts and a top and pants also. It was generally satin in those days that we
all wore and that was a lot of fun.
3
�Interviewer: “It was better for sliding into base.”
Absolutely, you would get strawberries and that didn’t feel too good.
Interviewer: “Did you would still get strawberries even with the satin?”
Absolutely, they even had little sliding slides that we had. They had it.
Interviewer: “Now was the softball played with a sort of regulation size baseball
field or a smaller field?”
A regular softball field, and don’t ask me the size of the bases because I can’t remember
that far. 7:04
Interviewer: “Are the distances a little bit shorter than baseball or longer?”
Much shorter.
Interviewer: “So in that way it was similar to what the All American Girls League
was when they started out, when they played shorter dimensions.”
Absolutely.
Interviewer: “Now, in softball were you a good hitter?”
A very good hitter and that was one of my strong points. I was a good hitter and I had a
strong arm.
Interviewer: “As a hitter did you hit line drives or long flies?”
Line drives and I could whack the heck out of that thing and it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed
it.
Interviewer: “When you were with the Pasadena Ramblers, what was the farthest
away from home you traveled?”
Probably three hundred miles, north California and San Diego from Los Angeles.
Interviewer: “They weren’t sending you out into the Midwest or anything like
that?”
No, no, no, just the California area, but we hit from northern to southern.
Interviewer: “As you were doing this, did you have any kind of regular job at the
same time or was the team your job?”
I was in high school. 8:15
4
�Interviewer: “You were in high school and were you mostly playing in the summer
when you sere out of school or would they take you out of school to go on these
trips?”
It was during the summertime, during our summer vacation. My mother wouldn’t let me
out of school, period, no matter how I begged.
Interviewer: “Now, how long were you playing in that league?”
I was probably there until 1946 or 1947 when the scout saw me, the Chicago scout saw
me and wanted me to come and play professional softball in Chicago. 8:51
Interviewer: “So there is professional softball in Chicago, was there a league up
there?”
Oh yes, a wonderful league up there, a strictly softball league and we played in the
Chicago area and it was the best part of my life.
Interviewer: “They were scouting the California league you were in, so the scout
says, “you want to come up and play?” did you have to go and clear it with your
parents?”
Oh, are you kidding, that poor guy went through the fifth degree I’ll tell you, I felt sorry
for him. My mother was just a---every question she could think of and he promised and
promised to take good care of me and all I would have to do is put me on the train and he
would pick me up at the other end. 9:41 I would have to write home so often or call
home and that was guaranteed and he saw to it that I did.
Interviewer: “Had you ever taken a long train trip like that before?”
The first time in my life, I couldn’t hardly go to Englewood, California we were so poor,
we didn’t have any money, so that was my very first trip outside of California.
Interviewer: “Do you remember how long it took?”
Probably a day and a half or two days on a train, I can’t remember, but it was exciting.
10:14
Interviewer: “When you got up to Chicago, what did they do with you?”
Well, they met me at the train and they took me to a hotel and I was scared to death
because I was there all by myself and I had never been by myself, so I pushed the dresser
up against the wall and got me four baseballs and a bat and dared anybody to come in my
room. It was really something, I was scared to death and I called my mother and she
said, “I can’t afford this, get off the line”, so I had to cut the conversation pretty close, but
oh my god I was scared. 10:49 I told them, “I can’t do this any longer, I can’t sleep, I
can’t do anything”, so two days later I got my roommate in from Missouri, a gal, and we
5
�became very, very good friends and I was thrilled to death when she came, so she was my
roommate during that period. 11:09
Interviewer: “Was there a specific team that you were assigned to then?”
My assignment was with the Chicago Cardinals and it was a nice team and we had a real
good team.
Interviewer: “Now, did each team have their own home park or were their certain
parks that everyone played in?”
Everybody had their home park.
Interviewer: “What was yours?”
Except for our, that was the only on that didn’t, excuse me. We played at Bidwell
Stadium and Bluebird Park, which Charlie Bidwell owned and his son now runs the
Chicago Cardinals and there were several others.
Interviewer: “They are the Arizona Cardinals these days.”
Yes, the Arizona Cardinals, excuse me. 11:57
Interviewer: “There was a Chicago Cardinals football team.”
Well, that’s the same one. They came out here and are now the Arizona Cardinals and
that’s what he owned.
Interviewer: “Did they pay you much of anything?”
Oh yeah, I was rich, I made sixty dollars a week and my gosh, I had money that wouldn’t
end. I was going to save it and go to college like a lot of us tried to do and I sent some
home to my mother. I was a rich girl because the hotel room was only seven dollars a
week at that time. 12:24
Interviewer: “What did they do in terms of chaperoning you or were you just on
your own?”
Out manager was responsible for us, he and his coaches, and they watched out for us.
They did watch me very closely I’ll tell you, I was bad, I was bad.
Interviewer: “Did you get yourself in trouble?”
I was always in trouble having a good time that was my problem. I loved everybody.
Interviewer: “What were the games like in this league?”
6
�They were wonderful, absolutely wonderful and we had some fantastic ball players like
you see the Olympic teams today, that’s how our softball teams played ball exactly.
Interviewer: “Was it a higher level of ball than you played in California or close?”
Pretty close, but it was a higher level because they took the best ball players from each of
the teams because they would scout and take them back to Chicago and that’s what
happened. 13:26
Interviewer: “You’re playing and how long did you play for them?”
I played there in 1947 and in the latter part of 1948 is when I hurt my legs and I couldn’t
move and that’s when I was signed by Max Carey to go and play in the All American
League.
Interviewer: “All right, explain how that happened.”
Oh god, like I said, I was at Parache Stadium and I was out showing off thinking---I was
a show off for some reason and I could never understand that, but anyway, I pretended I
was a major league pitcher out there throwing the softball and I could throw a curve and I
had a good arm, so after I through showing off this guy comes up to me and said,
“Maybelle would you mind coming over here I want to talk to you for a minute”, and I
said, “no, of course not” and I went wobbling over and he said, “how would you like to
go and play for the All American?” I thought for about two seconds and I said, “sure
why not, I can’t do anything, but I don’t want to play anything but pitcher”, and he said,
“that’s what I want you for”, and I thought, “pitcher, I never played pitcher before, but
I’ll go”. 14:36 Well anyway, they signed me and I got in my car, I had a car at that time
because I had saved my money, and I drove down to Peoria and they got me a hotel and I
had a horrible toothache and these two little girls that were great fans went out and got
me some toothache medicine and saved my life and anyway to make a long story short, I
started pitching. 15:09 I was there for maybe a month and first of all he had me go
out—he called me into the game, “Hey Maybelle come in and pitch”, and I said, “oh”,
and here I come dizzy Dean herself is walking out there, so I was out there and somebody
was on first base, I don’t know who it was, but I think it was Sophie Kurys. I wound up
I’ll tell you, I wound up for forty minutes and by the time I got through unwinding that
runner was on third base you know not knowing I forgot all about it that I had a runner on
and that was the fun of it, I had a lot of fun. 15:49 They started bunting me because they
found out I couldn’t move.
Interviewer: “Ok, sort out your baseball career a little bit. How long were you with
the team before they put you in, was it a month?”
It was actually about a week and a half before he put me in and he kept me around for
courtesy’s sake I guess for another couple weeks and then he called me in his office and
he said, “I hate to have to tell you this, but I’m going to have to release you, but would
you please come back next year when your legs are well because we can certainly use
you.” 16.27
7
�Interviewer: “So he liked your arm anyway?”
Oh yeah, I got a good arm still today.
Interviewer: “When you were working out with them, before he had actually put
you in the game, did they know you couldn’t run?”
No, because I didn’t practice like I was running, I didn’t let them know. I kept it a secret
all to myself.
Interviewer: “So in the game, when you were playing, did someone try bunting on
you to see what would happen?”
Well yeah, exactly, because the rumor had gotten through because we had interaction
between the leagues because when we were off we would go and visit the other kids and
they said, “she can’t run so start bunting for god sake, she can’t move”, which was true.
17:12
Interviewer: “How did you hurt your legs?”
Running. And I didn’t tell him and I was hobbling around there and could hardly run and
for some ungodly reason the other leg was pulled and I cannot understand how I got two
charlie horses, but I kept those babies for a long time, even after I came home it took
quite a while to get rid of it. When I got home from playing ball I was hired by Northrop
Aircraft. I wanted to go back and play again, but I had such a good opportunity that I
couldn’t do it. This fellow I met was in charge of all traffic at Northrop Aircraft and he
said, “I want you to come in, learn the job and I want you to be supervisor in
transportation”, and I said, “oh come on, get off of it, I can’t do that”. I told him that and
he said, “you have the personality for it, I need to get you in here to get these drivers in
order”, and I said, “no, no, no”, anyway I finally decided to do it and I said, “the only
way I will do it is if I can learn to drive every piece of equipment we have because I do
not want to hear them razzing me or giving me a hard time that you picked the wrong
person. 18:27 Anyway, he did and I worked my way up from courier hauling VIP’s all
over like generals and presidents, heads of states and what have you all around, to
dispatcher and I went on to be supervisor and then I became manager of all highway
transportation for Northrop Aircraft.
Interviewer: “Tell me a little bit about that courier job. Who were you driving
around?”
Big time—heads of state from all over the world because at that time we were building
the F5 Fighter and we were trying to sell it, so we were selling it to all the different
countries for their fleet or air force and I hauled lots of very important people. In fact,
Ronald Reagan was one of them and to this day I was thrilled to death about that. He was
Governor of the state at that particular time. 19:27
8
�Interviewer: “Were their other individuals whose names stood out as being
particularly interesting or unusual people?”
Oh sure, General Whitehead who was the head of the Pacific, and what was his name—I
loved him, but several of them and I can’t remember right now. Korean generals and it
was quite an experience for me.
Interviewer: “Were you going into jobs that normally men had been doing?”
Yes absolutely, it was all men and then when I became currier there were two couriers
ahead of me and both girls. W wore one of those uniforms and I thought I was real cute.
I was uglier than sin, but I thought I was cute. Anyway, that’s what we did and that was
the only girls in the department and then I went on, like I told you, and became head of
the department and one of my jobs was planning routes for the F18 aircraft to get it from
Hawthorn Air Force Base to---from Northrop Field to Edwards Air Force Base. 20:45 I
would have to go our and survey all of that—take down signs, trees, everything else
because we had to get it there because that was going to be our future the F18, so luckily
that was a real job and I got that sucker down there. One time when we were going
through downtown L.A. because it’s got the wings on it, and this drunk comes staggering
out of a bar in downtown Los Angeles he looked and the wing was practically going over
his head and he went like this and turned around and went right back into the bar. He
wasn’t seeing pink elephants he was just seeing airplanes. I can imagine what he went
back in and told them. 21:31 When I got to Edwards Air Force Base it was so exciting
because they had laid out the red carpet for me and after we stopped the aircraft and all
the people got out, they were playing “off we go into the wild blue yonder”, and I got out
of the truck and I couldn’t stand up, I was so weak I fell almost down on my knees, but
they caught me, I was so excited, it was quite an honor.
Interviewer: “Did you encounter any friction being a woman and going into these
positions and telling men what to do?”
At first I did, but the problem was is that I knew it very well and I knew what I was
talking about and they couldn’t argue with me or try to pull the wool over my eyes and
they soon learned that they couldn’t do that to me. I was fair, but I was strict. 22:17
Interviewer: “So the fellow that hired you knew what he was doing.”
Apparently, I guess so and also, I planned the route for the B2 Bomber, so I was happy
about that too.
Interviewer: “Did you have to move that along surface streets too?”
Oh yeah, not the whole bomber, but just the cockpit area.
Interviewer: “But not the whole thing.”
9
�Oh no you couldn’t. Up at Palmdale they built the wings, but we built the cockpit at our
facility and that was great too. I have to tell you too that I played for the New Orleans
Jacks, the world’s champions.
Interviewer: “Now when were you doing that?”
I can’t remember what year that was, but it was while I was working at Northrop. I told
my boss at the time, I said, “I have to have a whole month or so off because they are
asking me and pleading with me to come and play for them”. I said, “Ok?” he said,
“Ok”, so he gave me a month off. 23:11
Interviewer: “How did you get the invitation to play for New Orleans?”
Well, they new about me playing back there and they were out here and they needed
another ball player desperately, so I said, “ok” and I went and that was fun.
Interviewer: “Did you play second base for them?”
Second base.
Interviewer: “Then where did you go when you were playing with them?”
Oh, up through Canada, all through Washington, Oregon, Arizona and California.
Interviewer: “Now, was this a point after the All American League had folded?”
Yes that was, I would say that was probably down at about 1950 or 1951 maybe and I
may be wrong there. 23:55
Interviewer: “It could be, in 50 and 51 the league was still going at that point
wasn’t it?”
Oh yeah, the league was still going, but I didn’t have time to go back and play ball, I
couldn’t do that because I would lose my job and that was more important.
Interviewer. “You could take the month and go with New Orleans?”
Yes, they each gave me a month.
Interviewer: “So you had a chance to go back and play a little bit after the injury?”
Yeah, I did and that was fun.
Interviewer: “Now, on that particular tour, what kind of crowds did you get?”
Oh, fantastic, in fact we stopped at Bakersfield and played the world champion men’s
baseball team and we had two sisters on the team known as the Savodas—the best
baseball players or softball players or ball players I have ever seen in my life. During
batting practice they, both of them, could take batting practice and hit it over the fence
10
�left handed and right handed, no problem, run like deer and throw—you cannot imagine
how great they were, the two best ball players that ever lived. 24:52
Interviewer: “You played a men’s championship team, was that a championship
softball team?”
Softball team yeah.
Interviewer: “So you weren’t playing the New York Yankees or something?”
No, but during that game that we played them, the men had to pitch from the men’s
league and the women pitched from out league distance to the plate and our pitcher was
named Lotty Jackson and she stood about six one or two and she had a wind up that you
couldn’t even see the ball. Ginny Finch today, I don’t think Ginny Finch is as fast as was
this girl and these guys couldn’t hit her and it was so funny, we couldn’t hit him either,
let’s face it, anyway he walked me somehow, I probably stood there with my bat on my
shoulder and he couldn’t hit the plate, anyway, I somehow got over to third base and this
manager we had, Freda Sevoda one of the Sevoda sisters, she said, “pretend like you
can’t run”, and I said, “I can run”, and she said, “no, pretend like you can’t run”, and I
said, “ok”. 26:00 She took over and what she noticed—we beat these guys and what
happened was that the catcher, when he would get the ball sometimes, he would walk to
almost where the pitcher was and give him this (a sign) and he would slowly start
walking back to the plate, She noticed, that’s how smart she was, well he went out there
and he gave a little pitch to the pitcher and she took off like a jack rabbit and slid right
under him and we won one to nothing and I think there were eight thousand people out
there for that game and they just hoot and hollered and that was really something. 26:35
I never was so tickled in my life.
Interviewer: “Did they make any effort to get you to stay on?”
They wanted us to come back and play, but we had a schedule and we couldn’t do it and
the league didn’t like that at all, not at all
Interviewer: “Was that the last time you were playing on organized ball?”
Yes, that was the very last time and then I decided to hang it up.
Interviewer: “Now, when you were working at Northrop etc., did people know
anything about what you had done in the past in these different leagues and
things?”
During that time they didn’t know because the movie is what made it, if it wasn’t for the
movie you wouldn’t have known about the All American Girls, you wouldn’t have
known about the professional softball league because actually, they could have taken the
softball league instead of the all Americans and made the same movie, but they didn’t,
but people didn’t realize that there was two leagues or even one league, especially the
western people, the Midwest knew it and in Chicago they knew it, but that was it, the
11
�south didn’t know it, nobody knew it until Penny Marshall decided to make the movie.
27:54
Interviewer: “How did you wind up hooked up with this organization that you
played on one team for a short length of time?”
They made the movie and they asked me to come and be in the movie, so I was in it when
the old timers were at the end and what have you and that was the reason.
Interviewer: “Did you know a number of the people who were in the league?”
Oh yes, because I played softball with them and baseball and what have you. I have
known quite a few of them for years.
Interviewer: “At the time you were doing all these things, playing in these leagues
or for that matter going into some of your jobs at Northrop, did you see yourself as
a pioneer or were you just taking care of yourself?”
Nobody did, nobody did until after the movie again. The movie was the making of
everybody and even when you mention that you played in the all American or the
National league they don’t know what you’re talking about and could care less, now they
care, it’s amazing. 29:00
Interviewer: “What do you think of sort of the state of women’s sports today? Do
you see yourself as being part of a larger trend?”
I think it’s the most wonderful thing in the world, it has given all the girls the opportunity
of scholarships, it’s not that they’re going to be great professional athletes, but it gives
them the opportunity to go to college and that’s what I’m thrilled about. It gives the girls
the opportunity to take the right step in their lives, whichever step that is. They have a
choice. And thank God that happened; we’re so thrilled about it. 29:33 Before it was the
good old boys and let’s face it, all we were supposed to do is stay home and put on our
aprons and have kids.
Interviewer: “How do you think your life would have gone if you hadn’t hooked up
with organized softball?”
What would have happened? I would have probably gone on to college and become a PE
teacher. That’s exactly what I would have done. That was my goal in life because I
didn’t think there was any chance to go and play professional softball or baseball, but it
was there and gosh, how lucky we were, how lucky we were.
Interviewer: “Is that what gave you the connections that enabled you to go into
Northrop? Did these people know you from that?”
No, no, I was in a function or something—I think I was giving a speech—I don’t know
what in the world I was doing, anyway he came up to me and he said, “I need you”, and I
12
�said, “what do you mean you need me?” He said, “I’m da, da, da, da, and I want you to
come to work at Northrop”, and I said, “well, I’m going to go to college”, and he said,
“no, I want you to come to Northrop because I’m going to give you a good job and I’m
going to open the door for you”, so maybe he saw something that maybe he thought I was
a leader or something, that’s what I thought. 30:54
Interviewer: “If you were at a function and giving a speech, was this somehow in
conjunction with what you had been doing already?”
No, no I don’t know what the heck I was giving the speech about, I was giving a speech
about—heck, I can’t remember what it was, but I was giving a little speech. I don’t know
what it was, maybe about going to college—that’s what it was, I was going to go to
college and what my career was going to be and what I was going to become, I think that
was it. 31:19
Interviewer: “How do you think your time in these organized leagues affect you or
change you? Did you grow up some because of this or learn things—that whole
experience of going out to Chicago and all of that?”
Yeah, it taught me a great deal because I had never even been away from my mother
overnight to a girls party or sleep out or go anywhere to visit anybody, that was the first
time and I learned a great deal and it was quite exciting and when they say they put the
ropes around the suitcases, well I had ropes around my suitcase and I took off. 31:55
Gosh, I thought I was in hog heaven when I landed in Chicago and they picked me up.
The buildings wow.
Interviewer: “Although there was that part there where you had to barricade
yourself in the hotel room when you got there, but the young woman who did that is
not the same person exactly that the fellow from Northrop spotted and said, “I need
you”, so something happened between there.”
Well that was a learning process, absolutely a learning process and It’s not as easy as you
think, I figured it out and when I went to Northrop I realized that if I really wanted to
make it, I had to devote myself to it and quit being a kid anymore and quit fooling
around. I still fool around, but anyway that’s the way it is. 32:43
Interviewer: “Well, it makes for a very good story and thanks for coming in and
telling it to me today.”
Hey, I hope you appreciate it.
13
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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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
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<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
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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
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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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_MBlair
Title
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Blair, Maybelle (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
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Blair, Maybelle
Description
An account of the resource
Maybelle Blair was born in 1927 in Longvale, California. Before joining the All American Girl's Baseball League she played baseball with her brothers at the age of nine and then later in 1942 at age twelve began playing organized softball. At about this time she played for a semi-pro league out of Burbank, California and then with the Pasadena Ramblers from 1943 to 1946 who she toured with playing games at army bases for servicemen. Her semi-pro career ended in 1947 when the Chicago Cardinals scouted her and signed her to be a pitcher. In 1948, Max Carey signed her to play on the Peoria Redwings as a pitcher. Due to an injured leg, her career was cut short and she only played a month with the Peoria Redwings. Later, she went on to play 2nd base for the New Orleans Jacks for a month in 1951. Her career ended with them ended when she was forced to choose between playing softball and giving up her job driving VIPs for Northrop Airport; she chose to quit softball. Blair wraps by mentioning how the All American Girls Professional Baseball League changed her perspective on the course of her life.
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
Baseball players--Illinois
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-09-26
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/77dbc87293a6f2fa75f4caa7dd9e657a.m4v
f551e738e9b37977900c2426821b7485
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a3e5546e8add0b8ee4b875f405a5e192.pdf
1d9e42aa8709f77334d199fe1ed23adc
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
LOIS YOUNGEN
Women in Baseball
Born: October 23, 1933
Resides: Eugene, Oregon
Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 5, 20010,
Detroit, Michigan at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion.
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, December 9, 2010
Interviewer: “To begin with what is your full name and where and when were you
born?”
My full name is Lois Joy Youngen and I was born October 23, 1933 in a little town of
one hundred people called Ragersville, Ohio.
Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like?”
Full of activity, I had a wonderful childhood and my mother was an elementary
schoolteacher, my father was a principal and subsequent superintendent of schools and he
also was coach and he also was a varsity baseball player. So, I think maybe that’s where
I got some of my ability. 45:03
Interviewer: “What was your school like? You said it was a small town, was it a
small school?”
We had moved to a little larger town where I started first grade. The first few grades
were rather uneventful and by the time I hit the fourth grade we had moved because my
father got a better job and it was about then that I started playing with all the
neighborhood boys because there weren’t any girls in the neighborhood and if you
wanted to play outside, and there’s no television remember, and other than reading books
and trying to learn how to play the piano, which I didn’t do very well and they finally
gave up on me, I played outside with the boys.
1
�Interviewer: “Give us an idea what the lot was like. What was your neighborhood
like for example? Was it a big back lot? Was it a full diamond where you play
baseball? What was it like?” 45:57
A yard and a back yard and then a little later on when we moved again and my father got
a better job, we were in—all the houses were on one side of the street and across the road
it was farmland, it was pasture field, so we took our paper bags and our one ball, you
only had one ball and you reused it, and our bat which had copious amounts of, I guess
it’s electrical tape, it’s black and it also had a screw and a bolt through it, but that was it
and I remember that the boys weren’t too excited about my wanting to play, originally
when we moved to this new town with the pasture field across the street. 46:40
Interviewer: “How old were you roughly?”
Let’s see—probably ten, ten years old.
Interviewer: “You’re the daughter of educators, small town, you’re playing the
piano, but you don’t want to play, you’re reading, which is wonderful, and how did
you hear about this boys’ baseball going on? How did you happen to get involved
with that?”
Well, there were a lot of boys in the neighborhood and they always just played ball over
there, so I wandered over naturally. I was interested and I asked about playing and they
said, “You can play right field or catch”, and being rather intelligent I said, “well, if I
play right field at this age, no one will ever hit the ball to right field because when we
choose up teams, which you often do in elementary school, the last person to be chosen is
the one who gets to play right field”, so I said, “I’m going to learn how to catch.” I knew
2
�my dad was a baseball pitcher and if he could throw to me some, I could really become
proficient as catcher. 47:44
Interviewer: “Did you have a glove?”
At the time I don’t know if I had a glove or not, but I know my father was supportive,
which is important, so we went out and bought me a glove. I don’t think it was a
catcher’s glove originally. Later on I got the real thing, but I’m not quite sure.
Interviewer: “So in the early days in elementary school, why baseball as opposed to
anything else?”
Well, we’re talking about the nineteen forties and individual sports were only for those
elite families that had money and could have private lessons. There was no physical
education in the schools during the forties, there was some extra, what would you call it?
Varsity sports, there were some varsity sports floating around, but baseball was one of
those things that every small town had a baseball team. That had maybe changed some,
but I think there were enough remnants so you could play with a limited amount of space,
a limited amount of equipment and still have a very good time. 48:48 All the small
schools that I went to, there was no football, no track and field when you look out and
soccer was something you played in PE, I think for fifty years before it caught on as
being a really important kind of sport around the world, but maybe never will catch on in
this country, we’ll see how that goes. Anyway, it was a remnant of a sport that
everybody could play you could join in. Everybody had a little softball game at a reunion
or at a picnic. You played softball, but this was baseball with a hardball that we threw
overhand. 49:24
3
�Interviewer: “Did you have access to sports either by newspaper or radio? Did you
know what was going on in the world of baseball?”
I had a grandfather that kept his ear to the radio to listen to the Cleveland Indians games,
so we had no television, but we did have radio and I think our family was always so busy
trying to earn a living—we had gardens in the summer and I had odd jobs that I did and
every kid had chores to do around the house. Some of my friends at that age, in
elementary school, got an allowance and other students had to work and they were doled
out certain amounts of money if they asked for it and that kind of thing. I’ve lost your
question. 50:13
Interviewer: “You actually already answered it in terms of did you know about
baseball from the outside.”
Oh yeah, the radio and newspaper, yes, yes.
Interviewer: “Did baseball from the very beginning or when did baseball become
more important to you than just kind of playing?”
Well, that’s an interesting question. That’s a very interesting question. By osmosis I
suppose, I don’t know if I ever realized when. I got to the point where we gathered more
boys to play on our team and then we started to call ourselves the “Town Team” and then
we walked to other small towns five miles away, no soccer moms to take us anywhere,
we took our one ball and our one bat and we would walk and we would play and then we
would walk home. They would walk over and we would kind of pre determine, it was
usually in the afternoon because we didn’t have jobs or anything and we were free to
play, and I know that one summer, I think I probably was in junior high school by then
and we did this for three or four years, and finally they came down, the boys, the team,
4
�came down to my house and they told me they didn’t want me on the team anymore
because the other towns teams and kids were laughing at us because we had a girl on the
team. 51:40 All I know is I think I suppressed that to the point where I don’t remember
it, but my mother said, yes, I was there and I heard them ask you to do that, you were
devastated she said, but it took them about a week before they came trudging back down
and asked me to join them again because they had lost two games and they wanted me
back on the team. I said, “well, that proves that winning is more important than having a
girl on the team”, so then I sort of graduated from their team. The boys got older and we
did have a varsity baseball team in that town and there were a couple of women’s softball
teams in the larger cities, Wooster, Ohio and Ashland, Ohio, so in the summer the
manager stopped by, I don’t know how they found out about me, but they came to me
and asked if I would like to play. I didn’t know if I was good enough, but then I played
softball with the Wooster, Ohio softball team for a year and then I played with Ashland
probably two years. 52.42
Interviewer: “A couple questions between all this, what was your father’s and
mother’s reaction to your playing baseball with the boys?”
Nothing, I mean it wasn’t negative, and you know the research shows, all the early
research shows, that the father is supportive and supportive of their daughter playing.
There’s no problem and my father was always supportive and my mother probably didn’t
disagree at all because she was a horsewoman in her early years and rode a lot and grew
up on a farm and farm women had to help and get out in the field, so she knew what
physical work was like. She was a little bitty woman, but she use to drive when they
made hay and would drive the horses, so I don’t think she thought there was anything
5
�wrong with it and like I said, dad was supportive. They didn’t get to very many games,
but they had other things to do, but I think they were supportive. 53:37
Interviewer: “So a scout of the softball team somehow heard about you and came
along and said, “I understand you’re a pretty good ball player?” You played for a
year or two years?”
I played with the Wooster team one year and Ashland was closer and I think that was one
of the reasons, I can’t think of any other good reason, why I went from one to the other. I
went to play with Ashland and I was in high school by now, I was in high school.
Interviewer: “And you were still a catcher?”
I am still a catcher.
Interviewer: “Do you have a catcher’s mitt now?”
I have a catcher’s mitt now.
Interviewer: “This is a more difficult question I know because you’re delving back
quite a few years, but did you have any indication what so ever of what you wanted
to do with your life at that point? Did you want to be a teacher like your parents?”
54:31
I always knew I would go to college, that was never a doubt. That was instilled in me
from the beginning, I mean as long as my folks and I communicated about anything, I
knew I would go to college, so I knew I had to do well in school, which I did, but I
wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after I got there and what my major might be at the time.
Interviewer: “Baseball isn’t even in the consideration because it’s something you’re
doing because it’s fun?”
6
�Yes, doing it because it’s fun, yes, definitely. Fun, F U N, fun and winning too
occasionally.
Interviewer: “Did you feel like you were pretty good?”
I don’t know, I don’t think I ever really—I don’t think I thought much about that. I was
interested in the fact that we were a team and that every time we won the team won. As
women, I don’t think we spent much time thinking about statistics and who hit the
winning RBI that high. I think it was the team winning and we were interested in the
game as a team game. 55:41
Interviewer: “Now, you’re in high school so your morning you go to school, you
come back in the afternoon, when are you playing baseball?”
Probably on a night, like a Friday night and we might be playing on a Sunday afternoon.
Interviewer: “This is a neighborhood thing, so you got the bleachers full of locals
and those people egging you on with rah, rah, rah?”
It was the thing to do to, and here we’re talking about the nineteen forties and people
didn’t have a lot of money and I think we were much before television was popular. You
might have one or two people in town that had a television set. I remember going to visit
somebody in 1948 and they had this snowy television set, but I think there wasn’t a lot to
do. You could go to the movies, pay seventy-five cents and go to the movies, maybe it
was a dollar by then, or you might go out and watch, I’m sure we weren’t the only
softball team in Ashland, the men probably had one or two teams, and they still had
businesses that sponsored men’s softball teams, so I still think in the nineteen forties
softball was probably a pretty popular activity for a medium sized, we’re talking about
twenty-five thousand people or twenty thousand people, something like that. 56:58
7
�Interviewer: “Can you remember, and how did you hear about Pearl Harbor?”
I was sitting with my father in our den and we had one of those Zenith tall radios, you
wouldn’t know about that, sorry, and it had a big round dial on it and so on.
Interviewer: “I actually do know about that.”
You do? I wasn’t going to—and we were in Ohio and it was in the morning, I’m sure it
was in the morning, it was a Sunday morning, I don’t know if we had been to church and
come home or we hadn’t gone yet, I can’t tell you the exact time, but my dad was
listening, I don’t know when it got turned on or anything, but I heard my father call my
mother in and they sat down and I think I kneeled, I don’t know if there was a chair there
or an ottoman or sofa or something for me to sit on, but I get the impression I was
kneeling down and cocking my head and listening and we heard Roosevelt come on the
radio and talk about the date that would live in infamy. 58:10 From there on it sort of
changed everything.
Interviewer: “How did it change around your immediate world?”
All the good teachers went off to work in the war plants, so there was a shortage of
teachers and I don’t know if you know this, but maybe you do, but once a woman got
married, in the nineteen thirties, she no longer could teach. Married women could not
teach, so until World War II, married women were pretty much prohibited from teaching
unless they had a special kind of certificate to do something, but in general married
women, if the husband taught, the wife couldn’t teach. So, my dad came home and he
was the principal of a fairly good size school, and he had been losing all his teachers—
you could make five times as much—you know that’s still the way it is, you can make
five times as much money doing something else as you can teaching. 59:13 Everybody
8
�was leaving to go to the was plants, so what happens is dad says, “Mom, you got to go
back and teach third grade, or fourth grade, or fifth grade, but you got to get back in.
They are dying for good teachers”, and my mother was a very good teacher, so she got
geared up to go back and teach and those were the years when people only had one car or
one truck, you didn’t have two. Our life changed immediately after we started in 1941
and we had war drives and war bond drives and we collected scrap metal and I know we
had scrap medal. We had recesses where we got our physical activity and remember I’m
a lot younger than I was from your previous question, but we didn’t have any organized
teams during that time that I’m aware of. 00:07 I had a paper route and I needed some
spending money, so after we lived there a couple of years I got a paper route in that
small town.
Interviewer: “When did you first hear about the league, The All American Girls
Professional baseball League?”
I’m not quite sure whether I read about it, and remember this is 1951, actually it’s 1950
when I first went to visit a cousin in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I don’t know when I heard
about the league, but Fort Wayne had a team and I went to visit my first cousin that lived
there, and she and her husband had two children at that time and they said to me, “would
you like to go see the girls play baseball tonight?” Well, that’s a no brainer you know,
YES, and I’m sitting there and I’m sixteen years old and we’re watching the game and
Fort Wayne had quite good attendance in those years and I’m sitting there and we’re
getting to the seventh or eighth inning and I have no idea who won the game or even
played, all I did was I turned to my cousin and I said, “you know, I can do that”, just like
that, right out of the blue. 1:24 That surprised even me because I don’t think the
9
�majority of women in that generation are terribly aggressive and I surprised myself by
saying that, and by golly my cousin got on the phone that next morning about eleven
o’clock I had a tryout with Max Carey, our manager, our hall of fame manager and least
four other Daisies were there and he put me through the paces for about an hour and he
said, when we were wrapping things up, “Lois, we will be in touch with you. We will
contact you probably around the first of the year”, and this was probably in August or
maybe July of the previous year, so I went back home and finished my junior year and
started my senior year in high school. 2:25 Along about January third or fourth I got
and invitation to come to spring training in Alexandria, Virginia, Fort Wayne Daisies.
Interviewer: “What was your parents’ reaction?”
I think they were both very positive about it. I remember my dad talking to my mom and
saying, “well, she’s going to go off to college at the end of this year. She’ll have a
chaperone and that’s more than she’ll have at college. We better send her off, it might be
a good experience for her”, so they were kind of positive about it. 2:57
Interviewer: “I want to walk you through very carefully, with a lot of detail, what
was the preparation to go, packing and the whole bit, what you’re thinking about
while you’re going through this. I don’t want to just suddenly show up there, give
us an idea of what it was like.”
Well, first of all during those years, every senior class had been collecting money for
fifteen years to go on a senior trip. We picked potatoes and we mowed lawns and we had
car washes and you know, some of the same things they are doing today and we ended up
with quite a bit of money, so our senior trip was planned to go to Washington D.C.
Alexandria, Virginia is real close to Washington D.C., and I thought, “well, if I can plan
10
�this and work this out, I can go with the class trip on the train, I don’t know if I had been
on a train before or not, I can’t remember, and we would go down—I think we left from
Akron, Ohio, went through Youngtown, through Pittsburg, on down to Washington D.C.,
this was my thinking, and then I could go to Alexandria and the rest of the seniors were
going to go to New York because they had all this extra money and they could go to New
York and spend it freely in New York City for another four days or so before we had to
go back to Ohio. 4:20 It was standard for every small high school in Ohio to take a
senior trip, so I’m thinking, “maybe I can maneuver this so I can get to Washington,
spend some time with my class, go see some of Washington D.C. and then get myself
over to Alexandria, Virginia, which is just across the river”, so I’m thinking, “well, the
first thing I have to do is I have to get out of school for about three weeks in addition to
our senior class week”, so this is a big chunk and whether you believe this or not, you just
didn’t get out of school. You had doctor’s appointments, dentist appointments, other
kinds of appointments after school or on week-ends. You just weren’t allowed to walk
off the school grounds. So I’m thinking, “how am I going to maneuver this?” I’m
talking to my teachers and I got an ok from all of them except one and I talked to the
superintendent and it was like getting special dispensation from the Pope to get away for
four weeks. 5:23 I jumped through all the hoops that they could possibly put in front of
me. I had one teacher that I had to send homework back to and I promised religiously
that I would do that. Everybody else said, “go with our blessing, and make the team “,
even the fellow I was going to the senior prom with said,” make sure you’re back here for
the senior prom”. Anyway, so I arranged it with the Fort Wayne Daisies, Ernie Bird was
their business manager and we wrote letters, we didn’t call back in those days, long
11
�distance phone calls cost a lot of money, so you wrote letter and I think they probably
cost three cents for a stamp too, so we wrote back and forth and we made the
arrangements that I would go spend some time with my senior class and then go over
Alexandria for the tryout for the Fort Wayne Daisies. 6:12 So we got on the train, there
are fifteen in my graduating class, nine boys and six girls, that’s a small town, and all I
remember is all the mothers and fathers were there and you would think we were going to
cyber space or someplace, and they gave us sandwiches, we had food, we had this long
trip to go to Washington D.C., I think it took eighteen hours, it wasn’t that far away.
Anyway, I remember eating sandwiches, we left like in late afternoon, and we went
through Youngstown and Pittsburgh and all the Bessemer burners in the steel mills were
going strong and it was an absolutely gorgeous site to see them lit up the way they were.
That’s one of my vivid memories of taking that trip. The rest would be seeing the
monuments in Washington D.C. and meeting with our local Senator or Representative
and having our picture taken with them, which every small class does on their little
sojourn to Washington D.C. Then they left and went over to New York City and I went
over to Alexandria, Virginia. 7:20 This is where, and I don’t know if you want to
include this, but you may know that Peanuts, Mamie ”Peanuts Johnson” had an article in
the New York Times not too long ago, and she’s an African American woman, and we get
asked this a lot if we speak to groups and so on, and since Jackie Robinson didn’t get into
the majors until 1947 it was obvious that there was a problem with having African
Americans in our particular league as well. Well, here we are in 1951 and according to
Mamie, she came to Alexandria, Virginia during that time that I supposedly was there. I
never saw her, but she indicated that she came, she came with another girl, another
12
�African American girl, and they wanted to try out and whoever the management was at
the time that met them and talked to them, told them that there was no place for them in
the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. 8:20 Now, the girls like myself,
none of us that I have talked to ever have any interaction with them or knew that she had
even come and we feel bad about that, but there wasn’t really anything we could do
about it when we didn’t know about it, so that’s something that we have been thinking
about and talking about some. Anyway, we never did have, to the best of my knowledge,
any African American player in our league. So, back to what we did there, I got the
opportunity, I’m not quite sure why, but I got picked out of the group to do some public
relations things and we were supposed to play in Baltimore. 9:06
Interviewer: “Let me back you up a little bit. You got there for tryouts?”
Yes, so I’m trying out.
Interviewer: “Ok”
I’m hitting, I’m running, and I’m throwing.
Interviewer: “In the movie you get this idea, and I know it was in the very
beginning of the league that you saw from the movie, but you walk out onto the field
and there’s all these women out there, girls playing, is that similar to what happened
with you?”
I don’t remember, to be honest, but I don’t think so because there were two teams and the
object in the 1951 spring training was to have two teams, the Battle Creek Belles and the
Fort Wayne Daisies, all have spring training together and then you would play exhibition
games around, I think it was Katie Horstman talking about being in North and South
Carolina and so on. Well we played—we had an exhibition game scheduled in whatever
13
�the Baltimore Stadium was at the time and we also were supposed to play in Griffith
Stadium. So this was part of—we practiced in Alexandria and we didn’t practice very
long before we started playing, supposedly, exhibition games. 10:04
Interviewer: “You’re the new kid.”
I know
Interviewer: “what was that like?”
I don’t remember very much about the tryouts. What I remember about it was that I
whisked off to be on the radio and whisked off to meet with Maury Povich, he was the
sports supreme or one of the major sports writers in the country at that particular time. I
had my first glass of wine, don’t tell on me, at one of the lunches we got feted at you
know. We were taken to lunch and I had a glass of Rosé and I have no idea who ordered
it, but I didn’t, but I drank it and I think I enjoyed it.
Interviewer: “You are very articulate and I would imagine, because of your
educational background with your parents and what not, some of the girls may or
may not been able to speak as well as you. If they are going to get you on the radio,
you have to be able to talk and that’s probably what happened.”
Well, we were trying to get them to come out to the games. I the idea we’re playing this
exhibition, come out to the game. I do want to tell you about—we got rained out of
Griffith Stadium, but the one picture I have, other than with Jimmie Fox who came later,
is I have a picture of Clark Griffith, the grand old man of baseball, and myself standing
next to him and another rookie I have never been able to find out, and then Max Carey.
11:25 The four of us are there and Max Carey has the handle of the baseball bat and
Clark Griffith has the other end of it you know and I am there in my dress, you know
14
�dresses, we must wear our dresses, and it’s an 8x10 and it’s been chopped and cut and
pasted, but it is my picture with Clark Griffith and Max Carey and it’s the only one I
have. The interesting thing is, I made the team and the girl next to me didn’t and I don’t
have any idea who she is, but that is, that’s my picture. 12:01 The second thing I want
you to know, in the world, as far as that goes, is that we went, we were in Griffith
Stadium and I go and take batting practice and I stood up there and I said, “Joe DiMaggio
stood here”, and I’m standing there and I turned around on the other side and I said, “Ted
Williams stood here”, and we didn’t get to play, we got rained out, but at least I had the
opportunity to stand there in Griffith Stadium at home plate. I never thought about
getting behind the mound like a catcher would. I was thinking about hitting for whatever
reason and now that I think about it in retrospect, I didn’t think about getting down there
and getting into a catchers position like Jim Hagen who caught for the Cleveland Indians.
12:41
Interviewer: “Now, by 1951 was there the—did you have to go through the charm
school and all that kind of stuff?”
It is interesting that you mention this. If you talk to groups of people, especially younger
people, one of the things they want to know is, “was that charm school really for real?” I
have to say, “yes, it really was in the early years”, and most of the gals that went through
it thought it was worthwhile. They didn’t pooh pooh at it and they didn’t think it was
terrible. I’m sure there were some that did, but the few that I’ve talked to thought they
learned some valuable lessons going through the charm school.. I think that was Mrs.
Wrigley’s idea in the first place.
Interviewer: “What about you? By the time you got in?”
15
�This is what I tell my audiences, “by the time they got to 1951 they had given up on us”,
so that’s my response. They were more interested in the ability of the players. Some of
those were still maintained through the whole twelve years, but charm school was not one
of the— 13:44
Interviewer: “What were some of the rules, the ground rules, when you started if
charm school was not in there, what are some of the things they told you? This is
what you have to do as a player.”
We always wore a dress or a skirt when you went to the ballpark, when you were out in
public; you were invited to a luncheon, home from the ballpark. You lived in private
homes and usually there were two of us to a private home. I think there might have been
some occasions over the years where there would be four. I’m looking forward to seeing
my Blue Sox roommate here at this reunion. Anyway, the pants thing, nope, no pants, no
slacks and even by then women were starting to wear slacks more and blue jeans were
more common as far as everyday dress. 14:33
Interviewer: “Kathryn Hepburn in particular really made it.”
Took over as far as that was concerned, but that rule was sacrosanct, we did not wear
pants period. Now, if we were going to the corner grocery store or something, if we
happened to be lucky enough to have a day off, of course if it was pouring down rain, you
could wear your jeans. You were very careful about how you presented yourself to the
public that was still very important. You didn’t have to worry about make-up, you didn’t
have to worry too much about the length of your hair, that was something that was
included in this charm school business and make-up, yes or no depending, most of the
time you put it on after the game not before. I remember the idea of dating—I don’t
16
�think—I’m going to get side tracked here, but the movie A League of Their Own, has this
wonderful scene at the “Suds Bucket”, I don’t know if you remember, but where
Madonna does her thing and I’m thinking, “oh, if we only had a “Suds Bucket” when I
was playing ball, I would have been there at every opportunity. 15:40 I love to dance
and I don’t remember my date ever asking a chaperone whether they could go out with
me and I dated quite a bit.
Interviewer: “Well, let’s start at the beginning, you’ve gone through the spring
training with the Daisies and the key thing here, I think, is for us to understand, and
remember we’re trying to get as much of your experience as possible and not the
league, but your experience. You had left home to play in the league for how long?”
Four years
Interviewer: “Right, but for your first season, a season is what?”
I think that first year Peoria was in the league and both of the Wisconsin [teams], so we
had eight teams that first year and then it went to six and eventually it went to five, but
we started out with eight teams. First of all I went back home, went to my senior prom
and graduated from high school all in one week and then I became a Daisy. There I am
in Fort Wayne, Indiana, my roommate is Pat Scott and she’s another rookie and she’s a
pitcher and a very good pitcher. I’ve got my Daisy uniform on and somebody picks me
up in a car to take me, I didn’t have an automobile or anything and I had no camera and
by the way we didn’t have cameras, if we had cameras you’d have all kinds of things to
use. The only cameras around were the little Brownie box cameras, no one had a camera
to take any pictures of each other and that’s why we’re short on pictures. The girls keep
asking about former players pictures and none of us had any cameras to take any pictures,
17
�let alone a movie camera. So here I am again, I’m back on track. 17:24 At the ballpark
and Max Carey is our manager we’re playing seven days a week with double headers on
Sunday and a seven inning first game. I think originally they had a nine inning second
game, but the switched and changed that to—I think because it got a little too much
with—we played a hundred and eighteen games that first season, so we had seven innings
and seven innings and then you got on the bus and rode all night to Rockford, Illinois and
then you played on Monday night and then you played seven more games and so on.
Interviewer: “This is overhand at this point?”
This is overhand, yes, this is 1951 and overhand started in 1948, so we went to—we were
definitely overhand pitching. 18:12
Interviewer: “This wasn’t a problem for you because you started out overhand and
as a catcher you were catching overhand anyway.”
Yup, well I loved it because I have short fingers you know and the baseball is small.
Nine inches is very different from a ten inch or twelve inch softball you know and my
softball would every once in a while fly off into right field when I’m trying to throw to
second base. So here we are, I’ve got this wonderful little nine-inch ball that I can get a
hold of, so I really enjoyed playing with a regulation nine-inch ball.
Interviewer: “What did you think of the uniform?”
I didn’t give it too much thought, but the reaction, I think, on the part of a lot of the
players in the beginning, and very much like it was in the film, was, “you mean I have to
play ball in that dress?” I think once they started to play—I think the biggest problem
was the strawberries, I don’t think it was—well, the other problem, and I’m going to
digress here a little bit and go back. By the time I got in the league we’d already made
18
�them into mini skirts. 19:09 If you look at the original uniform it’s got like three yards of
material in it. It’s got all kinds of extra skirt and it was to be worn exactly, according to
the older women, it was to be worn exactly one hand length above the knee. Well, that’s
pretty long and then you try to bend over and pick up a ground ball, you’ve got mostly
skirt and no ball, so you know these gals—our players are smart cookies and the first
thing they did was say, “we got to modify this”, so I talked to some of the older players
and they said was one of the first things they did was they got safety pins and they would
safety pin all this extra material of to the right and to the side, so it was more straight up
and down. By the time I got to the league they had really wised up I’ll tell you, we had
the first mini skirts. We took out all of the extra material, tightened it up and we lifted it
up so it was right below the tight line, so you could completely spread your legs without
any problem. Now, it’s still a one-piece dress and another thing, they wanted us to keep
it cinched in so it looked like we had a waistline you know. 20:20 Have you ever tried
to catch with your arms and your dress tries to go up in the air? It’s practically
impossible, so I kept—we would loosen everything when no one was watching you
know, we’d loosen this decorative belt that we had, which didn’t serve any real purpose
except being decorative, so we’d loosen that up and we looked pretty great out there
because according to everything you’ve read and so on, showing a lot of leg is ok, and we
got to do it in the fifties when it didn’t happen all the time. They were covered up below
the knee, and there were a lot of good-looking legs, so it served the purpose.
Interviewer: “What can you recall, if not your first game, what’s the first memory
you have of a game in the very beginning?”
19
�The first memory I have is being sent in to catch the last inning or the last two inning of
the game and hopefully we were ahead. I would get to go in because I was the rookie on
the team. We had two other very good catchers, and I’d get to catch batting practice
often for experience, and that first year I just sat on the bench and watched everybody.
21:31 Like I said, I’d have to go out and warm up the pitcher or go out to the bull pen
and warm up the reliever that was going in or maybe you got in to catch the eighth inning
or the eighth and the ninth inning for experience, and I know that first year, in 1951, Max
Carey said, “well, if we send her off to Kenosha for August, or part of August”, and
Kenosha was a team that was folding at that time and there last year was in 1951, if I
remember correctly. They were traveling by car and all of their home games were all
now away games, they adjusted that somehow, so I got to play a few games for Kenosha.
I don’t remember much about that; it was only for about a couple weeks. 22:18
Interviewer: “Your first season, this is going to be a touch question because it’s—I
have to keep in mind that you’re a very young, seventeen your first year—Was
there any sense at that point, maybe later it’s different, but was there any sense at
that point, the first season, that this was going to go on anywhere beyond that year,
or next year, playing?”
I don’t think anybody thought too much about it, this was my first year, maybe some of
the older players who had been in the league for four or five years, had a sense, when all
of a sudden they’re thinking about, “we don’t have the turnout in some of these towns
and we’re not going to have a team in Kenosha next year”. Dropping from eight to six-that would have been a clue to me if I had been thinking about that.
20
�Interviewer: “I guess what I’m trying to get at is, today a young boy, even to a
certain degree a young girl, can dream about being a professional, not necessarily
baseball, but you’re playing professional ball, but did you see yourself as a
professional ball player?” 23:24
I knew I was going to college, so after the 1951, first year, I took what money I earned
and paid my college tuition. I did that for four years, so in essence my four years as an
all American paid for my Baccalaureate degree. So there and I think my parents were
very supportive of that, but that’s the way I used the money. I never saw myself or as my
one hat or one role in life as being a professional baseball player.
Interviewer: “Another tough question, and this as you look back—I look at my own
life and as a seventeen or eighteen year old, did I really know what I wanted to do
kind of thing, but did you understand that this was something very unique and that
this baseball team was something very unique at the time or was it just like at the
ballpark when you played in the back lot with the kids, it was fun, but was there any
sense—ok this is paying for my college, but was there any sense the this is really
something great?” 24:32
At least you didn’t ask me the question; did we know we were being part of baseball
history?
Interviewer: “I’ll wait until later for that one.”
I mean no, no, I don’t think there was ever a player that played in our league—my
question to you, do you think you’re going to get the Pulitzer Prize sometime? No,
everybody that I knew loved to play and the only time you didn’t love it was when you
got a strawberry. Another time when you didn’t love it is when it rained in Fort Wayne
21
�and they poured gasoline on the field and burned the field in order to get rid of the water
and you had to go out and play in that and slide in that and field ground balls in that.
There were times when you didn’t—or you were very, very tired. Sometimes in August
when it’s very hot and muggy like it is the last couple of days here in Michigan, it got
pretty hot and when it got muggy we got pretty tired. 25:25 Remember, we didn’t have
any weight lifting or any weight training, we might have had some batting practice in
mornings at home, but very seldom on the road. We had no batting helmets, so if you got
hit in the head, you got hit in the head you know. We wore men’s equipment and I was a
catcher and I was forever—I don’t know what kind of tape it is, the shiny stuff.
Interviewer: “Duct tape”
Duct tape, there you go, I couldn’t think of it. I was forever cutting the chest protector
down so I could lift my arms, and the shin guards came halfway up my thighs because
that’s all we had, we had men’s equipment. Our bats were men’s bats and I couldn’t find
a bat that was small enough around, Ted Williams would have loved me because he
wanted that really small handle there, and I needed that because I had short fingers and
the weight was thirty-five, thirty-six pounds [ounces], that’s Babe Ruth weight for a bat.
26:32 I think I probably would have been a pretty good hitter if I ever could have found
a bat. We’d go into a sporting goods store to buy our bats right off the shelf and there
weren’t that many. Excuse me, I’m getting carried away, but the playing of the game
was made a little difficult because of the fact that there was nothing much out there,
really, for women, but no, the question you asked, did anybody think they were going to
be, or where were they going to be in history, how important was women’s baseball
compared to others? I do know though because somebody asked me, Jean Faut asked me
22
�this, we were the first professional women’s team sport league—first professional
women’s sport period. The golf people have challenged it, the PGA has that, but they
didn’t come into being until 1948, 1948 I think Just a tidbit to throw in there, but I don’t
think any of them ever, I never heard any talk about it, we has more fun singing on the
bus and deciding what we were going to eat or what we were going to wear to something.
27:45
Interviewer: “How many seasons did you play?”
Four, I terminated the league; I finished them out in 1954.
Interviewer: “I want to start now in getting into the actual games, but I want to do
it season to season as opposed to jumping—if you want to jump in there it’s fine, but
I’m just thinking, because your experience actually grows as you get better season to
season and I assume you did, so how was the first season?”
I did get better, you’rer right. It was very enjoyable even though I didn’t play very
much. I got to meet and get acquainted with my teammates and Max Carey was a
wonderful—he was a terrific base runner, so you learned a lot about base running from
him and he was a good teacher and I was very content to be where I was and continue to
learn. I never thought about jumping up and down and saying, “I want to play”, which is
something they would be doing now days, the men would be doing anyway or, “trade
me”, one of the two. 28:49
Interviewer: “I did one of the interviews in Milwaukee and I asked this question
about the managers. Did the manager treat you as a woman baseball player or did
the manager treat you as a baseball player?”
23
�As a baseball player, let’s face it, look at society during those years; the men were in
charge of everything, religion, economics, political, and were in charge of baseball.
There were men managers, the men were the umpires, the men drove the bus, but they
treated us as baseball players. That doesn’t mean they didn’t treat us with respect, they
respected us as women and were concerned about things like we were up all night riding
the bus. The manager was very concerned about that and the bus driver, helping us with
out luggage and be careful that is a bad step or something. They were very aware that we
were women, but as far as the game was concerned, we were treated like ball players.
29:51 No yelling, they were very professional about—the professional players like
Jimmy Foxx and Max Carey and so on, they were very professional in their interacting.
The no crying in baseball, I know that’s Hollywood proverbially, but still there are people
who think that actually happened and if you made a mistake, in some ways, your
manager would maybe call you off to the side or into the dugout and talk to you
individually or after the game was over they might call you in. I only know of one
incident in four years of a manager, in a relatively public area, having words and I don’t
remember what it was about at the time, but they were very professional and I know as a
catcher it was all right for me to kick a little dirt on the plate and to maybe kick a little
dirt on the umpire’s shoes. 30:56 You had to be very careful what you said to him you
know. I didn’t talk much to the umpire and I didn’t talk much to the other players.
Interviewer: “An interesting thing came up in the interviews that I’d done in
Milwaukee and was that a lot of you learned how to play baseball, as you said, just
playing with the boys. You never had professional training per say, but the ones
that I interviewed said that amateurs contributed a great deal because they told you
24
�little tricks or little things that professional baseball players learned in their
training, but since you were kind of a new thing, did you get any kind of tricks or
hints about catching that helped you become a better catcher or did you just learn it
on your own?”
Not too much because none of the—none of my managers were catchers. If they had
been I probably would have, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t listen. I learned a lot about
base running and learned some things about covering the base and certainly—we had
infield practice and we’d have-- the ball would be hit in from right field and you have to
hit the cutoff player you know and bounce it in on one bounce to the catcher. 32:05 We
all knew the basics, I don’t know where we learned them, but we knew the basics. The
manager might, some managers more than other managers, some had practice where
others—it seemed to be individual, from the gals I talked to, it seemed to be
individualized. Different managers worked on different things. I know one of the things,
because I wasn’t playing regular, I didn’t get—I got about two swings in for batting
practice because, you know, we had to get the regular players and hitters out there, and
we didn’t have much bating practice before—the managers I played for, they just didn’t
do that and I know darn well that I could have hit much, much better, every year I got
better at everything, and I know if I’d had more hitting practice and had a bat that I could
hang on to and didn’t fly out to the third baseman every time it flew out of my hands.
33:01
Interviewer: “When did it change for you, in the second season or the third season,
where you were playing more? You said you were sitting on the bench most of the
time.”
25
�I sat on the bench and the next year was 1952 and Jimmy Foxx, we had six, I think six
teams, you can go back and check on this, but I think we dropped down to six teams that
year and for the next two years I think we were at six teams, and Jimmy Foxx was the
manager and don’t let anybody tell you that he wasn’t just a wonderful man, I adored
him. He was renascent, well the exact opposite of Jimmy Dugan. Now, he was an
alcoholic and I want the record—everybody knew that, but if you’re a health educator,
you know that alcoholics can drink quite a bit and it doesn’t show, so he’d go home and
do his drinking at night and he would show up at the ballpark sober the next day and he
was a great big guy, so I suppose he could drink a lot. 34:01 I don’t know, but I think
everybody that knew him, and Bobby Doerr lives in my part of the world out in Oregon,
and I’ve talked to him about Jimmy Foxx and he said that the drinking is what caused his
demise as a baseball player or helped add to that, and we just loved him. If we were
lucky he would take batting practice four or five times during the season and he would
hit the ball over our fence, over a pasture and out over a four lane highway, but we
couldn’t get him—we just couldn’t get him to do it very often and we had to beg him, we
had to grovel to get him to take batting practice, but we all adored him, so most of us feel
kind of bad that sports writers and movie critics have written that the Jimmy Dugan in A
League of Their Own is a thinly veiled Jimmy Foxx and every chance I get I like to say,
“you think what you want, but that’s not the Jimmy Foxx that I played for”, so that kind
of bothered me. 35:10
Interviewer: “In the second season did you start to play more?
I played some, not a lot, we still had two good catchers and we had lost two good teams
from the league. I was always the squirt, about 110 pounds, maybe 115 at my top weight.
26
�I wasn’t a home run hitter, and I was vying with six foot gals that were pretty good sized
and I couldn’t get a bat that I could hold.
Interviewer: “I think that was the reason. When did it change?”
1953 I started to play. I was traded to South Bend and I guess they needed a catcher, I
don’t know, but I was traded to South Bend and started to play regularly.
Interviewer: “Once again It’s unfair, but can you remember the feeling—because
you’d been sitting on the bench for two seasons and now you’re, you got a good gig
going on here, you got money coming in, you’re going to college and all, but there
had to be a difference in your emotions when suddenly you’re now at south bend
and now you’re playing more. Tell us about that, how did that feel?” 36:16
Absolutely, and I guess all of a sudden I realized that, “yeah, I belong here”. Maybe
before I didn’t think that I quite belonged. I belonged in all these ways, but as far as
being a ball player maybe I didn’t quite belong and all of a sudden I started to play and I
started to be able to throw the ball down to second base alright and I got knocked on my
whatever I suppose ten or twelve times and got knocked out a couple times, but I
managed to make the put out at home plate and it’s not easy when you see a six footer
coming at you. Anyway, I took a few of those knocks pretty well, hung onto the ball and
I think my feeling was coming that I really belonged. 37:14 My hitting was coming
along, I wasn’t a great hitter, and that didn’t seem to bother me. I thought it would come,
but my throwing was better and I always knew in my head what was going on, more so
than some of my teamates who couldn’t remember how many outs there were, but you
know, I always was on top—the mental part of it wasn’t any problem.
27
�Interviewer: “I was a pitcher, a lousy hitter, but such a good pitcher, this is little
league and I’m not anywhere in your league, and I’m talking as if we’re both
professionals here, but I do know what you mean. There is a certain amount of
compensation your players give you if you know that you’re a really good pitcher or
a really good catcher. You don’t hit as well, but we got hitters and we’ll take care of
it. What was the most challenging thing about being a professional catcher as
opposed to this sandlot kind of catching? Or maybe there wasn’t a whole lot of
difference, I don’t know.” 38:11
It’s hard to compare because you’re older and have had all these other experiences that
kind of filtered in here. I think part of it might be the idea of playing everyday rather
than just on occasion and you tend to build on that fact that maybe you learned something
last night and you still remember it. Excuse me, but rather than, “I made that mistake two
weeks ago”, because you didn’t play that often, plus the fact that we’re older and
hopefully you learn some things, you read the paper, you maybe read some things about
Ted Williams hitting you know. I mean, different players had a different, I think,
approach. 39:06
Interviewer: “Did you have any sense of how good you were?”
No, not the foggiest and you brought that up earlier and one of the things that I think is
interesting is I have always felt rather uncomfortable knowing I was on a team for four
years, but never contributed heaps and gobs. That I never was, although I played
regularly, especially the last two years and played well and the last year I hit 284 which is
in the top one third or yeah, in the top one third of all the players that played that year,
and I was up there and I feel good about that, but I always felt that I wasn’t quite worthy
28
�and I don’t know quite how to explain this. I never really thought about how to articulate
it, but I’ve always thought—yes, I guess that would be a way of expressing it, that I
wasn’t as good as some of these other players and therefore, I’m not worthy of being
included in the group and yet so many people, people that aren’t just my friends who
might tell me something like this, “hey, you made the league, you made the team, you
played, what else is there?” It’s just a “get a hold of yourself and quit thinking that way,
that thinking is obsolete, it doesn’t make any sense”. 40:34
Interviewer: “A lot of people didn’t make the league and another thing that is
really a good part of that movie, is that scene with Geena Davis and Tom Hanks
where she says, “if it was easy everybody could do it”.
That’s the scene I quote to everybody, throw out that” there’s no crying in baseball” and
get to the heart of the game of baseball. “It just got too hard”, she said and he said, “it’s
supposed to be hard, if it wasn’t hard everyone could do it, it’s the hard that makes it
great”, and to me that is the summary, the overpowering scene in that whole movie that
sums up what baseball is all about. 41:12
Interviewer: “I use it in my writing classes. I teach writing and I said, “If it’s not
hard anybody could do it”. I use that same example.”
It’s the hard that makes it great and to me that is the scene from the whole movie that the
women in this league should take with them to share with friends, relatives, and admirers,
fans, and forget that, “there’s no crying in baseball”, which is a clichéd kind of thing that
got thrown in there so Tom Hanks could do a little acting. I guess he did it well because
according to Pepper Paire, one of our catchers in the league who was one of the advisors
on, or whatever kind of a role she had as far as the film was concerned, she said, “they
29
�had to have ten takes of that with Tom Hanks because the cameraman would break up
every time he said, “there’s no crying in baseball”.
Interviewer: “So you just got to take it realize, “well, that’s Hollywood”. 42:12
Absolutely, but I’m sorry, but that’s the real clincher in that film, that’s my scene.
Interviewer: “I agree”
So I got better every year, all right? 1953 I’m catching with Fort Wayne, I mean with the
South Band Blue Sox and I catch a perfect game. Jean Faut, who pitched as probably one
of the all time greats in our league, she could play any position, she could hit the ball out
of the ballpark, she could pitch, she had all the pitches in the world, she pitched a perfect
game on September 3rd, 1953 and we beat the Kalamazoo Lassies four to zip in
Kalamazoo on their home turf. 42:56 I’m laughing because I have no idea if she called
the game or if I called the game, but I’m sure she did call her own game, so I take very
little credit for that other than the fact that I managed to hang on to the ball, all right?
People keep asking me who called the game and I said, “well, when Jean Faut’s pitching
she calls her own game and whether or not I called the pitches she liked and she didn’t
you know.
Interviewer: “Yeah, but something you might have noticed in baseball, you have to
have a catcher with the pitcher. It’s essential to the whole thing and she may have
been a great pitcher, but unless somebody was on the other end catching it, I’m
afraid the game would just not be the same.”
Anyway, that’s my big claim to fame. That and hitting one home run in Grand Rapids.
43:42
Interviewer: “I want to hear that one, please.”
30
�I hit one home run in 1953 with South Bend, I think it was—no, maybe it was 1954—all I
remember is that I hit it over the fence, it was in Grand Rapids and it was my one home
run and it might have been in 1954, I think it was in 1954. Anyway, 53 or 54 I got my
one home run in there. 1953 I caught almost the whole season for South Bend and that’s
where the perfect game came in. We were playing a shorter—I think maybe six teams,
but we weren’t playing as many games and attendance was starting to fade and I think, if
I’m not mistaken, when I reheard Ken Burns, they had it on PBS again, they talked in
there about the fact that in the early 1950’s all the major league ballparks had problems
with attendance. 44:42 So, I’m trying to put together—people want to know why we
quit playing and I hadn’t realized that the attendance had really fallen off in major league
baseball in the early fifties. So, it stands to reason that we wouldn’t have people coming
out to the ballpark either. They didn’t give any reason for it, but they said there was a
major drop off in all major league attendance during the early fifties, so obviously that
happened with us as well, so 1953 the season was shortened, 1954 I got traded back to
Fort Wayne. I didn’t ask why, I just picked up my stuff and went and Bill Allington was
out manager then and you’ve probably heard his name because he’s the manager in the
league over the years that everybody said, “if somebody cracked open his skull little
baseball would roll out”. I mean, he was a taskmaster, I don’t know if he did spot
quizzes, but he had the rulebook and he expected you to know the rules, he did a lot of
teaching and he was the manager of the infamous Rockford Peaches for many years and
then he came to us in 1954. 45:45 He said, “Lois, I’ve got a catcher, you’re too fast
you’re going to be a left fielder”, and he made me into an outfielder. I didn’t –well, I
roamed well and I was pretty quick, I had to make up for my other lack of strength and
31
�other things by being fairly quick, so I could read where the ball was going to go and
made some pretty good catches out there and I could throw fairly accurately and in left
field you didn’t need a cannon for an arm, only the right—that’s the interesting thing
about playing right field, you know when you’re a kid it’s the worst place to be and when
you’re in the majors it’s the best outfield position because you have to have the greatest
arm and you got to hit and do other things. Left field was a good place for me because I
could handle everything he needed and I hit. There’s something I want to share with you
if we’ve got time. I’m playing left field and we’ve been playing with this ten inch ball
and all of a sudden, around the fourth of July, I think it was a couple of days after the
fourth of July, it was around the fourth of July in 1954 and all of a sudden we get a nine
inch regulation baseball. 47:00 I’ve talked to the gals and I can’t get anybody for the life
of me, able to explain whether or not they ever really practiced with a nine inch ball. It
just sort of appeared. We got to the ballpark, the baselines had been extended, the
pitchers mound had been moved back to sixty feet when we had been playing with it a
little shorter than that. Same old bats and same old uniform, but they moved the outfield
fences back and they kept playing with the distance so they could—I remember hearing
bill Allington say, “If you can hit a home run, we got to move the fences back”, but the
thing that I haven’t been really able to digest is how we could go from a major change
from a ten inch ball to a nine inch ball and change the distances everywhere and not ever
have practiced like two or three weeks before in the mornings or sometime with this nine
inch ball, but it just appeared and bingo there we are with a whole new game. 48:02 I
don’t know what the newspapers or the radio, we had those two venues, but no television,
but what they had to say about it. I would like to go back sometime and do some
32
�research to find out how it happened. I know it happened because of the fan appeal and
they wanted to see if they could bring some more people into the—I think most of the
changes that were made over the years were made primarily to bring more people into the
ballpark. Softball wasn’t a novelty, but boy, throwing it sidearm from a distance with a
smaller ball that’s kind of different. The second part of my theory, since I’m allowed, is
that these managers knew of the athletic ability of the gals they had playing the game. I
don’t think they ever would have tried to change the game if they didn’t think the gals
could handle it. 48:51
Interviewer: “How did it end for you? How did you find out that it was the end for
you particularly?”
Well, fortunately I was playing left field and I think it was around the sixteenth of
August, around the middle of August after we’d made this giant switch to the nine inch
ball, that somebody in South Bend, the catcher, got injured, so they asked me if I would
go back and finish the season because they needed a catcher. They were—we kept losing
the catchers, but anyway, I got shifted back and I said, “Well you know if they need a
catcher, I don’t think I have much choice”. I had to go and that was the year that fort
Wayne was just knocking the socks off the ball you know. They had Jo Weaver and
Betty Weaver Foss and Jean Weaver and these four hundred hitters and home runs every
time you turned around and locomotors on the base pad I’ll tell you that and so, I went
back and finished the season in South Bend. Now, Fort Wayne won the pennant and I
remember going back and I don’t know, I don’t think—they had a banquet or something,
but they did give me—I got a scrapbook and it says Daisies “54” and you know I’m not
sure—I got a couple of things that they gave to the players. 50:08 But I finished at
33
�South Bend and it kind of finished with a whimper and I’m not sure we did anything in
South Bend to end thing s up, but I’ll ask Mary, my roommate, my married roommate
with I don’t know how many grand kids she has now, but we’re rooming together and
I’ll see if she has any feeling about how we ended. It sort of ended with a whimper,
actually. Now the thing that probably didn’t bother me as much was because I was
getting ready to go, I got my degree now and I’m out in the world, I got another goal in
mind and I was fortunate enough that I was very successful in education and went on and
they were four wonderful years, don’t misunderstand me, but they’re not my entire life,
they don’t define me. 50:52 My four years don’t define me.
Interviewer: “That’s an interesting transition for my next question. You say it
ended with kind of a whimper, but you had a life ahead of you and you and you had
a very productive life ahead of you. A lot of the WWII vets that I’ve interviewed
and even some of the women ball players, say that they didn’t really think about
their baseball experience as they’re going through their life. Is that true of you too?
Did you tell people you were a baseball player when you were an educator?”
I did on occasion and the response was, “oh, you’re a softball player”, and you’ll get that
from everybody. No one knew who we were and where we were or what we did. I
wasn’t until Penny Marshall came out with the film and people were coming out of the
woodwork, former students and colleagues say, “Why didn’t you ever tell us you played
baseball?” I said, “If you had been listening, I did tell you that early on and you
responded with “you played softball”? And I never could explain it well enough to get
you to understand that it really wasn’t softball, it was baseball”, and once the film came
out—51:58
34
�Interviewer: “That’s my next question. What effect did the film have on you? I
don’t mean a critical review of the film, do you know what I’m talking about?”
I’m going to give you a critical review of it. I’m in Eugene, Oregon and I get a call from
a local newspaper, the head of the sports section calls me and he said, “ I would like to
take you to see the film and the first showing is Saturday morning at eleven o’clock”,
and at a local theater, and I said, “well”, my mother lived with me for twenty-two years
and she was still in good health then, so this is 1992, so I said, “yes”, and I obviously
hadn’t seen it and hadn’t been invited to any of the premieres. I’m way out there where it
takes a pony express to get to me and no one had ever bothered and I didn’t get to
Cooperstown to the exhibit because my boss was an Englishman and he didn’t think—I
suppose if I had said it was soccer he may have—or cricket, there you go, but he didn’t
think I should go. 53:03 I had to work with the guy for another eight years or so and I
didn’t think it was worth circumventing him to go to the Dean, which I could have done,
but I opted not to do that.
Interviewer: “It shows that you didn’t think it was that big of a deal I guess, huh?”
Well, I had to work with this gentleman for eight years and he was in charge and he could
have made life very uncomfortable for me for eight years. There we are back to the
movie, so I meet him at the theater and we go in. The first thing is the music you know,
overpowering music. I don’t know how many minutes we were into the film before I was
crying and in another two minutes I was sobbing. I sobbed, and I don’t mean cried, I
sobbed through the whole movie. Talk about embarrassed, losing my cool, I just cried
and cried my heart out. I just brought back everything I hadn’t thought about for—since
1954 to 1992. 54:03 It all came rushing forward you know, excluding the hyperbole, the
35
�feel of it, and like I just said, I just sobbed for—I sobbed through the end and then I was
embarrassed and he wanted to buy me a cup of coffee or something and my eyes were
two big red blobs here and I told him I was sorry and I was embarrassed, but it just
brought back this rush of memories and I’m sorry, this is just the way I reacted to it.
54:35
Interviewer: “How did that movie change you or change your perception of your
participation after that. You’re past the crying and the emotional element and now
you’re into day two, day three and the rest of your life. Did it have any effect on you
in terms of other people reacting? You said your students were talking about it and
stuff. How did it change you?”
A number of people wanted to go see the movie with me. They wanted to know, all of a
sudden there’s this big gigantic interest in this movie. It made lots of money because it’s
still being shown every two months or three on cable TV, so anyway, I went, I must have
gone eight times with different groups of people who wanted to go see the movie and
we’d go have ice cream or something afterwards and they could ask me about the movie
and then I got to—I was a chapter in a book and the university bought the book, that
chapter to put in their quarterly. 55:36 Then more people had a chance to read it, but
immediately after the film, I think I went seven or eight times with different groups of
people and I was considerably calmer and could explain what happened and then people
started asking me if I would come and speak to this group, the rotary, there are three
rotary’s in Eugene and while the film was still being shown I got invited to speak to a lot
of-Interviewer: “Were you at all surprised at all of this?”
36
�No, honestly no, because finally our story got told and it was the truth. Now, there are
some things that are out of order and probably the most significant is the fact that in 1943
we would have been throwing underhand and not overhand, but there was a germ of
truth, even Stillwell, you know I played for the Blue Sox and Jean Faut, the pitcher for
the no hit game, was married to the manager, Karl Winsch, and they had a little boy and
he traveled on the bus with us, but he was a little boy of the fifties and not the 1990’s, so
you never heard of him, you never knew that he was there, so they took some of these
ideas and did the Hollywood thing to him, which I could stand. 56:46 I’ve always said
that it captured, that film captured the spirit of the league and the spirit of the women that
played, the spirit of the game, those three things, the spirit of the league, the spirit of the
game that we played and the spirit of the women that played because not being nit
picking, I thought Penny Marshall did us just fine. 57:08 I was pleased with her film.
Interviewer: “Looking back now and for the record, Where do you think this all fits
into the whole scheme of things for—and lets get really big here, you’re an educator,
I’m an educator and we know that in human history there are moments, some of
them tragic, some of them great, some of them—you look at the time line of history
and there’s all these things. We’re blips on these things, but where does the All
American Girls Professional Baseball League fit into all of this?”
Well, I think we need to stop taking credit for being a pioneer in women’s sports. Title
IX is what did this for us. Title IX came along in 1972 and any parent that’s got a child,
male or female, that can get a college scholarship now, we can’t—you know if you’re
going to get $100,000.00 free scholarship to Stanford or Ohio State or Michigan or
wherever it is, it’s not to be sneezed at and that came with Title IX. 58:12 Also, the
37
�proliferation of other women’s professional sports came with Title IX because until
Penny Marshall got to us, nobody knew we even existed, so I see us a sort of a blip, a
very fond, warm, fuzzy blip or whatever you would like to call it, an anomaly actually
and I’m often asked if women belong playing with men’s teams and no, I don’t see that
because of lestosterone and lack of and levers, you know, they’re bigger, they’re
stronger etc., but I do think if the ever wanted to have an al American girls, Women’s
professional baseball team again, and there were enough women who were interested in
doing it, we have professional women’s fast pitch softball and most of those gals, that’s
the way the original All Americans got started. 59:06 Most of them made the transition
to the smaller ball and the longer distances, some couldn’t, but I don’t think we should e
taking credit, in retrospect, for something that really title nine, through federal funding
and balancing the men’s and the women’s varsity sports at the collegiate level, and the
high school levels, helped balance out.
Interviewer: “But you have to admit the number of women who credit you,
regardless of whether the film was there or not. I talk to athletes, women athletes at
our university. There’s a coach at our university who you were a major inspiration
to and knew enough about the fact before the movie.”
We may be an inspiration and I’m not saying that our story won’t inspire prospective
women athletes, and I think we do everything we can to be the voice as well as the face
of the AAGPBL speaking as often as we can, but yes, sure I would love to be an
inspiration to a group of Babe Ruth baseball ten year olds, girls, and boys.
Interviewer: “I’m trying to get my mind around that.”
38
�Interviewer: “Let me ask you the last question and I really appreciate you put up
with this for so long. You mentioned earlier about how you played baseball as a
child and you enjoyed it. You played the baseball as a professional with the idea
that you were going to go to college, you had a larger picture involved, but now,
looking back at that experience, and now you have pre-baseball professional
baseball after you watch the things you’ve accomplished that you’re proud of, this is
just one of them, I know that, but where does that fit in your life?” 1:02
Oh, it’s extremely important because I’ve been sports oriented you know, it’s right up
there with some other awards, alright? It was only four years out of my like, but it’s a
significant four years. I wouldn’t trade those four years for forty of some of my other
years, and it’s even better now that we’re older because we can embellish all those stories
that we’ve been telling over the years you know? You really did get to third base, but I
tagged you, no you didn’t, it was second base, what do you mean, you never got to third
base. It’s a significant part of my life. I simply meant—what I’m saying is it doesn’t
define my total life, but it’s a significant portion of it and I’m extremely proud of it. I
wear my ring with pride and thank god I had those four years and I probably would have
played four more if they had them because it worked out well being a teacher and coming
back and I was getting better. 2:10 That made me feel good.
39
�
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
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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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
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
Identifier
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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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/.
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RHC-58_LYoungen
Title
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Youngen, Lois (Interview transcript and video), 2010
Creator
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Youngen, Lois
Description
An account of the resource
Lois Youngen was born in a small town in Ohio in 1933. She grew up playing baseball with boys from her town, and played on a boys' team for several years before switching to a girls' softball team while in high school. She learned about the All American League while visiting a relative in Fort Wayne in 1950. She joined the league the next year and played for Fort Wayne, Kenosha and South Bend as a catcher and outfielder until the league folded in 1954. She used the money she earned as a player to go to college, and eventually earned a doctorate in Physical Education and taught at the University of Oregon.
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--Indiana
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-04
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/09534ac5cad0c3de04430a392a308d4b.m4v
34e524624d277662d6dc1c5934bc2b74
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/149a9b4cd9d722443da7e47d52fdd06f.pdf
de582ea70840b72f5d636aa3a16fa60b
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans’ History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Katie Horstman
Length of Interview: (01:08:34)
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, May 20, 2010
Interviewer: “What is your name and where and when were you born?”
My name is Katherine Teresa Horstman known as Horsy or Katie and I go by the name
of Katie and I was born in Minster, Ohio on April 14, 1935.
Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like, before high school, in the early
days?”
The early days—I had five brothers, two sisters, born on a farm east of Minster, Ohio and
I’ll tell you, I had a lot of cows to milk every morning and that’s how I got my wrist
strength, so Jimmy Foxx said. I helped with the chores because my brothers all were in
service at one time, so the three girls had to help out with the farm work, help dad.
Interviewer: “So your dad was a farmer?”
Oh yes.
Interviewer: “A dairy farmer?”
We had everything. It was a hundred acres at that time, about a hundred acres it was all
small. Small town, German town, talked German, didn’t talk in English, I was brought
up speaking German. 1:19.
Interviewer: “So the early day before the war you had your brothers around you?”
They were all older I was the second youngest.
Interviewer: “Ok, so you didn’t play games with your brother—they were already
older.”
Except for one brother, John and he was a good ball player, but whenever I could,
whenever I didn’t have chores to do or anything, drive the tractor or whatever, John and I
would hit balls. We had a lot of neighbor kids and every Sunday it was known that we
would take turns going to each other’s houses and play baseball, not softball because the
boys didn’t want to play softball, we had to play baseball. 2:03 If you weren’t any good
you sat on the sidelines, but if you were good they asked you to play.
1
�Interviewer: “So did you sit on the sidelines?”
No way, no I was pretty good otherwise they wouldn’t let me play.
Interviewer: “In school were there any kinds of sports for girls?”
Not at all until—it was a Catholic community, 99.9 percent Catholic, and a young priest
came into town and he started the CYO, which was a Catholic Youth Organization. The
girls didn’t have anything and he felt sorry for us and he was a good ball player, so he
started it. We had softball, so I started in the sixth grade and ended up a freshman
because at fifteen years I was scouted by Fort Wayne, Indiana. 2:56
Interviewer: “We’re jumping too quickly—so he set up a softball team that was not
just for boys?”
No, not at all, they didn’t play softball they played baseball.
Interviewer: “So there was a softball girls team that you played on in high school?’
Exactly.
Interviewer: “Did you hear about out did you know about, for example,
professional men’s baseball? Were their newspapers that you red or radio?”
Oh my gosh, Wally Post is from around us, played for the Reds and Pete Rose was born
on April 14th, same as my birthday, so that was my hero, my idol.
Interviewer: “So you actually knew about baseball outside of just the people you
were playing with?” 3:39
Oh yeah.
Interviewer: “You followed the teams?”
Radio, we always had the Reds on—big Reds fans.
Interviewer: “When did you hear, I don’t mean the exact date or anything, but do
you remember when it was that you heard there was a women’s team?”
Well, in one of the papers, Dottie Schroeder was in the Sidney Daily News and said that
Charlie Grimm would pay her fifty thousand dollars if she was a man. I cut it out and I
had a little scrap book that I kept all the clippings in because we had a weekly paper, The
Minster Post, and they would always put the scores in and what we did, and I pasted
those in and I put Dottie’s picture right on the front and put under it, My Ambition, not
knowing, I was only fourteen then when I saw this picture in the paper, and I cut it out
and I always dreamt that hopefully I would meet her. 4:35
Interviewer: “So once you saw that picture, you cut it out and put it in your
scrapbook. When did the actual opportunity come up?”
2
�The next year—my father passed away that year, when I was fourteen, so I was tired of
milking the cows for my brother and the chickens and everything else that we had to do
and I thought—I just kept praying on the dream that I gotta find. So we were playing St.
Henry in Ohio in May during school time and a scout from Fort Wayne happened to be
there and he told the coach from St. Henry, “Hey, I think that girl can play ball and she
can play on the Fort Wayne Daisies team”, and he said, “who are the Fort Wayne
Daisies? He had never heard of Fort Wayne either or girls baseball, so his daughter was a
senior, so he said, “I would like to see those two try out for the Fort Wayne Daisies.”
5:45 He’s the one that took me after school was out, which was like May 23rd and we
went to Fort Wayne and I started pitching and infield practice. Max Carey was the coach,
hallo of famer, and he said, “Yes, you can stay”. 6:02
Interviewer: “What did your mom think about this?”
Well, I came home, I had to get clothes and stuff, and I told her about it and she said, “As
long as you go to church every Sunday you can go, but as soon as you don’t you’re back
here”, so I never missed a Sunday in my life because I always remember my mother, she
was very, very strict.
Interviewer: “What was the actual process? How did you get there and once you
got there what actually happened? I know you want to get into the game and all
that, but for our purposes we want to know the exact details.”
Okay, I was fifteen years old, I couldn’t drive, I didn’t have a car, my dad had passed
away, and nobody could take me except Tony Bernard, who was from St. Henry, the
coach, he took me and then I started and I had another roommate from Philadelphia and
we stayed in somebody’s home, you couldn’t stay in apartments, we always stayed in
private homes that wanted some ball players to stay with them. 7:16
Interviewer: “Did you sign a contract?”
Oh yeah.
Interviewer: “At fifteen?”
At fifteen I signed a contract. Fifty dollars, the rookies got fifty dollars a week, okay this
was great money since I was only making forty cents for mowing the neighbors’ lawn, an
acre. I could have cared less about the money I had no idea. I think the first year, until I
turned sixteen; I was paid under the table. They gave me cash because they weren’t
allowed to write out a check. 7:47
Interviewer: “So, had you traveled at all any distance before you went to Fort
Wayne?”
3
�Probably Dayton, Ohio was forty-five miles and that took an hour and a half in a 1936
Ford because I remember the escalator that’s all I remember. I had never been on an
escalator and I was petrified to go up that escalator and I finally did and it was okay.
Since we had chores, you had to be there, it was a responsibility and we didn’t know any
better and loved it as long as I could play for CYO once a week that was great to me and
I loved to hit. 8:29
Interviewer: “What was your first impression of Fort Wayne when you got there?”
Well, when I got there it was funny because Max Carey had me pitch right away. He
wanted to see my arm. Well, I had a pretty good arm and I was very accurate and I
pitched and pitched for at least thirty minutes batting practice and Lefty Alvarez was
picking up the balls and giving them to me and she was talking and I couldn’t understand
her and I thought, “what kind of a language is she talking and what am I getting into?”
She kept saying, “are you tired, are you tired, are you tired?” I thought, “gosh” and I
finally turned around and asked somebody because I couldn’t understand her and they
said she was saying, “are you tired”, and they said she was from Cuba. 9:16 I said,
“Cuba, where’s that? I had no idea. I really paid attention to the history lessons after
that.
Interviewer: “Did you feel at all intimidated at that age? Here’s these girls you
know who are playing professional ball.”
I was more intimidated by the big city life. That just threw me you know, all these cars
and all these people, I had no idea, but as far as playing ball, no, they were all very nice.
Dotty Schroeder was on that team, so I was happy, Jo Weaver, the sisters, Jean Weaver
and Betty, super nice because most of them came from farms like me, so I could
communicate and we talked farm life mostly and baseball and that’s all I remember.
10:09
Interviewer: “ Now rookies are usually treated like rookies, so how were you
treated when you first started?”
Not bad at all because they knew I had an arm and knew I could hit, so we had no
problems. Jo, Jeanne and I, there were four of us that were fifteen, sixteen years old and
that helped. With her sisters being older and Betty was a super player, and they played
two years before I did, Betty did, So she had the car and she took us all around and that’s
how I got my transportation. 10:54
Interviewer: “That must have been amazing to be with some players and one of
them has a car?”
I know, it was unreal, well she was making a hundred and some dollars a week and cars,
you could buy a band new car at the end of the season for two thousand five hundred, so
she always had a brand new car and a big one you know. We were in seventh heaven and
didn’t know it.
4
�Interviewer: “I know this is going back a long way, and I don’t want to jump ahead
too far, but what were the first few, say days or weeks like? You didn’t start
playing in a game right away did you?”
No, no.
Interviewer: “What were the first days kind of like?” 11:31
Just more or less getting acquainted with the girls and getting use to playing every day
and a regular schedule.
Interviewer: “What was the routine? I know it was different sometimes, but what
was the routine?”
The routine was that a four o’clock you would be at the ballpark and we would warm up
and stuff and seven o’clock was game time and the crowd would come in. Fort Wayne
had one of the biggest crowds in the whole league and then we would watch the game or
participate for the first couple of weeks or month. I didn’t play very much, but just
watched to see how everybody was playing their position. I was very versatile because I
could play outfield or whatever, but I never considered myself a pitcher because I didn’t
pitch underhand, I always threw overhand. 12:35
Interviewer: “At that time, when you first started, were they still pitching
underhand?”
No, no, in softball in the CYO, that’s the only position I never played. Just to get
acquainted with the bigger city and the fans and the rules, that’s what threw me, I
couldn’t believe the rules. Lipstick on every day all the time because the chaperone
would remind you and I mean she was strict, Tetzlaff from Wisconsin and every time we
would try to get out of it or something she would say, “Okay, either wear it or you get
fined”. The fine the first time was five dollars and then ten dollars and then twenty
dollars and then suspension, you were out and man, I didn’t want to go home. Although I
did get homesick and I was surprised, but you get over that. 13:32 I think my room
mate, Jeanne Geissinger, who was sixteen, she helped me a lot, we were both together
and like I said, the Weaver sisters really helped me.
Interviewer: “I’m kind of curious about this, had you worn lipstick before you had
gone into the league?”
No, you normally didn’t wear lipstick in our town until you were sixteen. Sixteen was
like a magic number, you could wear lipstick, you could have a date, you never dated
before and that was another thing because some guys would come up and ask me for a
date and I said, “well I don’t know, I have to ask the chaperone”, and she said, “Only if I
go along”. Go along, I thought, “wow” and I said, “No, I’ll wait until I’m sixteen”.
Interviewer: “Well, who taught you how to put lipstick on?”
5
�Well, I just did it you know. It wasn’t that hard and I thought it was amazing and then we
had curfew and I wasn’t use to that either because on the farm we went to these dances
and we had huge dance halls and we had Guy Lombardo, the Eagles and all and that was
very famous in our town, we had big dances. 14:46 So, I don’t know, I just got to learn
how to put lipstick on and everything and that was it.
Interviewer: “ What were some of the other things you had to do besides lipstick?
Did you have to wear your hair a certain way?”
It had to be a certain length. You couldn’t wear boyish hairdos. You had to be in two
hours on a road trip and that was another thing, we got to travel to Rockford, Illinois and
all these places, but if you got off the bus to get a coke, you had to put a skirt on. You
could wear shorts and slacks on the bus, and I thought--my god, we stopped at a little
town and I said, “who in the world is out here at two thirty in the morning? I don’t see
anybody”, and she said, “if you want to pay the five dollars, it’s up to you”. No way.
15:41
Interviewer: “Was there, when you first started, did they kind of sit you down, you
and a couple others, to kind of go through this little school—this is what you have to
do, you have to have on lipstick etc.?”
The chaperone did.
Interviewer: “So right away from the beginning they told you?”
Right away on the very first day.
Interviewer: “Okay, so like you said, there were certain rules and regulations and if
you didn’t you were fined.”
Yes, I told you what the rules were on that. Five, ten, twenty and suspension.
Interviewer: “How far did you get?”
Oh no, I paid attention believe me, I wanted to play ball. I did everything they said and
my mother would have been really proud of me because I would always question her.
16:31
Interviewer: “So let’s kind of put ourselves, you’re on the bench over the first
couple of weeks, watching and seeing how the game is being played, what was your
experience when you first got your opportunity to play?”
Well, the first opportunity I remember playing outfield, right field, and I think I pitched
too. I did real well in hitting and Max Carey liked the way I hit, so I played outfield and
I think I pitched the very first year too and I won three games. I pitched three games and
6
�won every one of them, so that was great. The next year Jimmy Foxx came in as our
manager in 1952 and he didn’t want me in the outfield. He thought I had super arms, so
he put me on third base in the infield and I really liked the infield. I moved around and
then he needed pitchers, so then I pitched and played third base. 17:35 I didn’t get a
day’s rest like these pitchers do now, I went right to third base, if he needed me I was
right there.
Interviewer: “Let’s stay in the first season, you got a chance to pitch and one of the
things I found from some of the interviews that I have done with the other players,
is when they became a rookie there was certainly the sense that they were the
rookie, but once you played and the other women saw you playing well, you no
longer were the rookie. Did you ever get the feeling or sense that you were no longer
the rookie?”
No, I guess it didn’t bother me.
Interviewer: “So you just wanted to play baseball?”
Exactly, that’s all I wanted to do. I just wanted to play ball. I was a pretty good punter in
football. 18:29
Interviewer: “You had played before with the Catholic Youth Group, but now
you’re playing in professional baseball and I would imagine there’s a few more fans
in the stands, how were the fans?”
Oh yeah, but we had a lot of fans in CYO. It was a small town and that’s all you had to
do in the evening, we always played at night, so people from work, this was there
entertainment. We had a semi-pro baseball team, boys, but they only played on Sundays,
so during the week we played and we drew a pretty big crowd. 19:00
Interviewer: “So you were used to the fans?”
Well not ten thousand like the fans they had
Interviewer: “Was that at all intimidating to you, the fact that there were that
many people?”
Not at all, I loved the fans. That’s why I liked third base because I could talk to them like
Rosie O’Donnell, I was one of those with the fans and I always loved to talk to them.
Interviewer: “How was that? I remember from the movie that happening, but did
you actually talk to people during the game?”
Not during the game, no, no, but right after or before mostly before and you would sign
autographs. You never refused because you knew they paid for your work. 19:52
7
�Interviewer: “Was there a mixture in the audience or was it mostly men or
women?”
Amazingly and what was amazing, lots of young men and that amazed me. Same thing
with these autograph sessions—that really amazes me—young man, what do you want
my old autograph for? Like I said today, lots of historians are young men and they
collect a lot of memorabilia.
Interviewer: “What were some of the highlights that you can remember from your
first season, the first time out?”
First season—well, that we were in the playoffs, we were in the play offs and so I had—
well, you know I was supposed to be back in school after Labor Day, that’s when school
started, so I thought that was going to be a big problem, but the superintendent liked me
and he said, “Oh well, women don’t ordinarily get an education anyhow, so you might as
well just go and as long as you have good grades”, and that was the thought because the
women over there hardly anybody went to college at that time. You’re talking about the
fifties and the philosophy over there was that women get married, have kids and are in
the kitchen making meals or working on the farm. 21:22
Interviewer: “But you got to play baseball.”
Yes I did.
Interviewer: “So the first season you did the playoffs. Did you play in the games?”
Oh Yeah, and I called the superintendent and he said to go ahead and he was really nice,
he understood, but I only missed like two weeks as long as I made it up, but then I came
back and spring training was like the first of May and we were going to Newton, North
Carolina in 1952. I approached him as soon as I found out, which was in February, and
he said, “Okay, this next semester, I notice your conduct is going down and if you can get
your conduct up you’re allowed to go”, so I had to button up a little. 22:21
Interviewer: “Shall we get into the conduct part of this or not?”
I was a prankster and I got that from my brother.
Interviewer: “So no more pranks?”
No, I was an angel believe me. It was hard but--Interviewer: “So the first season when you came back from playing, what was the
reaction, you say it was a small town, what was the reaction from your family, from
the town, were you treated differently?”
Well, in a way I was and they were very happy because after that we had spring training
and the teams came through, like I said, that one night with Kenosha, Wisconsin and Fort
Wayne released me to play with them and I pitched in front of my home town and we had
8
�three thousand people and our town was only two thousand five hundred, so the
neighboring people came and baseball was very popular. My brother played for Minster,
so we played against each other one time. 23:22 They treated me perfect and I was a
star.
Interviewer: “So you got past the rookie status even though you didn’t feel that
way, but you got past that and now we’re going into 1952 and it’s your second
season. Tell us about that, was there anything different about coming to play”
Oh yeah, we heard that Jimmy Foxx was the manager, the Jimmy Foxx, he was like Babe
Ruth and we thought wow, you know we’re playing under this guy? He was super nice
just unbelievable, he couldn’t believe it that the girls were so good and coming from him
you had to be pretty good. He was just—he was like a second dad to me, we really
clicked and he brought me in from outfield and he said, “you’re going to play third base
because you got that arm and that long distance”, so I had accuracy, that was the biggest
thing and then he was running out of pitchers and they didn’t have savers or what they
have now days, and so I would also pitch and because I had accuracy and fast ball was
my main pitch. 24:58
Interviewer: “Tell us about being the pitcher, what was the strategy there? Did you
have many different types of throws?”
No, I didn’t have very many—I didn’t have a curve ball, knuckle ball or anything like
that. All I had was a fast ball and then I found out from the other pitchers that if you
slowed it down a little, different speeds, change up would throw the batters off, which I
noticed some did because we had a lot of good pitchers and if they changed up, my gosh,
you were way ahead waiting for that fast ball to come in and you would strike out. I tried
it and it really worked for me and also my catcher was very, very intelligent, she knew all
of the players and what they liked—inside ball, outside ball and since I was so accurate,
because I had really worked on accuracy, I think I hit one person ever and I felt so bad I
never threw another inside pitch. 26:04 That was mostly it and I think my ERA speaks
for itself because I think I only lost two games the second year.
Interviewer: “Was there a difference, in terms of your playing, between the first
manager and then when Jimmy came in, did you feel that you played better?”
I played better because Jimmy was a hitter and I loved to hit the ball. I remember one
time I was up to the plate and he said, “Gosh, did you live on a farm and milk cows?” I
thought, “Wow, does it show?” I was thinking about smelling the manure and all that
and thought, “wow” and he said, “no, because I was on a farm and you got a wrist action
like a farmer”, like milking cows because that’s where I got my wrist action. 27:00 I
thought, “way to go”, and I hated to milk those cows and here it was the greatest thing I
ever did. I’ll never forget that though because I looked at him and I thought, “wow”, I
thought maybe I looked like a farmer, I didn’t know.
9
�Interviewer: “Did he actually show you specific things to do that maybe you had
not done before, techniques and things like that?”
He just told me that I was a natural, a natural hitter and my last—1954 I was only
eighteen or nineteen years old and I was batting three twenty eight and that was my final
batting average. 27:41
Interviewer: “52”, are there any highlights that you can think of? You mentioned
having a new manager and that was a big thing, but in terms of plays, in terms of
games you may have played, is there anything that sticks out from that year?”
I played more, I played a lot of games, I was in every game, except when I pitched, and
normally he gave me a night or two off. I also played different positions if somebody got
hurt, like second base, he would put me in or first base, whatever-- because again, we
heard rumors that pretty soon there wouldn’t be girls baseball, but we just thought they
were rumors because Fort Wayne did real well, but South Bend, Studebaker went out, so
they were no longer there and that really affected the crowds in South Bend. 28:34
Interviewer: “We’ll get back there in a minute, but I want to get back to the idea
that Jimmy was having you go to different position. Was that unusual? Did all of
the girls have that ability—just put them here, put them there?”
A few, just a very few. Most of them just had their regular positions, like Dotty
Schroeder, she would always play shortstop. I never saw her play any other position.
Willy Briggs, left field, Tybee Eisen, center field—the outfielders were sort of set.
Interviewer: “You were kind of, for Jimmy anyway, if he really needed somebody.”
Oh yeah, he could rely on me and besides he didn’t like me on the bench. 29:20
Interviewer: “So now the second year—how were the crowds the second year? Still
the same numbers?”
Fort Wayne was great, the same numbers. People really—and we didn’t get harassed at
all, called “tomboys” or anything like that. Those people—well, the early forerunners in
the forties set the tone and we didn’t have any problems. Everybody else knew that it
was still a men’s game, but we never got any kind of harassment call or you know. 29:57
Interviewer: “Now the first year and the second year, you were going on the road
too, right?”
Yeah
Interviewer: “So, what were the road trips like?”
10
�Oh, they were excellent, we would get in the bus and everybody would try to get in the
back of the bus, but they were excellent and we would start singing our songs and
everything like that and South Bend wasn’t too far, but in Rockford, Illinois we would
leave after the game and all night and get there maybe like four o’clock in the morning,
go to the hotel and sign in at the hotel. Again, we wouldn’t play or be at the ballpark
until four o’clock, so normally we took in a movie. 30:42 That was normally it and after
the game we had two hours before our curfew and we would have to be in because the
manager was right there and the chaperone was right there and we knew when to come
in. 30:56
Interviewer: “You hadn’t traveled very much in terms of from your childhood and
now you’re traveling. Did you get an opportunity to spend any time in the towns
that you went to other than to see a movie or something?”
Well, sometimes, but not really, but spring training, that was my first spring training and
we got to go to Newton, North Carolina and I got my first train ride and I was excited.
Then when I went down south they had a whole different language, you know that drawl
and especially in Newton, North Carolina I remember people would---and I was playing
outfield and there was one kid in the stand near right field and he said, “hey Yankee go
home”, and I said, “Yankee, I’m a Reds fan”, and he said, “communist”, and I thought,
“what is this?” 31:48 I had no idea, but we made it and it was nice. People treated us
great, but again the food was different you know, hominy and grits, hominy and grits, oh
yuck. I was use to cereal, bacon, eggs and stuff like that. They didn’t have it; they had
hominy and grits everyday. I used to go across the street and get a hamburger. 32:21
Interviewer: “Where in the south did you go?”
Newton, North Carolina and played around, like another team like Kenosha or another
team that would train there. We would stay at a big boarding house, one team, and again
we were not allowed to fraternize with another team, so even though they stayed down a
block or whatever, we weren’t allowed to talk to them. After the game we never shook
hands or say, “nice game”, because they thought we would throw the game or something,
I don’t know what their thinking was. That was also in the men’s though and actually it
still is, but the media now is so great that they have to talk back and forth. I think that’s
what happened. 33:05
Interviewer: “So, after your second season, were you making fairly decent money
by that time?”
Oh yes, at that time I was making seventy dollars. I went up twenty dollars.
Interviewer: “What were you doing with the money?”
Well, I saved my money and I paid for my own—well, we didn’t have too much book
money then for school and I was still in high school, but I paid for my own clothes and
everything like that and the rest I just saved until I could buy a car.
Interviewer: “Were you sending money home?”
11
�No, not really, I kept my own. My mom let me keep it, she said, “you’re in charge”, so I
put it in the bank.
Interviewer: “That’s great. Now, 1953—I know, of course we all know now that
we’re getting to the end of the league although, you didn’t know it.”
It just never dawned on us, we just thought it was rumor, but 1953 was a good year. Bill
Ellington was my manager, and again we went down south and played ball and I was use
to that and the train and that was to me like having an airplane ride. I got on the all-stars
for third baseman and won the all-star game by pitching up to the thirteenth inning, I
think I pitched from the ninth inning to the thirteenth and we won the game four to three.
34:49
Interviewer: “How does one get chosen for the all-star game?”
They take everybody in the league and compare their averages and everything with
everybody else—hitting, fielding, so I played more third base then because what threw
me off on the other years was because I also pitched, so I had double duty, but I was
hitting well, I hardly had any errors and they brought me on the all-star team. 35:27
Interviewer: “What was your reaction when you found out?”
I was ecstatic, but I didn’t know I was going to end up pitching in the game you know.
Interviewer: “Mostly you’re a third baseman.”
I was chosen for third base and then he needed a pitcher because it was extra innings and
he put me in because he knew I was accurate, so I went in pitching and won the game.
My roommate hit the home run to win the game. 35:53
Interviewer: “Tell us about the game.”
Oh, it was exciting and there’s a picture in one of the books that somebody wrote. I was
just so happy, my roommate and I, we had big headlines in the paper.
Interviewer: “Walk us through the game. How did it open up? How was the
beginning, the first inning?”
Well, we always start it with the opposing team lining up on third base and we were on
first base V for victory, we always honored the veterans and the American flag, the whole
ball of wax just like the regular ball games and I was playing third base and you’re asking
me who we played, but it was the second team that was next to us, that’s who we had to
play. All the other all-stars, Fort Wayne, we were in first place, so I played with Fort
Wayne and we played against the all-stars, so our team playing against Fort Wayne as the
12
�all-stars. We beat the all-stars and like I said, we were very young. A lot of us were
young and I think the oldest one was twenty-five, so anyway, it was thrilling. 37:18
Interviewer: “How did the game open? How were the first few innings? Was it a
slam-dunk from the beginning?
Well it was—nobody could get a hit. I think Winsch pitched and she was good, so she
pitched and she was the number one pitcher and she was excellent. She had curve balls,
drop balls, you name it, and she was good.
Interviewer: “How did you do against her?”
I think I did all right; I had two for four, so I thought that was pretty good.
Interviewer: “How was the middle of the inning? Were you still going?”
Oh, we were battling; it was a terrific game for the fans because they just enjoyed it. It
probably was the longest game you know, we didn’t have all these gizmos like helmets to
put on and knee wraps or anything like that. It bothers me and I noticed somebody said
our games were two hours or two and a half hours and that game was like three hours and
that was really long and like I said, we speeded it up because we didn’t have all that
although, our pitching style is totally different from what they do now. 38:31 I had a full
wind up going like this then throwing the ball in.
Interviewer: “So when was the moment when it really determined the game was
going to go your way?”
Well, not until Jeanne hit the home run. I mean it was deadlocked and it looked like we
were going to be there all night until Jeanne Geissinger hit the home run and we were in
happyville.
Interviewer: “That’s wonderful, that’s wonderful—when that was over, and the
season was over and when you went home, was there a different reaction this time?”
39:10
Well, we got in the playoffs, but we never won the playoffs for some odd reason, I don’t
know what it was—just tired, so actually it started the beginning of 1954 when we went
to spring training we came through Ohio and some games in all of these little towns that
would bring the fans, so they would look for the players and another town that was pretty
good and semi-pro teams were there, so we played in my home town. My nephews came
out, they were just little like four or five years old and I played against my brother.
That’s when we played against the men and the men would pitch against the men and the
women would pitch against the women and then we beat them. 40:11 That was terrific
and like I said, there were like—there’s only like two thousand five hundred in our town
and I think there was a crowd of two thousand eight hundred and that was terrific because
I pitched and I won.
13
�Interviewer: “You said your cousins, were other members of your family there?”
No, my nephews and my brothers were there and my family and of course all my
classmates. I was pretty nervous and that’s the only time I remember being really
nervous because everybody was counting on me. 40:53
Interviewer: “What about the catholic… was it the priest?”
Yeah, he was there and he was praying for me.
Interviewer: “That must have been a pretty proud moment for you.”
Yes, very emotional and everybody talked about that game. They had flyers out, Katie
Horstman and Armstrong Airport which is just five miles down the road took a plane and
threw out flyers saying that we were coming into town. 41:23
Interviewer: “Do you remember after the game whether the father came up to you?
Did he?”
I think he came to the Wooden Shoe Inn, which is a big restaurant right in town and they
treated us to a chicken dinner. They were famous for chicken dinner and he came and
was very proud of me.
Interviewer: “He had to be considering the fact that he started the game when you
were there.”
He’s still living and I still go back there and see him. He does mass every once and a
while and he’s retired, but excellent.
Interviewer: “Wow, wow, we should send him a copy of this.”
Oh yeah, he would love it. His name is Father Shuey, ordained and handsome, everyone
went out for CYO. I never even knew half the kids could play you know. I think about
fifty kids came out and we couldn’t take care of fifty and we ended up with twenty.
42:18
Interviewer: “So, are there any other highlights from 1953 that you can think of?”
Just that I was becoming more involved and playing more games, like everyday unless I
pitched and I would get time off and my batting average kept going up, I think it was like
two eighty nine, but again the ball was a little bit bigger than the regular ball. Now,
coming into 1954 they couldn’t find those balls anymore and they weren’t going to make
them because they didn’t know if the league was going to fold in the middle or when, so
they didn’t want all these balls, so then we played with a regular baseball. Oh my god
how easy, I mean girl’s hands are smaller then men and I could grip that ball, wow, and
14
�hit it. 43:14 We were hitting home runs galore, so it was the best thing that ever
happened. Bill Allington became our coach and he was strict. When we went on the
road, he would have thirty questions and you better read that rulebook and you better
answer them right or you had laps to run. He was strict, which was very good and I
believed in discipline. I had discipline from my mom and dad and of course with eight
kids you have discipline. I had nuns in school although, it was a public school, Precious
Blood where the father came in, and they were strict, with rulers, the ruler sisters, and
when I came into baseball and saw all those rules—I was born with discipline, so I didn’t
mind it. Although, you always try to see if you can beat the system, right? 44:21
Interviewer: “So, coming into 1954 was the atmosphere at all different in terms of
either the moral of the teams?”
No, except that we were all praying that it wouldn’t end because then they kept—like in
the middle of the season they said they didn’t think it was going to continue because they
couldn’t afford it and you know, different ownerships of different teams. Fort Wayne
was great, For Wayne was solid, but the other teams—television came in and people
would go to see the guy’s play and we also, couldn’t find girls. We had like Jr. Daisies,
Blue Sox, and Jr. Blue Sox similar to a minor league team and they were anxious to come
up, but we didn’t have enough of them. They only had like two teams and they would
play against each other in each town. 45:21
Interviewer: “How about the fans, was there any difference? I don’t mean about
being enthused or anything like that, but number?”
Well, that went down because they were watching television. They had more things to
do and in wartime it was very restricted like gas rationing and all of that stuff, so that was
no more and they could go place and you know, more things to see.
Interviewer: “I’m going to ask you a question that at the time you might not have
been able to answer, but I’ll just pose it anyway. Was there anytime up until 1954
that you actually thought this would be a career you would be doing? You were a
really young girl.” 46:07
Oh I know, I was just getting in my prime. No, I thought it would last forever. To me I
prayed everyday that it would last forever, but after 1954, most people don’t know, but
then Bill Allington got a group of us, eleven of us, twelve with him, two cars and we
went all over the United States, except for the east, and we played against the men. We
had a bookie out of Omaha, Matt Pascal was his name, and he would get the schedule
maybe two weeks ahead of time so we would know. We would play a game, go to the
next town, play another game and we had a hundred and ten games, the same as we did
for the Daisies. We played every day, but we had to travel. You only had a duffle bag,
that’s all you could have, your uniform and whatever. We were always in the laundry
room, but like I said, we weren’t like the Silver Bullets, like Phil Niekro did, they played
against the men. 47:13 At that time that never would have worked because nobody
would come to the game and we didn’t want to say that, “hey, we’re stronger and better
than you”, the men, although a lot of times we were except when we played the triple A
15
�teams, the semi-pro teams, they were good, but we had their pitcher and catcher and they
would pitch against them and we would pitch against the girls, so we won most of our
ball games. Every four o’clock we would advertise, beside the posters that we had, that
map. We would go in the fire truck and run around town in the fire truck telling people
that the game was at seven o’clock they would announce it. It was thrilling and I saw the
whole United States except for the east. 47:55 That was wonderful to me because I
loved traveling.
Interviewer: “This is after 1954 though?”
This is after 1954—55,56,57 we did that for three years.
Interviewer: “Let’s go back to 1954 though, when did you find out and how did you
find out that it was over?”
Well, I think it was after the play offs and then they said, “count on not being here next
year. I think that we may not have teams”, and we all knew that was the end 48:34.
Interviewer: “What was the reaction?”
The reaction was very, very sad, we counted on it, especially the very young ones, and
we were just getting into our prime. I thought, “my god, what are we going to do? We
got to work”. That was our biggest reaction, what are we going to do? Here I just got out
of high school and I thought, “wow, not I got to look for a job”, so that was most of us,
we were very, very upset. 49:09
Interviewer: “How was your last year though playing?”
My last year, my god, I batted three twenty eight, I think, and pitched and won I don’t
know how many games, but it was excellent because I loved that little baseball you
know. The size changed to a regular baseball and it was tremendous you know. You just
could hit it harder, throw it harder, everything, I just enjoyed it. When I was a kid
playing with my brothers that’s the ball we used and I was use to it, so it came back and I
was very happy about it. 49:49
Interviewer: “Any highlights that you can think of from 1954? What really sticks
out to you that may have been the big ones?”
Well, just my hitting, I hit a lot of home runs and I was a long ball hitter because I didn’t
like sliding in the short skirts. I did that once at second base and oh my god that hurt. I
always made sure I get a single, a double, a triple or a home run. I wanted to make sure I
would get to that base without sliding.
Interviewer: “You say you went through three years of playing with this kind of
team that was kind of put together after the end.”
Yeah, Bill Allington and we had spring training—like we went to Arlington, Texas, that’s
where we had our first spring training and we played amongst ourselves first to warm up
16
�and then we played all the teams coming through Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico
you know, he had them all booked for us. 50:55
Interviewer: “This is still professional ball though and you’re still getting paid?”
Oh yeah, we changed our name to All American that was it, All American Girls
Professional Baseball rather than saying Fort Wayne Daisies or something like that, but
we had the same uniforms.
Interviewer: “What did you end up doing after you—did you continue to play
baseball after three years or what?”
Well, I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana and I didn’t want to go back to school because it was
so much fun it sort of spoiled me from going to get my education or further my education
you know, so three of us rookies went to the cookie factory in Fort Wayne, Archway I
think it was called, and anyway two days was like an eternity and I couldn’t take it
anymore watching the cookies and besides I would have gotten thrown out because we
started throwing cookies you know, we were bad and we didn’t like that kind of work. I
went right to IUPU extension and signed up—I’m going back to school, so I started
college at IU Purdue. 52:03 Ernie, I can’t think of his last name now, Ernie Burns or
Ernie anyway, he was the general manager for the Daisies and he was also the general
manager for the Fort Wayne Comets hockey team, and so I needed a part time job while I
was going to school ,so he signed me up that I could work in the office with the tickets
and I got to meet all the players and stuff and went to the coliseum. It was great and I
had a good part time job and went to school, to college. I did that for two years and
then—gosh I don’t know what I did afterwards, after school, anyway, I was twenty-five
years of age. 53:00 When I was twenty-five years of age I went to medical records--oh,
I worked at Burnham City Hospital and stayed with Dotty Schroeder’s parents and I went
part time to Illinois State University then and came back and worked at Burnham City
Hospital for a year in admissions because I was always interested in medicine and
everything and I was sort of in pre-med. Then the medical record librarian came to me
and she said, “you can make a lot more money being in medical records”, so I talked with
her and sort of worked with her on weekends and everything. 53:38 I went to St.
Elizabeth’s Hospital in Danville, Illinois and spent a whole year with the Franciscan
Sisters of Sacred Heart from Mokena, Illinois and she was our instructor and only ten
people could enter the school and you had to have two years of college and then a year of
practice at the hospital to become a Registered Medical Records Librarian. 54:09 They
were making good money, like a hundred dollars a week, and at that time it was super
money, so I was all for that, but then I got to know the sisters and I thought they were
super, and then I got a calling to go to the convent, so two days after I graduated from
there I entered the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Mokena, Illinois. I went to
the convent, was a nun five years, it was really a nursing order except for some
elementary schools, so the reverend mother decided to have a Sacred Heart Academy, a
high school and she didn’t want any lay people and she understood that I played baseball
and she asked me if I wanted to be a phys-ed teacher, well she didn’t ask me you just did
it—some more discipline for me. 55:04 So I went to DePaul, Loyola and Illinois—I
17
�don’t know, it was another university there because I needed drivers ed and DePaul
didn’t have driver ed, so I went to that other college and got my driver ed and went to
DePaul and graduated from there in 1965. I taught at the academy because I had two
years of college I could do that in that private school and I taught in a private academy
and the girls were super. 55:44
Interviewer: “Did the girls know? Did you let them know?”
Well, later on they found out—DePaul grads you know, my picture was in the Sun Times
with my habit playing soccer, so I made headlines. I also got in a lot of trouble with
those state students because I would—one day I drove the reverend mother into town and
I could drive because I was I was older. Most nuns who were becoming nuns were under
twenty-five, like eighteen, nineteen, twenty and she knew I could drive since I was
teaching drivers ed anyhow. I had to drop her off downtown and I went up town to
Fullerton Avenue to DePaul University and the state student saw that I had a car, a big
Cadillac, you know people give stuff to the religious, so eleven o’clock came around and
they said, “hey Sister John Anthony, (that was my name) hey, let’s go to the baseball
game today the Cubs are playing”, and I said, “Cubs, yeah, but who are they playing?”
And they said, “The Reds, the Cincinnati Reds”. Because I was always talking about
Reds, Johnny Bench, Pete Rose and I said, “I can’t go, I don’t have any money and I
don’t think I’m allowed to go and I don’t think the reverend mother would like it”. 57:09
“We’ll never tell, you don’t need money and we’ll pay your way in”, and I thought, “ oh
gosh, should I or shouldn’t I? Well, what can it hurt, kids want to go”, so guys and gals,
we all piled in the car, I think I had ten of them and the Cubs ball park wasn’t too far
from Fullerton Avenue, so I wouldn’t use much gas, so we come up there, the parking is
horrendous, so I went right up there and he said, “hey lady what are you trying to do?”
And I said, “I want to know where I can park?” he saw my habit and he said, “oh, sister
the vice president isn’t here today, so you can park right here. Wow, the co-eds, “way to
go Sister John Anthony”, and I was a hero. 57:57 He said, “do you have tickets?” I
said, “tickets, I don’t even have any money”, and he said, “well he wasn’t going to be
there, so we could have his box seats”, so here I was, I was a hero. I mean I felt so good.
The Cubs were beating the Reds you know, so the ninth inning, the Reds and I was going
“way to go Cincinnati”, and I’d get all excited. I didn’t think anything about it—came
down, went and took them back to school ok, picked up reverend mother. The
Archbishop came into town, new Archbishop, so she had to meet him or something, so
we went back to Mokena and during vespers, it was just after six o’clock we would pray
the vespers, and all at once I get this tap on the shoulder and it’s the reverend mother.
We went out in the hall and she said, “Where were you this afternoon?” I said, “why?
You know I was at DePaul University I had things to do, study, went to my classes and
everything. 59:04 She said, “then how come I saw you on television cheering for the
Reds?” I never thought about it and I said, “mother, we’re not allowed to watch
television”, and she said, “the Archbishop was in town and I met with him and she was
on television. They interrupted the program saying that one of your nuns was cheering
the ball game”. Well, she didn’t like that too well and that was only one incident, so
anyway in 1965 left the convent before my final vows. Then I worked at the medical
records library in Dyer, Indiana and then taught in Gary, Indiana the next following and
18
�spent my summers and a year at Miami University in Ohio because I got my masters
degree and if you taught there your education was free at the college. :08 I took a big
deduction coming from Indiana to Ohio, but it all worked out the same. I got my masters
then I worked five years teaching phys-ed and science at Kendallville Jr. High in
Kendallville, Indiana. Then I came back to my home town, that’s when title nine was
trying to come out, 1972 to 1975, so I became the phys-ed teacher there and actually jr.
high school and high school that’s all I would have, but I said, “why do you want to start
a program in jr. high? Why don’t you start it?” Illinois has a super phys-ed program,
they still do, they have phys-ed every day from the first grade to the twelfth, but these
other states don’t have that, once a week or whatever, and Minster, my home town, didn’t
even have a phys-ed program for the elementary. They only had jr. high and freshman
and sophomore and I said, “What do you want to do that for? Start with the little kids”,
so I did, I had the whole nine classes per day; I really loaded myself up, but stayed there a
long time. 1:23 So then the teams started coming out where we could play state
tournaments and that’s what I wanted, I wanted to be a coach, I had a great desire. So we
had track the very first thing in Ohio and that was in 1975, so we had a track team and
came in runner up in the state. The kids didn’t know anything about running. They had
no idea what a discus or a shot put looked like because we didn’t have boys track either,
until we started the girls track program. Then we were very successful, 1976 through
1980 we were the state champs in our division, three divisions in track, and then 1982,
1985 and 1989, so we got eight state track titles and they talked me into cross country.
The first year, 1982, the girls, state champions, so I was very successful in that. 2:23
The town loved me and I loved them, that’s why I go back there all the time.
Interviewer: “You stayed in sports, of course you stayed in education, stayed in
sports, when did you start to realize that other people were recognizing what you
had done when you were just a teenager in your early days with the All American
Girls. Was there a time when you started to realize that people were knowing about
that?”
You mean as far as playing baseball?
Interviewer: Yes
Well, it was sort of dead because we all went our own way, we communicated, and I
communicated with the Weaver sisters and Dotty Schroeder and some of the others. We
always wrote Christmas cards, that was one thing we always did. To our teammates, but
eventually that falls apart too, so until they started the reunion and I think that was in
1982, it was forty years after we quit, well, yeah forty years I think. 3:40 We met in
Chicago for reunion, everybody was sort of hesitant, like in the movie, should I go or
shouldn’t I, I probably won’t recognize anybody, but everybody remembered the voices
or the walk or whatever and it was hilarious you know. “Is that really you?” Because
everybody changed so much and got so much older. The people that were twenty were in
their sixties—grey hair, white hair and thank God we had name tags. Once we got use to
it all these memories flowed back, but that was one heck of a nice thing to do. 4:27
19
�Interviewer: “You look back on that period of time as just part of the evolution, I
imagine, of your becoming the person that you are now. That was just one part of it
right? When did you realize that other people were looking at that period as
something very unusual and very special? Am I making myself clear?”
Oh yeah, first of all there wasn’t professional baseball for women—ended, it’s the only
time in history that was an organization where you got paid and professional. Jo Weaver
was a super runner, but she couldn’t enter the Olympics because the Olympics at that
time was amateur, so she couldn’t go to Olympics and she could have made it easily. We
had to understand that from that period until about 1970, girls athletics were taboo except
for CYO, anything voluntary, GAA, Girls Athletic Association, that’s all that kids had.
5:35 When I came back to Minster I thought, “wow, these kids don’t have anything, at
least I got something playing baseball and I got an education and I was taught in Illinois
where the phys-ed system is super”. I never played soccer or field hockey or anything
like that, so I came back there and I wanted to give something back to my town where
they appreciated me and so I started the whole program. 6:04
Interviewer: “Looking back on that period, and you have a lot of things to smile
about, do you think that particular period had an affect on you and the person you
are today? You were a teen and a young girl at that time. Was there anything that
happened then that you can look back on and say, “That helped me get here?”
What I did then, I wanted my girls in Minster to feel the same way that I did, that they
had an opportunity, they got a chance, “ok girls let’s go out”. It wasn’t easy , now you’re
talking about Germans, and the boys were still on one side of the room and girls were on
the other side. Phys-ed was still segregated; girls only, boys only and boys had a hard
time with it. 7:03 We didn’t as much and I was very fortunate to have some super
athletes that didn’t even know it because they never had a chance. I know how they felt
because I thought I was going to be stuck on the farm. I thought, “whoa, we gotta do
something”, and if we do something great people and if you have discipline—I put rules
out, no drinking, no this or you’re suspended, I didn’t even give them one chance. I said,
“this is it, if you want this we’re going to have to do it right and get on top immediately”,
so that’s what we did. 7:37 Like I said, “My athletes do it now because they’re
continuing my tradition over there because we twenty-three titles in that town and one
title for boys”. We showed them.
Interviewer: “Thank you so much, it was wonderful and you were wonderful.”
I don’t know, but I did get in five halls of fames with Annie Oakley, who was one of my
idols, The Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame with Doris Day and I was real happy about that
and of course and the National Track Coach Hall of Fame and the Ohio Track Hall of
Fame and in the Western Buckeye League.
20
�21
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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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
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
Identifier
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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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/.
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RHC-58_KHorstman
Title
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Horstman, Katie (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
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Horstman Katie
Description
An account of the resource
Katie Horstman was born on April 14, 1935 in Minster, Ohio. Before joining the All American Girls Professional Baseball League she played baseball with her brother John. She started playing softball with the Catholic Youth Organization (CYI). At 15, Horstman started her professional career when Max Carey signed her to play for the Fort Wayne Daisies. In her first season of 1951 she played for the Kenosha Comets and the Fort Wayne Daisies as a pitcher and outfielder. Under Coach Jimmy Foxx in 1952, During her second season, in 1952 she played under Jimmy Foxx who switched her to play as a utility infielder. In 1953, she played for the Fort Wayne Daisies and the All Star Team as a third baseman and pitched part of an all-star game. Her biggest highlight was finishing her final season with a batting average of three twenty eight just as the All American Girls Professional League was ending. Afterwards, Horstman went on to become a Physical Education teacher.
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--Wisconsin
Baseball players--Indiana
Women
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2009-09-26
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/87f9f709762b06e5b8c39f0fb8487e7e.mp4
1abcbc02dd4ca54e5711968b8b535dfa
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f8a7c7451ee4fe9215968d2234e1bea9.pdf
8eab3cbbe6004f009ad1fd5aee69e96d
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Jacqueline Baumgart
Length of Interview: (01:28:17)
Interviewed by: Frank Boring, Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer February 20, 2010
Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like?”
Hard.
Interviewer: “In what way?”
It was very hard. We were eight and I was the youngest of eight and I did not have a
father, so the whole time during the depression was very, very difficult.
Interviewer: “What did your mother do to support you?”
She did washing clothes, ironing clothes, house cleaning. That’s what she knew how to
do and in those days—women, that’s pretty much what they did with a fifth grade
education.
Interviewer: “What was school like before high school?” 1:38
Before high school, I got into trouble a lot because I wanted to play ball and I wanted to
kick the ball and play ball and do what all the boys were doing. I grew up with boys,
brothers, and so I tagged along, a few feet behind, but I tagged along. We played a lot of
softball and scrub games and that’s how I learned how to play and whenever they didn’t
have enough players, they let me play. 2:17 I was little, I was very, very little and
when they let me play, they put me in the outfield because they didn’t have to shag the
ball and then I learned how to throw very long and hard because I was throwing the ball
back in and that’s how I really learned how. By playing with the boys, it gave me an
opportunity to develop physically, because, like I said, I was very, very small. 2:57
Interviewer: “The town you grew up in, was it a very big town or was it a small
town?”
It was a small town. Waukegan is located between Milwaukee and Chicago and very
near there was the Great Lakes Training Center and not too far from there was Fort
Sheridan and so, it was just a small town and in fact very close to Kenosha, where I
wound up playing and about the same size. 3:30
Interviewer: “How about high school, how was high school for you?”
High school was very, very interesting. I moved to Milwaukee in March of 1942.
1
�Interviewer: “Your whole family?”
No, I had a sister living in Milwaukee and two of my brothers went into the service and
mother had received a widow’s pension and that kind of decreased a little bit when they
went into service, so I moved to Milwaukee to live with a sister and from there, which
was a great thing because that helped me develop differently than what I would have in
Waukegan. I had playgrounds to play on. 4:16 You couldn’t play in the schools in
competition, but we could play on the playgrounds in the summer and I fortunately—the
alley behind the house had a common fence, with the alley and the playground and so
when my sister asked me to take the garbage out, I said “sure”, because I took the
garbage out and I was gone. That’s how I started and there were two gentlemen that had
worked with the Milwaukee recreation department and the playgrounds had directors and
one was Bunny Brief and one was Jack Chlossa, both professional ball players, because
we were going from playground to playground, and they said, “I think we’ll take you out
to West Allis”, which is a suburb, because they had a fast pitch softball league there.
They took me out there and I got on the team right away—
Interviewer: “Now by team—is this a girls team?” 5:25
A girls team. I finally found that I was good at something, because you don’t know,
you’re always playing with the boys and it’s a different kind of competition when you do
that. The boys say that you are only a girl and I had to live through that and that develops
a certain kind of tenacity in you and so when I went to West Allis, they had about eight
softball teams, fast pitch, and the first year that I was there, we won the state
championship. My mother came into town and it was the first and only game that she
saw was winning, winning my first championship. 6:17 One to nothing on a balk.
That’s the kind of close competitive games that I was learning all the while.
Interviewer: “Now, after the game, what did your mother have to say?”
Not too much, she really—it was indifferent to her, she didn’t really know anything about
sports, particularly women playing sport, and she just thought it was nice, everybody
treated me nice, so that was her main important thought. She didn’t live with us in
Milwaukee; she went back to Waukegan and was living there. 7:01
Interviewer: “What position were you playing by this time?”
A catcher.
Interviewer: “Were you always a catcher?”
No, I was always everything and that’s how I grew up, to play every position. I played
every position and I actually became a catcher during the wintertime when we were
playing inside a gym with a different kind of ball—it was a little bit larger ball than a
softball, it had an out seam to it and a little softer, I mean it wasn’t had at all and I was
just playing in the outfield, but they all knew that I wanted to play and that I could play
2
�anywhere. At one point a pitcher wasn’t doing too good, so the catcher became the
pitcher and then they said, “Well, who wants to catch?” All eyes came this was, I mean I
didn’t have to say much of anything, so I went into catch, well, I dropped the first foul
ball, “tip’ you know, and I realized that I had to keep my eyes open because you flinch
and that’s an automatic response and I said, “I have to keep my eyes open”. 8:20 By the
end of the game there was a foul ball and I caught it and from then on, I was a catcher.
Those are the kinds of things that happen that lead you in a direction. Coming to
Milwaukee, doing something like that as a catcher, staying a catcher, going out to West
Allis, being pointed the way; it has an awful lot of importance for my development. 8:49
Interviewer: “Now how old were you at this time? This was still high school?”
I was in—yes; I was about fifteen and a half, sixteen, something like that.
Interviewer: “So you’re going to high school, you’re playing ball with this group?
What happened next? Did you graduate from high school?”
I graduated from high school and then I was working and playing out in WestAllis,
softball, and we began to start playing baseball and we were playing in West Milwaukee,
which is between West Milwaukee and West Allis in terms of property lines and during
that time I was scouted for the All American Girls Baseball League. 9:54
Interviewer: “Did you know anything about this group prior to that?”
I knew a little bit because some had started to come back from playing professional ball
and we had to wait a year or two before you could play amateur again. I knew that they
had played and I knew that Milwaukee had had a team. I became a knotholer because we
didn’t have any money, nobody had any money and I was a catcher and another lady,
Edna Shear, lived in Cedarburg another suburb and we both were scouted. I didn’t know,
we didn’t know we were scouted and I got a card in the wintertime, close to winter, and it
said to go to someplace in Pennsylvania or Newark, New Jersey. 10:53 I didn’t know
that Edna had received a card and her card said Chicago was where she was supposed to
go. Well, I wanted to play, so I borrowed some money, took a train and went to Newark,
New Jersey all by myself and my world wasn’t any larger than from Waukegan to
Milwaukee, which is about forty-five minutes away. 11:22
Interviewer: “Now, just previous to that, you’re still living with your sister.”
Yes.
Interviewer: “So, did you talk it over with her at all? Did you have anybody that
you talked about going to New Jersey?”
No, I just went. I borrowed money from a sister that was living in Waukegan and she
was married to a dentist, so I figured they had a little bit of money and sure enough it was
either fifty or sixty dollars that I borrowed. To go. 11:51
3
�Interviewer: “So you arrive in New Jersey, what was your first impression of New
Jersey?”
Big, huge—where do I put my foot next? Sounds are so different, very, very different.
Speaking the English language was different—in “New Joyzee” you know, that was a
little bit different, but I was met at the train by I think it was three, of the ball players and
they were part of the recruiting and all of that. They took me to a gym, an inside gym,
just like the movie and I tried out, I had my glove, a catche’rs glove, and we went up
against the wall and then we went one by one and there was a black lady sitting next to
me and she didn’t have a glove, so she asked if she could use my glove and I said, “ yes,
but it’s a catchers glove”, and she said, “that’s ok”, so she went and she came back and I
went and the three of them took me out to dinner after that because I was staying in a
private home. 13:17
Interviewer: “The three originals that picked you up at the railroad station?”
Yes. They were the only contacts that I had. They asked me, “was that your glove or her
glove?” I said, “it was my glove”, and then they said, “Oh, we don’t do that”. That
was my first introduction into how people felt about other people, because where I grew
up in Waukegan, we were pretty much a mixed group and for me there wasn’t any kind
of distinction when you were going to play ball or whatever, so that was very upsetting
for me. 14:05
Interviewer: “In that particular gym, you mentioned yourself and then there was a
black woman there too, were there other women there trying out? About how
many?”
There were probably twelve to fifteen or something like that.
Interviewer: “But there was actually one black woman in there?”
Yes, one black woman.
Interviewer: “Wow, do you know what ever happened to her?”
No.
Interviewer: “After you had the dinner with the three, you went back to the host
home and you stayed overnight, what happened next?”
I just went to the train again and came back. One of the things that I just very well
remember was going through the oil city in Pennsylvania—you could smell it—it’s a
whole new smell, everything was so new and so different. 15:05 When you’re by
yourself, you learn how to—what to accept and what not too. I’m a survivor of a lot of
things and was attuned to a lot of things going on and very much a real experience. For
one to grow up at that age, very impressionable and I take everything in, like you learn
how to steal second or something.
4
�Interviewer: “Once you got back home to Milwaukee, was there another
communication of some kind?” 15:57
Yes, before spring training I got another card and it said to go to South Bend, Indiana and
I met about sixty girls there and we had a spring training. Spring training wasn’t easy it
was very hard.
Interviewer: “Tell us, first of all keep in mind, you were there and we weren’t, so I
kind of want to visualize your arriving there were sixty girls there. Give us—take us
there to spring training.” 16:29
Spring training—early in the morning and we would go until noon, we had a light lunch
and only because I was thin, if they had a little extra couple of cups of ice cream they
would say, “here you need this”, and we had a little bit of rest period because we ate and
then it was all afternoon again until four o’clock, we never let up. We didn’t play an
actual game, but it was like an infield practice. You went to a position or you said you
wanted to go and you played that however the manager wanted it to go, because it wasn’t
a game, it was—he was almost actually teaching us. He wanted to know what we really
knew and how we would think and respond to the ball and other players and to managing,
how we would respond to directions. 17:40 After that I was told to go to Racine to meet
up with Rockford.
Interviewer: “So, at spring training—I know a lot of these answers, but I still want
to get it for the record. The spring training, you did not have a team yet, you were
not on a team yet?”
Not yet, no.
Interviewer: “So the girls were all playing different positions to see which ones they
could play well or not well and then a decision was made as to what team you’re
going to play on?”
Right.
Interviewer: “What were you wearing during spring training?” 18:10
Just jeans and shorts depending on how warm it was.
Interviewer: “But it wasn’t uniforms, just whatever you brought to play is what
you wore?”
Right.
Interviewer: “So the spring training was completed and they let you know that you
were now a?”
I went to Rockford—actually Rockford was in Racine and so that’s where I went and I
was there for a week and I was under the tutelage of Bill Allington, I learned more from
him in one week than I did in all the time before. As we look back at it now it has to do
with—we came with the skills and the professional men managers helped us become
5
�professionals. A lot of little things that you never think of, if you get into bad habits
naturally in terms of batting and throwing. 19:14
Interviewer: “Give me an example of maybe one of the ones that you learned. You
say that you learned more in that week, well, give me an idea, what did you learn?”
One in particular, because I was a catcher and we would have an infield practice and all
of a sudden he threw the ball down on the ground and I took that to be a bunt, which it
was, so I hopped right after it I picked it up and I went like this and then I let it go and he
did it again and I did the same thing and he said, “now what did you do that for?” I said,
“What do you mean?” He said, “you put your hand into the glove and then you throw the
ball. That runner has got a whole step and a half on you.” You don’t think about those
things when you’re just playing and learning a little bit, just a natural by osmosis thinking
The managers we had playing fast pitch were good managers, but they weren’t teaching
us anything. 20:18 They just taught us about some things as the game moved along.
You really weren’t learning like we learned in the professional league and of course I
listened. I did that all my life was to watch and listen and from that I learned an awful
lot. Now the other thing was in hitting, I stood too far in the back and he said, “you got
to move up a little bit and choke up a little bit. You got to be brave and go all the way
down to the bottom of the bat. Just choke up a little bit because then you have more
balance at the end of the bat. We have to learn to hit and bat according to our bodies
what we can do and what we can’t do it isn’t all show. If you want to play, you play, you
don’t act up.” 21:18
Interviewer: “Good advice”
It is and he didn’t mean it in the sense of show off, he meant it in the sense of getting out
of bad habits.
Interviewer: “Let me ask you a question and this may sound like an unfair question
and you don’t have an answer for it, but he’s a professional male baseball player
and he’s working with you as a very young girl. Did you get any sense that he was
treating you like a girl or treating you like a baseball player?”
Like a baseball player, because he knew his positions as a manager and what it probably
might have been like for him when he started out being a professional. It’s a transitional
period and he knew how to do that. He also knew that you had to learn not only how to
play, but the intricacies of the game, the whole game, the whole thing, whether you were
catcher or first baseman, pitcher or an outfielder, you learned it all, everything that’s
going on because three things, 1 is the ball, naturally, there is no play without the ball, 2nd
is accuracy, if you’re going to play, you don’t just throw, you concentrate, not too hard,
but you concentrate on where you’re going to throw that ball and the 3rd one is to think
where you’re going to throw that ball, when are you going to throw the ball and to be
ready to receive. 23:02 For him those were the three most important things. They are
very, very basic, they don’t get anymore basic than that, and it will take you a long way.
The other thing he pointed out was that you are on the field playing and the manager is
watching all of this and the manager doesn’t miss a trick and so if you think you’re going
6
�to fluff off, it doesn’t work because the manager sees what you are doing and those are
some of the little things that make you a professional ball player. 23:51
Interviewer: “Once the spring training was over with and you were chosen to be on
the team, what was the process of getting your uniform and do you remember what
it was like to see your uniform for the first time?”
After that I was sent to Chicago, excuse me, the northern part of Chicago, and most of the
girls I met in South Bend were there. They were choosing thirty girls to make up two
teams, so that means that there are fifteen players on a team, that’s all we had. I was
chosen as a Springfield Sally and only because we had the uniforms. They tried a team in
Springfield and it didn’t work and the other team was called the Chicago Colleens
because Chicago had a professional team. It wasn’t baseball, it was fast pitch softball
and they set-up a perimeter and around that perimeter, we couldn’t play anywhere near
there because it was an infringement, so they put us on a bus, thirty of us girls, the two
women chaperones managers, a man manager, sometimes the business manager, and sent
us all east of the Mississippi and into Canada. 25:28 I probably was one of the older
ones and another Cuban girl was, I think, about twenty-four. I think I was going on
twenty-one or something like that, but the others were all younger. What it was—it was a
traveling team to gain experience playing professional baseball. In the towns that we
played, they had charities that they gave money to and then to have tryouts. Every time
we went someplace, there were tryouts and when we came back to Cleveland, I think it
was, we just went home. 26:26
Interviewer: “So it was two teams of fifteen, traveling and playing each other?”
Yes.
Everyplace you were just playing each other, playing each other. You were actually
getting back on the bus together, so you had the camaraderie of being on a team, but
you would separate out and play each other?”
Yes. That’s a learning process, a growing process because we were from all over the
United States and Cuba. The whole experience is more than an experience. That’s how I
look at it, it became a way of life because you ate baseball and played baseball, slept
baseball, we went from one town to the next town and very seldom were we two nights in
the same town. 27:30 We never read the write-ups you know.
Interviewer: “Give me an idea, I know this might sound dull, but what’s the
routine? You get up in the morning, you get on the bus, you go—walk us through a
typical day when you go on one of those excursions and how it was.”
Well, you know it depended on how late we got in from one town to the other, especially
going in and through the mountains. Sometimes we would be like six in the morning
coming in, so we went to bed. I went to bed early because I needed my eight hours. We
would get up, we ate together in different restaurants and places and we then would rest
because we couldn’t eat sooner than two hours before we were going to play, so that was
kind of a restful time, lounging time, and that was a time when we weren’t in close
proximities in what we were doing and we maybe went to a movie or something and
7
�chose different things. 28:53 We would then get dressed and ready to go onto the bus
and the bus would take us to the ball park and then we would work out and I mean work
out, and then play a game and shower, find a place to eat, travel, depending on how far
we had to go, and the next day the same thing. 29:20 There was sometimes a little long
time in a city depending on how far it was and what time was and how long it took to get
there. We still had to take care of our own clothes.
Interviewer: “Wash your own clothes and stuff, wow.”
We would go to a Laundromat, but not the uniform.
Interviewer: “How did the uniform get cleaned?”
I don’t know--the managers took care of that. They took it to a Laundromat or where
ever they could. 29:50
Interviewer: “What were the fans like?”
Very good. In the towns that we were in, they had either a double A or a triple A team
and the diamonds that we played on were good, which was a nice thing.
Interviewer: “You were obviously getting locals that came out to see the teams. Did
you have a lot of girls, women or men or was it more mixed?”
It was mixed, more men than what they might have now because it wasn’t as popular and
we were sort of an entertainment or a show of some kind and people wanted to see what
we were all about. There was advance publicity and quite often we had more fans then
the home team that played there because we were playing when they were out of town.
30:55 We would hear that and when we made a good play we were rewarded with—it
was like a whole surprise for them to see that because we were very good and we came
with the skills and we were naturals. We also exhibited the joy that we had in playing
even though we played the same team all the time; we were still growing and learning.
31:30
Interviewer: “The two teams were they exactly the same or did you switch over and
play catcher for one and then play catcher for another or was it always the same
group playing against the same team?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “That makes sense, so once that was over with and you went back to
Milwaukee, then what happened? What was the next stop in all of this?”
I got a card. I got another card because all thirty of us were put in the “pot” so to speak
and the teams told—this one and that one, and I was asked to go to Kalamazoo,
Michigan, so I want to spring training there and Kenosha didn’t have a catcher at that
time, so I was catching for Kenosha even though I belonged to Kalamazoo and after
spring training Kenosha bought my contract, whatever that was, because when I signed
the contract it was blank. You never knew what you were getting or anything else, you
just signed the contract and you were going to play ball. 32:39
8
�Interviewer: “Now if you’re playing for two different teams, what was the
uniform?”
The same uniform except in a sense it was Kalamazoo and I’m trying to remember that
part of it because I don’t remember it being any different. When I went to Kenosha, I had
their regular uniform.
Interviewer: “Now, on the touring team with the thirty of you, you were already a
professional baseball player, but now with the new team, this is now the American—
the league, so this is different, did you have any sense of going from this to this or
were you just going to keep playing baseball?” 33:45
There was a little bit of that yes, because you’re coming into an already—a team that is in
place, so there’s a lot of difference coming to a team than what we did, because we were
all new to each other in terms of what we were going to do and this team was already in
place. They already had their own ways of what they were doing and who they get along
with, where they go and now we have a home place and then we have on the road, so
your monies are different, you take care of your own stuff when you’re at home and on
the road you get a per dium I call it. 34:35 We all got pretty much the same for that.
Interviewer: “Well, as the newcomer into this team, how did you get along?”
Quietly. Quietly in a sense of interaction. More quiet—you have a different manager,
everybody has their own style, how they do things and I had to learn all that. It wasn’t
too hard to learn it, but you had to learn the differences. Some managers manage a lot
and some managers manage a little and they kind of let you play. It was about the same
thing with the players because they’re older, not much, but they had been playing, so they
have a couple of years under their belt and you’re a “rookie”, you’re a “rookie”. I still
had to carry the bats and things. From my own growing up and my formative years, I
learned how to understand where my place is wherever I am and whomever I’m with.
36:11 That part wasn’t too hard, I could read that and I knew that because I’m a
survivor. You do make friends in the sense of hanging with some more than you do
others and I think there were three or four “rookies” on the team in Kenosha, so we kind
of hung together for a while.
Interviewer: “Was there a point and I know this is kind of a difficult question
because it’s so specific, you’re a “rookie”, was there a moment, was there a period of
time when you felt like you were no longer a “rookie” and whatever you were doing
the went, “oh, she’s good”? 37:05
I got a hit—see, I was a straight away hitter, I wasn’t a long distance hitter, partly
because of my weight and you’re the catcher so you bat eighth and I smacked one over
the second baseman’s head, because we were playing baseball rules now, we’re a bigger
diamond, we’re not on the softball diamond and I got to first base and I said, “It’s about
time”, and I remember it so distinctly and it’s a great, great feeling to do that. I didn’t
9
�throw anybody out at second, but I was pretty close a couple of times and that is a great
moral builder for me anyway. 38:00
Interviewer: “You felt different, but did you notice a difference also from the other
players that you were treated a little bit differently?”
Sure, because we’re a team and that’s how you become a team is learning to play
together and giving lots of kudos when they’re necessary and I never experienced any
player getting down on a another player like, “what did you do that for?” You were the
one that made the mistake, so there was none of that and most managers wouldn’t allow
that. We learned how to be a team by practice and you practiced as hard as you played,
you didn’t sluff-off. 39:04 For me as a catcher, one of the most marvelous things that
can happen and the joy really comes out, is when we have infield practice and you
“around the horn” as we called it, after a certain ply and then you “zip” to first, second,
third, back, back down to second for the shortstop and over to first or the opposite,
because when we played we ‘zipped” the ball, we didn’t just throw, we “zipped” it.
39:37
Interviewer: “Now by this time the charm school and all that had been over with or
did you have to do that too?”
No, I didn’t have to do that.
Interviewer: “You knew about it or you heard about it though?”
Yes, I heard a lot bout it.
Interviewer: “What do you mean, you heard a lot about it?”
Well, they would tell little stories about having to walk down steps with a book on your
head and they thought how ridiculous. Well, how do you walk down the steps with a
book on your head and a “Charlie horse”? It’s bad enough with just the book on your
head. If you had a sore leg or something then—and the next time you walk down steps
what are you looking at? You look down like this and you can’t keep a book on your
head when you do that. That usually pretty much what they talked about and the
etiquette part. They didn’t like—I eat like I eat like I eat and there were a lot of jokes
about different things and we took it all in and it’s a part of the camaraderie, we had great
camaraderie and we still do. 41:00
Interviewer: “Tell me about strawberries.”
I didn’t do too much sliding because of my position in the batting order, but I did have
some when I got on, they weren’t really strawberries, they were more or less things
that—you know when somebody’s coming into home and sliding in home, we didn’t go
head first, we had hook slides, so you had to—I learned from Mr. Allington, I learned
because I was—I didn’t want to get bowled over, so what he taught me was to give him
just a little corner and to turn sideways so that I don’t have the full force and you turn
sideways because then you’re in a position to move your legs and go wherever you need
to go after the ball, but there still were collisions and things like that because you don’t
10
�know where the balls coming from when you begin and I did get knocked over one time
in pro, but it was just the nature of the game. 42:38 Very much how the play happened,
developed and happened. There was nothing like foul play or anything like that; we
purposely didn’t do those things.
Interviewer: “What did you think of the uniform?”
I’ll have to tell you, the first time I put that uniform on, I cried because what flooded in
my mind was of this little kid at home playing with the boys and here I am—I get teary
eyed just thinking about it because it was never a dream to become a professional ball
player, the dream was to survive, the dream was to do the best you can in whatever you
do—lit was like winning a game, when you win—oh, that’s great. This was my own
kind of winning and I kind of stood there for a little bit after I was dressed and I said,
“Ah, this is it, this is it”, and I never forgot that. 44:07
Interviewer: “So the actual design and all that didn’t bother you?”
It did to some degree; it did all of us to some degree because we never played in a skirt
fashion. It was all one piece, but it was a skirt on the bottom, there were no legs to go
into, but you had to learn how to play with it, especially some of the pitchers when they
would begin throwing side arm, it just gets in the way, so each one developed a way in
which to fix their uniform either by shortening it a little bit. I had two tucks here and two
tucks in the back so that it would fit comfortably. 45:04 They weren’t tight fitting at all
because we didn’t like that and we didn’t want that at all. It was heavy, it was like heavy
denim and very warm in the summer, in the hot summer, it was very, very warm.
Interviewer: “You had talked about the fan of the traveling team, can you recall the
fans of the team when you went pro?” 45:34
Yes, because there were fans that came all the time and there were some fans that came
once in a while and some of the fans treated some of the ball players very well. A little
money under the table or whatever, invited over to their houses for picnics and stuff like
that if time provided for that, but we didn’t have too much time for that, but they were
very, very good to us. The regulars were very good to us. 46:16
Interviewer: “You mentioned earlier about the traveling team, that it was a mixture
of men and women and things, the professional team you played for, where the fans,
the majority of them, men or women or what?”
A few more women because we were in one place and they get to know you and they
have favorites like any team does have favorites and we played excellent baseball. We
weren’t just entertainment as we were in the beginning, we still were, but not to the
extent, we did what the Brewers do today, but not to that extent. 47:13
Interviewer: “I understand what you’re saying. I think it is really important what
you are saying, that you were still entertainment, but now you’re baseball players
11
�and their watching it for the baseball, professional baseball. In your first season
you told about that one time that you whacked that ball out there, were there any
other particular ones that you can recall that really stick out either on your end or
what you saw?” 47:37
It had to do with the pitchers because I was little. I remember Jeanie Marlow in Kenosha,
she had a screwball, it’s opposite of a curve and they don’t throw it very often, so anyway
about the third batter, it was early in the season and a new team came in and I don’t even
know who the team was, so I gave her the number one sign because that’s a fast ball and
just plain ball and she shook it off and I was wondering what was going on, so I knew she
didn’t want a curve, so I gave her number two and she shook it off and I gave her the
change up and she shook it off and I gave her the screw ball and I just went through the
whole thing and she kept shaking it off, so I called time and I went to see her and I said,
“can you see the signs?” 48:45 She said, “oh yea, I can see the signs ok”, and I said, “can
you see me ok?” We’re starting to loosen up and josh one another and I said, “what’s the
problem?” She said, “Oh, I just wanted to confuse the batter”. Those are the moments of
the different little things that one does in a professional league. Now that might not have
happened with another pitcher, with another pitcher it might be something else or I might
get a sign from a pitcher instead of me giving a sign to the pitcher. That didn’t happen
very often though. 49:33
Interviewer: “When was it, maybe in your first season, or was it later, that you
started to think that maybe this was going to be your career or did you even think
that?”
I never thought it; I was just doing what I loved to do. I just never thought of it. I came
back to Milwaukee and I had to work. I did a little bit of coaching with some younger
kids and played a little bit of slow pitch baseball.
Interviewer: “There’s no comparison.”
No, heavens no there isn’t, but that’s what was going on at that time and that went on to
become a pretty popular thing, so I was staying in the activity of the game and then I got
married and raised children. It isn’t that I didn’t think about playing professional ball,
but we never talked about it. Bob knew when I married him, but we didn’t talk and I
think that if you ask that question to everyone of us they would say the same thing.
50:53 We just went about our business, it was grand, beautiful and we didn’t have that
sense that we were setting standards or overcoming barriers, we just did it. You really
didn’t know the historical impact on things until much later and my three boys—I had a
ten inch ball that was signed by the teams and it was upstairs, so they used the ball and
used my glove, they couldn’t use my shoes of course, and I said, “oh, you can’t use that
ball, can’t you see those signatures on there? That’s when I played professional”, and
they said, “oh yea mom”. 51:50 Well, that was the opening of saying a little bit about
what I did and I said, “well, I played professional ball”, and they said, “yea, yea”, you
know how boys are, but they do know now and they’re very proud of that and they relay
that to other people very easily if we’re out in a group of some kind. One of them will
12
�say, “oh my mom played pro”, and I say, “here we go”. My husband did a lot of that, but
I didn’t do it. I’m learning how a little bit and I pick my times if it’s called for, then I
might. 52:55 I don’t just advertise it and I do give a lot of talks to different groups, very
different kinds of groups and they love to hear about it and that’s a whole new experience
for us again. When you do that you learn the impact of what we did and the style that we
did that. 53:33
Interviewer: “I want to get back to the—you’ve gone through your first season now
ok? How many seasons did you actually play with that team? You were with
Kenosha right? How long did you play with them?”
It was two, one season with them and one season before that. Kenosha in 1951 dropped
out of the league.
Interviewer: “Where did you go from there?”
To work.
Interviewer: “You didn’t play again?”
I didn’t play again. 54:02 It folded, it was terrible and I thought the whole league was
folding, but we went until 1954, but it was absolutely terrible.
Interviewer: “I guess and I don’t want to go somewhere that you don’t want to go,
but what caught me by surprise was that for some reason I thought after Kenosha
you went on to play for another baseball team. Why not?”
Because the Racine Belles were already out and you had less teams and you don’t need
that many ball players and I couldn’t wait, I had to go to work and send money home and
stuff like that and I just—it’s over. One has to understand how the move from one thing
to another because I did a lot of moving in my life and I learned how to accept something
and just move on. 55:20
Interviewer: “Did you see the end coming to the league? You said that in 1951 you
out.”
A little bit within our own team and near the end we weren’t sure we were going to get
paid and that sort of thing and then sometimes the chaperone became the manager and
that sort of thing. By that time there wasn’t an over arching league ownership, by that
time each team had to take care of themselves and I think that was in 1948 or something
like that. Looking back on it, it was pretty much the access and it was going to end and
there was some talk about it. 56:17
Interviewer: “You said that you went back to work and you said that very quickly
and how difficult was it when it ended? It’s over, it’s ended and you’re going back
to work now, what was your reaction?”
13
�You go kick stones, walk the beach and mull things over and cry a little, but one is
quickly drawn into a different kind of life style. You can’t stay there very long—I had to
go on and put bread in the mouth so to speak. We did have some contact with other ball
players and we’re all commiserating about the loss, our joy, our inner joy, play and just
learned how to accept it with clenched teeth. 57:36
Interviewer: “I don’t know about you, but for me it really hit me hard because in a
sense when you talk about going to slow pitch, that’s a huge drop and that had to be
hard to do. I never played professional baseball, but I went through a transition
and from playing to doing slow pitch I just went, “huh, what is this?”
What it does—that’s part of the transition and it wasn’t what it was called and what we
were doing, we were playing. We had the activity, this little child here was out doing
something—playing whatever she could play and the joy of the activity and the
movement of the body and being able to give expression to the body and I was still able
to do that and then I could coach some of that. That’s small little transitions that you
don’t know are happening, but they are you could still throw the ball, you could still bat
the ball and I could still throw and I’ve never had a sore arm because you take care of
yourself and when I throw, I use my body along with it, I’m not just all arm and that’s a
thrill. 59:09 It is a thrill to throw the ball because the whole sense of the body is active
and that’s what helped me to stop kicking stones.
Interviewer: “I’m going to ask you a personal question and if you don’t want to
answer it, please don’t, but you mentioned earlier that you told your husband Bob
about being a ball player. How did you two meet and did he know you were a ball
player? Is there a connection there?”
He didn’t know. A fellow came to work where I was working that had worked where he
was, at a company that he worked at for thirty six years, and he played golf, they had
their own golf team, and Paul and I had already made arrangements to go golfing on
Thursday with his wife and they golfed on Wednesday, so he came to work the next day
and said, “Do you mind of somebody else comes along to make a foursome? :12 I said,
“that’s fine”, so I left work and went home and changed my clothes and met him on the
golf course and went to Paul’s house afterwards and had a light lunch and then he was on
vacation someplace and about two or three weeks later Paul comes to me and said, “could
I give him your phone number?” I said, “is that Bob?” And he said it was and I said,
“ok” because I had to know who it was and I made my own decisions around those
things. 1:02 On our first date we went to a Packer game, a Packer game here in
Milwaukee at the old Marquette Stadium and it was a kind of foggy, rainy night, but the
Packers won, it was that Bishops game, and then we met Paul and Fran downtown and
we had dinner and danced and all of that. We went together pretty well after that and that
was in August and I was engaged in October and married in January. All from meeting
on the golf course. 1:52
Interviewer: “When did you tell him about being a baseball player?”
14
�I don’t really remember, but not too long after that because he knew that I was interested
in sports and he played softball and I think he got the idea that to get to me we had to
participate in sports and I think it just kind of came out in natural conversation.
Interviewer: “In the earlier conversation we were having, you said that he liked to
talk about the fact that you were playing baseball.”
Yes, because I wouldn’t and he was proud of that and most of the players, when they left,
didn’t talk about it much. If they did any talking, they did it with each other if they were
in contact with one another. 2:57
Interviewer: “I’m so pleased to hear your boys and that they seemed to like the fact
that mom played baseball professionally too.”
They have come a long way with that. They were very young and I taught them a lot of
things. I think they gradually came to understand that I knew something because I was
teaching them. They played a little ball, but they liked swimming and auto mechanics
and all that sort of stuff and I learned then what was happening to me when I was little. I
wanted to do what I wanted to do and each individual boy does, they’re all mechanics
and machinists, but they’ve learned to be their own person and they are very different.
3:48
Interviewer: “This is going to be a tougher question digging into your memory, but
when did you first start and I don’t need a date or anything, but when did you first
start realizing, after the fact, what you had participated in, enjoyed so much, was
very proud of, but still didn’t talk a whole lot about, other people were starting to
go, “Hey, did you know about that?” When did you first realize that you guys
participated in something that you didn’t think was very important at the time, but
a lot of other people were?”
4:27
See I, because I had a married name, they didn’t catch up with me for a while and so
when I found out that we were in the Hall of Fame.
Interviewer: “You didn’t know?”
I didn’t know. I was at a house with Marge Peters, who had played before me in 1944,
and she didn’t know that I had played because I was in 1950 and 1951, so they were
always looking for different ones and a group of us were together at her house and there
was a long hallway and there was her wall of honor and my picture was up there and so
she told me and she showed me the video from Cooperstown. 5:16 Well, I’ll tell you, I
beat my chest. I just beat my chest because “this little one”, which I was called, did
something, I said, “I wish my mother was here now” because she really didn’t approve,
but she knew that I needed to do those things and we finally agreed to that. 6:06 I think
that when you do what you really love to do that it is a gift and when we exercise and
grow out of our gifts, that’s where we go in life and there’s a different joy in learning that
than there is the playing. The joy is monumentus, it’s like “this little kid did it” you
15
�know because I had to prove myself all the time. 6:52 All the time I was proving myself
to myself as well and there isn’t anything better than proving yourself to yourself. It
gives momentum to what you do and there’s opportunity then to share that. We now
share that with each other. We still can come to reunions and meet somebody you
haven’t met before, but you know that they’ve played and we share the same thing, all the
ups and downs, ins and outs, hurts and bruises and strawberries and stories. 7:39 We
begin to tell our own stories within our group.
Interviewer: “You said something earlier about not talking about it, the fact that
your husband was very proud of you and did more talking about it than you,
because you wouldn’t, your kids finally got to the point of realizing it. Why do you
want to talk about it now?” 8:04
It’s valuable. It’s history. If we don’t tell our stories there’s no history to anything if the
stories aren’t told and when I give talks, I say that to the mothers, I tell the mothers that
they have to support their child in what the child likes to do—they may change their mind
in two weeks and they need to tall their story and the grand parents need to love them to
pieces because those are the important things for a child when they’re growing up. 8:55
As I said before, it was very difficult growing up, but all of that is who I am and when I
began to recognize that playing baseball was a very important part of my living and
growing up and who I am and we need to share that with everybody and anybody who
wants to know or will listen and that’s important for the other person also. 9:27
Interviewer: “I have two last questions for you. One you answered in part
throughout, so I’m just going to ask you this: How did the experience of baseball,
pro baseball affect you as a person and how you became the person you are today?”
Learning how to get along really. In college I’m a broad field social science major
educated in secondary education and I was broad field because of all the things that I was
learning, because when you meet at a very young age somebody from New Jersey and
somebody from the south, Atlanta or whatever, Cuba, Canada, each one of us teach each
other who they are and we begin to look at that and recognize that broadens our horizons
of how we view our world. 10:37 The capability then of interacting with people in a
situation no matter where we are. I often say in my talks that we were taught how to be
professional people on the field and off the field very much so.
Interviewer: “You talked earlier also using the word history and as you know, we
have Dr. Smither here in the history department at Grand Valley State University
and I’m a documentary film maker, so I’m going to ask you this very specific
question. Where do you think the All American Girls Professional Baseball League
fits in the whole scheme of history?” 11:24
The development of women, to be given the opportunities to do who they are. Every
person who is alive has desires and things that they like and dislike and if one only does
as one is told or put in a niche or to be seen and not heard we have lost something. That
person has lost something, the world has lost something, not just the United States, but
16
�the whole world has lost something because we’re still part of the human race, we’re not
just what someone else thinks we are. We have to learn to live out from within instead of
having to fulfill somebody else’s ideas of what we are. I’m very strong on that because I
had the privilege of living that out. I always say, “I had a health dose of stubbornness”,
but that’s what it takes. There are so many facets to the development of the human being
that intellectually, physically, emotionally, all of that and the more we do that the more
we are who we are and we can interact with other people of the world. I can reach out
and I can say, “hi, thank you, good to meet you”, and I do that with the kids and if we
don’t do that, what are we? 13:53 It just so happens that through sports, it could have
been any sport because most of us played all sports and in that is the interaction between
us and if I throw the ball to you and you throw the ball back to me, we have a relationship
and if we don’t know how to have relationships with people, oh man, we’re in trouble,
we’re in deep trouble if we don’t, that’s what we’re here for. 14:36
Interviewer: “I still didn’t get a complete answer to the history question. Where do
you think the, and I love what you just said, don’t get me wrong, but I want to focus
on—from your perspective where does the team fit in terms of history? Were do
you just a baseball team? Where do you think it fits into all of this?”
You know, we grew up in a time when we were at WWII and my husband was in WWII,
I had two of my brothers in WWII and we took care of the homefront in the sense of—
when we played we made a V from home plate past the pitchers mound, one team here
and one team there and that V was for victory, that’s what that was for. We played at
Fort Sheridan for the soldiers there and for the navy people at Great Lakes and that was
usually in the springtime for exhibitions and things like that. 15:43 We helped to sell
war bonds in the sense of our appearances. We didn’t physically handle that, but it was
because of whom we were and what we were doing that the war bonds were sold and we
saved Aluminum foil and made it into baseballs and threw them around. We were a part
of the homefront; I think a very large part of the homefront. To give entertainment where
there wasn’t much. You didn’t have much money, there was gas rationing and we took
care of the people in that sense that were in a geographical area.
Interviewer: “Now that part you did feel at the time, right? You did feel that
part?”
Sure right.
Interviewer: “You may not have understood the significance of the baseball and
what it was going to do for future generations, but you did feel that it was part of
the war effort like “Rosie the Riveter”, the WACS or the WAVES or anybody?”
17:08
Absolutely, we were very much aware of sort of a role, I would call it a role, that a—that
actually helped to keep people who worked very hard and long hours, they had a chance
to relax and had a chance to interact with us, and we with them, in a very positive way.
We were always in tune with what was going on, always. 17:49 We began every game
with the “Star Spangled Banner” and we were very in tune to “God Bless America” with
17
�the fat lady singing. Had to hear the fat lady sing and you know what we did when we
traveled? We sang all the time and it was the singing that helped us in the sense of
fulfilling what it is that the people at home had to go through and keep the moral—we
were moral boosters, I would say for whomever came in contact with us. 18:39
Interviewer: “A couple random questions, any particular incidents, events
highlights anywhere in that period of time you were playing that you, for whatever
reason, would like to have on the record? Maybe the kids want to hear about or
grandchildren would finally hear about. Just something, it doesn’t even have to be
baseball related per say, but what in that period of time when you were playing pro
ball, any particular things that may have happened that come to your head?” 19:10
Well, there are two things. One thing is the travel and realizing that we are part of a
larger thing and the other one is baseball and it has to do with playing in Yankee
Stadium. As we were traveling through and came to Newark, New Jersey again and we
played in the old Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. and that was our first time to play
within a major league ballpark, “marvelous”. 19:57 Of course you’re in Newark when
you go across the water there and go to Yankee Stadium and that’s where I met Yogi
Berra because I was on that side and when he was starting out and I was so excited
because I think we parked like two miles away, I left my shoes on the bus and that’s how
excited we were to be in Yankee Stadium. To walk inside for the first time as a very
young person to see Yankee Stadium, you’re looking around and “oh my goodness”. At
that time it was pretty much “the stadium” and to meet the players that we met was a—
Yogi asked me if I wanted to use his bat—well, first of all Yogi liked a thick handle and a
heavy thing out here, it was a club, and if I had picked it up and swung it, I would still be
going around in circles. I saw his wrists and his wrists were really big and you had to
have those kinds of wrists to use a bat like that. The whole experience at Yankee
Stadium was memorable in terms of baseball. 21:21
Interviewer: “Was part of it because you were professional? You’re not just a fan
walking into Yankee Stadium; you’re walking in as a professional into Yankee
Stadium.”
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Like I say, we went to Griffith Stadium first on the way up
from town and the difference between a AAA league diamond and major league, there’s
no comparison, it’s just awesome and I use that word not casually, it’s awesome. I
realized why the Yankees had great catchers—because the distance between home plate
and the backstop, you could put a softball diamond in, I mean it was very far. 22:19 You
knew you couldn’t have a fat ball, no fat balls in Yankee Stadium because they could
take two bases instead of one and I think that’s why they had such good catchers and
good hitters. They had catchers that were very good hitters. It was a professional
meeting, absolutely, and a lot of the kids that were there still talk about it. We’re proud
to have been there and rubbed elbows with the “biggies” and just like young kids now are
proud to meet us in that vein. 23:18 When you tell the story, you relive the emotions.
18
�Interviewer: “Well, there are a few of us older “fogies” here that kind of special
being here with you too. I’m not quite the older “fogie” yet, I’m not going to admit
to it though although—I have a question and I’m sure you’ve been asked it a
hundred times, but what did you think of the movie?” 23:48
The movie was good because it was based on fact even though it was a fictional story and
that’s Hollywood and Hollywood eyes. A lot of embellishments that we sit and laugh at
and I think the only thing we were concerned with was in the beginning, when we saw
the move, was a little bit of the language. There wasn’t a lot of that, but we’re thinking
of it in terms of showing young people and I think there’s a version out that doesn’t have
that in and I’m happy about that because it needs to be in the schools and whether it’s
elementary, high school, college or whatever. 24:33
Interviewer: “You will be happy to know that when we first started about doing
this project, the Library of Congress project with women’s baseball, when I talked
to my students and there was not a lot of knowledge about it, but when you said,
League of Their Own, they knew and said, “oh, I loved that movie”, and then I said,
“I’m going to meet the real women” and they went “wow”. I look at it from a
different perspective, I watched the movie and I love tom Hanks and I love Geena
Davis and for me it was more of a Hollywood version, but it did give you the
overview of the experience of walking into that ballpark. eeina Davis walks in and
there’s all those players playing, it had to be close to being real, oh yeah. 25:32
I thought that Penny Marshall was very astute in how it was put together because when I
was in Chicago when we were first asked to come and tryout for six speaking parts and
then we went to Cooperstown and I wondered, “how are they going to do this without
being trite about things and just throw an idiom in there somehow or another and have it
make sense”, but she made sense all the way through, all the way through. There were
integral parts of the story that said what it is and what won support for a lot of us was
when Tom Hanks is talking to Geena Davis when she’s leaving to go to Oregon. Well, I
saw the premieer in Fort Wayne, we had a premiere there and when he said, “of course
it’s hard, if it wasn’t hard, anybody could do it”, well there’s another chest going thing,
but we were quiet, it was so quiet that you could hear all the motors and stuff underneath
that handle everything in that theater. That’s how quiet it was because we were crying.
What I said about having to learn to survive and go through a lot of stuff, that was
another way of saying that, but a way that was acceptable to other people. It helped us to
be acceptable because we went through a lot of unacceptability, but we didn’t let it
change us, it helped us to grow. 27:30
Interviewer: I was moved by that too, in fact I teach writing at Grand Valley and I
say that about writers, the same thing. “It’s hard work and if it was easy,
everybody could do it”. I really felt that too.”
If you are doing what you really love to do, you will do it, no matter how hard it is, but
that makes it what it is or anybody could do it. 28:05
Interviewer: “That was wonderful, that was wonderful.”
19
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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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
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Moving Image
Text
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
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RHC-58_JBaumgart
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Baumgart, Jacqueline Mattson (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
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Baumgart, Jacqueline Mattson
Description
An account of the resource
Jacqueline Baumgart (née Mattson) was born in Waukegan, Illinois. She grew up in Waukegan area and played with the neighborhood boys. She played outfield positions as a kid. In 1942, her family moved to Milwaukee, WI where she played with as a catcher for a few local softball teams. Eventually, she was scouted for the All American Girls Baseball League. At the start of her first spring training she had not been assigned to a team yet. She was eventually assigned to the Springfield Sallies in 1950. She played the 1950 season with them and was then traded to the Kenosha Comets and played the 1951 season with them. One of her main career highlights was having the opportunity to play as a professional in Yankee Stadium.
Contributor
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Boring, Frank (Interviewer)
Publisher
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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
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2009-09-25
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/53d6e32a248b7e8a9884fc4f1e9440b7.m4v
710fe2fb8c2154f3c611673a90bb5058
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dff524aad3ae2e0954db52e451b3ec72.pdf
9c9a51bef94866f5aa8b9501dfbaad90
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Helen “Gig” Smith
Length of Interview: (01:02:00)
Transcribed by: Sean Duffie, March 1, 2010
Interviewer: We’re talking today with Helen Smith of Richmond, Virginia
Gig Smith:
Gig
Interviewer: Everyone called you Gig, so, okay. She’s a veteran of the Women’s
Army Corps from the Second World War, as well as a player for the
All American Girls Professional Baseball League, and this interview is
going to cover both of these, because both fall under the privy of the
Library of Congress Veterens history project. The Interviewer is
James Smither, of the Grand Valley State University Veterans History
Project. Now, Gig, can you start by telling us a little bit about your
own background, to begin with: where and when were you born?
Gig Smith:
I was born January the 5th, 1922, and I lived in Virginia, Richmond. I think
I was interest in sports since the day I was born.
Interviewer: Do you remember how early you started playing baseball, or softball?
Gig Smith:
Yes, when I was thirteen. And I played for Lucky Strike. (1:00) They
didn’t know when I was playing, they didn’t know how old I was, and
when they found out how old I was, they let me go. Then I went joined
another team.
Interviewer: You said you were playing for Lucky Strike, the cigarette brand. Now,
did the tobacco companies sponsor teams?
Gig Smith:
Well, they sponsored their own players, not outsiders
Interviewer: Now how did you get to be on one of those teams?
Gig Smith:
Well, everybody went to the playground in those days, and that’s where it
really started.
Interviewer: Were you playing baseball or were you playing softball?
Gig Smith:
Softball, fast pitch.
�Interviewer: Okay, and fast pitch softball, was that overhand or underhand?
Gig Smith:
Under. A little bit of side arm.
Interviewer: Now, what position did you normally play?
Gig Smith:
3rd base
Interviewer: How good was your throwing arm?
Gig Smith:
Pretty good.
Interviewer: Now, could you hit well? (2:00)
Gig Smith:
Yes, I was fourth, always fourth hitter.
Interviewer: Let’s back up a little bit here. Tell me, what did your family do for a
living in those days?
Gig Smith:
My mother was a nurse before she became married, and my father worked
for the city, and he was a CPA. He worked at city hall.
Interviewer: That sounds like a fairly secure job, so he could keep that during that
depression?
Gig Smith:
Mmhmm. He helped to support other people in the family, when they lost
their jobs. We doubled up., which everybody did in those days.
Interviewer: Did you finish high school?
Gig Smith:
Yes, and I received the athletic trophy, Most Athletic, when I graduated.
That was a graduating class of over 500, so that was guess that was pretty
good. (3:00)
Interviewer: So what other sports did you play besides softball?
Gig Smith:
Everything that they let me get into. I majored in four sports in high
school
Interviewer: And what were the other sports?
Gig Smith:
Track, tennis, field hockey and basketball
Interviewer: These days, girls have a lot of opportunities for sports, but you were
doing pretty much what was available to you at the time.
�Gig Smith:
That was everything that was there. Nowadays they concentrate on one
sport. I did them all.
Interviewer: Well, how were you able to fit all of them in?
Gig Smith:
Well, they were after school.
Interviewer: They had them on different days?
Gig Smith:
And different seasons
Interviewer: In what year did you graduate from high school?
Gig Smith:
1940. (4:00)
Interviewer: Then what did you do once you finished school?
Gig Smith:
I worked for a photo finishing place until I heard that Pearl Harbor
announced on the radio. Then I went back to the kitchen where my mother
was, and I said, they bombed Pearl Harbor. And my brother was already in
the navy. And I said I wished that they had something for women to do.
I’d love to go in. And two months after that, they started the auxiliary
corps, and two months after that, it became the army.
Interviewer: Did you remember when you first heard about the auxiliary corps?
Gig Smith:
Well, that was army; all I knew was the branches of service…
Interviewer: Was it advertised or announced in the news that they were recruiting
women?
Gig Smith:
Oh, yeah.
Interviewer: How did the recruiting process work? Where did you go to sign up?
Gig Smith:
I went to the Marines first, and they didn’t want any women in the
marines, but they had to take them. (5:00) The fellow at the recruiting
station was very rude-- he kept his head down and wrote-- and I stood
there waiting. It seems like a half hour but it couldn’t have been more than
a few minutes. Then he said, what do you want? And that threw me back.
And I said, what do you mean what do I want? I’d like to know a little bit
about the Marines. He said-- still writing and still not looking up-- what do
you want to know about the Marines? And all I know is I wanted to get
out of there. I don’t remember what was said after that, and I could hardly
wait to get out of there, and I walked down those steps and down about 8
blocks to the Army recruiting station. The fellow was totally different. He
�was opposite of the rough old marine that didn’t look immaculate in his
dress, (6:00) and this was a young black fellow that stood up and
introduced himself and put his hand out when he introduced himself, and
he said, “What can I help you with?” And I said, “I’d like to know a little
bit about the Army.” And he said, “Have a seat and we’ll see what we can
do.” And I asked… I wanted to know if there’s any way of getting any
type of art work in the service. And he said, well, I’d say you’d have about
98 chances out of 100 you won’t get it because there’s very little being
done, and I thought, he’s very polite and he’s honest, and if this is the way
they ought to treat me, I’ll join. So I went home that night, and my brother
was already in the navy and my sister was with her husband—he was
stationed in New York. (7:00) I told my family, my mother wasn’t very
well at that time, but I took a chance and I said I joined the army today—
not having joined it—just to see what their reaction was going to be. And
there was dead silence and I said uh-oh, I sunk. Finally my father said,
well how do you know you’re going to like it? I said, I don’t know, but
that’s the chance I’ll have to take. And that’s all that was said, so the next
day I went back and signed up
Interviewer: When you walked into that army recruiting office, and there was a
black soldier there, were you surprised to see him there?
Gig Smith:
No.
Interviewer: Because this is still the era of segregation, and the army was
segregated.
Gig Smith:
Well, I’ve always been different in my ideas, and I was taught to handle
things like that differently by my family, thank goodness. (8:00)
Interviewer: At this point, the army itself was still segregated so they don’t
desegregate…
Gig Smith:
Well, I didn’t know.
Interviewer: And it was perfectly normal to you when you walked in and he
behaved like a good person?
Gig Smith:
Extremely polite and very immaculate in his dress, totally different from
the marine.
Interviewer: The Marine quite likely was somebody they pulled off from some
other duty some place and just stuck him there. So when you go back
to sign up then, what’s the process?
�Gig Smith:
I don’t know; that’s a little blurry. I just signed up and they told me when
I’d be leaving. There were street cars in those days, and I remember
driving to the railroad station. (9:00)
Interviewer: Where did they send you for training?
Gig Smith:
Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia
Interviewer: And where in Georgia was Fort Oglethorpe?
Gig Smith:
It’s in the northern part.
Interviewer: And what kind of facility was it? What did it look like?
Gig Smith:
Normal army barracks, wooden, nothing to brag about. We had stoves that
you had to stoke with the coal. It was rough, but I liked it.
Interviewer: About how many women were in the group you were training with?
Gig Smith:
I would say probably fifty to one hundred. I don’t remember.
Interviewer: What sort of people did they have training you or supervising you?
Gig Smith:
We had officers and then we had noncommissioned officers that handled
us.
Interviewer: Were these women or men? (10:00)
Gig Smith:
Women
Interviewer: Did you have the impression that some of these women had been in
the army a while, or were they all pretty new?
Gig Smith:
Well, we were all pretty new in those days.
Interviewer: What kind of training did they actually give you? Did they have you
marching around?
Gig Smith:
Absolutely. PT every morning. Physical training. And when we got to
hours after my basic training, I was sent to Headquarters Company on the
fort. I was part of the headquarters company, and they had various places
where we went out to do our jobs. I was assigned to publications, and I got
art work. So, that was very unusual, because he told me I probably
wouldn’t. (11:00) We made all the training aids, and we illustrated the
post newspaper, made illustrations. Publications was just one of the
services the Headquarters Company serviced.
�Interviewer: You had mentioned this before, where did your interest in art come
from?
Gig Smith:
I just always drew. I don’t know. Just like the sports.
Interviewer: So you‘d always done that. Had you taken art classes in high school?
Gig Smith:
(12:00) And after school. I didn’t think there was a chance for me to go to
college, because in those days, the boys always got the first chance to go,
and I knew I wouldn’t go. So I played in school, I really did, I played
everything. Art was everything to me, but once I got out of army, and had
a chance to go, then my grades were totally different, and I had excellent
grades then.
Interviewer: Did you just do drawing or did you do painting?
Gig Smith:
Everything. Ceramics. Everything. Anything I could get my hands on.
Interviewer: Tell me a little bit more about the training part and life on the base
here. You mentioned you did physical training. Did you have to learn
army discipline and following the rules?
Gig Smith:
Oh yeah. When I was finally settled in the Headquarters Company, every
six weeks had physical training that they tested you on, and if you got over
a certain score, you were exempt for the next six weeks. I got the high
score. (13:00) So they put me in charge of getting up in the morning to
train those ones that couldn’t even do a situp. So the next six week, I
didn’t get the high score, and I was out of there.
Interviewer: Was that by design?
Gig Smith:
Yes! Who wants to get up in the morning to train people who couldn’t do
anything?
Interviewer: At this base where you were, were there a lot of male soldiers training
too?
Gig Smith:
We had a company of male soldiers there, but these were for various jobs
on the post, and we worked with some of them, but mostly we had
women.
Interviewer: (14:00) What kind of rules did they have governing contact with male
soldiers, or anything else like that? To what extent did they keep you
separate?
�Gig Smith:
Well, they were stationed in a different part of the fort, and I really don’t
know where they were, but they came to work. They worked in
Publications, a couple of them, various jobs.
Interviewer: And did you have any supervisory responsibilities? Did you tell
anyone else what to do?
Gig Smith:
No, not at that time.
Interviewer: How long did you stay at that?
Gig Smith:
Only for the duration of the war. All the transfers were frozen. Everyone
wanted to out of Fort Oglethorpe. (15:00) And the only people who could
get you out of there was the Pentagon, which was the headquarters
company for the war. And I don’t know how I was chosen, but I was
requisitioned to go to the Pentagon. I was with all nice people, with cooks
and bakers, they’d have had me washing pots and pans the rest of my life.
Interviewer: When did they send you up to the Pentagon?
Gig Smith:
About half way through. Before I left, I went from Publications, over to
cadre. Cadre runs the headquarters company. I was in cadre for a little
while, that was when they called me to the Pentagon. I had to sit outside
for a week while they did a three-way clearance. (16:00) I don’t have past
that – because I’m joking – but they had to come to Richmond and
interview a lot of people before they let you into the office. But that was
wonderful, I was with a great great bunch of people there. We had about
200 people in that office, that were specialists in everything Japanese.
They were specialists. I don’t’ know how I got there.
Interviewer: What duties did you have there?
Gig Smith:
We had people on islands that the Japanese didn’t know about, and if the
Japanese had known about them, they would have of course beheaded
them. (17:00) But they intercepted their codes, Jap codes, as the ships
went by. They sent them to our department. Now, I did not do the
decoding, but it was within our department. It was all secret. Everything
that they sent us – little pieces of paper with information on it, where the
ships were, what they were carrying, what the weight of the ship was –
they sent to us to plot on these maps, and we determined which ones
would be bombed, which would help to shorten the war. Actually, we
were as close to the war as you could get for not being there.(18:00) It was
fascinating.
Interviewer: What kind of work did you do for them in that, if you’re not doing the
decrypting?
�Gig Smith:
We were taking the ones that they had decoded, and we plotted them out
on the maps. We had special cards – everything’s different today, such an
advancement in technology – and we took what was on those cards, and
we plotted them on the maps and we had special couriers to fly it over.
And it had to be done as it came in, it was very fast, because these ships
were moving. Sometimes we’d have to work all night to get them out.
Interviewer: Where were you living while you were working at the Pentagon?
Gig Smith:
We lived at Fort Myer. (19:00) We walked every day in a tunnel under the
highway to the Pentagon. We were not very well liked, because they made
special barracks for us. They were cinder block, and we had these dryers
that you’d pull out. We had everything. We lived 4 to a cubicle and not in
the barracks like the other girls did. Everybody in the barracks that we
lived in knew that you had to be quiet because there were people there,
you know when you worked all night you had to sleep all day or part of it,
so they did not like us. Also, we were exempt from doing KP duty, and
they did not like us at all.
Interviewer: When you say they, who are you referring to?
Gig Smith:
The other soldiers.
Interviewer: Were they male soldiers or were they women?
Gig Smith:
(20:00) Women, strictly women.
Interviewer: So there were a lot of other WACs basically on the base, but only
certain of you had the special assignment over at the Pentagon.
Gig Smith:
Yes.
Interviewer: The women you were working with, what kind of backgrounds did
they have?
Gig Smith:
Practically all of them had college educations but me. And that’s why I
don’t know how I got there.
Interviewer: When you were working with the maps, were there situations where
your abilities as an artist were helpful to you somehow?
Gig Smith:
Yes, in plotting them, and things like that.
Interviewer: That may well have a lot to do with it. They look for specialized skills
and you had some. While you were working there, did you meet any
�high-ranking people or any important ones? Did they come through
and check up on you?
Gig Smith:
(21:00) At the Pentagon? I’ll tell you a funny story. I’ve told it so many
times, you’ll probably see it in other places. I had a friend that worked in
General Marshall’s office. And she said – everything was military and sort
of sterile – in her office, she had a cute little waiting room there with a
sofa and a lamp and a chair and all kinds of little feminine touches. She
said, why don’t you come to see my office some time, if you want to see
something that’s not military? And I said, okay, when I have the chance
I’ll go. So one day I went around there and all of a sudden – well, she was
leaning up against a… I don’t know… I was sitting on the sofa facing a
door – this loud buzzer went off and she jumped to attention at that door
and I didn’t know what was going on. (22:00) All of a sudden, I knew that
was the secretary of war, Henry Stimson, and I could not move, because
you’re supposed to stand at attention when any officer comes into the
room. I could not move, so Stimson was a very small man, and he had a
colonel that looked like he would hit the ceiling… and I still couldn’t
move. So, Mr. Stimson said How do you do? as he passed. I know I said
how do you do. But as they went around the door, the big tall colonel came
back in, and I knew he was after me. I jumped to attention. (23:00) He
said, “Sergeant, don’t you know that when the Secretary of War is in the
room, you’re supposed to stand at attention?” “Yes sir, but I didn’t know
he was behind that door.” She should have told me, she was very
embarrassed about it because she could have warned me. But that was an
experience I’ll never get over. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then.
He said just see that it doesn’t happen again. And I thought to myself,
man, you’re not ever going to get into this office ever again. He had gone
in to see General Marshall and I didn't know anybody was in there, she
didn't warn me.
Interviewer: While you were living at Fort Myer and were working at the
Pentagon, did you get a chance to go into Washington itself? (24:00)
Gig Smith:
We went in every once in a while, but we didn’t go regularly.
Interviewer: Did you have any spare time, and if you did, how did you spend it?
Gig Smith:
Sports: basketball, softball. I played on a team down in Oglethorpe that
went to a state tournament. I had two bases loaded and a home run.
Interviewer: Two grand slams
Gig Smith:
Yeah, grand slam, I tried to think of it.
�Interviewer: I guess, when we look ahead to the Women’s baseball league, they
didn’t hit necessarily a lot of home runs.
Gig Smith:
Well, the last three years of my playing Richmond, I had an average of
hitting a home run a game.
Interviewer: Was it easier to hit home runs in softball than it was going to be in
baseball? (25:00)
Gig Smith:
Well, I didn’t get far enough into baseball to know the difference.
Interviewer: Let’s go back to Washington. Did the Pentagon have women’s teams
that you could play on?
Gig Smith:
Yeah
Interviewer: And who would they play against?
Gig Smith:
The other forts, or… I’m not thinking.
Interviewer: The other bases and other units?
Gig Smith:
Yeah
Interviewer: Did you travel around to play those games?
Gig Smith:
Occasionally but it was all in the Washington area
Interviewer: When working at the pentagon, there’s going to be men working
along with women. (26:00)
Gig Smith:
Right
Interviewer: What kind of relationship was there in the offices? How did the men
treat the women?
Gig Smith:
I was with officers and people that were skilled, so they were a little bit
different. We were treated with respect.
Interviewer: Were there situations outside of the office or off of the base where
people treated women in the army with a little less respect?
Gig Smith:
I think so. I have no idea what it’s like today… I don’t know, I can’t
compare the two.
�Interviewer: Were there ways that you could recognize that people were a little
uncomfortable with you?
Gig Smith:
Yes, well, that’s human nature. (27:00)
Interviewer: Now when you went off the base, would you stay in uniform?
Gig Smith:
Yes, always.
Interviewer: I guess in Washington there’d be a lot of women in uniform.
Gig Smith:
Oh yeah. It would be so overcrowded. Where the mall is now, they had
barracks. It was a real busy place in those days.
Interviewer: Now, are there particular events or things that happened while you
were working in Washington that stand out in your memory?
Gig Smith:
Well, I remember when Roosevelt died. We were shocked, I was getting
to go home for the weekend – because Richmond was so close – and then
I remember when Drew Pearson of the Washington Post broke it, that we
had broken the Jap code, the office went berserk. (28:00) Because he
should have been hung. He should have really been… but they never did
any thing to him.
Interviewer: When did that happen? Was that late in the war?
Gig Smith:
It was towards the end of the war, but you could have still used the
Japanese code today if he had not put it in the post. He must have paid
someone a pretty penny to get hat information, or somebody must have
been drunk.
Interviewer: Then, do you remember when the atomic bomb got announced?
Gig Smith:
I don’t remember the particulars.
Interviewer: Of course, then there’s the announcement that the war itself is over
and the Japanese surrender.
Gig Smith:
(29:00) I never had headaches, but they wanted some of us to go to Japan
with the occupational forces. And I wanted to go very much, but I also
wanted to go to college. So I kept the headache for a week trying to decide
which I wanted to do most. And as soon as I decided that maybe I would
feel too old when I got back, the headache went away.
Interviewer: So you decided that you were not going to go then
�Gig Smith:
No, I decided to go to college, going to art school
Interviewer: Is that the first thing you did after you left the army?
Gig Smith:
I went straight to New York.
Interviewer: What school did you attend there?
Gig Smith:
I went to Pratt until… I was trying to live on 79 dollars a month, and it
was pretty rough, so I called the scout that had offered me the contract that
I had turned down to go into the service, to see if I could still get that
contract. (30:00) And that weekend, they had me flying from New York to
Chicago to meet the president of the company of the association.
Interviewer: The president of the association, Mr. Wrigley himself?
Gig Smith:
No, it was… oh dear, I know it as well as I do my name. I don’t
remember.
Interviewer: He was the president of the league?
Gig Smith:
No, I didn’t meet Mr. Wrigley, he was president of the league.
Interviewer: When did you first get approached about playing professional
baseball?
Gig Smith:
Before I went into the army, and I said no, I’m going into the service.
(31:00) Because everybody was doing something – it was a different war –
everybody was collecting things, scrap metal, everybody was doing
something, and I wanted to go in too.
Interviewer: Now, the league itself doesn’t get started until the war is going along-Gig Smith:
Yeah
Interviewer: --pretty well. If you’re joining the army in 1942, did maybe did the
league contact you not long after you joined?
Gig Smith:
No, they contacted me before I went in, and I turned that down. Then,
after I got out and needed the money – at least in the summertime -- that’s
when I joined. But then my mother became ill and my father wrote me a
very sweet letter, asking me to consider if I would come home to help him.
(32:00) So I had to transfer from Pratt to what’s now DCU, And I had to
stop playing softball, too, and baseball.
�Interviewer: Let’s see, go back then to your baseball story. You go out to Chicago,
did they try you out? What happened when you got to Chicago?
Gig Smith:
No, the scouts that they sent around, they knew what you were capable of
and those things, and I was later, in the Fast Pitch Softball Hall of Fame in
Virginia. I was one of the first people to go in. And we had a team from
Virginia that went to the first national softball tournament.
Interviewer: When was that? (33:00)
Gig Smith:
That was in Detroit, don’t ask me dates. I’m 87, please! (Laughter)
Interviewer: Was that back when you were a high school player?
Gig Smith:
Yeah
Interviewer: So you were pretty well known then.
Gig Smith:
Yeah.
Interviewer: So they thought, okay, we’re going to go get her. So what team then
did they assign you to?
Gig Smith:
Kenosha. The bus was waiting for me, because I had been in school, and
the bus was sitting on the side of the road waiting for me. They were going
to one of the teams they were going to play.
Interviewer: Do you remember what it was like to first meet the people on the team
and join the team?
Gig Smith:
I don’t know, I was just happy to be there. I don’t know, I don’t
remember. I met people easily.
Interviewer: (34:00) So you made friends quickly then?
Gig Smith:
Yeah
Interviewer: Describe a little bit of what life was like in that first season.
Gig Smith:
Well, I was a rookie, so I was lucky to get in a game, but I got in a few. It
was great, I thought it was great.
Interviewer: Now, at the point when you joined, how much were they doing in
terms of enforcing the rules for dress and conduct and all of those
things?
�Gig Smith:
We had chaperones. We were supposed to look and act and conduct
ourselves like ladies at all time, but play like men. So it was a pretty big
chore for some of us. We could not drink, smoke in public. (35:00) We
had to wear a dress or skirt at all times. And in those days, there were no
nylon hose because everything was going to war, so it was pretty funny to
look at those pictures now and see bobby socks in your shoes when you
were in a dress.
Interviewer: Do you remember any of the chaperones that you had?
Gig Smith:
They were wonderful; they were really great to us. But we played a lot of
pranks. The movie was correct in some of the things that they said, like
putting limburger cheese on the light, and when she came in – as the light
got hot – when she came in the night, she went all over the place hunting
for the smell. (36:00) Then we were passing around chocolates, and we
gave an exlax to one of the chaperones
Interviewer: Now none of this was your ideas was it?
Gig Smith:
Oh, no, you don’t think? I was so innocent.
Interviewer: Were you older than a lot of the players on the team?
Gig Smith:
Oh yes, I was.
Interviewer: But were they teaching things about how to play at their level?
Gig Smith:
Well, I was good enough to play at heir level, but the rules were different.
You played off the base. They started us off with a smaller ball and to
push the bases back a little bit, you know, until we could become
accustomed to the length and the size of the ball (37:00) But I had a
strange thing happen to me. There was a girl there the year before I got
there that had the same name as I, and she played center field. I was
always the third baseman. And when I went to spring training -- evidently
Grand Rapids wanted a center fielder – they must have thought that I was
that Helen Smith. I thought you were supposed to play where they asked
you or wanted you play. So I played center field.
Interviewer: That was your second season?
Gig Smith:
Yeah
Interviewer: So, you played in Kenosha for one year, then you played with Grand
Rapids for one year.
Gig Smith:
No… yeah, yeah.
�Interviewer: What years were those? 47-48?
Gig Smith:
46-47, I think.
Interviewer: So right after the war, essentially. (38:00) The war ends in late enough
in 1945, the baseball season is pretty well done, so the next year you
come to play
Gig Smith:
Yeah, because I was in New York going to art school.
Interviewer: And then, between the baseball seasons, then, you went back home to
Virginia and you went back to art school.
Gig Smith:
Yes, I transferred
Interviewer: Did the team accommodate your school schedule, or did the season
start late enough that you didn’t have to miss school or miss games.
Gig Smith:
No, I had to stop doing both, stop playing ball.
Interviewer: In the year that you first joined the league, you would have missed the
spring training that year, right?
Gig Smith:
Yeah
Interviewer: You were coming in after that. Now the next year, the year that you
joined Grand Rapids, did you go to spring training that year?
Gig Smith:
Yeah, we were in Florida, and then they flew us to Cuba to put on
exhibition games.
Interviewer: What was that like? (39:00)
Gig Smith:
Cuba. I was happy to be home. Just leave it as that. It was rough down
there.
Interviewer: People didn’t follow quite the same rules as they did where you came
from?
Gig Smith:
Well, we were only there to put on an exhibition game. I got awfully tired
of the Cubans following us around, singing. I was hungry for American
music.
Interviewer: Did you play against Cuban teams while you were down there? Or did
you play American teams?
�Gig Smith:
I’ve forgotten, I don’t remember. We probably played our own girls, I'd
imagine.
Interviewer: Now the league did recruit some Cuban players. Did you have any
Cubans on the teams that you played for?
Gig Smith:
No
Interviewer: (40:00) Do you remember how long they had you in Cuba? Was it like
a week or a couple weeks?
Gig Smith:
In Cuba? Just a week, couple of days, a week. Bacardi opened up their bar.
That was the longest bar I’d ever seen in my life. We had one of our
leading pitchers was not a drinker, and I wanted to go to Sloppy Joe’s –
I’d always heard about Sloppy Joe’s and I really wanted to go – and we
were going there after we ate. They took us by Bacardi’s. And this leading
pitcher, who was not a drinker, and she was so out of it, that somebody
had to take her back, and I volunteered. (41:00) And I never saw Sloppy
Joe’s.
Interviewer: So what was Sloppy Joe’s
Gig Smith:
That was where Ernest Hemingway used to hang out.
Interviewer: You said this woman was drinking, where were the Chaperones while
that was all happening?
Gig Smith:
Well, you can sneak something in a Coke, and not know it, You know? In
fact, I had my first drink when I was in basic training down at Oglethorpe.
And they knew I did not drink, and that was a funny situation. Where we
left the Non-com club, there was a long row of steps, and I was just as
happy as a lark, not knowing that I was tight. I went to go down the steps,
and my arm got caught on the rail and I slid all the way down. I went into
the barracks, and everybody was asleep, and I would go through knocking
on the double bunks and I would say “I’m drunk, I’m drunk.” (42:00) And
the next day, they caught me good, because they came through banging on
pans. But that was kind of a mean trick to play; you don't know how
people are going to react. That was my first drink. Probably my last one in
the army, too.
Interviewer: So in the time you were living in Washington, you kind of resisted
whatever offers there were to go have a drink or do this or do that.
�Gig Smith:
Yeah, well, we were a specialist field, and we did not do much going out,
Because the work that we did was so directly associated with the war, that
we didn’t do a lot of that.
Interviewer: And you had to be on call and all of that? (43:00)
Gig Smith:
Yeah.
Interviewer: Let’s go back to the spring training thing. What was the spring
training in Florida like? Was training in Florida different from
Cuba?
Gig Smith:
Well, we put on exhibition games in Cuba. In spring training in Florida,
we had a lot of drills and things like that, and played different teams.
Interviewer: One of the hallmarks of the league was that you played in skirts – and
relatively short skirts at that. Did you have problems with the base
running and fielding and things?
Gig Smith:
People that slid, they had horrible strawberries. It was ridiculous. But he
wanted us to look like women.
Interviewer: Did you do a lot of sliding, or did you just hit home runs? (44:00)
Gig Smith:
No, well, I didn’t hit any home runs there. If I was lucky to get in.
Interviewer: So you didn’t play a lot in that first season?
Gig Smith:
No, not a lot. We had a girl – we were playing in Chicago – we had one of
the leading center fielders, Pat [Kagel], and she slid into second base, and
came up screaming. Her bone was sticking through the sock. I got more of
a chance to play then.
Interviewer: Was that when you were with Grand Rapids?
Gig Smith:
Grand Rapids.
Interviewer: Did you get to play any third base with either team?
Gig Smith:
No, they didn’t know I was a third baseman. I thought you played where
they wanted you to play. I caught in the army, because nobody was stupid
enough to get back there (45:00)
Interviewer: Which position did you prefer to play?
Gig Smith:
Third base, definitely.
�Interviewer: Do you remember much about Kenosha or about Grand Rapids, the
communities you were playing in? What were the fans like in those
places?
Gig Smith:
The fans were great by the time I got there. I think the people that
preceded me had a rough time in the beginning. But when they found out
the caliber of ball that was being played… and I was amazed, because we
had some fantastic players.
Interviewer: Who were some of the best players that you played alongside?
Gig Smith:
I think Kamencheck was probably the best one. She was a first baseman
and left-hander. She could do anything. (46:00) Dottie Schroeder played
longer than anybody, but she was not the best hitter. She caught an
unbelievable ball that was hit a line drive over second base, and I don’t
know how she got to it, but she was fantastic. But Kamencheck was a
fantastic first baseman. She caught a ball that was hit so hard, she just
whirled around, and she ended up backwards when she caught that ball. I
don’t' know how she caught it either. Those were the two things that I
recall.
Interviewer: Now when you were playing, are there particular either plays that you
made or hits that you got?
Gig Smith:
No, I remember I hit a ground ball to Sophie Kurys. I was running to first
base, and the hat slid down over my eyes. I had a time with that.
Interviewer: (47:00) Did you hit the base?
Gig Smith:
I don’t know. All I remember is the hat sliding down and I couldn’t see a
thing. I was trying to push it up and run faster.
Interviewer: If it hadn’t been for your family situation back at home, would you
have stayed in the league a little bit longer?
Gig Smith:
Yes, definitely. I would have stayed in art school, too. I mean, I would
have finished at Pratt.
Interviewer: Then, after your second season playing ball, you come back home to
Virginia. Did you complete your degree down there?
Gig Smith:
Yes, at VCU. Then I taught for 31 years.
Interviewer: Where were you teaching? (48:00)
�Gig Smith:
I was teaching at Richmond Public Schools. I taught all grades, the last
eight years, I taught emotionally disturbed – not retarded – emotional
cases. I had some funny experiences there.
Interviewer: Could you tell us one of those?
Gig Smith:
Yes, I can tell you one of them I can tell you a couple of them. We had
one fella that did not like to – this was in the shop class, because I taught
art in shop – and he was working on a wooden project. He just did not
want to sand it properly, and he wanted to stain it or put some shellac to
finish it. He came to me – they had to come to be before they could the
next step – and I kept saying, because he was lazy and didn’t want to do it,
and he came back to me and he said, and this as after the third or fourth
time, he said “Mrs. Smith, I don’t care, I’m going to pay for it.” (49:00)
And I said, “Let me tell you something, Jesse. I’m a teacher that takes
pride in my teaching. If you walk out that door with a project, it’s going to
be done right." About three weeks later, or maybe a month later, a new
student came into that class. He was trying to pull the same trick that Jesse
pulled. I didn't know Jesse was behind me, and I said, “nope, it's not
right." I could hear his voice pop in, and he said, "Man, let me tell you
something, Ms. Smith takes pride in her teaching, and you’re not going to
go walking through that door with a project unless it’s done right.” I had
to cover my nose, I was laughing. I didn’t know if I’d have gotten through
to him at all. I liked those emotionally disturbed, maybe it was because I
was. (50:00)
Interviewer: I think that, even today, we still often find that classes like that, where
they can get hands on and do their own things, often students can
learn that way, if they’re not doing the conventional way. But you
must have been a pretty good teacher to get that kind of response.
Gig Smith:
I think I had more empathy for what they were going through. I had one
little girl that came in – I taught shop and art both – one little girl came
into the class. Tears were running down her eyes. She said, "I've just got to
talk to you, I've just got to talk to you." I said, well, let me get the class
started and we'll walk out in the hall." And she said, "my father kept us up
with a gun, drunk, all night.” So I think I did more good not necessarily by
teaching them art and shop, but I think I did more good in other ways.
(51:00) I think I was more successful with them, because they’d come to
me before they’d go to a counselor.
Interviewer: So they must have trusted you, or you were the person that they could
talk to.
Gig Smith:
Yeah, they knew that. And I had a little boy who was so sissy, it was just
pitiful. And they were kidding him all the time because he couldn’t throw
�a ball, or couldn’t throw like the boys threw. So one day, I asked him to
bring a softball up after school, the first thing I said, was “just throw me
the ball.” And he stepped on the wrong foot first, you know. Throwing
right… and I said, no, change. And we stayed there fifteen, twenty
minutes, until he could throw a ball. (52:00) And they didn’t kid him any
more. But they were the types of things that I think were more meaningful
to those kids than whether they could be a good artist or not.
Interviewer: During the time when you were working there, did anybody know
that you had been a professional ball player?
Gig Smith:
No, I didn’t dare tell anybody. When the movie came out, a friend of mine
knew that I had played, and she called up the newspaper and didn’t tell
me. And he called me and he said, I’d like for you to go and critique the
movie with me. And the next day, there was a full spread in the newspaper
with pictures and everything. I thought, oh dear Father, it is finally out.
(53:00) I hadn’t told anybody because softball was not looked upon like
tennis and golf, and yet it takes more strength to do those two, than it does
for sometimes to play right field and wait for a ball to come to you.
Interviewer: What did you think of the movie?
Gig Smith:
I thought it was funny, and I thought it also touched the human element. I
thought it was really good. It was really good, I liked it.
Interviewer: Were there parts of it that you thought were a little inaccurate or
Hollywood-ish?
Gig Smith:
Oh, of course. Tom Hanks urinating for ten minutes? We would have
thrown him out.
Interviewer: What sort of managers did you have during the two years that you
played?
Gig Smith:
(54:00) I had excellent managers. I had Johnny Rawlins – played for New
York – and we had good managers, we really did. We had nice
chaperones, we did. We were really restricted din what we could do.
Interviewer: What kind of living accommodations did you have while you played?
Gig Smith:
Usually, we lived in somebody’s home.
Interviewer: How did that work?
Gig Smith:
Well, I’m not going to tell you the first night I got there, because the next
day, I asked to have a new roommate. I was with Al Hallet, who was one
�of the leading pitchers at the time, and it was real good. She and Ruth
Lessing, we used to chum around together.
Interviewer:
The people who were your best friends in these teams, were they some
of the ones were older players closer to your age, or were some of
them younger. (55:00)
Gig Smith:
I never thought about age, you know?
Interviewer:
Let’s go back to life afterward again. The movie comes out, and so
forth. At what point do you start getting involved with the
organization?
Gig Smith:
I went to the first reunion in Chicago and I’ve been associated with them
ever since. That movie has opened up more doors me than you could
imagine. I’ve been to the White House twice, they wanted somebody who
had been in the service and also played in the league. They sent me to
Hawaii to make speeches at the army bases there for equal opportunities.
(56:00) They had a really nice program once a year for that type of thing,
and I was guest of honor then. I didn't see much of Hawaii but I saw the
army bases.
Interviewer:
At the time you were playing, did you have any sense that you were
sort of making history or were doing something important?
Gig Smith:
No, no. All I knew was that we were keeping baseball alive for Mr..
Wrigley, because President Roosevelt had called him and said I'm afraid
we're going to have to fold the men's league association because we need
every man that we can get. He asked one of his assistants if we would
dream up something to keep baseball alive, and he came back in a couple
of days, and said, “why don’t you start a women’s league, and treat hem
exactly the way you treat the men’s league and take them to Florida for
spring training and fly them to Cuba to put on exhibition games, and let
them come back up the east coasts all the way to their home teams just
like the men’s?" (57:00) And that was what happened. But there was
nothing equal in pay. We had to be on those hot old air-conditioned
busses. We had some great players. We had one girl who pitched two
perfect games, and when she wasn't pitching, she played third base, was
married to the coach, and had a three-year-old son.
Interviewer: That was Jean Fout.
Gig Smith:
Yeah.
Interviewer: To what extent where you aware of where the league had come from
or why they were doing it? (58:00)
�Gig Smith:
We knew why they were doing it. I’ll tell you something else that was
interesting. When I went to the Pentagon -- it wouldn’t happen today -every enlisted man that came into that unit that we were working in at the
Pentagon, was given a direct commission. They didn’t have to go to OCS.
For every woman that came in there, she was given the privilege of going
to OCS if she cared to go. That wouldn’t happen today. And I did not want
to go. I turned it down when I came out of basic training, I could have
gone then. I turned this one down because I was told that if I went to OCS
– I was told by the people in the office – if I went there would be no
chance of getting back. (59:00) I was with marvelous people. I was with
people I admired and I respected and I was doing a terrific job, a job that
really dealt directly with the war. That’s where I wanted to be, I didn’t
want to leave, so I didn’t go.
Interviewer: If you had been a man coming in, you would have been commissioned
automatically?
Gig Smith:
Yeah. Automatically. No questions about it.
Interviewer: As you look back on the whole thing now, how do you see what the
significance of the league was?
Gig Smith:
Well, it’s opened up doors – unbelievable doors – for all of us I think. As I
said, I’ve been to places I never would have gone before. (1:00:00)
Interviewer: When you meet women athletes from later generations and so forth,
what’s that like?
Gig Smith:
Awesome. What has happened for women in sports… Billie Jean King
was just given a presidential honor for her job in passing Title IX, and I
know for a fact -- I think she was given either a month or two months -she was ready to throw in the towel because she had been working for a
couple of years on that, and all of a sudden they passed that. Thank
goodness they did. You can give her full credit for that because she really
put her career on the line and used her own money to do it. She’s to be
admired. (1:01:00)
Interviewer: And she’s someone who, in turn, admires your group and all the
things you do.
Gig Smith:
I think so, I think so. She’s going to be our guest of honor, so I’m sure she
does.
�Interviewer: At this point, is there any important part of your story we’ve left out?
Is there anything else you’d like to add here into the record before we
close things out?
Gig Smith:
I’m just happy for the life I’ve had. Many times I thought it wasn’t going
to work out, but everything’s worked out according to whatever divine…
Interviewer: In general, what do you think the importance of sports – baseball and
softball – what did that mean to you? How did that help you in your
life, or what did you learn from the experience of playing?
Gig Smith:
You should have given me time to think that one through! (Laughter)
(1:02:00) It has opened up so many doors, unbelievable doors, for me. The
experience has been wonderful, and it’s still wonderful. I just wish I had
about 20 more years to live.
Interviewer: Well, I can tell you that you do have a wonderful story and you’ve
done a wonderful job of telling it to us.
Gig Smith:
Thank you.
�
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Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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Grand Valley State University. History Department
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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.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Moving Image
Text
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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RHC-58_HSmith
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Smith, Helen "Gig" (Interview transcript and video), 2009
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Smith, Helen
Description
An account of the resource
Helen "Gig" Smith was born on January 5, 1922 in Richmond, Virginia. She began playing softball at the age of 13. She joined the Women's Army Corps after Pearl Harbor and later was attached on special assignment to the Pentagon to decrypt Japanese codes. In 1947, she joined the AAGPBL's Kenosha Comets and then in 1948 played for the Grand Rapids Chicks. During her time in the league she played the infield. In 1948, she left the league to pursue teaching art in Virginia.
Contributor
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Smither, James (Interviewer)
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
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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--players--Wisconsin
Baseball players--Michigan
Women
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2009-09-26
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5092a94e7a78b7c270892bde9e9df49f.m4v
f07ec4764b9b29a611f08f1982cfb6d0
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6531d57d37a35878d16b558e3f012b62.pdf
a6e927403c9beeae56794767a3c57154
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
HELEN FILARSKI
Women in Baseball
Born: 1924 Detroit, MI
Resides:
Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 5, 2010, Detroit,
Michigan at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion.
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, November 26, 2010
Interviewer: “Helen, if we could begin with your full name and where and when
were you born?”
My whole name is Helen Margaret Filarski and I was born in 1924.
Interviewer: “Where?”
In Detroit, Michigan
Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like? Where did you live?”
I lived in Detroit, Michigan and most of the time it was—the war was on and there was
no—it was before the war was on I should say and I was going to school in Detroit, the
Catholic school. 14:17
Interviewer: “Did you wear a uniform?”
No, not at first, it’s when you’re out of the eighth grade that you start with the uniform.
Interviewer: “I had the white sox with the black shoes and the girls had the skirts
with the white sox, yup, yup. Where did you live? I know it was Detroit, but did
you live in an apartment or a house?”
No, we lived in the east side of Detroit and my mother and father and there were seven
children. The war was on and most of them at that time were in war plants because the
war was on and everything, so we just stayed there and I went to Holy Name School for
1
�eight years and graduated from there and went to St. Joseph’s because my mother had
gone there, so we all followed up in the Polish atmosphere. 15:46
Interviewer: “So you had neighborhood friends and did you play games?”
Played games—I was one of seven children, so the girls, I didn’t consider myself a girl
because I went with my brother and we played ball all the time. The boys got away with
it you know, so I stuck with him and we played ball and most of my time with them we
played and like everybody else, we had one bat and one ball and I got the job to sew the
ball up every time after we played because we knocked the stuffing out of it, but then we
had to sew it up before we could play a game. 16:41 I would keep that up and I went
through grade school and I played all that way and then I went to high school.
Interviewer: “Now, were there any organized sports at the school?”
No, not at grade school they didn’t have any.
Interviewer: “But you’re playing baseball basically with other neighbor kids?”
We would get out of school and out we would go. We lived right next to a playground
and that was one thing you know, we would go out the door and over the street and we
played until it got dark and that was it every day you know. 17:34 Because I was a girl,
my mother would call me every once in a while, “get in here and do the dishes”, and I
didn’t enjoy that, but what do you do? We did that all my life through eighth grade then
when I graduated out of grade school—oh, in the summer time my mother, since we were
so poor and they didn’t have a job, my father got a job cleaning the streets at that time
because there wasn’t any war plants. My mother would make a big lunch and everything
and my dad would drive out to a plot that the city gave you and make a garden and we
would sit out there all day working on the planting. 18:40 Then my dad would come
2
�back after he got through with his job and pick us up. There were about four of us at that
time that went there and they took us home and we got ready for dinner and everything
and that was every day, you know, that we had time to get over there.
Interviewer: “By the time you got into high school, did you have any idea what you
wanted to do through life? Were you going to be a nurse or be a mother, what were
you thinking?”
Well, through those years I played ball at the city park and I played with the girls that
were in the league and mostly I was too young and that and I would pick-up the bats and
chase the ball and stuff like that. 19:43
Interviewer: “So is this the actual professional girls’ baseball league?”
Yes
Interviewer: “How did you hear about them?”
Oh, I learned a lot from them you know.
Interviewer: “But how did you hear about them? How did you know they were
there?”
Here’s the playground, here’s the street, here’s my house, I mean we lived right upon it
and anybody that would get on that field we could see and if there was an open space, a
position open, I ran over there and played in it, the boys or whoever is playing.
Interviewer: “How did you hear about the All American Girls Professional Baseball
League though?”
Alright, when we played, a bunch of girls were in the league and I got good enough to
play with them and on their team, so I played and everybody said, “why don’t you go join
us for this year, you’re good enough to go over there”. 20:52
3
�Interviewer: “So they were off season, they were from Detroit and they went to
play wherever they played and when they came back, that’s when you were playing
with them?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Ok, now I get it, so did you go and talk to your mom and dad about
it?’
Oh, I kept talking to her all the time, but it was no use and she would say, “girls don’t
play ball, just come in the house and do some work around the house”, all housework all
the time.
Interviewer: “You had told me a story about how you heard about tryouts in
Chicago, let’s hear that story.”
Through the girls, we kept going to the park and that and I heard the story about it and the
girls kept asking me, “come on, come on with us, don’t stay here”, so I went and asked
my mother and she said, “you’re too young, you can’t leave home alone, you’re too
young to go”, and she said, “Al Capone is in here and he’s trying to get a league together
of women and it’s not for playing ball and you’re not going anywhere near that
playground again”, so it just kept a going and I kept playing there. 22:27 I kept playing
until I got out of high school.
Interviewer: “So you had to have her permission to be able to join the league and
she wouldn’t let you.”
No
Interviewer: “So when you turned was it eighteen? What did you do?”
4
�Eighteen, yes and I said, “I’ll run away”, and she didn’t like the idea of me running away,
so she said, “let me talk to some of the girls, Connie Wisnwiewski, and a lot of the girls
that were on the team and they were my friends and I had them over and everything and
she talked to them and they said, “she’ll be all right, we’ll take care of her”, and I was
about the youngest one there then and when I got to spring training they got me in real
good you know. “You Polock, you go and stay in the room and when we call you bring
down the fire escape and bring us in”, so that’s what I was doing for a while. 23:40 I
was the best friend.
Interviewer: “So your mom finally says it’s ok to go. What does your dad think
about all this?”
My dad didn’t care. Hhe didn’t care.
Interviewer: “So, how did you actually go to the spring training? Did you go by
train, did you go by bus?”
We did, we went by train.
Interviewer: “And you were with the other girls that you knew, so you felt kind of
taken care of?”
Yes, placing you where you were going to play, I got on a team, Rockford, with no
friends of mine and I didn’t know anybody.
Interviewer: “Did you have to try out? Did you have to try out for the team?”
Yes
Interviewer: “What was that experience? What was that like, the tryouts?”
You’re scared, you’re scared and there were girls from the league out there and they
would hit the ball to me. Connie Wisnwiewski was the best pitcher there was at the time,
5
�so she would do the pitching—running and everything, teaching you, but they made a
fool of me. 25:04 They’ll do that, they will kid around with ya, but I tried to do it my
own same way.
Interviewer: “But you got in.”
Oh yeah, I got in
Interviewer: “That must have been a happy day?”
Oh, it was fine, but it took me and got me into a house. When you get on a team they
check you into a house, so this was mom and dad Gorenson and they had no children and
they had a beautiful home and everything, but they said to them, “keep an eye on her
because she’s underage and we don’t want any problems”, so it was “where you going?”
They kept their eye on me. 25:57
Interviewer: “Did you have a room mate?”
Yes, she was a movie star, Kay Rohrer, and she would go out and she would say, “don’t
forget, I will call you when I want to come back in”, so she would call and if we were on
the road, she would call and I’d let down the fire escape otherwise I would wait and put
the light on so she would see the light and that the road was clear and she would come in
and we did that for two seasons.
Interviewer: “What was your first season like as a rookie?” 26:36
Scared, you’re really scared when you play with these gals who know their position and
what’s going on instead of waiting for someone to say, “now you go there and you go
there”. They put you in your position and they taught you—you learned and you would
stay on that field until you fell down. You learned to not be afraid of the ball and it was
good, it was really great. 27:12
6
�Interviewer: “What position did you play the first season?”
Third base
Interviewer: “As a rookie, did you start or did you sit on the bench a lot?”
No, I started I started.
Interviewer: “Even though you were scared, you must have been pretty good?”
I didn’t mind it and I was tough you know, I would run and go after that ball because I
was going to stop it if it killed me. When you were a rookie, you were going to fight
your heart out and that’s what I did and it was a strong team.
Interviewer: “Any particular game that you remember from the first season? Was
there anything that you did that was good or maybe made a mistake?” 28:03
I don’t know, I’m telling you; I ended up in the hospital.
Interviewer: “What happened?”
Well, I got spiked a couple of times down my legs sliding into third base you know and I
think that’s what the worst one was, but that was it.
Interviewer: “How did you like the uniform?”
Oh, it was free you know and they gave you a lot of free time there.
Interviewer: “Did you have to alter it at all for your height or anything?”
The first year no, but the second year we did because it was a little bit long.
Interviewer: “One of the girls said the difficulty was that she played in the outfield
and as you reached down for the ball, you got dress and you didn’t get the ball you
got the skirt.”
Right, it’s just like in the infield, you’re down here and you go down for the ball and
here—the ball is right there. 29:14
7
�Interviewer: “Now, once you finished your first season, you came back home to
Detroit?”
Oh yeah
Interviewer: “Then what did you do when you got home? Were you still in school?
You were out of school, right?”
No, no I wasn’t in school, but in-between there I went to the war factory. I was two years
in the war factory and then I was able to—my age could get me out you know, so that’s
where I went.
Interviewer: “You were in Detroit though?”
Yes
Interviewer: “So that was one of the factories that was supporting the war.”
Yes
Interviewer: “So then how did you—your second season, did they send you a letter?
Did they call up your house and say we want a new contract?”
Yeah, they send a letter and tell you it’s—we met in spring training.
Interviewer: “Ok, and once again you took the train?” 30:12
Yes
Interviewer: “Did you still travel with the same girls that you did before?”
Oh yeah, there were about seven or eight of us from Detroit that—and every year they
probably picked up on or two girls, so it got big and it was very nice.
Interviewer: “So the second year you weren’t a rookie any more?”
No, no and boy, you better know your steps. It was great and you just knew what you
were doing.
8
�Interviewer: “How were the fans?”
Oh, the fans just loved ya I’m telling ya. They would be in there and we had a lot of
attendance. They were there all the time. It was great.
Interviewer: “Now you played some games at home and then you also had road
trips?”
Yes, four games at home one time and three on the road and then three home and four on
the road.
Interviewer: “What were the road trips like?”
Bumpy, we just had a beat-up bus and oh my god I’m telling you it was really something.
It was worse than these that go down the street. 31:34
Interviewer: “These were fairly long trips by bus?”
A lot of them, like you would go to Chicago, that was a long one from Peoria or
something like that. That was about the longest one I think, from Peoria over into
Chicago there.
Interviewer: “Now, when you stopped along the way were you just able to walk out
with in your blue jeans?”
No, if you stopped there and you intended to get off the bus you gotta put your skirt on.
You couldn’t be seen in public in shorts or anything like that. 32:16
Interviewer: “Right, did you have to go through the charm school, the school?”
Ya, it was the first year the charm school was there.
Interviewer: “I’m sorry, I should have gotten back—how was that?”
9
�Oh, everybody laughed about it at first. They made us scared you know, because we
couldn’t get out there and play ball because we were doing this and everything you know,
and what did we want to do that for.
Interviewer: “Did you have to have a book on your head?”
No, but some did
Interviewer: “Well, did they ask you to sit down in a certain way? Did you also
learn how to use the knife and fork and things like that?”
Well, your woman who taught us-Interviewer: “Helena Rubenstein?” 33:27
Yeah, she was one, and they taught us how to get up and how to sit down and some of
them would just mock them and come in and plop down.
Interviewer: “But this was new to you, you were a city girl, right and playing with
the boys and now you got to sit this way?”
Yes, and I was scared and you would get scared at doing these things, but I loved it just
as much.
Interviewer: “Did any of those things carry on for the rest of your life? Do you still
sit that way?”
No, no and if I want to sit down, I sit down. 34:17
Interviewer: “So, your second season, you’re not a rookie anymore and you’re still
playing third base?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Any games that you can think of that were a little bit unusual and did
you have a good year?”
10
�Oh, we had a good year, we won the championship the first year that I played and that
was good.
Interviewer: “Because of you?”
No, I helped a little bit and I had a good year there and if I couldn’t do it with my glove, I
would do it with my body.
Interviewer: “You said earlier that your family was not wealthy and you were
making pretty good money weren’t you?”
Yeah, it was more than I did in the factory. I mean we were still at the war a couple more
years I think into it and we were still at war.
Interviewer: “Did you send money home?” 35:20
Yeah, oh yeah I sent it and I didn’t have anyplace to spend it because you can’t do
anything anyway.
Interviewer: “At that time Helen, you’re a professional baseball player and
whether your mother believed it or not, you really were a professional baseball
player. Were you thinking that was something you were going to keep doing every
year?”
Well, I didn’t hear about it at first, but I wanted to get into it and once I got into it I loved
it you know.
Interviewer: “But did you think you were going to be able to play this for a
number of years?”
No, I would just do it day by day and figure it out just as good as you can and you do
what you can.
11
�Interviewer: “Did you have any idea what you wanted to do professionally with
your life? Did you want to become a nurse or did you want to become anything?”
No, I just wanted to play ball all day long. 36:31
Interviewer: “So, at the end of the second season you came back to Detroit and you
worked in the same factory?”
No, you couldn’t go back there.
Interviewer: “So, did you get a job?”
No, I don’t think I did.
Interviewer: “You were living at home with mom and dad?”
Yeah, and working around there.
Interviewer: “Now the third season comes along and you’re not playing for the
same team anymore, right?”
Let me see, I went to Peoria and Kenosha for one year after that and then went to South
Bend for three years.
Interviewer: “But the Kenosha experience—how come they transferred you to
Kenosha? Do you remember why?” 37:29
Well, they probably had an opening. Either somebody got hurt or you never know if they
didn’t have a good player there.
Interviewer: “So, you’re playing with one team and the next thing you know you’re
playing with another team.”
That’s right, you can go overnight, a lot of times you play ball that night and then as soon
as you start packing in the dressing room and out you go to another city. That’s how they
went when they were short on players.
12
�Interviewer: “Was the experience at Kenosha a good one?”
Oh yeah, it was a good one, getting use to the girl next to you, you know, it takes a little
time, so they make you play a little longer and you get different plays and it works out
good, so I stayed there for that year. 38:37
Interviewer: “Good, then back again to Detroit?”
Yes
Interviewer: “And then you play another year?”
Yeah
Interviewer: “This time you’re with the new team, South Bend and they had a
pretty good team didn’t they?”
Oh yes, they did and three years I played with them and they were very good. They had a
lot of old time ball players. I mean they didn’t get any new ones like the other teams got
and it’s hard to get use to playing next to somebody like that, going after the ball or
playing to the right team. 39:38
Interviewer: “Now, you’re playing for a number of years as a professional baseball
player and even at that point you’re still not thinking that this is going to be your
career?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Did you think that you were just going to keep playing?”
I never thought that it would last that long you know. We played night after night
wondering how long we were going to be together because sometimes they were talking
you know, about breaking up and things like that, but we never did, so we just kept on
playing.
13
�Interviewer: “What was your last year? You lasted until?”
1950
Interviewer: “The league went on until 1954, how come you left in 1950?” 40:31
I got married, yes in 1950 I got married
Interviewer: “And you just decided that you weren’t going you play baseball
anymore?”
Yeah, and things were getting different and my boyfriend Donald Steffes said, “it’s either
me or baseball”, so I quit and got married.
Interviewer: “So, after that, after you finished, did you miss playing baseball?”
Oh, yeah you do
Interviewer: “Did you ever play another sport after that?”
No, I was married and lived the married life.
Interviewer: “Did you talk about your baseball experience after you were done?”
41:34
Oh, we always talked about it, anyone we met we talked about it and I use to come to the
reunions too and continue to come.
Interviewer: “Well, how did you hear about—did you come to the first reunion?”
Yeah, I think I’ve been to all of them, oh yeah.
Interviewer: “All of them, now let me ask you a real dumb question, why do you
come to the reunions?”
To see, to meet and talk baseball, that’s all we do you know, we get there and we tell
about all these crazy plays we make or something and they will say, “oh, you were so
14
�dumb, you were supposed to the other base”, and they all laugh about it you know. It
was great and the best part of my life.
Interviewer: “What are some of the stories that you tell at the reunion?” 42:32
Oh, I don’t know
Interviewer: “Well third base gets a lot of action.”
Oh yeah, yeah it does
Interviewer: “Especially when you have bases loaded.”
Right, right
Interviewer: “Well, let me ask you this, you did talk about your experiences with
baseball and a lot of the girls never talked about it, didn’t tell their kids, didn’t tell
anybody.”
Oh yeah, you ought to see my room and what I got, pictures and everything and I’ve
gotta—and after seeing those pictures downstairs I start saying mine aren’t so good
because they’re great.
Interviewer: “Were people interested in talking about baseball?”
Anybody that met me would talk about it and, “are you still playing?”
The first question anybody will ask you, “are you still going back?” 43:31
Interviewer: “Did you get a chance to see the movie “A League of Their Own”?”
Yeah, we were in it, we were in it and we were showing them how not to throw it so hard
and we laughed and had more fun with that.
Interviewer: “What did you think of the movie?”
We thought it was great and I thought it was great. A lot of them that saw it came out
came out of their shell and said, “never knew there was any ball league”, and those
15
�pictures they had over here, they aught to put them in a book. You talk to somebody and
they say, “I didn’t know that”. 44:30
Interviewer: “What do you make of all the—the movie came out and in some ways
you’re treated like movie stars. What do you think about that?”
Well, we were for a while there you know. We did some crazy things with them I’m
telling you. Every time you would hit the ball or something they would say, “don’t throw
it so hard”, or something and we just sat down and laughed because they wanted to make
the picture, but they didn’t want to do the business, but it was great, the whole thing you
know.
Interviewer: “You went to Cooperstown?”
Yes
Interviewer: “How was that experience of getting inducted into the hall of fame?”
That was great, that was the first time I saw the whole thing you know and it is just
beautiful there. 45:30
Interviewer: “the movie, I thought, did a pretty good job out of showing the
reactions of the players in there and were you in that scene in the movie?”
Yes
Interviewer: “I’ll look for you the next time I look at it, Ok?”
Yes
Interviewer: “It’s interesting because I teach at the university level and the kids are
usually anywhere from eighteen to twenty and when I told them I’m doing this
documentary about the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, and A
league of their Own, they get all excited over it.”
16
�Everybody loves it and they say, “are you—did you see that picture?” I say, “ yeah, I
was in it”, and they say, “you were?” It was really great and we loved it all the time we
were working on it.
Interviewer: “That was just a few years of your life, a small part of your life, but
how do you look back on that period now? How do you look at it? Is it some thing
that’s very special to you or is it something that just happened? Have you had a
chance to think about it?” 46:41
It’s very special to me because I lived for it and a month before I had to leave town, I was
packing, so it meant everything to us and kids would say, “where is everybody?” They
are different people you know and there was something, the love for the game and we
still loved the people around there and talked to them. We didn’t think we were stars or
anything.
Interviewer: “But you played professional baseball.” 47:41
Yeah, that’s right
Interviewer: “One other question for you, did your mom ever get a chance to see
you play baseball?”
Yes, I think she saw one game and she would say, “I’m not going to watch you get hurt, I
can’t watch you get hurt”, and that’s the first thing she always thought of. She would
say, “you’re going to get hurt”, and I said, “well when the ball is hit to me real hard, I’ll
get out of the way ma”, and she would say, “Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it”
Interviewer: “You said earlier that your dad didn’t care one way or the other, did
he get a chance to see you play?” 48:28
17
�He probably did, but he wasn’t interested in it. Girls should be in the house, you know,
and wash the dishes. I’m so sick of washing dishes.
Interviewer: “When did your parents find out that you played for the league? Did
they know early on?”
Not really, not really it didn’t mean anything to them that I went out of town. They
thought anybody can do that, we all play ball.
Interviewer: “But that all changed.”
Oh yeah and as the years go by it means more to them.
Interviewer: “You have a special family her, this—you have your own family, but
you have another family that’s all these other girls and all their daughters and their
sons and whatnot.”
We have a big family when we all get together and they all feel the same way and the
mothers talk just like they do, you know. 49:47
Interviewer: “What do you think about this All American Girls Professional
Baseball League? It’s part of American history now.”
Yes, yes it is
Interviewer: “Did you ever think it was going to be that big of a deal?”
No, it was getting slowly and they would get it out there once in a while, but they get it
out there now and everybody says, “A League of Their Own is on”, and everybody is
going and I say, “A League of Their Own”.
Interviewer: “If it’s on TV I can’t change the channel, I just—I don’t care where it
starts or where it ends, I just watch it. My favorite scene is the Tom Hanks and
Geena Davis when she’s about to go with her husband and leave and she said it got
18
�too hard and he said, “It’s supposed to be hard, if it wasn’t hard everybody could do
it”. 50:46
Yeah
Interviewer: “That’s an amazing scene and I use that in class, you gotta work at it.”
It makes sense
Interviewer: “did you get a chance to travel to other countries? Some of the girls
went to Cuba.”
Yes, I did
Interviewer: “How was that experience?”
I don’t know really.
Interviewer: “Just another ball game?”
It’s another ball game, it’s another country and they start talking and I say, “ya, ya, sure”,
you don’t know what they’re talking about and they touch you. We were walking in a
parade coming to the stadium one time and they touch you and get on the floor and
holler, they just go out of their minds. They toss somebody and the guys that are keeping
the line straight and they go up to them and are beating them with a Billy club and they
didn’t care how they hit them. 52:05
Interviewer: “The public was just going crazy about it, so the police came?”
Outside yeah, the police would get them if they would stick in their hand to touch you.
Interviewer: “Where else did you travel to besides Cuba? Did you go any other
places?”
Yeah, I went on the train, I’m trying to think where I went in the wintertime. I played
somewhere, I forgot already.
19
�Interviewer: “Was it South America? No”
I was in Puerto Rico
Interviewer: “Once again, just another ball game?”
Yeah
Interviewer: “No Billy clubs this time I hope.”
No, sometimes they will just run in and do something and run out. Somebody had been
talking and they said it’s like holy people when they run out and throw their arms up and
holler. It’s something sacred and that’s why they come and run out. You got to stop it
because the parade is going on. 53:33
Interviewer: “They thought you were somehow holy people, huh?”
Yeah, little do they know, huh?
Interviewer: “Well Helen it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Is there any story that
you just want to be able to tell because I know you talk to your friends about things.
Are there any stories that you can think of off the top of your head?”
Right now I can’t remember.
Interviewer: “All right.”
20
�
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Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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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.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Text
Language
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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RHC-58_HFilarski
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Filarski, Helen (Interview transcript and video), 2010
Creator
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Filarski, Helen
Description
An account of the resource
Helen Filarski Steffes was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1924. She grew up playing baseball with boys in the neighborhood. She met some of the players from the All American league who encouraged her to try out, and went on to play third base for Rockford, Peoria, Kenosha and South Bend between 1944 and 1950.
Contributor
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Boring, Frank (Interviewer)
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
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Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Baseball for women--United States
Baseball
Sports for women
World War, 1939-1945
Baseball players--Indiana
Baseball players--Illinois
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Women
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2010-07-02
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dd7f30f3e8a50eb357cabd7d0983f09c.m4v
dbc517c5f8ec935ef3ecc22abc9e8fe4
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/027a6f526baba095d20d2302fac1a1e9.pdf
3ed43232ca0e9464b5090a7c988bb4e8
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Grace Piskula
Length of Interview: (00:38:20)
Interviewed by: Gordon Olson, September 26, 2009 in Milwaukee, WI at the alumni
annual reunion of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, April 14, 2010
Interviewer: “Grace, I think the easiest way to start these interviews is to just talk
a little bit about you and your family and your experience with sports before you got
involved with professional baseball. Where were you born and tell me a little bit
about your background.”
Well, I was born on February 26, 1926 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the south side of
Milwaukee and the neighborhood was primarily Polish and German. I had a younger
brother and an older brother in my lifetime. All of my experience with sports came from
the neighborhood because my neighborhood was full of boys and there was only one
other girl. 1:16 Gladys and I were the only two and she didn’t like any sports, but I
always played and had a lot of fun. I even played tackle football in a lot of open lots and
wherever we could get equipment. We had a big yard and the man upstairs would buy a
ball and we would play ball in the back yard. There was a big barn that we surrounded
and it must have been an old country area because if you got a home run it would go over
the barn and land in the alley in the next block there, but my brothers were not interested
in sports. One was very interested in reading, that’s my oldest brother, and in theater, and
my youngest brother was a runner. He ran when he was in high school. 2:10 There was
a social center near our home and you could go to the social center and play volleyball,
basketball or take classes and it was run by the Milwaukee Recreation Department, which
was terrific, so I got interested in sports. I was playing all over the city, volleyball,
basketball, and softball and eventually played softball in West Allis, they had a league
there and many of the girls who made this league are from that area.
Interviewer: “They started as softball players.”
It started with underhand softball and we played at night, and of course when I was
playing it was during the war years and the men weren’t around, so they had big crowds,
five thousand people would come and watch and I was offered a job at Heil Company if I
would play volleyball, basketball and softball for them. 3:10 I wasn’t interested because
of my family. My mom never went beyond the sixth grade and my father never beyond
the tenth and both of them were terrific believers in education. However, they couldn’t
afford to send us to college, but we certainly were checked on during our grade school
and high school time and that’s all that mattered, doing well in school. 3:34
1
�Interviewer: “Now, in the neighborhood when you were playing, this was what
would be called today, disorganized recreation. There were not teams as such, it
was just whoever showed up in the morning to start playing ball?”
Yes, all the boys were—I think I was the only girl and all the boys would get together
and somebody would bring a bat and they would bring a ball and we would play in an
open field. 3:59
Interviewer: “Did you choose up sides?”
Yes, you would toss the bat and choose up sides.
Interviewer: “As the only girl, were you the last one chosen?”
No, I was not and my brother never liked the fact that he wouldn’t be picked before me.
Interviewer: “You were the better ball player in the family?”
Yes, but he was a better runner. 4:21 I had these trophies in the kitchen, my mother had
them up and his friends would come over and they would say, “What did you get the
trophy for?” My brother would say, “they’re my sister’s”.
Interviewer: “That’s great—now, what position in softball?”
I played—actually I played almost all of them except pitching and catching, but my main
positions were short, first base, third base and left field. 4:50
Interviewer: “That pretty well covers it.”
I played second base once, but I never played right field or pitched and I was a good
hitter that was the other thing.
Interviewer: “That would explain why you got chosen quickly. How did you hear
about the all American Girls League and how did you get involved with that?”
Well, I didn’t hear about it frankly, it was news to me. I didn’t know they had tryouts, I
didn’t know anything about that. I was working at Schuster’s in the candy department to
get money for school. 5:28
Interviewer: “Schuster’s was a department store in Milwaukee?”
Yes, a department store and they had a cafeteria and all these other things and I played
softball on their team and I got a telegram from Jack Lossa. Jack Lossa was a former
Milwaukee Brewer who had a softball team on the north side and Buddy Greif was my
coach and he had a softball team on the playgrounds on the south side and he got to be a
manager and he needed a player in left field immediately and he remembered me playing
against his team and he just sent a wire and said, “Have job for you on Rockford Peaches.
Report to Racine”, and my mother said, “You’re not going anywhere.” 6:14
Interviewer: “How old were you at this point?”
I was about eighteen, and my mother said, “you’re not going”. I was a senior in high
school, trying to earn money for school, so I called Buddy Greif and asked him to come
2
�over and he said to my mother, “where could she earn fifty dollars a week plus two fifty a
day for spending money?” My mother couldn’t answer that and I wasn’t earning that
kind of money even at Schuster’s or even in the defense plants soldering canteens, so
they did let me go. 6:46 I went to Rockford and lived in a rooming house.
Interviewer: “I have to ask you, when you went to Rockford, was that one of the
first times that you had left home essentially?”
Yes, I never was on a train until I went to college because it was kind of a protective
neighborhood. We had certain hours at night and you had to stay home and talk as a
family. We had a night where we had to stay home so we could talk together as a family,
so we could talk together and play together and stuff. A different kind of family than we
have today. 7:32
Interviewer: “That’s a good family practice. Your family must have been rather
excited when you decided to go off and play baseball?”
I’m not sure they were excited at all. Actually my mother knew very little about sports.
She came to an all city game we had one time when I was playing left field and my father
told me that when the ball came out and I caught it, she turned to him and said, “now
what’s she going to do with it?” That’s how much she knew about the game. 8:02
Interviewer: “Fortunately you knew what to do with the ball when you caught it.”
I knew where to throw it, right.
Interviewer: “Somebody told me that at one point Mr. Wrigley took an active
interest in your career.”
Actually when I went to college, I went to LaCrosse State University, my first college
experience and while there I got a phone call from Mr. Wrigley, I wasn’t the only person,
there were a few girls that he must have somehow got names of who were from different
areas not just Milwaukee, but from others, and he asked me to come and tryout in
Chicago with the Chicago Chicks. 8:46
Interviewer: “A different league.”
I really think the Chicago Chicks were the work up league for the other one.
Interviewer: “Their teams played all around Chicago.”
They played at night and we wore shorts, we wore satin shorts and tops and then satin
leggings and I still have the contract in my scrapbook from that experience and we lived
in rooming houses in groups. In fact, I will try to remember the name of the gal who—
her husband use to come and she was married and had children and he use to come and
watch her play on weekends. 9:21 She also got on one of the teams in our league, so that
was like, what do you call that, the minor leagues?”
3
�Interviewer: “Minor leagues probably.”
Mr. Wrigley, I don’t know if it was he himself. He asked me to come and I said, “I can’t
come, I have no money”, and he said they would put me on the Hiawatha, which went
from Lacrosse to Chicago and I never had a chance to see my parents, so I said, “I won’t
come unless I can stop in Milwaukee and see my parents”, and they let me do that and
when we got to Chicago there was a limo waiting and they took me to a gym and tried me
out. When the movie came out I was sitting there and I had forgotten about that
experience and all of a sudden tears were coming down. It was a recall that happened to
me and I’m sure it happened to other people also. 10:20 I played first base there.
Interviewer: “Describe that tryout experience. What did they have you do?”
Oh, they had me bat mostly in the gym and field when someone would throw a ball to
you. That’s about the extent of it. It was a fairly large gym.
Interviewer: “Who was watching the tryouts and who was making the decision?”
I don’t know who the man was. They had somebody that took us there and was checking
out what you could do and I had a first baseman’s mitt and an infielder.s mitt and a ball.
I had one of those bags with me. It was a twelve-inch softball. It was the Olympic style
softball. 11:09
Interviewer: “This actually took place though after you had already played with the
Peaches, correct? You played with the—or did you go with the—“
I played one year with the Peaches and then the next year I played in Chicago.
Interviewer: “Let’s back up to that Peaches experience. You got to Rockford on
your own and do you remember the first game you played in?”
No. I remember that at one of the games I slid into first base and I may have sprained my
ankle, but we had no people to help us with injuries. We had a coach and the team and
that was it, and a chaperone, that was it. The catcher, I remember, taped up my foot, but
we were all so eager to play that we wouldn’t tell the coach what condition we were.
12:02 When I look back on it, when I look at the players now and all the help they get,
exercises, food and all this. There was nothing and in fact most girls worked during the
day, especially in Chicago. That’s why I went there, to make money for college. We
worked during the day, like office work or store work and played ball at night.
Interviewer: “Just so you had money to go to college, but earn money and also get
to play the game you love.”
To earn money for college and I loved the game. All three of them.
Interviewer: “Any recollections of the—you played essentially part of a season in
Rockford?”
Yes.
4
�Interviewer: “Any recollections of the games?”
They were terrific in Rockford, the people; they had lots of support and lots of people in
the audience and then the American Legion and others there would say, ”today the first
home run gets ten dollars”, you know what I’m saying, they use to give away prizes to
the batters and a lot of times they would serve lunches for us after the game. 13:15 You
always had to deal with the fans to sign autographs on cigarette packs and stuff you know
people weren’t going to keep anyway. They were eager to see what you look like. 13:29
Interviewer: “Any guys hang around after the game?”
Lots of guys, especially in Chicago.
Interviewer: “So it’s a version of what goes on in major league baseball today only
the genders are reversed.”
Yes. The ladies went to see the men and the men went to see the ladies.
Interviewer: “that’s good. What was the field like? The playing conditions, do you
have any recollections of the condition of the field for example?”
I thought they were very good fields. They were fields, as I recall, that other men’s
softball teams played on in the communities. In fact, all of my sports experiences were
out of the community. I played volleyball and basketball even in Iowa, you know, we
would go on weekends on trips. I don’t know why, but during the war none of the
companies got a lot of publicity and they always had these teams for publicity. 14:30
The paper always had the scores and the name of the company would be in the paper and
that’s why they wanted people to play ball.
Interviewer: “They wanted winning teams.”
They wanted winning teams and they wanted their names in the paper and that’s why I
was offered a job to play three sports, during the war, for that company and they said they
would give me this nice easy job, but of course without an education, what kind of a job
could you get, so to us—my mother was so proud—I told you she never went to school
and I have a brother with a PhD and both myself and my other brother have masters
degrees and my mother said we were the only ones in the neighborhood. 15:10
Interviewer: “She was very proud of that.”
She was so proud of that, when she lived she was.
Interviewer: “Any big hits, any big plays still come to mind from your playing
days?”
I remember that in Chicago at my first bat, I hit a triple and I’ve never forgotten that one.
I also remember my first night with the Rockford Peaches, playing left field, a fly ball
coming and I’m going after it and I catch it and I look and there was someone backing me
5
�up to make sure I would catch that ball. I remember getting my ankle wrapped when I
slid into base. 15:49
Interviewer: “Pain is something you tend to remember.”
It was painful later, also because it wasn’t taken care of.
Interviewer: “So, you played part of a year then in Rockford and then the next year
in Chicago, was that the extent of your professional playing?”
Yes, I finished and I went to school.
Interviewer: “Where did you go to school?”
I went to school at Lacrosse State University and then I went to New York University for
my masters and in 1952 we all went to the Olympic games as part of our studies. We
wrote some papers on sports in America and as they are played in other countries and
that’s a very big highlight in my life. 16:34
Interviewer: “That’s an incredible experience. Where were the 1952 Olympics
held?”
Helsinki. We saw Paavo Nurmi run—
Interviewer: “Helsinki, that’s right. You didn’t just go to the Olympics, you got on
a boat and traveled across the Atlantic to the Olympics.”
Two boats.
Interviewer: “When you say we all, who do you mean?”
We were all graduate students for either masters or PhD’s at New York University. The
only man who spoke Finnish in the group was a black man with his PhD and to me that
was very interesting. 17:10
Interviewer: “I bet it was interesting to the Finnish people as well.”
We slept in a dormitory of some kind on straw beds, double deckers, but you could see
the Olympic torch all night long through the window. Those were interesting experiences
and meeting the athletes from other places who were on steroids. You could see it in
their builds
Interviewer: “Already then you saw it.”
Way back then in 1952, I think before they even noticed it. Most of the gymnasts--I
never saw such shoulders on women
Interviewer: “A little unusual.”
Very unusual.
Interviewer: “Particularly for you as a physical education major, you studied
kinesiology and the structure of muscles and things, you knew what you were
looking at.”
6
�Something was funny. I think it was a year later in 1953 or 1954 that they got onto the
drugging. 18:11
Interviewer: “For the first time. I want to back up just a minute because I’m
familiar with Lacrosse. Now Lacrosse, one of the featured majors is in physical
education.”
Yes, I got my first degree from there.
Interviewer: “That’s what that school, among other things, focused on. How many
women at Lacrosse were taking these kinds of courses? Were there a lot of women
and was it unusual? ”
No, there were a lot of women. We had practically—it was almost even the men to
women as students. I don’t know what we had in my class, eighty or ninety and half
were men and half were women. 18:48
Interviewer: “Then you went from there and got a graduate degree?”
I went to New York University for my graduate work and I would go in the summers at
first. They had a school camp and then later, the last year, when I got my maters we were
on this trip and we studied on the ship all the way across.
Interviewer: “That’s still an incredible experience.”
Just a wonderful experience and I have never really forgotten it because we became very
good friends after all the trips through Europe etc. The gents carried our luggage and it
was wonderful. I still have friends from those days. 19:32
Interviewer: “Once you graduated, what was your career after?”
The same thing after I graduated. My first job was as a physical education teacher at
McKinley Jr. High School in Racine, Wisconsin where I started my career in baseball.
Interviewer: “You came home.”
No, I’m a Milwaukee girl.
Interviewer: “You went back to Wisconsin.”
That was strange, that was strange, that was very strange. I remember coming to that city
and wouldn’t you know, I got a job there. I was in Racine at the junior high school and
then I taught in the high school and then I taught at the University of Hawaii for a year
and then I came back and I became the director for the district in health and physical
education. 20:20 I spent my major lifetime in Racine.
Interviewer: “In education.”
Yes, in education.
Interviewer: “You were in Hawaii?”
I was in Hawaii before they were a state.
7
�Interviewer: “How did that happen?”
That came up because I was a student at N.Y.U. and Dr. Sokhi, who was on staff in
Hawaii, got to know me when I was going for my masters and at the time physical
education teachers were hard to find and they wanted me to come the very year that I
graduated, he did, and I said, “I can’t do that to my district. They took me when I knew
nothing and they can’t replace me now because there are no teachers, so I went back to
Racine and all the while I was in Racine that year, I kept getting missiles from Dr. Sokhi
and he asked me to come the next year then. 21:20 I asked my superintendent, I didn’t
know if I would like it or not, if I could take a leave of absence and he told me I could if I
came back the next year, so I agreed to that and I wasn’t to Hawaii and taught and after a
year they wanted me to stay on and I said I couldn’t because I had promised Racine that I
would come back. I went back and the man I had made the promise to had lest the
community and I have never forgotten that. That is a dirty trick to play on somebody.
Interviewer: “You kept your word.”
I kept my word, but the superintendent didn’t.
Interviewer: “Hawaii would have been a very interesting place to be in.”
It was and the next year they became a state.
Interviewer: “Because of the fact that you were a player, a teacher—you’ve been in
sports in one way or another, women’s sports, for a long time. Reflect a little bit for
me if you will on the kinds of changes you’ve seen in the attitude towards women
athletes for example and the attitude of women athletes toward their sports.”
Well, I think the women are interested in their sports, but there’s little they can do with
the fact that sports have become a business instead of anything else and unfortunately
what happens is the women, even though many are more talented than some of the men,
never are paid anywhere near what they are being paid and the reason is that they don’t
bring in the revenue at the gates and I think that’s true with almost everything except
maybe golf. 23:12 I was hole captain at the meets when the golf association was in
Wisconsin and they got terrific crows, so golf and maybe tennis is good, but women’s
basketball and softball, for some reason, do not draw crowds. The basketball’s a killer
on the heart and the women play as well as the men do, but their not compensated.
Interviewer: “Not at all. One thing that occurs to me, when you were playing
baseball the uniforms were designed to emphasize the fact that you were a woman
and it seems to me that all the way through, right up to today, that still is a part of
the difference between men’s sports and women’s sports. There is still an emphasis
on making sure that the fans in the stands know that they’re watching women
athletes.”
I don’t know, I think women will always be women, or they should be, otherwise we
have a big problem and I think that the attitude that people think if you play a sport you
have to be tough, it’s not true. I know many women who are very feminine who play
8
�sports very well, so I don’t know how you’re going to dispel that. There are a lot of very
nice looking women in sports and not only in looks they have good shapes too. 24:39
You can’t—the only difference, I think, you have to remember—take for instance my
shoulder for instance—men have more muscle spindles in that shoulder than I do and I’ll
never be able to match them and maybe that’s the reason that when women got into
overhand throwing, they lost so many arms, I don’t know.
Interviewer: “There were a lot of injuries to women pitchers?”
Yes, the women went to play just like the men play baseball, throwing from the pitching
staff and we lost a lot of arms and pretty soon the league was over. Some of it might be
part physical, I don’t know. 25:17 That’s just my opinion, you would have to ask a
Kinesiologist.
Interviewer: “At the time there wasn’t a lot of good science about the strain that
was put on an arm by throwing.”
I have a personal opinion, I can’t figure out why women would want to box. I don’t
understand, I can see tennis, I can see volleyball, I can see the other games, but boxing
and football, I don’t understand that. Somebody’s going to have to give me an education
also. 25:53
Interviewer: “I’m with you.”
Every man I know that ever played football has had back problems all his life.
Interviewer: “Legs and knees and just serious problems.”
It’s tough; it’s a tough sport.
Interviewer: “This is a question I’ve asked an awful lot of the players. While you
were playing—when you first started out as a professional woman baseball player,
did you see yourself as a pioneer in any way?”
No, I loved the game and I think—my mother use to say I shake to play. I would go to
the social canter and play volleyball and basketball, you know I’ve done those three
things all my life and now I golf and that’s about it, but I don’t know why because I
didn’t have a family—my mother never went beyond sixth grade and my father never
beyond tenth and they just didn’t have the opportunities that I had. 26:56
Interviewer: “Sports opened doors for you.”
Yes, the sports have opened the doors for me and I’m sure it has for many young people,
but first get the education.
Interviewer: “Now as you look back on it, you have a chance to assess the role you
played, now do you see yourself as--in some ways, although you didn’t realize it at
the time, actually pioneering?”
9
�Yes, I think that helping women not only in the professional aspect, but even in the
college sports and the scholarships and things of that kind because those things are much
more available to women today than they use to be just as they’re available to someone
who is good in theater or good in art, we have that in sports now and people will have to
look for it, but it’s there. Some of the legislation is helping also. 27:58
Interviewer: “Ok.”
I figure I was lucky and I thank you for this opportunity.
Interviewer: “Well, we were the fortunate ones.”
If anybody’s going to hear it---“get your education first”.
Interviewer: “A great line to end with.”
Thank you.
Interviewer: “Thank you very much.”
Interviewer: “Lets talk a little bit about the movie. All of a sudden the league—it
wasn’t forgotten, but it wasn’t well remembered either and then all of a sudden
there’s a major movie made about your experiences. What kinds of reactions and
experiences did you have as a result of the movie?” 28:39
I think everybody was excited about the movie, but I forgot to mention the fact that I had
my uniform sitting in my closet for, it must have been ten years, because the last game
that Rockford played was in Milwaukee and I still have the programs from that day and
here I had that uniform sitting and after about ten years or so I got rid of the uniform from
my closet. I either gave it to a costume shop or to the theater group I can’t remember
which, but the movie is unbelievable, every year and I watch what’s on the movies and
they must show that thing eight or ten times a year and every time they show it they got a
crowd watching it. Now, the movie made the comedian, Rosie O’Donnell, I think that
made her, that movie and I think you should know that actually a bunch of players at the
time, I’m not going to name them, didn’t want Madonna playing in our movie because
they didn’t like her lifestyle at the time, so I didn’t know much about Madonna because
I’m not a big movie fan, but I did buy the movie for all my nephews and nieces. 30:01
Interviewer: “After the movie comes out, did that affect you more recognition?”
Yes, after the movie came out you get more mail—people asking for autographs. I have
had autograph seeking from Germany, for soldiers, from people in the services that send
you stuff and one person sent their first day issues of a stamp collection and instructed me
to sign on that first issue thing and I thought—“what are they doing?” I know they’re
selling autographs and I think mine is worth about fifteen dollars now. I had somebody
check up and see, but there’s one I have from the Brewers called the—It’s in the case and
that one’s worth more because I’m on with the men players also. 30:57
Interviewer: “And you get invited from time to time for appearances?”
10
�Yes, it’s usually clubs and schools. Every year I’m at some school because they’re
studying women—what women have achieved and there will be some number of kids
that want to write about the league, so then they call me up and ask for an interview and
then they write their papers. So far every girl who has written a paper about my life in
the—has received an A on their paper, including my niece.
Interviewer: “what do you tell them when they--?”
I tell them what I told you—how I was brought up, how I had never been on a train until I
went to college, how my folks never had—and this was a way of getting an education for
me because they couldn’t afford to send me and how the boys were both able to go
because they were both in the army at that time and their school was paid for and mine
wasn’t. I think at that time there was an attitude that it’s more important for the men to
get educated than the women because I found a little of that in my father. He was afraid I
would get married and all that money would go down the drain. 32:10
Interviewer: “You emphasize to the girls, when you get a chance to talk to them, to
get their educations.”
Yes, I really—that was the proudest—my mother was proudest of the fact that she had
three kids—two had masters degrees and one had a PhD and that to her meant more than
anything we did, even playing ball really, because she never went beyond the sixth grade.
They never had a chance, they had big families and they had to help at home. My father
never beyond the tenth, he wanted to be a doctor and never got to be one—they had
thirteen kids in their family and they had to go to work. It was the end of the depression.
33:02
Interviewer: “Kids need to understand that in many ways they have far more
opportunities and they better take advantage of them.”
All of my nieces and nephews, I tell them that they’re spoiled rotten and they are.
They’re living in an entirely different world, they have so many things and they ask for
something and pretty soon it comes. We could wish for it, but we didn’t expect it.
Interviewer: “Any regrets about taking time out to play professional ball?”
No, I loved to play, I would love to play now, but all I play now is golf.
Interviewer: “thanks for taking an extra minute. There was good usable stuff
there.”
11
�12
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
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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.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Text
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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RHC-58_GPiskula
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Piskula, Grace (Interview transcript and video), 2009
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Piskula, Grace
Description
An account of the resource
Grace Piskula was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 26, 1926. Growing up she played softball with the neighborhood boys and in school. She played all positions but mainly stuck to playing shortstop, first and third base and left field. Eventually, her coach, Buddy Greif, approached her one day and informed her she would be playing for the Rockford Peaches. Soon thereafter while she was up at college, she received a call from Mr. Wrigley, owner for the Chicago Chicks to come play for them. She played one year for the Rockford Peaches and then the next for the Chicago Chicks. Her career highlights include hitting a triple for Chicago and then catching a fly ball while with Rockford. Following her two years in the league she quit and went back to college. She discusses her post-baseball career in some detail.
Contributor
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Olson, Gordon (Interviewer)
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
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Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Baseball for women--United States
Baseball
Sports for women
World War, 1939-1945
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Baseball players-Illinois
Women
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Moving Image
Text
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2009-02-26
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fff4db0931b72f7532359498cdb682a4.m4v
72ed15cc84d8bda66515f1060fc06225
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/428f12781a3bd30360554b6dce3001a6.pdf
9d94cfc8650e7efc9c87ceb92ddb1a91
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
ELMA WEISS
Women in Baseball
Born: Columbus, Ohio
Resides: Phoenix, Arizona
Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project, August 7, 2010,
Detroit, MI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion.
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, January 4, 2011
Interviewer: “Now Elma, can you begin by giving us a little bit of background on
yourself?”
Yes, I was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1923 and we’ll skip the early years.
Interviewer: “I would like to ask a little bit about the early years. What did your
family do for a living in those days?”
Well, originally farmers, everybody was a farmer in that era and he was an electrician.
He had a lot of work with professional buildings. He wired hospitals and businesses and
part of the Ohio State University stadium because we lived in Columbus just a short
distance from the campus. 55:12
Interviewer: “Did you grow up in Columbus and go to school there?”
Yes, I grew up and went to school there and started at Ohio State University, and I
completed three years and then the war changed people’s lived dramatically, as you
know, and we had we had a shortage of teachers, but the rule at that time was, if you had
completed three years of college and you could get a principal to hire you, you could
teach school, so that’s what I did. After my third year I went to Port Clinton, Ohio, and
taught high school for a year and then I was supposed to go back and finish, but I went
back, but the urge, the desire to be patriotic again—instead of finishing my senior year I
joined the navy.
1
�Interviewer: “Why did you choose the navy as opposed to another branch of the
service?” 56:00
This is going to sound funny, but it was strictly because I didn’t like the khaki uniforms.
I liked the navy blue.
Interviewer: “You are not the first WAVE to tell us that. That they had better
uniforms.
Is that right?
Interviewer: “So you did that and once you signed up what—where did they send
you for training?”
For the navy, do you mean?
Interviewer: “Yes”
All of us went to New York at the time and we spent—I think it was four months or six
weeks, it was six weeks, in basic training and my major was in physical education, so I
had another three months in New York City and then eventually I ended up in Oakland,
California.
Interviewer: “While you were going through basic training and then more
specialized training, tell us a little bit about what that was like. In basic training,
what do they have the women do?” 56:56
Well, they were trying to get us familiar with navy terms and so forth, and we had to
learn that the floor was the deck and the stairs were ladders and so forth, so we spoke in
navy terms and we were taught to recognize and identify airplanes and ships and so forth.
Just so we could—we didn’t expect to get aboard a ship, and of course we didn’t, but we
knew all the navy lingo and that’s the way they wanted it.
2
�Interviewer: “Did they teach you discipline and all that kind of thing?”
Oh yes, we were under the same rules. I went home for Christmas at one time and we
were snowed in on the train coming back and in the navy they don’t care about a
snowstorm. What happens if you miss your ship? The war might hinge on you making
your ship, so we had to serve what they call “a captain’s mast” and you had to work
cleaning the decks or something of that nature. 57:54 They treated us like the young
men.
Interviewer: “Did they give you a lot of physical training and exercise?”
No, I already had that actually, at the university, but we did go through—they called it PT
and we did some exercises and swimming.
Interviewer: “What year was this when you joined the navy?”
It was in 1943, in 1943 I was still in school at that time, so we covered the summer and I
went in the fall of 1943 and served in 1944 and was discharged at the end of 1945.
Interviewer: ‘What did your physical education background—how did that affect
your assignment? You mentioned you had been majoring in that, so they had you
go to a particular kind of training and you stayed in New York for three or four
months and what were you doing at that time?”
Well, they called it Specialist I Training and I guess it’s what a drill sergeant would do
more or less and when I was a student I was a student company commander and I was in
charge of six sections of forty girls each. 59:05 I recall one day we mustered out in front
to go to breakfast and one—she was a specialist I guess, and she called out the window
that she overslept and I was standing down there and we were all standing at parade rest,
two hundred girls there, and she said, “can you get them to the mess hall?” I called the
3
�company and turned them around and marched them down the street and bleeped them to
the right and to the mess hall, and I was so proud of myself and I was so proud of myself
as a youngster doing that, really.
Interviewer: “Now, were most of the women training about the same age?”
I suppose they were, you had to be twenty-one to go in—well I was, let’s see—you had
to be twenty-one to go in the navy, which is one reason I didn’t go in earlier. I wasn’t
that old yet. 59:54
Interviewer: “Well, the men were going into the navy at seventeen and eighteen.”
But not the women
Interviewer: “Not the women, alright, so basically you’re training to train other
people.”
That’s pretty much the size of it, yeah. The S really stood for shore patrol for the men,
but we ended up being in charge of barracks.
Interviewer: “So, you go out to Oakland, California, now what was there?”
Well, the WAVE barracks were in the heart of town and what we had to do, we were
called “ship’s company” because we didn’t go, but every morning buses would come in,
and several hundred girls would get on the buses and they would be taken out to one of
the navy stations, but “ship’s company”, there were about twenty of us, stayed there and I
arranged recreation for them by buying books for the rec room I guess, and records and I
painted a badminton court and I managed a softball team and things of that nature for the
girls. 0:56
Interviewer: “All right, what do you think was the most interesting aspect of that
job?”
4
�Well, I enjoyed—I took leather craft the year before—see, when I’d gone out there I
couldn’t get in because I was a day late at the university, so I was out there and all I had
was about seventy five dollars and I came from Ohio of course, and didn’t have enough
money to go back home and didn’t know—I said, “don’t panic”, and I had training in
recreation, so I went down to the city recreation department to see if they would hire me
and they said, “well, you’re in luck because we’re just doing Civil Service training now
and you can take the test”, so I took the test the next day, as a matter of fact, and the rule
in Civil Service was that whoever got the top scores had to get the top jobs, so they had to
hire me. There was a woman who had taught at the Golden Gate Recreation Center down
there and she was much better and knew her job and they wanted to keep her too, so they
had to create a job for me. 1:58 I ended up working at playgrounds quite a bit for a year
until I was eligible to go to the university.
Interviewer: “That was after the naval service then?”
No, this was—let’s see, I’m getting mixed up on dates. It was after the naval service, but
before the baseball.
Interviewer: “All right, we were talking about the naval service itself and I asked
what was the most interesting part of that job.”
Well, I use to play a trumpet years ago and I recall one time we were raising the flag on
our post and several officers came out and I practiced raising the reveille in the morning
and took some pictures of that and that was kind of thrilling and exciting too because I
wasn’t a top trumpet player. I was kind of exciting with all the people standing around
saluting and watching the flag go us and here I was struggling with that bugle. 2:59 that
was interesting and then we had a softball team and the navy girls played the coast guard
5
�and marine women’s group and we sang in a chorus and we went out to San Quentin one
time just to sing for the prisoners, so there were recreation type of things you know.
Interviewer: “Did you feel like you were doing something useful for the war effort
or making a contribution?”
Well, I suppose so, I didn’t really think about the war in essence, I just did the job that I
was supposed to do and we were supposed to take care of the women. They trained me
in leather craft during my work in the recreation department there in the city of Oakland,
and I ended up teaching the craft to women in the Golden Gate Community Center. That
was fun because that was strictly afterwards, but I had learned that in the navy and that
was good because that was something they could really gain from. We made wallets and
belts and purses and things like that. 4:02
Interviewer: “So, you had kind of a direct connection between the naval career and
that work in the Civil Service that you did afterward. It all kind of fit together and
they all grew out of the training that you already had in college.”
You’re exactly right, the physical education and the actions there and the recreation
things that I did.
Interviewer: “All right, now we’re going to go back up a little bit, going back again
to being a kid, how did you start playing sports?”
Well, we lived near a playground and it was just about a block away, a city municipal
playground, and every summer when school was out we were at the playground. They
had fifteen softball diamonds there and every summer they had the industrial leagues and
church leagues and other leagues there and I used to go down there all the time and sell
pop for five cents to—carry a bucket with twelve bottles of coke and holler, “ice cold pop
6
�five cents”, and they would stop the ball game, and so I worked in the summer selling
pop to the ball players. 5:00 In the daytime when the diamonds weren’t used , we used
them and we played different, other playgrounds..
Interviewer: “Who is “we”, who were you playing with?”
Well, mostly local boys and girls that I knew and who were my age level. It was from
about the—well, I started doing that when I was in the first or second grade when I
started playing softball, but more in the ninth grade and on into high school.
Interviewer: “There were other girls beside you who were playing?”
Yes and we played other local playgrounds and eventually we played night ball for a shoe
company, J.K. Shoe Company, and we were hired to work at the shoe company because
we played softball, so every summer we did that and we had a pretty fair team.
Interviewer: “By this time you’re getting specifically women’s teams?”
Women’s softball teams 5:52
Interviewer: “So, you’re actually involved in that at that time. Then did you
continue to play when you went on to college?”
Yes, but not so much. You know in those days women were supposed to behave
differently and we were told not to play on a team that was coached by a man. That’s
what they told us at Ohio State, so we—but I loved softball so much that I thought what I
do in the summer is my own business as long as I make my grade in the winter, so I
played for local teams that were coached by men and then we went to state tournaments
and so forth, so we had pretty fair teams.
Interviewer: “Did you go out of state when you were playing softball or did you
stay in the state?”
7
�It was all state wide, but we went to state tournaments up around Elyria and Toledo and
Cleveland, up that way. 6:41
Interviewer: “How did you wind up signing with the All American Girls
Professional Baseball league?”
Well, I was out in California at the University of California Berkley working on my
master’s degree in 1948 and I was playing at the time with some softball players in
Alameda, California and they were quite famous because they were the world champions.
I knew two girls out there that had been picked to be members of the All American
League and they told me about it and they told me that Bill Allington was a scout and
coach and he was trying people out, so I got a hold of him and he tried me out and I was
an outfielder, so he hit a lot of fly balls to see if I could catch and checked my arm out to
see if I could throw and whether I could run and the next thing I knew I was in Peoria,
Illinois. I was sent there to play with the Red Wings.
Interviewer: “What year was that?”
That would be 1948 and that was a little bit difficult for me because, well, I was older
then, I was twenty five and many of the girls played ball when they were fifteen years
old, but it was a little different for me and I sort of suspected that maybe they were going
to make a chaperone out of me because I had the college credits and all of that, but I
played there and enjoyed it very, very much. 8:03
Interviewer: “Did they have you play all outfield positions?”
I was outfield and I could play any of them. The trouble is, the college wasn’t out until
June and they started their spring training in April and by the time I got there they had
finished their spring training and were well into the season, so I’d of had to be a pretty
8
�fair player in order to break into the line-up, so I did a lot of things, I pitched batting
practice, and participated and they taught me different things. The game was different
from softball, so it took me a while to learn, so one time at the end of that first season the
coach said, “you’re going to start tonight. You’re going to play right field and you’re
going to play the whole game”. Oh boy, I thought this was just great, so I played the
game and played well. I made a couple double plays, which I figured in catching the ball
and throwing the runner in off base. I thought, “Now I can show them what I can do”.
This proves, in those days professional ball was the same for the women as it was for the
men and it is a business. 9:08 I didn’t know it, but the next day I was shipped out to
Rockford, and he let me play the game because he knew I was going to be leaving the
next day, so it’s a business, you go wherever they want you.
Interviewer: “All right, when you got to Rockford did you get a chance to play any
more?”
Well, there were two weeks left in the season, so then I went home and worked there and
the next year instead of going back to Rockford they had me on the tour. They were
trying to popularize the league in the south and we played in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas
and Louisiana, all the way down there for the season. Getting close to the end of the
season my back was hurting me quite a bit, so when I went home I just never went back
to the league. 9:51
Interviewer: “Because of the way you joined the league, coming in in mid-season
and kind of moving around a lot, and maybe also the fact that you were a little bit
older, did they tell you much in the way of what kind of rules you had to follow and
that kind of thing?”
9
�Well, they didn’t because they were well into their training, but I learned from the other
girls everything that I had to know and they had their rules, which we had to follow, as
you well know.
Interviewer: “So, you had to wear the skirts and so forth and all that kind of
thing.”
The nice thing about the league—the fact was they just accept all the girls. If you play
one day, one week, one month, one year or ten years, you’re part of the family more or
less. That is the thing that has been so good because over all these years we’ve all
maintained a relationship with each other and I think that’s a wonderful thing. I think we
did a lot really. 10:50 I was teaching school when Title IX came in and women just
didn’t do things in those days and I was in on a lot of this changing and I think it was
fascinating business. We didn’t know we were pioneers until the movie was made and
the cards were made and we didn’t know this.
Interviewer: “When they got to the point where they were making the movie were
you connected with that or did you participate?”
I was teaching school again and I couldn’t go. You know that’s—that was a good thing,
but it also kept me from doing other things.
Interviewer: “How long did you teach?”
As a whole now, I’ve taught over thirty years. I have a degree from Ohio State and from
the university in Berkeley, California and a doctorate from Arizona State University.
Interviewer: “And did you take the doctorate also in physical education?”
Yes
Interviewer: “And have you taught at the university level as well?”
10
�Yes, it was almost all—I finished my last twenty-five years at Phoenix College, which is
a two-year community college. 11:51
Interviewer: “Did you do coaching while you were there too?”
Yes, we had to coach and that was another thing, we had intramurals and we had sports
day, but women coaches were not paid, we just had to do these things, but we never got
paid, we just had straight teaching jobs. We got paid for teaching and we went through
all of that, we went through all the different sports and then Title IX came along and the
men gave us a lot of static because they thought they were going to lose some money.
That the women were going to get the scholarships and some of the money, so we had all
kinds of wars with the men’s departments. It was just true over all the universities at that
time and I think Title IX was—and thing like our league here being pioneers and all that,
I think they were some of the best things that ever happened for women in sports and to
live in that era was a very interesting thing for me. 12:47
Interviewer: “And you were really in a position to watch those changes.”
Yes, I saw all those, I was department chairman when the money came in and we hired
volleyball players, basketball players and I coached a softball team in college then.
Interviewer: “Let’s go back to the playing days. Tell us a little bit about life with
the traveling teams. How did that work?”
Well, when I was with Peoria, with the Red Wings, we had so many games away from
home and we were assigned by the chaperone, we had roommates in the hotels and we
were given per diem money. When we were at our home base we had a family that we
lived with and I guess maybe we were home about a week at a time and then we would
go off on the different trips, so that was interesting. The second year when I was
11
�traveling in the south and it was kind of rugged. 13:43 They had the two teams, we
traveled on one bus and I remember we had one more player than we had seats, so we
alternated and walked up and down the aisle. When it was time to stop somewhere they
had two rooms in a hotel and we all showered in those two rooms and we were off to a
game every night, but when you’re young you can do a lot of things.
Interviewer: “Because you were a little bit older, did you kind of fall into a little bit
of a chaperone role too?”
No, but after the end of my two years, they had never said this to me, but I kind of
suspected that might have been why they kept me on because I was not playing regularly.
As a matter of fact, I only played about seventeen games in those—if you take both of the
summers, the summers were only two months long because of teaching, and to play
seventeen games in four months was, I guess, all I could hope for, and that’s the reason I
suspected maybe they had another plan for me. 14:42
Interviewer: “Aside from that game toward the end of that first season when you
kind of got in there and played the whole game and made a couple double plays,
were there other games when you were out there playing, that stand out in your
memory?”
Well, I was out there practicing certainly as hard as the rest of them and learning all the
tricks and everything they were doing. I might have been called in for a pinch hitter or
something of that sort, but no, whether you were home or you were on the road, you had
to get there hours before the game started and of course I did the same routines all the
other girls did as though I was going into the game, but most of the games I spent on the
bench.
12
�Interviewer: “All right, who did you have managing you when you were going
around on the tour?”
Schrall, Leo Schrall that was his name, yeah, and we had a good team and there are some
very famous girls that played. 15:42 Now, Twila Shively, and we had—let’s see, who
were some of the others, these manes are—Terry Donahue, who was well known and
Kate Vonderau, who was a catcher. That one game I played before I was sent out, and
the reason I thought I was going to stay—I was playing out in the field and there was a
long low fly that I had to run and reach down to catch and I just saw the runner starting in
from third, so I just heaved it toward the catcher. We’re taught to bounce it in if you’re
coming from center field and one bounce if you’re coming from right field, but I just
heaved it and it got to the catcher on the fly and she tagged the runner coming in, so it
was a double out. I thought, “boy, I got it now”, and the next day I end up in Rockford,
so it’s a business. 16:30
Interviewer: “As you were traveling around, what kind of reception did you get
when you went to these little towns in the south?”
Oh, everybody just loved it and we had big crowds. The biggest crowd I every played
before in the baseball was ten thousand they were giving away—the girls all got a
suitcase and they were giving away an automobile, so when they had specialties and
things like that, the crowds were bigger. Everybody would stand outside the locker room
and wait for the girls to shower and then they would sign autographs, so it was exciting
and you begin to think you have some importance in this world.
Interviewer: “Were there any particular places that you went that kind of stand out
in your memory or do they all just run together?”
13
�No, they probably did at the time, but as I look back sixty years ago, I can’t remember
anything special except that it was just great. Of all the things I’ve done, the college
degrees and the teaching and getting married and having children and all of that, I recall
that the baseball was the thing that I remember the most and enjoyed the most of all the
things I’ve done in my life. 17:44 In eighty-seven years you do a lot of living.
Interviewer: “What is it about is it about the baseball, do you think, that makes it
particularly distinctive and makes it stand out?”
Made it stand out?
Interviewer: “Yes”
Probably—we played softball on the playground and I just knew since I was a kid—I
remember I use to play in the second grade, at recess we would play and at a high school
reunion one time a man said to me, “when you were in the second grade everyone wanted
you on their team”, because not too many girls played, just the boys, and they knew that I
could play some, so they enjoyed that and I enjoyed that also. I just always played
softball and we had some quite good teams in softball, we really did.
Interviewer: “What did you think of the “A League of Their Own” movie? What
was your impression of it?” 18:41
Well, I thought it was very good. Of course, it was an entertainment feature of course,
the parts with Tom Hanks and some of the other things. I don’t remember any girl that I
knew that had a husband who was killed in the war or anything of that sort because they
were still pretty young and there were not very many girls that had mates or anything at
that time, but you just get involved, you don’t have time to do anything else. It was fun
to go on the road because you would get up and have breakfast and you would go to a
14
�movie every afternoon or you would go shopping and then there would be practice and
then there would be the ball game. When you were home you had more things that you
could do and it just became like a sorority. We’re all sisters in the same thing, but we all
admired it. The pitchers did well, they usually made about a hundred and five dollars and
I made fifty-four dollars a week and that was my best salary, but that’s pretty good for
sitting on a bench. 19:47
Interviewer: “Do you think you changed much or grew much because of that
experience? Did that add something to your life or was it just a really good
experience?”
Well, I think so, it enlarged my field of acquaintances and you become quite close
because you’re definitely into it in depth. You don’t just play around like amateur ball.
Your money depended on it and you were competitive in other words and you wanted to
play. In softball, as amateurs, we use to play men’s teams and we got a kick out of trying
to beat the men’s teams, but in baseball you just wanted to make the team and play.
They had more players and of course they couldn’t put them all in and they had several
pitchers just like they have in ball today, so I enjoyed that. As a matter of fact, when I
married my husband was a professional ball player and he AAA ball for the Chicago
Cubs, so I continued liking baseball. 20:51
Interviewer: “As you were going through your career teaching and so forth after
you were out of the league, did you tell people that you played professional ball?”
No I didn’t, I just got busy teaching school and doing the things I had to do teaching
school because it was an era of my like that was over with just as the navy was, just as
the college was, and so forth. Actually it was the making of the movie that brought us all
15
�back to life again really. Before that we—it was it and it was over and it was done and
when I read through a lot of the biographies of the girls, they got different jobs, went on
doing their other jobs and the movie came out and all of a sudden we became pioneers.
Interviewer: “But you didn’t see yourselves as pioneers when you were doing it?”
Oh, no not at all, and in fact for the twenty-five years I was teaching after that until I
found out they had reunions every year and I started coming back. I didn’t know any
more about it, so I think that was a good thing, it makes you feel like you are part of a
sorority, part of a group and it was the relationships between the players, team work.
22:00
Interviewer: “That’s something that comes up very consistently when we talk to
people. It’s a hard thing to get people to talk about individuals sometimes because
everybody is the group.”
We pretty much liked everybody and everybody liked each other and we cooperated in
the things that we did and had a good time. Faye Dancer was on our team and she was
well known as liking life, but we didn’t do some of the things—well, you know a lot of
times they would do what—Faye liked to put Limburger cheese on the doorknobs so you
couldn’t turn the door and go in and playing pranks, but kids do that. Between fifteen
and twenty-five you’re still a kid and you’re not under your parents’ authority, so you do
what you have fun with. 22:49
Interviewer: “So, what have I left out? You have done a very good job and I
anticipated multiple questions in the process, so you were very helpful.
Thank you, thank you, I didn’t want to say too much and like I say, I wasn’t one of the
top players, but I was lucky to have lasted as long as I did and I had other conflicts with
16
�school and all of that, but over the years I think I accomplished more things than many
women did. That wasn’t our thing, women were supposed to stay home and cook and I
don’t like to cook. 23:00
17
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
Rights
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<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
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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
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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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/.
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RHC-58_EWeiss
Title
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Weiss, Elma (Interview transcript and video), 2010
Creator
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Weiss, Elma
Description
An account of the resource
Elma Weiss was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1923. She attended Ohio State University and then enlisted in the Navy in 1943. She served in Oakland, California during the war and subsequently attended the University of California and was playing in a softball league in the area when she was recruited for the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. She played for parts of two seasons with the Peoria Redwings and Rockford Peaches, including a barnstorming tour of the south, and was a reserve outfielder. After her time in the league, she continued her education, received a doctorate and was a Professor of Physical Education at Phoenix College in Arizona.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
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
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
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-07
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7c2b7ef52968bdc5639a8cefe3b88dd5.m4v
801928cc9c04f1b5b10aea3ffc829529
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c8b1740876438254838419adac0900ff.pdf
b6093bbd79151fdf0ec188f12ab9dda8
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Earlene Risinger
Length of Interview: (00:57:00)
Interviewed by: Frank Boring
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer August 19, 2008
Resides: Grand Rapids, MI Deceased: July 29, 2008
Interviewer: “If we can begin with your name and where and when were you
born?”
My name is Earlene V. Risinger and I was born in Hess, Oklahoma, which is hardly on
the map ever, on March 20, 1927.
Interviewer: “What were your parents’ occupations? Did you live on a farm?”
We just lived in the country and we worked for farmers, they did. I can remember way
back even, my mother and my dad lived in a big tent one time and they would pick cotton
and do anything to make a few bucks to feed their family. 1:18 I was the first born and
five or six years later I had my first brother and on down. I have three brothers.
Interviewer: “Three brothers and you. What was your early childhood like?”
Lonesome, and you didn’t know what you were going to do, but we made it up by
playing games, Annie Over and all that stuff at my grandfather’s place. It was just –you
just made your own—somebody asked me one time, “What did you do for fun down
there?” I said, “We drowned out crickets”. That’s the truth, there were big crickets and
we would fish with them. 2:02
Interviewer: “You eventually were in a house?”
Yes, we lived in a house. It seems like there were a lot of empty—they were really
shacks that we lived in. I can remember during the storm, you know the dust storms; you
would get up some mornings and have a half-inch of dirt on your stove and everything. It
wasn’t an easy time. 2:31
Interviewer: “Who were your neighbors, or were there neighbors around you?”
Oh yeah, they were maybe a quarter of a mile away. This was way out there and the
houses were spread out, but the town of Hess at that time had two grocery stores and two
service stations and things like that and nothing is there now. We live there now. I live
back there now with my niece. 3:00
1
�Interviewer: “When did you start school?”
When? When I was six years old.
Interviewer: “So it was like kindergarten?”
There was no kindergarten then. It was first grade.
Interviewer: “What was the school like?”
It was a big brick building and it went from first grade right through the twelfth grade.
Later on they closed the Hess school and Hess and Elmer, which is another little town
over there, consolidated and during the WPA years, because my dad worked on that
project, we got a new rock school. It was made out of rock. 3:43 That was when I was
in the seventh grade. I went to the Baptist church. That was one of the schools until the
school got finished and then in the eighth grade we had this wonderful school with good
teachers and the towns had consolidated.
Interviewer: “I see. We were talking earlier about recreation. Did you have chores
that you had to do when you were younger?”
Oh gosh yes, I had to go out and try to find kindling to make the old pot belly stove in the
morning. That was my job, to get the kindling so dad could start the fire in the morning.
4:28 Many times at my grandparents’ house—sometimes, you know they all lived sort of
together, we would eat corn and that was it for supper.
Interviewer: “Where did you buy your food?”
We would go by wagon mostly into Altus, which is thirteen miles away and you would
buy your stuff for a year, I don’t mean a year, but a month because that’s a long haul,
that’s a day up there and back in a wagon with two horses pulling. 5:02
Interviewer: “Who owned the horses?”
Oh, my grandpa.
Interviewer: “Your grandpa was actually a little better off than your folks were?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “Because you were family, you shared responsibilities and whatnot?”
Oh yes.
Interviewer: “What were some of the earlier games? You mentioned a couple
games, but when did baseball come into your life?”
2
�Oh, my dad played on a, what did they call it back then? A sandlot team and he and my
uncle and all of them played on Sunday afternoon. He was a first baseman and he had
me out throwing balls to him when I was six years old or five years old playing catch
with him. 5:39
Interviewer: “Did you have a glove?”
No, he had a glove, but I didn’t. My uncle Will finally bought me a glove; you know
they were not much bigger than my hand back then. He had a service station, so he
bought me my first ball glove.
Interviewer: “When your father was playing, I assume you went to church on
Sunday morning and then afterwards you had these baseball games?”
Yes, and that was up at the old schoolhouse.
Interviewer: “Where were these teams formed from?”
Just different—like Elmer would have a team and Hess would have a team and Tipton
would have a team and they would play each other. 6:18
Interviewer: “So, this was just basically recreational baseball, it wasn’t pro?”
Yes, families sitting up there in covered wagons and stuff like that.
Interviewer: “There were no benches?”
I don’t remember any. That was a long time ago when I was a kid.
Interviewer: “So, I know this is a long ways back, but what appealed to you about
baseball? What was it, when you were a child watching was it because your father
was playing?”
It was just something that I could do. Just something I could do and I had an uncle Doc
and he had two sons and they loved baseball too, in fact they went to college at OU on
scholarships because of their baseball. 7:01 Then there was Jack Shirley, a good friend
of mine and his dad saw me throwing a ball to somebody one time and then Jack and I
became good friends and we would get together and just play games. I would throw him
grounders and he would throw me grounders and then we would hit—just the two of us.
Interviewer: “Were you at all aware, I realize you were out in a very remote part of
the country, but were you at all aware of major league baseball from newspapers,
radio or anything like that?”
3
�Yea, we always had a radio, it had batteries, but we would run it at certain times. I
remember my dad hauling it out on the porch and plugging it in during the World Series.
7:45 Yes, we got to listen to that.
Interviewer: “So this is a whole group of you would gather around the radio and
listen to it and hear the roar of the crowds?”
Yep,
Interviewer: “Maybe this is where the seeds were planted.
Right.
Interviewer: “You’re tall, six foot one, how quickly did you grow when you were a
child? Did you sprout right up?”
I think so because my mother—people would see her carrying me around sometimes and
they would say, “Why are you carrying that long legged gal around?” I was all legs, and
I was only about six months old. 8:23 My dad was tall, but my mother was tall for a
woman too.
Interviewer: “When you watched your father playing baseball, did you ever think
that maybe you could play someday?”
No, I never did. Later on when I started in high school and I was warming up the catcher
or pitching batting practice for the boys or coaching first base, which I did a lot, I
thought, “I wish there was a girls team”. I’ll put this in, before when I was in the sixth
grade, I was going to school at Elmer, I was out playing with the Fancher boys and
people that I knew and we were just throwing high fly balls and stuff and then Mr. Boyer,
who was the superintendent at that time, he had a girls softball team. 9:25 He would let
me go, I couldn’t play, being in sixth grade, but he would let me go with him to play
other schools. He would put me out there, I don’t know why he did it, but he would bat
fungoes, high ones out there for me to catch. Then the highlight was, we would come
back through Altus on the bus and he would buy us a nickel ice cream cone. 9:58
Interviewer: “You did get through high school right?
Yes.
Interviewer: “Did you play during high school?”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “But not on a team per se.”
No. I just played with the boys and warmed up the pitcher and pitched batting practice.
Interviewer: “That’s what I want to get into. There was a boys team for the high
school?”
4
�Oh yes. They were the South Side Red Devils. 10:18
Interviewer: “You’re a girl, how did you get in that position?”
I just did it and they were happy to have me do that. The coaches didn’t mind.
Interviewer: “I assume that a lot of people that were on the team knew you
already?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “You were a tall person and you could throw the ball. I guess what’s
interesting to me—when I was in little league, there is no way we would let a girl,
even on first base or even coach so, you had to have gained the respect of the
students.”
Yes, and the guys who played. 10:54 Ya, they respected me and if they just had a little
pick-up team or something, I would always get chosen.
Interviewer: “So you were playing on boys teams that were not part of the high
school curriculum?”
Yeah, just for fun.
Interviewer: “What did you think you wanted to do after high school?”
I didn’t have any idea. I knew I wanted to do something, but I had no idea. There was no
money for college or anything. I knew that was out of bounds and I didn’t want to do it
anyway. I could have because I was the Salutatorian, but I just didn’t know. 11:33 I
was going to go to the navy to the WAVES, but my mother wouldn’t sign for me and it is
a good thing because I probably would have flunked out or gotten homesick or
something.
Interviewer: “The war began in 1941. Do you remember Pearl Harbor, do you
remember that at all?”
Oh yeah.
Interviewer: “Tell me about your experience?”
Well, we just heard it on the radio or somebody calling maybe, a few people had
telephones back then, but not too many around Hess had telephones. The old kind that
was on the wall. 12:09
Interviewer: “How old were you?”
Well, I was born in 1927.
5
�Interviewer: “So you were old enough to recognize that this was serious?”
Yes, I know that my two uncles got drafted and went to war.
Interviewer: “I know this was a long time ago, but did you have any grasp—did you
have any idea, you’re from a very small town and this is a world war, did you have
any idea of Germany and Japan, bombings and all this?”
No. I know that papers came through the school and you would have to give reports on
them so therefore, we did get a little bit. We picked it up that way. But I didn’t realize it
like people who had radios and stuff like that. 12:56
Interviewer: “Up to that time, what was the farthest you had traveled?”
Oklahoma City, which was 100 miles away. I had to go there to meet that girls team.
Interviewer: “Let’s back up, I don’t want to jump ahead too far. How did you hear
about this girls team?”
I went down to the grocery store, the lady down there would get the day late paper and I
was reading the sports. 13:28
Interviewer: “Why did you get a day late paper?”
Because that’s the way it went back then. In Oklahoma City you could buy it that day,
but then they had to mail it down. I read in the paper where this girls team was coming to
Oklahoma City to play a charity game against each other and I thought, “Oh brother”,
and then I got a postcard and I wrote it to the editor.
Interviewer: “Where did the postcard come from?”
We must have had a penny postcard. 14:00
Interviewer: “You got a postcard to sent to them?”
Yeah. I got the postcard, a penny postcard, sent it to the guy who had written the article,
and he sent it on to Chicago and it’s a miracle that I even heard about it, much less got to
go. That’s when I went up there and just—
Interviewer: “Wait a minute, there’s a lot more to this story than that, I know that.
Alright, you had the initiative to send a postcard to the guy who wrote the article,
what did you write on there?”
I just wrote, “How do I go about getting information about this league?”
Interviewer: “He just forwarded it on to them?”
Yeah.
6
�Interviewer: “Why did they contact you?” 14:43
Probably because they needed ball players. They needed ball players.
Interviewer: “So, how did you find out that they were asking you to come out? Did
a letter come?”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “So, now the letter arrives and you got to be excited about that.”
I am excited.
Interviewer: “You were at home with your parents?”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “Tell us about getting the letter.” 15:05
I just got the letter, was excited about it and filled it out and sent it back to them. I had
never played on any professional teams or anything, but anyway, I told them I threw
overhand and all that kind of stuff and so they said to go to Rockford, Illinois.
Interviewer: “What did your parents think about this idea?”
They were happy because they know I was unhappy doing nothing. 15:31
Interviewer: “Now, did this team offer money? Were you going to get paid for
this?”
Yeah. You had to go, and if you made the team they reimbursed you your money for
going, and if you made the team you would get sixty or seventy dollars a week. That was
a lot of money and I thought I was rich. 15:54 But, then I got to Chicago—I had to go to
the bank and borrow the money.
Interviewer: “I want to hear about that too—I found that very interesting.”
I went to the bank and Tom Thaggert, he was quite a sports guy and he was a big shot in
the bank, and he loaned me the money to go on.
Interviewer: “So, you actually sat there—you’re a young girl and you sat down
with one of the richest people in town, a banker, and told him that you had this offer
to go?”
He wanted me to go. 16:24 Then, I got to Chicago finally and went on a milk train as I
call it. I was so homesick and it took so long to get to Chicago, at least I thought, and I
turned around and I had enough money to come back home on so, then I had to go out
and pull cotton and make the money to pay Mr. Thaggert back. 16:50
7
�Interviewer: “How much did you earn pulling cotton?”
About fifty cents a hundred pounds. You had a twelve-foot sack around your shoulder
and you would empty it in the wagon and that’s what’s wrong with my back right now.
17:06 You would make maybe twelve fifty a week pulling cotton. That was seasonal,
but you had to do if you wanted a pair of shoes or—many a time I’ve worn a pair of
shoes with—you would cut out a cardboard and put in it.
Interviewer. “How long did it take to pay the bank back?”
Not to long. It wasn’t very much money back then to borrow and thing sere different.
Seventy-five bucks a week was a lot of dough back then.
Interviewer: “When you came back and had to pick all that cotton, what did you
feel like?”
I felt really let down and everything that I shouldn’t—but it was a miracle that I turned
around and came back and here’s why. They were pitching side arm and underhand and I
couldn’t do anything but pitch because I was a slow poke to China when it came to
running and I couldn’t have played any other position. 18:21 So it was a good idea that I
did turn around and come back because in 1948 then they sent me another letter and I got
to Springfield, Illinois and played for the “Springfield Sallies” that year.
Interviewer: “You could only throw overhand. You were not a very good batter or
runner so, in other words, if you went there in 1947 to try out?”
I probably wouldn’t have made the team. I would have been sent home. 18:51
Interviewer: “So, what was different about 1948?”
Well, I just wanted it and we were pitching overhand then and we had a chaperone and
Carson Bigbee was the manager and they just took me under their wing and that’s what
happened and I stayed.
Interviewer: “Well, let’s actually talk about that. You arrived there in Springfield
right?
Yes.
Interviewer: “This is a fairly good size town?”
Springfield, Illinois.
Interviewer: “Yeah, did you go by train or by bus?”
Bus, and in one day we made it from Oklahoma City. 19:34
Interviewer: “Who was there to greet you?”
8
�Nobody, I mean, they had a room for me. I went to the room and I was tired and sleepy
and I fell down and went to sleep on the bed and finally somebody came knocking at the
door and said it was time to go to the park. I went down and went out there and we got
dressed.
Interviewer: “Hold on, so you went down there and previous to this time you had
been playing in back lots and you had been playing in farm team type things. When
you first walk into the stadium, what was that like?”
Well, that was wonderful and then all these people standing around in their short skirts
and everything. They were very friendly and very nice and I was very shy back then, but
I got over that pretty fast. 20:25
Interviewer: “So, the uniform you’re talking about, what did the uniform consist
of?”
Just a thing you pull over your head and it come down here and you wore some kind of
shorts or something underneath it and you had socks that came up and everything like
that.
Interviewer: “Didn’t you have to physically tryout for that team?”
I guess not, I just started pitching because they needed pitchers. The sad part about that
was Springfield did not draw so, halfway through the season we were kind of on the bus
together all the time just finishing out the year and we were called a traveling team.
21:14
Interviewer: “So, you would get on a bus and you would go to another town and
you would play whatever team was there?”
Yes, and stay in the hotel. We lived in hotels.
Interviewer: “What was the early camaraderie like? These are all girls that were
baseball players. You played with boys before and now you’re actually with your
peers. How good were they?”
They were good. Most of them were good and if they weren’t, they weren’t there. That’s
the thrust of it. Some of them went home too, just like they would get hurt and not
return again and so on. 21:48
Interviewer: “You had been on a farm, you mentioned before how you lived mainly
in overalls, didn’t wear shorts or anything like that. What was your reaction to
these short little uniforms?”
9
�Well, I was embarrassed when I first had to go out and pitch in front of them, but you got
used to it because everybody else did too and so, it didn’t bother me after a few times.
22:17
Interviewer: “Your first few games, how did you feel about being out there actually
in a uniform, in a stadium, that’s a big jump?”
Kind of scary. Scary, and all I knew, I hadn’t had any training you know and
everything—this was in 1948. No training and I just threw the ball jut threw it and I
could throw it hard. 22:41
Somebody asked me once what my best pitch was and I said “high and tight”, but
anyway in the winter of 1949, we went on this Central South America tour and they
asked me to go and I accepted and that was another scary thing, getting on another train
somewhere in Texas and we went to New Orleans and then ended up in Guatemala
meeting a bunch of kids from Miami, a whole plane load from Miami. 23:21 Then we
all got together and they called them the “Cubanas” and the “Americanas”. I remember
pitching in the Panama Canal [Zone] and we stayed in a barracks there.
Interviewer: “Military barracks?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “What was your reaction to coming to a foreign country?”
Scary, everything was scary, but you know, the kids were so nice that they just took you
right in and so, there were three or four girls that were going to play and Johnny
Rawlings was our manager and he was an ex-baseball player, Johnny Rawlings, so was
Carson Biggby, they were all ex-players in the big leagues. He taught me more about
pitching than anybody else ever had. 24:32 I had gotten allocated to his team so
therefore, his kids that were playing for him took me in and everything worked out just
fine.
Interviewer: “These were women from all different teams and this was formed to
play in a foreign country?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “So, it wasn’t the “Peaches’ or it wasn’t—it was almost like an all star
team?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “So, he took the time to teach you how to pitch better, is that right?
So you were basically just throwing the ball across the plate?”
Yes, trying to.
Interviewer: “What did he teach you?”
10
�Well, when you got two strikes on them, waste a pitch or two, and things like that. I
never could throw a curve ball though, never, but my pitches would go in and dance in
like that and I don’t know what they call those now days, but they got a name now days.
25:29
Interviewer: “Did you feel like you were getting better as a pitcher because of
that?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “Your confidence rose. What about your batting?”
Oh, they always called on me to bunt mostly. Move them along.
Interviewer: “That’s exactly what they did with me.”
Yeah.
Interviewer: “You have long legs, you must have been a good runner?”
Heck no, heck no, one time I did get a hold of a ball and it hit out to the fence there in
Grand Haven and I was running around the bases and another time the accountant for our
league had his little boy there at a game in Grand Rapids here, and he looked at his daddy
and he said, “Why don’t she run daddy?” In the paper the next day it said, “Here she was
being staggered into third”. I was strictly a pitcher and that was it. 26:21
Interviewer: “Your experience in South America, did you have a chance to get out
to the city and look around?”
Oh yeah, poor countries, Managua, Nicaragua, and the Panama Canal and Guatemala and
all those.
Interviewer: “Now you say poor, but you were poor?”
Yeah, I mean, but their meat hung out on the street and you know, all that kind of stuff,
but it was a very good experience. We were invited to General Somoza’s big palace and
all that kind of stuff. 26:56
Interviewer: “Was there a lot of newspaper coverage? Were there newspaper
people around?”
Yes, I know, one time before I started playing, they went to Cuba for spring training and
they were very, very well received there.
Interviewer: “This is pre-Castro of course.”
Yes.
11
�Interviewer: “You mentioned that the original team you played with, they were not
drawing the audiences, so you were playing out on these traveling tours and then
you got the opportunity to go to South America, when that ended then where did
you go?”
I just came back home and went to spring training. 27:41
Interviewer: “Spring training for what?”
The Grand Rapids Chicks.
Interviewer: “Ah, you didn’t give us all that information. I know what the story is,
but you need to say it. So, John was impressed with you and he was in charge of?”
The Grand Rapids Chicks and the players that he had, if he wanted to trade them off or
whatever.
Interviewer: “So, with his experience with you in South America, he decided he
wanted you to be on his team?
”
Well, I was allocated there, but he could have passed up on me, or whatever he wanted to
do, but going to Central South America was a good thing for me because of meeting him
and some of the players. 28:15
Interviewer: “What were your thoughts about going to Grand Rapids, Michigan?”
I guess I liked it. I stayed and I made a lot of friends and a lot of friends that aren’t
baseball players too.
Interviewer: “Let’s talk about—you’re back—you did go home after the South
America trip, to Oklahoma?”
Yes, and then back into West Baden, Indiana, that’s where we were having spring
training and from there back to Grand Rapids and I got assigned a room mate, with
another pitcher. 28:50
Interviewer: “I want to get into more detail about this. Did you have contracts?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “So, you had a contract that specified that you would be playing for a
certain period of time and these are your responsibilities. Was it any different in
terms of what you had to do when you were the “Chicks” as opposed to the team
you were with before? Did the “Chicks” have a better facility? Did they have better
equipment?”
12
�No, but we had rules, strict rules that we had to abide by. We had to wear skirts all the
time and we couldn’t be seen in public in shorts or anything like that and always act like
a lady. Like somebody said, they wanted us to play like men, but act like ladies.
Interviewer: “You had mentioned earlier about a chaperone and I wonder if you
could explain in detail what was the chaperone for your team?”
Well, our chaperone was Dotty Hunter and she was wonderful. She didn’t really have
any trouble with her kids. After a game you would get two hours or something and you
had to be back in your room so, most of us respected her and we were back in our room,
but a lot of chaperones would do bed checks, but she never did, but a lot of them did and
that was their job to do because we weren’t supposed to be up carousing around. 30:20
Interviewer: “So, chaperones were officially part of the team and their
responsibilities included, making sure that you followed all the rules?”
All the rules and if you skinned your knee she put methyalate on it and stuff, which they
did, they had strawberries, the gals that would slide into base would get strawberries and
that was awful.
Interviewer: “You didn’t have to do that too often.”
No, I didn’t slide. I didn’t get to slide.
Interviewer: “Did you have to go through the charm school?”
No, that was only the first year. They had quit that by the time I came in. That was in
1943. 31:00
Interviewer: “Where did you stay in Grand Rapids?”
I stayed on Delaware Street. The chaperone would go around and talk to people and two
people would stay in one room and roomed with another pitcher and we could walk down
to the ballpark from Delaware Street. 31:26
Interviewer: “So, you were in people’s homes. You would rent out a room in a
home, somebody’s home, and you would share that room with a roommate?”
Yes, with another gal.
Interviewer: “What was your schedule like during the actual season?”
We usually played double headers on Sunday and you were lucky if you ever go a day
off. We did once in a while, or a rainout or something like that. 31:50
Interviewer: “You would get up in the morning?”
13
�Sometimes we would have to go to practice in the morning about 10:00 AM and then be
back there at 4:00 PM to get ready for the game.
Interviewer: “What did you do in the meantime? I mean, you went to practice and
then you would?”
Oh, we would eat lunch and just whatever. Some of them played golf, but I didn’t.
32:18
Interviewer: “You were making pretty good money, were you saving it or sending it
back home?”
Well, I would go up to Smitter’s store in The Heights and buy my three brothers some
short sleeve shirts and send them home to them and things like that because I knew how
desperate they were.
Interviewer: “So, you were in a sense making more than your parents were making
or your brothers were making?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “That must have made you feel pretty good?”
Well, in a way, but like one gal said one time, my dad was making thirty-five dollars a
week working for the telephone company and I was making three times that much. That’s
the way it was back then. 33:02
Interviewer: “What were your first experiences with the “Grand Rapids Chicks”
and did you feel like you were welcomed in by the—you’re a rookie right? How
were your first experiences with them?”
Fine, no problem at all, I just took my turn and we had five pitchers. I just took my turn.
Interviewer: “Being six foot one, I don’t think too many people would mess with
you anyway.”
I went to school with—I went to high school with my—she’s more like a sister to me and
she would be my grandfather’s kid, and the boys would pick on her and I would have to
whop them around once in a while. They were picking on her because she couldn’t take
care of herself. 34:00
Interviewer: “You said there were five pitchers on the “Grand Rapids Chicks”.”
Yes, or at least four. At least four.
Interviewer: “So, in a given week, how many games were you playing?”
Probably seven.
14
�Interviewer: “Seven games over the course of a week and some of those are double
headers so, you got Sunday off?”
No, Sunday was a double header. It wasn’t easy, but it was a good life—riding the bus,
you know when you ride a bus you get to—everybody gets along. 34:38 Sometimes
they pull jokes on you and all that, but you didn’t care about that.
Interviewer: “This is the team players on the bus?”
Yeah, they would play canasta and gin rummy and all that stuff, or singing and we had
good times. 34:54
Interviewer: “What was your first experience playing as a pitcher after you had
this training from Rawlings, did you notice a difference in the way you were
pitching?”
Yeah, but sometimes I would go wild as a goose and that would make him so mad. One
time he came out to me and he said, “Beans, if you can’t get the ball over, bounce the
damn thing in”. So, that’s the way it was. 35:30
Interviewer: “With four to five pitchers, though, how often would you actually be
able to pitch? Were you first string?”
Yeah, and then sometimes the next pitcher, if I got wild or something, they would put
them in. They didn’t have regular-- like they do now, you pitch six innings and a reliever
comes in, we didn’t have that. I pitched a twenty-one-inning game and a twenty-twoinning game and did it all so, that’s why I get a little upset with these primadonnas as I
call them. Give them one like that and they’d charge the mound, you know. 36:06
Interviewer: “You had several quite remarkable experiences playing in the
“Chicks”, but you started in 1948, 49, 1950. This was your regular job now right?
Uh huh.
Interviewer: “What was—the season itself lasted how long?”
I forgot, but it was in May and all the way to September and then you had the playoffs.
Interviewer: “What happened during the lull period?”
You mean after the season was over?
Interviewer: “Yes.”
Well, I used to go home, but then there was a Mr. Jordan, who was a—he had a Buick
place on South Division here and he just made a job for me in the wintertime. I started
doing that in 1952 I think it was or 1951. 37:06
15
�Interviewer: “What kind of a job was that?”
Oh, answering the phone or running around here, just gave me job and I made twentyseven or thirty dollars a week to tide you over until the season started again.
Interviewer: “Why didn’t you go back home?”
There was nothing to do, nothing to do.
Interviewer: “No work?”
No work, no nothing, I sure wasn’t going to go back to pulling cotton.
Interviewer: “What would you say was your highlight season?”
Probably when we were playing for the trophy against the “Kalamazoo Lassies” in
Kalamazoo. 37:47
Interviewer: “What year was this?”
1952 [actually 1953]. It was a cold night, the bases were loaded and the manager,
Woody English, had gotten kicked out of the game.
Interviewer: “How come?”
I don’t know, I said, “It’s because he got too cold”, but he had his long pants on out there,
and so they made it a seven inning game because of the weather and it was the last game
and the bases were loaded and Sammy Samms came to the bat and I struck her out and
we won the game so, that was my highlight of my whole deal. 38:30
Interviewer: “Sammy Samms was, I understand, a very good hitter and player?”
Yes, a very good player and a good hitter. She could pitch and she could play outfield
because of her hitting.
Interviewer: “So, when she came to bat with three people on?”
Marilyn Jenkins was my catcher and you’re going to interview her next week, she just
walked out to the mound and said—first before that, “Ziggy”, Alma Ziegler was the
captain of out team and she was the coach after he got kicked out. So, with the bases
loaded she walked up to me and looking up, she was little, she said, “Can you get her out
“Beans”? I shrugged my shoulders and she left me in, but I got her out anyway and that
was a good deal. 39:15 She was a wonderful person and she’s now deceased, Alma
Ziegler. She could pitch and play second base both.
16
�Interviewer: “The Grand Rapids Chicks was actually a very successful team. What
do you attribute to the success of the “Chicks” compared to some of the other teams
that didn’t do so well?”
Well, they tried to keep all the teams equal and they would trade someone off to make it
more better, but most of the time, thank goodness I never got traded off and I guess it was
because I was a pitcher and they were in demand. They busted up the team once and
Tiny Petry, who was a shortstop, and she was wonderful with “Ziggy” playing second
and then the team kind of went down a little bit then you know, but we won a lot of
games. 40:14
Interviewer: “You got to know these women quite well right? Where did they come
from?”
The come from California, they came from Canada, they came from Kansas, Florida, all
over.
Interviewer: “This was a nationwide search for ball players and then a lot of them
ended up in Grand Rapids, Michigan because it was a team.”
A lot of them stayed on here and a lot of them are deceased that played on our team for a
long time so, I feel lucky to be alive right now. 40:51
Interviewer: “1952, you had a wonderful year, how was 1953? How were the
crowds etc?”
Well, it had fallen off a little bit, but then it had started gaining back and even in 1954 we
were gaining back, but South Bend and some of the other teams weren’t drawing at all so,
the men just got together and decided that was the end of it. Like that—we heard about
it. 41:26
Interviewer: “What kind of crowds were you getting here in Grand Rapids at the
height of it all?”
Well, there would be a thousand people; there are pictures of the people in the stands. I
think it’s down at the library. They drew really well when I first came here.
Interviewer: “How were the crowds? Were they enthusiastic? You see major
league baseball and you see fans screaming and yelling.”
Oh, ya, cheering and carrying on. We got to playing later and later and there was this
writer, what was his name? I can’t remember, but he had a little article, a thing in the
paper, and he said, “Chicks were getting sleepy”, because they were keeping then up to
late at night. 42:15
17
�Interviewer: “Early on and this was in the movie and the movie was not that
accurate, but it had some good points to it and it was a wonderful film, but
especially early on, were you harassed at all by people, being women out there?”
What the movie showed in the beginning they were, but not when I came in 1948. That
had all calmed down because they knew that we could play the game and play it right.
42:50
Interviewer: “Did you ever get a chance to play—I think this happened on
occasion, but play exhibition games with the men’s teams?”
No, not to my knowledge, one time we might have, after the season was over, played a
game with the Sullivan’s or something once. Not very often.
Interviewer: “1953, you said things were going fairly well still, were there any
indications that this might come to an end?”
Well, I think there was, but I didn’t know it and most of the players didn’t know it. We
figured, like they said, we owed Grand Rapids, owed the cleaning people that cleaned our
uniforms money and I guess in the end we might have been getting paid in cash rather
than by check. Things were getting tight because TV came in and the war was over and
there wasn’t any gas rationing. 43:54
Interviewer: “Now, there was a real financial tragedy that happened in the 1950’s
where the equipment and everything was burned up.”
That was at Bigelow Field. I still say that guy who owned us then, more or less, Jim
whatever his name was, I still say that he probably had somebody set that building on fire
and the reason I say that is because of the fact that he immediately built a motel out there
and that was hard on us because we had to get a different uniform and that wasn’t hard to
do because it was back down to six teams and they had extra uniforms and stuff, but your
glove, everything was gone. 44:54
Interviewer: “Now, you say that you got uniforms from other teams, but you’re six
feet one.”
Well ya.
Interviewer: “How did you get a uniform to fit you? Did they actually have tailors
come out?”
Well no, we could get them hemmed or whatever they needed to be.
Interviewer: “In the past, when you were with the “Grand Rapids Chicks”, you had
your own uniforms and it was all color coded right? The hat, what about these new
uniforms?”
18
�Well, in the end, I think we had the “Peoria Redwings” uniforms and we wore red then
with white, whereas in the beginning we wore blue--- gray and then the blue sox and cap.
45:40
Interviewer: “You said there were indications that something might end, but you
didn’t know and most of the players didn’t know?”
We were hoping it wouldn’t, yes.
Interviewer: “In your case, did you actually think that this was going to go on for a
career?”
I think a lot of us did, yes. We were very disappointed. Especially the ones that came in
late like I did.
Interviewer: “How did you officially find out that the league was ending?”
I think it came out in the paper, but I’m not sure.
Interviewer: “Do you recall at all what your reaction was?”
I thought, “Oh well, I have to start thinking about doing something else?” Like I told
them out there before you got there, that I’d gotten hit on the elbow and had to go get an
x-ray and I thought hmm, that might be a good thing for me to get into, and so, Dr.
Blackburn was our doctor. and he said, “Oh yes, they have programs at the hospital and
we’ll get you in”, and that’s what I did then. I got to be an x-ray technician and I did that
from 1955 to 1969 and then I decided to work for orthopedic doctors and was the
manager of the office and took casts off and all that stuff and I worked with them until I
retired in 1991. 47:13
Interviewer: “When you were an x-ray technician, were people aware that you
were in the baseball league?”
Some were and some weren’t.
Interviewer: “I’m talking about the early days, I’m not talking about now because
now people know who you are, but in those days?”
Just the one’s who had attended, if they would come in and then they would say who we
were. We got a little publicity because Marilyn got into x-ray too after me and another
gal, Betty Wanless, and somehow I ran across a picture the other day where the three of
us were in our white uniforms. We got a little publicity back then even, but we didn’t get
a lot until we had our first reunion in 1982 and then-- 47:57
Interviewer: “How was that organized?”
19
�A bat girl from South Bend and then June Peppas had a printing shop and she was a
player for Kalamazoo and she got the idea of sending me a letter and do you know the
address of somebody else? And that’s the way it went and then they got it going. There
were a few people there, historians who came to that, and three years later we had another
one and so on and so forth and we’re still having them.
Interviewer: “Now in the movie it’s very moving when Geena Davis comes to the
reunion, and of course her sister is there with a family and all that. Was it sort of
like that?”
Yes, sort of like that the first time you see them and you have to look sometimes at there
tag to see who they were, ya. 48:51
Interviewer: “There were a few people from Grand Rapids that went, right?
Marilyn went and did Rosemary go?”
I don’t remember if she went, but I bet she did.
Interviewer: “I just wondered if the “Grand Rapids Chicks” gathered together and
the “Peaches” gathered together?”
We probably did after we got there. Dolly Konwinski went and all of them went, but we
didn’t stick together, we mixed and mingled with other people. 49:24
Interviewer: “That must have been an amazing experience, I’ve been to several
reunions of the Flying Tigers and I’ve been to reunions of other WWII groups and
it’s a magical moment to be standing there and just hearing these conversations.
“Do you remember when this happened?”
Yes, and as the years go by everything gets a little more, you know what it is—the stories
get bigger, yes the stories get bigger as you have these reunions. You daydream back and
then you think about so and so who’s not there because she’s deceased and we say she’s,
“gone to the dream team in the sky, the ball team in the sky”. It was a wonderful
experience for me and made me and made my life. 50:08
Interviewer: “I just want you to comment on the movie. The thing that impressed
me about it, I’m not looking at it as a historian at all because you heard from
Gordon Olson and others that it was a Hollywood movie, but it seemed to capture
the spirit, the excitement and of course the characters were just wonderful, what did
you think of the movie?”
Well, I thought it was about 89% correct. They made the chaperones look like they were
simpletons, I thought. They were all very educated and wonderful ladies and that was
one thing I didn’t like and of course the manager never came into our space. If he had
anything to say he would talk to the chaperone and she would relate it to us. So they
Hollywooded it up a little, which is all right and it put us on the map anyway. 51:15
20
�Interviewer: “Yes, that is what I was going to say, it certainly drew attention to
what you had done and made much more interest in what you had done.”
Like Penny Marshall said, she thought it was a story that should be told because—
another highlight I had was when we went to Evansville to see them film and after it was
over, she said, “Come down here, we want to play”, and I went down and pitched to her
and after working hard all day, she wanted to have a little fun and that was kind of nice.
51:47
Interviewer: “When did you see the movie? Did you just walk into a movie theater
or did they have a special screening for you?”
They had something at the Star Theater here and the fact is, somebody made me a collage
and I gave it to the library here about it and we signed autographs and everything before
the movie even started up at the Star Theater. 52:16
Interviewer: “Did you go to the public museum when they had their exhibit?”
Oh yes, and we signed autographs and everything there too. That was really quite an
exhibit, really, that will never happen again.
Interviewer: “I got to Grand Rapids just when that was ending, but a friend of
mine had a video camera and a crew and they actually videotaped the entire inside
and they interviewed a couple of people. I didn’t see you, you didn’t get interviewed
while you were there did you?”
I got a story written about me and they took pictures and I forgot, it was one of those—
she asked me, the gal that doesn’t work there anymore asked me if I—she said they might
not get it, they wanted, but they did and there was this booklet that came out, ya. I had to
come and I know about this a little bit because they had to take pictures you know to put
a picture in the magazine. I imagine they got one down at the library. 53:25
Interviewer: “We had students from the history department actually do all the
research and we know where all the pictures are and where everything is. At some
point I will have to go down there and take a look. I want you to make some
comments now in general. The beginning of the war, after Pearl Harbor, the United
States was not in a very good position, not just us, but the British and we were losing
all over, the Japanese were taking over Asia and Germany was taking over Europe
and as the story goes, Wrigley was concerned that perhaps major league baseball
would be affected by this so, he wanted to set up this alternative, this women’s team.
54:12 I guess the question I have for you and I want you to think a little bit outside,
did you and your players, did you have any sense or a feeling that you were a part of
the war effort? Because you know “Rosie the Riveter”, you hear about that and of
course we know about the WACS and the WAVES and it is my opinion that you did
a lot, what was your perspective?”
21
�Well, we feel that helped women get to play more sports etc. by us doing that because
when I first came to Grand Rapids and stayed in the wintertime, I said, “What do the girls
get to do in high school and around”? Well, they didn’t get to do anything and I feel now
that softball is so great now, that we were stepping stones for the younger generation.
People ask, “Do you think there will ever be another team like this”? I say, “No, it would
be too much money and also, I don’t think the gals of today would follow those rules and
regulations because they are too independent now. We feel like we made our mark in
that respect. 55:35
Interviewer: “Looking back on that experience, you had a successful career
afterwards, you were a professional and made a living for yourself and helped your
family out, how do you look back on that magic period of time and the effect it had
on your life?”
Well, all I just say is that it made my life and if I could do it anybody else could do it.
Interviewer: “One other final question, how do you think it affected you as a
person, how do you think it affected you as the person you are today? More
independent perhaps?”
Integrity, I get very emotional. 56:44
Interviewer: “This will be our last question. Your doing fine, your doing
wonderful.”
That’s why I can’t go and do speeches like a lot of them do because I get too emotional.
Interviewer: “We can stop now, we can stop now and thank you very much this has
been wonderful, wonderful.” 57:00
22
�23
�
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Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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Grand Valley State University. History Department
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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.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Moving Image
Text
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eng
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2017-10-02
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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RHC-58_ERisinger
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Risinger, Earlene "Beans" (Interview transcript and video), 2009
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Risinger, Earlene
Description
An account of the resource
Earlene "Beans" Risinger was born in Hess, Oklahoma, in 1927. She grew up on a farm in Dust Bowl country, and played baseball from a young age with family and friends, and practiced with boys' teams in her community. She saw a newspaper article about the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, and joined the Grand Rapids Chicks in 1948. She went with the League to Spring Training in Cuba in 1948, and then on a postseason trip to Central America. She was a talented pitcher, and pitched the final game when the Chicks won the League championship in 1953, and played until the League folded after the 1954 season.
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Boring, Frank (Interviewer)
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
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Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Video recordings
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Baseball for women--United States
Baseball
Sports for women
World War, 1939-1945
Baseball players--Michigan
Women
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2009-09-26
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8e6d48b0e5c7c6d3814d83c018200257.m4v
7e4edfe8bd6732feb5ec98285841618d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a869307cf1ab7639c73371219f3f9afe.pdf
c810c952e6380577a0b17747f698cf01
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Delores White “Brumfield”
Length of Interview: (01:09:42)
Interviewed by: Frank Boring, GVSU Veterans History Project, September 27, 2009,
Milwaukee, WI at the All American Girls Professional Baseball League reunion.
Transcribed by: Joan Raymer, July 25, 2010
Interviewer: “If we could begin with, and boy this is going to get complicated, your
name, I mean the full part, and where and when were you born?”
My name is Miriam Delores Brumfield White and I was born in Pritchard, Alabama, May
the 26th, 1932.
Interviewer: “And what is the name that you go by when you sign your check and
whatnot and what is the name you go by in baseball?”
Today I sign my checks as Delores B. White and when I sign autographs for baseball, I
sign Dolly Brumfield.
Interviewer: “We got that straight for the record now.”
Yes, I hope.
Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like?”
I was one of three children, I was the oldest of three and we lived in the early years near
an elementary school and a block away was also a junior high school, so my playground
at the school was where I grew up, where I preferred to play the things that the boys were
playing, baseball, football and all the other things. We were on the school ground most
of the time. 1:16 Sometimes we were in the neighborhood and I remember some of the
childhood games we use to play. Under the house was a good clay pit and we could
throw clay balls at each other and this type of thing, but I primarily grew up on the school
playground. The junior high school had a baseball field and that was the time when the
men use to come and play baseball after their workdays in the shipbuilding era during the
war. 1:44
Interviewer: “What did your father do for a living?”
My father was an automobile mechanic.
Interviewer: “So was my dad, and your mother was a homemaker?”
A homemaker yes, until the war and during the war she then took her skills of typing and
shorthand into the business world and worked with an insurance company.
Interviewer: “Pritchard was a fairly good size town?”
1
�Pritchard is north of Mobile at that time that’s the location. We were really Mobile, but it
was kind of a suburb of Mobile, but it’s an independent city known as Pritchard,
Alabama. It’s a pretty good size because at that time it was the fifth largest city in the
state of Alabama. 2:32
Interviewer: “You were talking about the war, so do you remember Pearl Harbor
when it happened and how did you hear about it?”
Well I heard about Pearl Harbor because our next-door neighbor had a son at Hickam
Field, so that made it very personal and I do remember some of the early happenings and
particularly the day of December the 7th of 1941.
Interviewer: “I can’t do the math, but how old were you?”
At which time?
Interviewer: ‘At Pearl Harbor.
Well I must have been about nine. 3:05
Interviewer: “All right, so you were old enough to recognize that something big was
happening.”
Something was happening, yes.
Interviewer: “So you spent a lot of time playing in the school—your back yard in a
sense, was the school and the baseball diamond and all that. How did that all work
out? You’re a girl how could you play baseball?”
Well I was called the tomboy of the neighborhood. I did not like paper dolls, that’s what
the girls were playing and they would cut out these little paper dolls and have these little
tea sets and that never appealed to me. I’d rather have the beanpole and do the polevaulting over the neighbor’s bushes or around the school were big ditches and we’d pole
vault across the ditches. Those were the things that were more interesting to me and of
course we always had the basketball games and the football games and baseball games
and that was the environment in which I grew up. 3:59
Interviewer: “Looking back now and playing baseball with the boys, how good
were you as a young kid? How good were you? Were you a good batter? Could
you pitch? I mean how were you as a player?”
Well, on the playground we played a game called work-up and you got to do everything.
They would let me play with them and sometimes they weren’t too happy about it, but
they would let me play with them. I remember one incident, I had trouble with a
neighborhood boy who didn’t approve of something I did, I have forgotten now, but all
the way home from the ball game I was riding my bike and he turned around and I guess
he thought I was riding at him and I was not, but he lived next door and he was older and
he turned and threw his glove and hit me in the middle and knocked me off my bicycle.
4:51 I’m usually very peaceful, but at that time I was not. Junior Cassidy was the one
and I went home and I think I got my bat, but anyway I went back and met him before he
2
�got home and chased him around the neighborhood for knocking me off my bike—he
made me mad, but anyway I didn’t catch him, but I was after him, around the house,
across the street and he was yelling for his mama the whole way and she came and got
him in the house and I was glad of that. Many years later as adults we enjoyed talking
about it. 5:32 That was one of the early ones and yeah, I got to play most of the games
and most of the times peacefully and that was one event that I can recall that was not very
peaceful. I guess one of the maddest I had got—my father was home at the time because
we were going home for supper and he wanted to know, “Delores what are you doing”,
and I went out of the house and daddy followed me, so they had to come and get me, but
his mama got him in the house in time. 6:05
Interviewer: “Now in high school, did you get a chance to play any organized sports
in high school?”
There were no sports for girls in Alabama, at least in my part of Alabama at that
particular time. Mobile public schools had no sports for girls.
Interviewer: “So what was your way of playing sports? Was it still like with the
children, did you still have these pick-up game type of things?”
On the playground, on the playground of the school and during the war they did start
some organized, but there were none for me. I had no opportunity and I actually came
into the league without any team experience. 6:40
Interviewer: “So right around, I believe and correct me if I’m wrong, right around
fifteen something happened to kind of change your life, was it fifteen?”
Fourteen, make it back even—how about thirteen?
Interviewer: “All right, let’s go there.”
In 1946 the all American league came to Pascagoula, Mississippi for their spring training.
Mr. Max Carey was the president of the league at the time and the fellas from the
shipyard use to let me play with them when they would come to practice on the junior
high diamond and if someone was missing they would let me fill in that spot and on
occasion they would even let me play a position if the opportunity presented itself and
they needed somebody. They were the ones that actually got me started in—when this
league was down in Pascagoula it was in the Mobile Press Register that they were going
to have tryouts etc. 7:42 So some of the guys went to my parents and wanted to take me
to the tryouts, but my mother said, “no, if you think she should go, I’ll take her”, so one
April afternoon in 1946 we borrowed my grandmother’s car because daddy had to go to
work in our car and she took me out of school and we drove to Pascagoula, Mississippi
where I actually tried out. After I had done all the things Mr. Carey asked me to do, the
hit, throw, run business, he asked me how old I was. It wasn’t until I had done all those
things he asked me how old I was, so I told him, “I’m thirteen and I’ll soon be fourteen”,
but he said, “we don’t take the girls that young”, and he went over to talk to my mother
and he said, “Mrs. Brumfield, we don’t take the girls this young”, and my mother said, “I
don’t want you to take her, I don’t even know what you thought”, so that was my tryout
period. 8:36
3
�Interviewer: “I want to stop you here for a moment though. Did you grow up fairly
quickly? You must have been a taller girl than most of the girls—I mean thirteen
years old looks like a thirteen year old, how would they?”
I was very slender at that time and not very large at all. I guess I’m down to 5’6” now,
being elderly, but at that time I was probably 5’6” or 5’7”.
Interviewer: “That’s fairly tall for a thirteen year old isn’t it? I mean—were you
taller than your other sisters?”
I guess I was taller, I have a picture at home, a picture with my father and one of the fish
he caught out of Mobile Bay and my brother who is sixteen months younger than I am,
but I’m a head taller than he is, so I guess maybe I was a little tall for my age. 9:21
Interviewer: “That makes more sense, yeah. When you played with the men before
they came to your mom and said that you should go and tryout for this, were talking
about men who were already in their teens and twenties playing baseball.
Remember this is WWII, these guys have been in the shipyards and they came for all
over and one of my favorite guys was a guy from Mississippi who played. He was a tall
slender guy who wore brogans, I don’t know if you remember the old high top work
boots or work shoes that they played in, we’re talking about school yard teams, we’re not
talking about organized teams as such, just teams getting together to play. 10:14
Interviewer: “They must have known you were playing pretty well to be able to
play with them?”
I was at the ball field every day and when they came over to practice I was there, so they
would let me play catch with them and all and that type of thing. There was a place we
use to go to, Alabama Village, which was in Mobile at that particular time, and Mobile
was one of major industrial areas during WWII. There were a lot of housing areas that
grew up at that time and Alabama Village being one of them and where this ball diamond
was with the junior high school was called Pritchard Homes, which was another housing
project during the war, so they played one against the other, but never uniforms or
organized like that. 10:58
Interviewer: “But still, somebody is throwing a pretty hard ball at you and you’re
having to hit a ball.”
Oh yeah
Interviewer: “At thirteen now your mother reveals that you’re glad that you’re not
going to be taken, so what happens? What happened, you went back home?”
I went back home.
Interviewer: “How did you feel?” 11:18
At that particular time I didn’t know, I didn’t know at the time if I thought I was going to
go anywhere anyway because I was just trying out. One of the interesting things—there
4
�was a fella by the name of Bill Mitten, as my mind reminds me, who was a local sports
broadcaster and also worked at a sporting goods store and I guess I feel like I was meant
to be a baseball player because Mr. Carey lost my name and they were coming to Mobile
and were asking about this girl that tried out and they didn’t know and I had gone into the
sporting goods store to buy a pair of shoes and talking to him about it and he said, “you
must be the one”, and that’s how they got my name back to Mr. Carey. 12:03 That year
in June, I tried out in April, they finally found me in May there, and in June when school
was out, school years were quite different than they are today, but he wrote my parents
and wanted me to go to Chicago and put on one of the teams because I had never had the
opportunity to be on a girls team and the parents said, “no, you shouldn’t go that’s too
far, too much”, so the next year in November I received a letter from Mr. Carey that said
they were going to Havana, Cuba for spring training and that they would like Delores to
be one of the girls we ask. I don’t know how many he said, I forget. At one time I had a
letter, a copy on that and I think it’s in Cooperstown. They said how many girls they
were going to take, new girls and that’s kind of the way that all happened. 12:59
Interviewer: “Now had you ever heard of Cuba before?”
Oh, I think I heard of Cuba. There was another girl from Mobile, her name was Margy
Holgerson and she also tried out in 1946 and was selected and she pitched for the
Rockford Peaches. Over that winter, Mr. Carey sent her out to meet me and to meet my
parents and then it was time for spring training to be in April and I’m in school. Now,
I’ve got to quit school in order to go to Havana, Cuba, so Margy was my chaperone, we
went by plane to Havana, first we went to Miami where we met up with all the girls from
everywhere else and we flew over to Havana for spring training. 13:45
Interviewer: “Now I want to stop you here. Had you traveled outside of your
immediate area at any distance before that?”
Only to my grandparents in Mississippi
Interviewer: “It was still in the south.”
It was still in the south. Both my parents were from Mississippi, but my mother and dad
met in Mobile and married in Mobile, so all of us were born and raised in that area.
Interviewer: “So now you arrive in Miami and you’re meeting girls from all over
the country?”
Yes, and Canada
Interviewer: “And Canada, what was that experience like?”
Very interesting, I have always been interested in people, I don’t know if it was that
experience led me to my interest in names, I’ve always been interested in that. It was just
a very exciting time, I’d ridden a train, I was in a different area, I didn’t know anybody
but Margy and then we were flown over to Havana and to the Biltmore Hotel. 14:49 I
can remember very well one of the older girls, there were several of us in a room and
adjoining rooms and this type of thing and my problem was that I said, “yes ma’am and
5
�no sir”, which was the way that I was brought up to do and this one gal from Detroit said,
“don’t ma’am me”, and that was a strange experience, but most of the girls were friendly
enough. I was put with the Fort Wayne Daisies for my spring training that year, but at
the end—I don’t want to get too far beyond, but all the tryout business. At the end of
spring training I was selected to be put on a team and I was put with the “South Bend
Blue Sox “. 15:37
Interviewer: “I want to address two questions. One, you were much younger than
most of the girls, is that correct?”
That is correct, I only know of one other girl that was younger than I that came into the
league later on and she was a month younger than I, but a lot of the girls came into the
league at fifteen.
Interviewer: “Now did you notice anything that you were treated any differently
because you were younger than them?”
The chaperone took care of that. The most important part of the experience was taken
over by the chaperone. The chaperone determined where you lived, whom you roomed
with and this type of thing she was very selective. 16:28
Interviewer: “So she made sure that there wasn’t going to be any kind of razzing or
they were going to tease you because you were younger?”
I didn’t have any of that, we were there for spring training and we were there for
business. There were places I didn’t go and things I didn’t do that the older girls did, but
that was all right with me.
Interviewer: “How did you deal with the fact that they all talked so funny?”
Well, that was funny, that was funny, I couldn’t understand some of them and they
couldn’t understand me, but it was just an interesting experience. The spring training in
Havana in 1947 was a highlight for me as I look back. So many fond memories come out
of that particular time. 17:13
Interviewer: “Well, I guess what I would like to get at is—I know I have been
through experiences in my life where when they’re going on you’re just doing them
and you’re not realizing that it’s something special or it’s something unusual. Did
you have any sense of—I mean Cuba, I’m playing baseball?”
I just had a uniform and I could go on the field and I could play and do what I loved to do
and it didn’t make that much at that particular time. There are some pictures in Life
magazine coming down the steps in Havana, Cuba, just kind of a wave of us coming
down that I kind of enjoy thinking about that and the people that I met that was so
important to me. I met people from all over everywhere. Margy had gotten me there, but
Margy was with the Rockford Peaches and I didn’t see her much anymore and now I got
to deal with all these new people. 18:11
6
�Interviewer: “How was it playing with all the girls?”
That was fine; in spring training you’re doing everything, the calisthenic approach to
things. At that particular time they didn’t think girls should be doing weights or be in
weight rooms, that all came much later. That gets me into a whole new area of how the
football coaches didn’t want the very idea of you in their training rooms, but baseball,
calisthenics, exercises, running sprints, your infield training and that type of thing.
Interviewer: “For that particular team in Cuba, what position did you play?”
About everything, mostly infield, but I don’t remember being put in any one position,
general skill, running, hitting and throwing.
Interviewer: “Now you say Life magazine was there taking pictures?”
There was a picture, but I wasn’t aware of it, but there is a Life magazine picture of the
girls coming down by teams. 19:24
Interviewer: “So, where did you stay in Cuba?”
At the Sevillia Biltmore Hotel.
Interviewer: “This was a nice place?”
Oh yeah
Interviewer: “Had you stayed in a hotel before?”
No, the interesting thing is I guess, I remember that particular time, there were people
riding around in Jeeps with guns, which was very different and this was before the
overthrow of the government and we were not allowed to go out by ourselves, we went in
groups. One of the interesting things is as I look back is, there were always fellas
standing across the street from the hotel and there were balconies out from the room and I
had to learn about things like that, but Havana itself was a beautiful place. One of the
interesting things to me was there were only two stop lights in the whole city and the
congestion of traffic, the sidewalks were about half the size of sidewalks as we think of
them and the buildings were built right up to the corners and as I understood it, the first
one to blow his horn had the right away—interesting traffic. 20:40 It was very difficult
to walk around some parts of the city, but then they had great plazas that I did like to go
down. We got to go into the capitol building itself and do some touring. I had a chance
in the next year to go back to Havana for some games.
Interviewer: “Tell us about the games the first season, the first time, what was it
like, who were you playing against and what were the, for example, when did you
get up in the morning, what was your routine like?” 21:11
Well, as you can imagine, you’re traveling most of the time, the traveling part, packing a
bag, taking care of laundry and doing those types of things, getting on the bus, being on
time, we toured going back, when we came back to the states we were doing tours all the
way back. I remember playing in Savanna, Charleston, and Roanoke-- places like that.
7
�One of my memories at that particular time, and I must share that one with you, we were
in Charleston and my mother and grandmother rode a Greyhound bus from Mobile to
Charleston in order to see me because I had been away from home now for several weeks
and I had been selected to be on the team and they rode the bus and came in and we had
been on the bus all night riding from one city to the other when my mother comes in early
that morning knocking on the door and I’m just getting in bed and she’s knocking on the
door. 22:13 She comes in and I say something to her and she is upset at the way I’m
talking and she said, “you’re not going to play this game if you’re going to talk like those
Yankees”, and that was going to be a no, no, but anyway it worked out all right. I think
about it, what they must have endured on the bus ride. If you can imagine going on a bus
ride all the way from Mobile to Charleston just to check and see if I was OK. 22:45
Interviewer: “Did they watch the game?”
They saw us play I guess, but I don’t have memories, specific memories of that. We did
play different cities as we worked our way back and then we flew from Roanoke,
Virginia to South Bend.
Interviewer: “Did you write letters home?”
Oh yeah and some of those are on file in Cooperstown.
Interviewer: “So really the way you communicated, they knew you really were ok.
They had to have wondered what’s going on with my—“
They wanted to find out and they did.
Interviewer: “So your first season that you played, and you played in Cuba, and
you also traveled right? What happened in the off season, where did you go?”
Back to school, I had dropped out of school, so I had to go back and make up some time.
It cost me another semester in high school, but at that time we only had eleven years of
public education anyway in Alabama, so it just cost me eleven and a half years to finish.
I had missed one course that you can’t take the next course until you had the previous
course. 23:56 I think one of my favorite stories about that particular time is in 1948, the
second year I played, and I wanted to go to spring training and I’m in high school,
Murphy High School in Mobile, and I had to get my teacher’s permission to take two
weeks out of school to go to spring training. Spring training that year was in south
Florida, Opa-locka, Florida, I think that’s right, and all my teachers had to sign
permission for me to go, well didn’t all and the worst one was my Spanish teacher and
she always made you feel very bad when she would get you before the class. This is a
young lady that wants to go and she made it be known that if I didn’t pass that class it
wasn’t her fault if I was going to go to Havana, Cuba and be gone for all that time. 25:00
Well, I did go and I did go back to Cuba, spring training was in south Florida, but we
went back over to Havana, but when I came back she—I was gone two weeks and three
days, so that’s when she said, “this young lady’s been gone two weeks and three days”. I
got back on a Wednesday, I went to school on Thursday and we had an accumulative test
on Friday for what I had missed and she didn’t realize that when I was in south Florida
some of the team mates were Cubans and were helping me with my Spanish and I was
8
�getting to go to Havana with Spanish, so she was really pointing me out that I was
doomed for failure, but I made the second highest grade in class. 25:53 After that, the
next year when I came to school, I was always late because of the season, she met me in
the hallway and took me to the principal’s office to be sure I was taking second year
Spanish. She was a pretty tough teacher and she made a point that I had done all these
things and missed school and taken out of class.
Interviewer: “But you were smart though by getting somebody who actually speaks
Spanish to work with you like that because you were actually getting a better
education with traveling and with them in Havana, Cuba because you’re hearing all
that as well. The kids in school didn’t have that; they just had whatever they had in
class. That’s pretty smart.”
That’s right, Mickey Perez was one of the Cuban girls that really helped me and we
would write letters back and forth to each other and we were good friends, and we never
played on the same team, but she was very helpful to me. Anyway, this was one of the
toughest teachers at Murphy High School.
Interviewer: I’m going to ask you an indelicate question now, how is your Spanish
today?”
Boco
Interviewer: “Ok, fair enough, fair enough.” 27:06
Although I think about it often and if I have the opportunity, I think, with the languages
being done today, I would like to go back and try to get with it again. I didn’t have much
conversational at that time it was reading and writing and very little, boco.
Interviewer: “Ok, I know this is kind of a tough question because it goes so far back
and we’re only two years into your career here, but did you at any time in those first
couple of seasons think, “this could be my job? This could be my career?”
Not long term, one year at a time, because I’m playing ball in the summer, I’m going to
school in the winter, I was always late getting back to school, but I was a pretty good
student, so I made it up all right until I got to be a senior and I had to have that special
class that took me into another semester, but like I say, we only had eleven years of
school anyway at that time. 28:08
Interviewer: “Now you were real young, so maybe this isn’t a fair question. Did
you have any idea what you wanted to do?”
At that time no because I really was so young and so early in my school career and I
hadn’t even had physical education until I went to the high school. I think the physical
education teachers at the Murphy High School were very influential in that also, the
experience I had. A lot of the girls who played in the league and friends that I had were
going to college and many of them also, were teachers. At that particular time, that was
9
�one of the opportunities that women had. The opportunities were very limited in what
girls do and if you could get the education, you could teach. 28:57 So the emphasis on
education was there to go on and teach and I mean my gym teachers were good for me.
Interviewer: “So the second time that you toured with the group to Havana and to
other places, what was the next step?”
Remember, I only went there for two weeks spring training and then I had to go back to
high school. Then during that interim period I find out that I’m no longer with the South
Bend Blue Sox, I’m now with the Kenosha Comets, so when I catch the train now to
Chicago and be on the new team, I have to get to Kenosha. I traveled by myself, by train,
to get first to Chicago and then into Kenosha and then I have a new chaperone, but Mrs.
Moore in South Bend, I have to give her credit, a great deal of credit, where she placed
me, with whom she placed me and the location that she placed me. 30:04 The
chaperones were very important, I hope that we’re going to give them good credit. For
the younger girls that came into the league, they always arranged for your housing and
who your roommates were. When you’re on the road they also controlled who you were
rooming with and that type of thing.
Interviewer: “So what were there—you mentioned just now in terms of what they
did for the rooms and making arrangements and all that sort of organization, but
what were their jobs? What were their duties?”
The chaperone was in charge of everything. They were the trainer, they were the
business person, you had to have the uniforms, you had to get the first aid, if you had to
see a doctor they went with you, they made the appointments, they arranged where you
were going to live, who you were going to live with. The first assigned place I had was
within walking distance of the ball field and with another girl from the south and I
thought that was important too, and into a home where there were no children. 31:09
The husband worked at Sears, he was an usher at the ballpark at night and then his wife
was a homemaker. One of my favorite stories is my fifteenth birthday; I’m turning
fifteen and Mr. Warner had to do the chore of what you did, he gave me the fifteen licks.
In those days you got a lick for every year, so fifteen and one to grow on, she baked me a
cake and I was able to go with teammates, some of them and I’m the rookie, but I got to
go to the radio show for the Knothole Gang, for younger girls that play in South Bend
and the sponsor gave me a beautiful sweater and they did birthday things over the radio
and that night at the ball park—I always was assigned to sit by the manager, Chet Grant
and that night they pushed me out of the dugout and in front of everybody during the
seventh inning and they played a song on the big microphone, “I’m a Big Girl Now”.
32:18 “I wanna be treated like a big girl now”, and that was one of my special memories
of that year was my fifteenth birthday. They gave me the cake and ice cream and all that
business at home with Mr. And Mrs. Warner and then I got to call home and that was
special.
Interviewer: “That sounds like a magic moment.”
10
�It was a magic moment, it really was, here I had been away from home now and that was
May 26 and I had been away since April, it had been about a month or more I guess, but
it was a special time. 32:56
Interviewer: “So what was the next step in your career, so to speak, with baseball?
You’re now?”
With the Kenosha Comets and driving—I didn’t get to go to spring training again until I
graduated from high school and that was in West Baden Springs, Indiana in 1950.
Interviewer: “So you miss spring training because of school, but where did you then
end up with the group? If they were spring training and went somewhere where did
you end up?”
They had started the league, they had started play and I think this is where I attribute
some of the team pictures where we could identify the people on the teams, so of them
we couldn’t identify because those were girls that were picked up in spring training and
given a chance to come with the team, but in the team, games being played up to the
opening of the league, then some of them were let go. Then you had usually about fifteen
or sixteen players were all we had. 33:57 That sometimes leads to misidentification of
those girls who didn’t make the team, but they were in spring training pictures.
Interviewer: “I gotcha, wow, I didn’t know that.”
Once, and others I’m sure, I was one of the ones that went to school and got to finish
school and then go play.
Interviewer. “Did you have any idea by this time about the scope of the league?”
I guess as I look back on it, when I went home there was nobody there and most of them
back there didn’t know anything about it. As I think back, I missed all the teenage things
growing up, going to the beaches and going to the ballpark to cheer for the boys church
team and that type of thing, but we didn’t talk about it and they didn’t know anything
about it. That league was totally dismissed away from them. 34:57 They had no idea
about it.
Interviewer: “But they followed other sports like major league baseball and things
like that? People talk about games don’t they?”
Oh yes, the boys were very active; they had all their teams you know. The American
Legion came in and organized all the boys and they had a team and they played and we
had church league softball for the boys and all like that, but it was in the summertime and
I didn’t get to play any of that. The American Legion came and said girls can’t play.
Interviewer: “that amazes me because here you have been playing professional
baseball and you would think they would want you on the team.”
No
11
�Interviewer: “No way, so that’s 1950 we’re talking about now?”
When I graduated from high school it was mid year, remember I had a half year I had to
put in.
Interviewer: “So you graduated from high school and had you any idea by that
time, had your parents, for example asked you what you are going to do now?
When you get out of high school are you going to be a teacher, are you going to do
this? Did any of that kind of conversation go on?”
Oh yes, you had to with the family, particularly my father, because he couldn’t see
educating me, I’m a girl. I have a brother sixteen months younger than I am and if
anybody goes to school it will be my brother. During that time I’m saving my money and
with my grandmother’s help, and my mother, I got to go to college. My brother went
right out of high school into the Air Force and stayed in the Air Force, that type of thing,
so he never wanted to go to college and my dad in later years apologized to me about that
as he was moving me –I’m getting all this in later times and I hope you can put it all
together later, but the year I got my doctorate and he was helping me move back home,
after that he apologized to me for that particular time. 37:03 Because of the league, and
the point I want to make is because of the opportunity I had to play in this baseball
league, that I was able to make money, I was able then to get my education and that was
so important to a lot of the girls that played in the league. If it had not been for that
opportunity there would not have been a college education for many of us, it certainly
was for me.
Interviewer: “Let’s go, I’m glad we went there, but I want to go back to 1950. Did
you play for another team after that or are you still with the original team in 1950
after you graduated from high school?
Well let’s see, I was in Kenosha until 1951. I played four years in Kenosha. I would go
to school and I would go back to Kenosha, I would go to school and back to Kenosha and
then in 1951 I started in college, 1950 really. 38:08 I ended up graduation in January of
1950 and I started college in September of 1950.
Interviewer: “I’m trying to get in my mind the chronology here. Did you play
professional baseball while you were in college?”
Yes
Interviewer: “Ok, that’s where I want to go next.”
I’m in school, I’m at the ballgame, I’m in school, I’m at the team and that’s what I did.
Interviewer: “So where—the Kenosha team was a traveling team though, right?”
No
Interviewer: “Ok, now I’m getting back on track here.”
No, the Kenosha team wasn’t established, the last year that it folded, 1951, it did travel a
lot.
12
�Interviewer: “Let’s go back to 1950, you’re going to college, but now you got a team
that’s staying at home.”
See, I’m in Alabama when I’m in school.
Interviewer: “Ok, college in Alabama?”
I’m in college in Alabama and then I go to Kenosha and then when I went to Fort Wayne
the same thing was true. My first meeting with Jimmy Foxx I very well remember
because I didn’t go until school was out and again school was not out until about the first
of June and then I reported just as soon—usually it’s one day apart, I’m out of school one
day and I’m on the train the next I’m at the ballpark, that type of thing. 39:25 The first
day in 1952 when I went to fort Wayne, I met with Jimmy in the dugout and it was the
first time I’d ever seen him and I didn’t know that much about him and the night before
they had let one of their rookie players go to another team and it opened up a position at
second base. I had never played second base, but Jimmy said, “you’re going to be our
second baseman”, and I said, ”I’ve never played second base”, and he said, “You’re our
second baseman”, and that whole year was one of my worst years that I remember, but it
was a good year in many other ways. 40:09
Interviewer: “What made it the worst year and what made it a good year in other
ways?”
My baseball results were not good, batting was down, I had led the Kenosha team in
batting and I was not doing that now, I’m in a strange position, but the strange position
was that I was between the best short stop in the league and also the best hitter in the
league. In 1952 Dottie Schroeder was the shortstop for the Fort Wayne Daisies. The
only girl to play all twelve years in the league and Betty Foss, who was on first base, a
great big girl from southern Illinois that was the league hitter in the league. 40:51 One
of my favorite stories, Betty gets sick and Jimmy says, “Dolly you have been wanting to
play first base”, and I told him I liked first base, “you have been wanting to play first
base, so this is your time”, so that night we had a double header and I got to play first
base and I had the best hitting, I think I went six for eight or something like that, and then
the next year they put Betty in right field, she’s still a great hitter, and he put me on first
base and now I outhit her and after that I was on first base. I earned my spot to be on first
base. 41:34 That’s one of my favorite times. I had a bad time—when you’re not
comfortable in the field it affects your batting.
Interviewer: “I was going to say, you either earned the place or Jimmy finally
figured out where to put you.”
Well, Bill Allington the next year, but that experience Jimmy probably did have some
influence in that particular event alone, but that’s one of my favorite times.
Interviewer: “What were some of the highlights that you can think of during that
period of particular games, not only for you, but maybe seeing another player make
13
�a play that was really amazing. There were a lot of them, but any one that you can
think of?”
It’s hard to come up with just one thing. There weren’t that many home runs hit because
we were playing in big fields. I have a ball at home that is signed by Jimmy Foxx and
it’s my prize possession right now and I’m trying to decide where I am going to want it to
go. 42:40 August the 26th , I think it was, of 1952 when I hit that home run and I’ve got
the ball and the teammates signed it, but Jimmy also signed it and he didn’t sign all that
much. That’s a—but you’re playing with great girls, girls that were really great players.
I played with Audrey Wagner in Kenosha and the influence again, she went on to be a
medical doctor and I think the achievement of some of the girls following the time we
were in the league was very influential to me, interesting to me, what all they went on to
do. 43:20
Interviewer: “You know what interests me is that you were so young and that’s a
very impressionable age and impressionable can go with who you are hanging out
with. It can be very good or it can be very bad and in this case you had all of these
incredible examples of girls that were doing really remarkable things and you kind
of had to keep up to make sure you were being as good as they are, that’s got to be
good training.”
Well, so many things go back to, not only time on the field, but also time off the field.
One of my memories of Mrs. Moore, who was the chaperone in South Bend, we were in
Kenosha in the hotel, I think the Dayton Hotel, you’re in and away from home and with
not much to do and they played cards, so they were playing cards and playing poker and I
was just watching, I wasn’t playing and Mrs. Moore came in and got most upset with all
them and got me out of that room, I wasn’t supposed to be doing that, so that was one of
my early remembrances. 44:22 Mrs. Moore took a very close account of me that whole
year. In fact, during practice when the first team would practice, Chet would let them go
home and keep the rookies and the girls that played in the Knothole Gang, the younger
girls in town, so some of my best friends were the younger girls in town. I wasn’t able to
go with my teammates to the places they went for their entertainment and everything
afterwards, but one family particularly, the McCrackens, that took me in. Their youngest
daughter, my age, we became best friends and that’s another thing that will carry over to
other years when I’m in Kenosha or anywhere else, it was not uncommon for that family
to show up to support me. 45:11
Interviewer: “Your personal fan club huh?”
Personal fan club, that’s right. It was very important to me because I could walk from
where I lived to their house. I never had a car when I was in the league. I always
depended on somebody else for transportation.
Interviewer: “Let’s talk about the fans in the early days and then maybe later on in
your career, how were the fans?”
14
�Great and you had selective ones, but overall the fans were very supportive, they really
were. You made friends and like I said, I made some friends younger out in towns where
I played because I was so much younger than the other girls.
Interviewer: “In the early days in particular, the most you had ever had in terms of
an audience when you were playing with these baseball teams when you were a kid,
very different than going into a ball park where there’s paying customers out there.
Can you recall in the early days what it must of have been like to walk out, and this
is not the way it was when we played at home?” 46:18
I don’t really remember being awestruck in that way, it was just because by then I had
been with the team. You go by bus, you get on the bus, you get off the bus and you’re
playing seven days a week, double headers on Sundays and holidays, you didn’t have
much off time. The off time you had was to go get ready, pack and go again. I don’t
remember that, but certain fields you liked better than others. The Grand Rapids field
always had this big factory in right field and that was a problem. The Rockford Peaches
played in a—had a football stadium for part of their stands. Different fields I remember,
Playland Park in South Bend had an auto racetrack around it, so those were kind of
strange situations there. To be awestruck by—because you come out early before the
fans get there and two hours before the game you’re on the field. 47:18 Two hours, and
you had batting practice, you had infield practice, you had all of that before the game.
Interviewer: “How about the press? Were there newspaper reporters around at
any time? TV cameras or things like that?”
We didn’t have TV cameras in those days, but certainly the radio people, there was an
announcer at every park. Then there were reporters, yes they always had coverage of the
local games in the papers.
Interviewer: “Did you ever get interviewed?”
I don’t remember so much being interviewed. Certain games were important, had a good
night, maybe hit in a winning run or something like that. They always had those.
Interviewer: “Did you have a scrapbook?”
My mother did more so than myself. A lot of the things that I had in that scrapbook are
in Cooperstown. 48:18 They have a file on me in Cooperstown that has a good bit, my
personal letters to my family and that type of thing.
Interviewer: “So mama was proud huh?”
She was proud.
Interviewer: “What was the last season you played? That was fifty?”
1953
Interviewer: “So in 1952 you are still playing, you graduated from high school,
1950-1951 you’re going to college and how many years of college?”
Four
15
�Interviewer: “Four, all right, so all through the first three years of college you’re
playing baseball?”
Yes
Interviewer: “By that time did it almost become a routine because you’re—every
year you’re doing this, you’re going off to play and then you’re going to college?”
Yes, and then it’s time to graduate from college. Now the year before, even though it
was my best year in the league, I had some health problems. Primarily anemia. [I] didn’t
eat right as a kid, all those years that I didn’t eat right, I had severe anemia and the
chaperone had taken me to get me booster shots and all the things they do for anemia.
49:33 the first night they did that I was a leadoff hitter and I don’t remember the first
inning of that game and going down the steps I passed out, so after that anytime I had to
take those shots for anemia, I’d get a day off, but that type of thing. Memories of that
type of event, the chaperone would take you to the doctor for an appointment and that
kind of thing. 50:03
Interviewer: “You say it was one of your best years.”
My best year of hitting, of playing first base, I’m more comfortable and Bill Allington
put me as lead off hitter that was another one, so it just kind of worked out that way.
Because of that year, though I’d had a good year—Bill Allington, I was in the game and I
was on third base and I told him I wasn’t going to come back and he said, “are you sure”,
and this type of thing because he wanted me to come back, but anyway, I didn’t go back.
It was time for me to go on with my career at that time, I was looking toward teaching
and getting started in teaching, that’s another whole story as to why. 51:01 I had a job
so early after—I had an uncle who was superintendent of schools in Mississippi where
they did play girls sports and he had another superintendent that was needing a basketball
coach at that particular time and a teacher , so he helped me get an interview during
spring break that year, so I made my interview and I had a job before school was even
out, but then I didn’t go back to baseball. As it turned out 1954 was the last year of the
league, so it worked out for me. 51:33
Interviewer: “I want to get into that. Was there any indication in the last year that
you played that things were different, that the league may not continue on?”
Yes, the number of teams that were in the league had changed, they had the traveling
teams and I don’t remember too much about the history of that part because I’m playing
every day, I’m moving every few days, so I really wasn’t aware of it as much as it
actually was happening. It just wasn’t a part of my everyday and I wasn’t one to be that
concerned about it, I was just playing every day. 52:12
Interviewer: “I had asked you earlier, when you were in high school did you know
what you wanted to do, and of course you said that at that age you didn’t. When
was it that you realized that you knew what you wanted to do that wasn’t baseball,
but your career?”
16
�The teaching, the fact that in that the physical education teachers did the things that I
liked to do and some of the girls that played in the league that were teachers, were going
to college, for one thing they motivated me to go to college and to want to teach.
Interviewer: “That was not coming from your family? Your family was not
saying--your father, as you said and there’s no blame attached, I’m not trying to—
but basically he just wasn’t thinking you were going to go there, but you saw the
example of these other women.”
That’s what motivated me. Again, it wasn’t that my father didn’t want the best for me
and I tried to bring that out. It wasn’t that he didn’t want me to do well or have the best
of things, but I had a brother and he was supposed to get all of that. 53:13
Interviewer: “So there was that period then in transition, how difficult was it, and I
know this isn’t even a fair question, but how difficult was it and was there an actual
time that you decided that, I’m not going to play that next year, I am going to go
and be a teacher?
I don’t know if there was any specific time, but probably my senior year in college.
Again I went to a women’s college at that time, that was the way things were done, a
women’s college, majored in physical education, no sports other than intramural sports,
there was nothing back home in the way of sports and I had to go to Mississippi to even
teach sports. I taught in the Mississippi schools because they had girl’s sports,
particularly in the country schools and that’s where I started, but there weren’t any
opportunities for girl’s sports. 54:15 I think that’s one of the things that’s been
passionate for me, for the girls to have the opportunity to play sports. I didn’t think it
should only be for the boys and I still don’t think it should only be for the boys. I think
there should be opportunities there and that’s a whole other story, so get me out of that
one.
Interviewer: “Did you have any experience in basketball before that?”
No opportunity in basketball.
Interviewer: “But you’re going to be teaching basketball?”
In college I learned because I had classes. I had basketball classes and in our physical
education we had activity classes and theory classes in all of sports, so I ended up
coaching basketball, track, tennis, things of this nature because that was the academic and
background training that I had, but no practical coaching things except intramurally
55:09.
Interviewer: “Now, during your college days did your fellow students know that
you played professional baseball?”
It kind of came that way, but I was late getting to college the first year, remember I’m
playing baseball every year, I’m always late getting to school. By the time I got to school
17
�the person I was supposed to room with wasn’t even there and I’m getting another room
mate. That type of thing was always a problem—I was late getting to school, all the
introductions and orientations had already been done and I come on late, so it was always
a little bit of a problem and other than some of my closer friends, people who were in the
academic area, where most of my classes were, they knew, but that was a—and they
didn’t understand, but they knew I was coming in late. 56:08
Interviewer: “Didn’t happen to have a Spanish teacher in college who gave you
trouble too, did you?”
No, no more Spanish.
Interviewer: “ I want to go back to the conversation that you had, if you can recall
it, with the manager, it wasn’t Jimmy, it was the new—who was the last manager
you had?”
Bill Allington
Interviewer: “What was that conversation like where he tried to convince you to
stay?”
The biggest part was that one night, that one night on third base in the middle of the
game, that was kind of strange. It must have been a timeout or something and he was
talking to me and I guess he had gotten word that I wasn’t planning on returning the next
year and he wanted to talk to me about it. Now Bill was the one that after the league
folded, that put together a team of players and they travel and played against the men.
57:07 I had been out of the league for a whole year teaching and he still was contacting
me to come and join that group, but I didn’t, I said, “I’m teaching, I’m happy, I am going
to stay where I am”. I had enough of that traveling around. You know, seven years of
suitcases and traveling and hotels and that type of thing.
Interviewer: “What was his main argument about why you should stay?”
He wanted me on his team in some position maybe and at that time I was having a good
year and he certainly had been aware of it from the years he had been in the league as a
manager. In my opinion, he was the best baseball man that I played under. Chet Grant
was, I think, very good for me because he was a teacher. I think my memory of the
things I’ve learned that he was a quarterback for Knute Rockne at Notre Dame, so his
background is in the part of sports. Johnny Gottselig was my other manager in Kenosha
and he was a Chicago hockey player, but he was a scout for Mr. Wrigley that’s how he
got into the baseball part of it 58:23 Jimmy was a nice guy and he got much of the
publicity that year, but Bill Allington, who had been a minor league player, was the best
baseball man—he taught you baseball.
Interviewer: “During the period of time that you played, through our conversation
here, you were always concentrating on the playing and of course you had school,
then playing, then school, was there any sense during that period that you were
18
�doing, and your fellow players were doing, anything remarkable beyond just
playing baseball? The fact that you were good at playing baseball?”
Just having fun, we were just having fun, I made a lot of friends, I had friends in the
towns where we played, got to do things that other people didn’t get to do, opportunities
that they didn’t have and when you go back home, nobody knows where you have been
or what you have been up to , they just know you’ve been away. 59:24 It was a strange
happening in that respect.
Interviewer: “When in your life did you realize that other people recognized that
period of time as being very special? You knew it was special because you played,
but now we’re talking about a totally different thing. In history, people are looking
back on the period and saying that this was so unique and had all this impact, when
did it dawn on you, or did it dawn on you?”
I don’t think it dawned on the people in my environment, where I lived. I’m in south
Alabama, Mississippi where I taught, now in Arkansas where I live—until the movie
came out, the movie “A League of Their Own”, until that came out and also the
recognition by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988 after we became an organization or
association, we tried to help with that and I think that was a first step there and that’s how
Penny Marshall got a hold of things too was showing up in 1988 when we were there
doing that recognition at Cooperstown. :39
Interviewer: “The movie portrayed, and I don’t want to get into the movie at this
moment, but Geena Davis’s reluctance to go to that, what was your reaction to being
informed that you’re being inducted? Did you get invited to go?”
I was there.
Interviewer: “Can you see where I’m going with this? I want to know, what was
your reaction to this happening and did you say, “Oh, I’m going to go”, or did you
think about it?”
Well, I guess the interesting part is that one of my colleagues that I was teaching with, I
invited her to go with me. Of course she didn’t know—she had played sports in high
school and she was a physical education teacher like myself, but I invited her to go to
Cooperstown with me and I think that was exciting. 1:29 I had been to the first reunion
in Chicago; even my husband went with me in 1982 when we went to that. It’s kind of
hard to put it all together in your head just exactly, but Betty Wallace, who is a colleague,
went with me to Cooperstown and was with me during that. I was just kind of the kid on
the block, the older gals were there, but I was one of them and that type of thing. 2:01
We traveled together and had to fly into Buffalo I guess it was and get a car to drive to
Cooperstown because it wasn’t an easy place to get to and got to be there with people I
hadn’t seen, it was an exciting time.
Interviewer: “What was your reaction to going in there and seeing all that stuff?
There were displays.”
19
�I remember being at the display area when—I think that is when it was really taking hold,
the display area in Cooperstown. You would sit around and hear everybody talking,
That’s what Penny Marshall was doing too with her tape recorder. When you get
together you talk about old times, what it was like, where you lived, what you did and
that’s when it really kind of—that was something kind of special, but until that was made
into a movie and somebody else knew about it. 2:58 Now, in the areas where the teams
were in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan where the teams played, a lot of the
fans were still there, but in my part of the world, they had never heard of it. You would
say something, I remember fellas I coach with—“no you didn’t do that, that didn’t
happen, you telling me one” and that type of thing. I found one fella I coach with that
finally said, “Ok, you’re an athlete”, because girls didn’t have that much of a background
at that particular time, so I got to go down and workout with the team. Everywhere I’ve
been, I’ve been initiating girl’s sports. That’s something that I thought was important, so
I’ve been able to be active in that. 3:51
Interviewer: “Why did you go to the first reunion?”
I just wanted to see everybody. That one in Chicago and my husband was willing to go
with me, that type of thing and he had never heard anything about it either.
Interviewer: “What was his reaction?”
He went with me to support me, but he didn’t really know anything about it.
Interviewer: “You didn’t talk about it?”
No, you don’t, you would go home and you wouldn’t talk about it because there would be
no one there to talk to about it. You didn’t want to go around broadcasting all the time
unless somebody asked you a question or something, you just didn’t talk about it. It was
another world. Even the boys I grew up with playing ball on the playground in later
years, they didn’t know where I’d been either and we had a fellowship of those people
called “The Pritchard Kids” for many years. Just last year we lost contact and I still hear
from some, but we use to have an annual reunion with those kids we grew up with, went
to church with, these were church people and that was another era. 5:00
Interviewer: “Two more for you, one is, how did that experience of playing
professional baseball affect you personally, in terms of the person you are today?
What was it about that time, was there any effect that happened during that time
that kind of determined or molded or shaped the person that you are today?
Certainly, The travel, the exposure to girls from so many different places. I have always
really appreciated that, I have always been interested in people and one of the things
about teaching, I’m interested in people and opportunities wherever I’ve been to provide
sports, particularly for girls, because that’s been my area, recreation. 5:56 The fact that
you can help make it better for somebody else, I think that’s a part of it too. I still am a
sports nut I guess you would say because wherever I’ve been, I’ve supported all sports
and just tried to make things better for the next group coming on and I’ve started
programs, a softball program where I have to start and they won’t let us use the little
20
�league field to play on and we have to go in front of a dormitory at the university where
there’s no—we made a field out of it. Even to go to the little league field and we have to
wait until the boys get through in July before they would even let us go on the field and
to put up with things like that. 6:48 Some of the girls that have now gone on to be
productive citizens and are doing good in our community, they came from those little
girls softball programs that we started and from that the women’s programs grew from
that. To see that makes you feel good, that the girls are having opportunities today to do
things that they never had a chance to do before. 7:09
Interviewer: “That leads me to my last one. This is kind of the big one, the big
question. In terms of history, American history, history of we as a people, where do
you think your little group fits in that whole big scheme of things?”
The changing lives of women. I think WWII was the really big one for my generation
and the times changed, women had to leave the home and the kitchen and the statement
in the movie that stands out, “now that the men are coming back you women get back in
the kitchen”. I’m sorry, you’ve opened the door of opportunity and were not in the
kitchen, we’re out in the world being productive and doing other things and having other
opportunities. 8:03 Opportunity is the key word; you have to have an opportunity.
What would my life have been without that opportunity that someone saw something in
me that they thought would do something in baseball and I go the opportunity to do that.
Did I have any other skills that would have gotten me the door that opened for me to have
an education, to travel and meet all these people, to have friends all over the country and
to travel to Cuba? It’s opportunity; I don’t care what it is that you do, if you don’t
have—if you have the greatest of skills, but you don’t have the opportunity to use it, it is
completely lost. We have to have the opportunity to do things and we’re still on the
threshold of that in women’s baseball because we’re trying to get it into the Olympics
now and I’ve been trying to support the girls who are trying to play baseball today and
we do have a number of them. 9:00 Some of them are right here in this program we’re
doing today. There is a Team USA Women’s Baseball and I’m very proud of that and
I’m hoping that one day we’re going to have the women to play that again because it’s
ok, if it’s ok in one sport and someone is just written me some things in e-mail saying,
“girl’s just want to play baseball too and softball is not the same game”.
Interviewer: “Thank you so much.”
You’re quite welcome.
Interviewer: “This is wonderful.”
21
�22
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
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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
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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
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Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
Identifier
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RHC-58
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video/mp4
application/pdf
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Moving Image
Text
Language
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eng
Date
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2017-10-02
Contributor
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Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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RHC-58_DWhite
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White, Delores Brumfield (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
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White, Delores
Description
An account of the resource
Delores White (nee Brumfield) was born was born in Pritchard, Alabama on May 26, 1932. Growing up, she got her start playing baseball with the school and neighborhood kids. Following tryouts in 1946 she was told by Mr. Carey that she was yet too young. Apparently, after her tryouts Mr. Carey had misplaced her name and sought her out until he found her one day in a store. In 1946, she made the trip to Havana, Cuba. That same year she was placed with the Fort Wayne Daisies during her spring training period. At the end of spring training, she was chosen to play for the South Bend Blue Sox in 1947. She played with the Kenosha Comets from 1948 to 1951. She then played the 1951 and 1952 seasons with the Fort Wayne Daisies. During her league career she played first, second, and third base. Her career highlight was on August 26, 1952 when she hit a home run and it was signed by her teammates and Jimmy Foxx. One other highlight she had during her league career was her spring training in Havana.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Boring, Frank (Interviewer)
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--Indiana
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Women
Language
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eng
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Moving Image
Text
Relation
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Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
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2009-09-27
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
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application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/87d150df23d71e970e32f6030510fc96.m4v
802089bdaa466bc342b6de51a77b992d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a99fe20f27f3ae797fc06c1ea9a723c5.pdf
e6a8ae81ecf1ed27f463e1803d7458bc
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Veterans’ History Project
Interviewee’s Name: Dolly Nemic Konwinski
Length of Interview: (01:23:44)
Interviewer: “What was your early childhood like? Where did you grow up?
What was your neighborhood like and your family?”
It was a typical, typical working class neighborhood. The neighborhood consisted of
Bohemians and Polish and Jewish and it was the most wonderful—growing up in this
neighborhood was exceptionally fun as I can remember and to go to school with this
group and to grow up with, I should say, the boys because that was my main team mates.
We went to grammar school together, to kindergarten and elementary and high school.
Interviewer: “What did your father do for a living?”
Well, in the depression he was with the WPA, I forget what that stands for.
Interviewer: “It was Roosevelt’s way of getting people to work.”
Right, my mother was a stay at home mother of course—back then all moms stayed home
and cooked, washed, etc. My dad played softball with a neighborhood group and in
Chicago, I guess you get the picture—in the neighborhood where there’s a tavern on
every other corner. Well, my dad would stop and have a little refreshment on his way
home and that’s the group he played horseshoes with and played softball with and not
having a boy, I was the tag along. (02:20) I wouldn’t let my dad out of the house, even
if he was going to the corner store for some “Halva”, which is a Jewish candy by the way.
I would sit by the door so, he had to take me to the softball games, which I was a “gofer”
and some of the men, if they were true ball players, they chased their own shag balls, but
since I was there, I was the “gofer”, to go for the ball. They would say, “Dolly get this”
and of course they couldn’t have picked a better person than me because I wanted this
badly. I wanted to be on the ball field since I can remember.
Interviewer: “Why? What was your motivation? I know your back to your early
childhood, but what was it about baseball that appealed to you as a young kid?”
(03:15) You know, that’s really a hard question, but my love for my father, I wanted to
be just like him and I would do things just like my dad and I just took to the sport. I
didn’t like dolls—I have a sister and she had the most beautiful dolls in the neighborhood
and I don’t know where they got the money to buy these, maybe they went down to the
relief station and picked them up, but she had these beautiful dolls and I had the best bat
and ball in the neighborhood. (03:56) Of course doing that, the boys all loved me too,
but I was good—I was good when I was a kid.
Interviewer: “How old were you when you actually started playing baseball?”
1
�I was probably seven or eight.
Interviewer: “Whom did you play with?”
I played with the boys in the neighborhood.
Interviewer: “Where?”
Well, if you can close your eyes and picture a neighborhood in Chicago and you will find
that the streets were narrow and they held a car, if you were lucky enough to have one
parked there. We use to play softball there and we used the manhole cover and the drains
as first and the manhole cover as second and so on, and then we took chalk and drew
home plate in the street. (04:53) When we started, we wanted to play baseball and
Kuppenheimer Clothes had a factory just a half a block away and in back of the factory
was a field, a large field and that’s where me and the boys went to play ball.
Interviewer: “Were you the only girl?”
I was the only girl.
Interviewer: “Did other kids come out to watch you play?” (05:22)
No, they played. I remember that movie “Sand lot” and I loved that movie because it’s
what I did when I was a kid. We went out there and we played “round robin”, you hit,
you fielded, you pitched, you were a Cub fan or a Sox fan and you took their names, you
took Stan Hack, you took Andy Pafko, but I was a Sox fan and I was in love with Luke
Appling so, I played short stop and I always told—you call me Luke—I wanta be Luke
Appling, I want to play professional baseball just like Luke Appling and not realizing
what was going to happen in the distant future. (06:13)
Interviewer: “That was fantasy because you couldn’t play even if you—we know
what actually happened later, but as a child at that time playing--fantasizing about
playing professional baseball, there were no women in baseball at that time”.
You know the old saying “Girls can’t play baseball”, well I did and I was a good player.
I wasn’t the best, I wasn’t a home run hitter, but I always was picked first if I wasn’t the
captain. Maybe it was because of that bat and ball I had and the boys liked it. I
remember the bat. We played with cracked, cracked at the handle and couldn’t afford to
go out and get a new bat—didn’t have aluminum bats way back then so, my dad took his
manual screw driver and he put a hole through there and put in a screw and then he taped
it up. (07:19)
He didn’t use the shiny black tape we have today, he used the tape that would get your
hands black, but he taped that bat up and it was as good as new and back to the ball
fields. (07:34)
2
�Of course, we only played now in the summer—wintertime, there was time for skating
and tobogganing and sledding. I think every kid in Chicago had a sled—so our summers
were—and then I had a paper route. I had a Sun Times paper route. The first girl to have
a paper route—a large one too. My sister would help me—please El, please El, I got a
ball game, can you help me deliver these papers? I have to do homework and then I
would have to run out—“They need me, they need me, my sister would say “Ok, ok”, she
is two years younger so—you know when you’re eight and nine and eight and seven. I
would say “Please El?”(08:25)
It was the same with doing dishes when we were young. That was out job—we had to
do the dishes, “Oh mama do I have to do the dishes?” “You have to do the dishes”.
Well, I finally caught on and I would say to my sister, “Will you wipe tonight?” One
night we would wash and one night we would do the wiping, but the dishwasher always
got finished first so, I would say, “El, El, let me wash dishes tonight”, and she would say,
“Well, you washed last night”, and I would say, “I want to get out of here, please, please,
I got a ball game”, because the boys would be sitting on the fence waiting for me. 9:01
“Oh Dolly, oh Dolly, when you were a kid back then that’s what they would yell. Then
when it would come to the pots and pans, I would say, “Oh mama, oh mama, can you do
this pot? It’s really hard and the boys are waiting”. I had a wonderful childhood. I had a
wonderful—when my dad got home from work—we played with a sixteen inch softball
in Chicago and if you hit it enough times it gets like mooch. We were—you know, a
small hand could squeeze it and the ball, when it was hit it would just kind of tumble
around. (09:46)
“Daddy, daddy, I need a new ball”. We had enough money for food, we were never
without food on our table and there he would come home under his arm, with his lunch
basket, would be a ball. Now, I don’t know where he got that ball—we’ll just leave it at
that. (10:12)
Interviewer: “You got through high school and graduated from high school?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “Ok, when did you first hear about the opportunity to play baseball?”
One morning after church, my dad stopped at the bakery and we always had bagels and
Kaiser rolls, he stopped at the Jewish market and they were the best in the whole world. I
wish I could go back there today and pick up a dozen. He came home and after coffee he
was reading the paper and he said to me, “Dolly”, he said, “did you know that girls play
baseball?” I said, “Girls don’t play baseball”, he said, “There’s an All American girls
baseball league that’s having tryouts and it’s going to be right in the neighborhood at one
our park districts”. (11:18)
That’s where I played a lot of my sports, at the park—volleyball and whatever girls
played over there, whatever they would let us play. He said, “It’s going to be right down
the street and I want you to go”, and I said, “Oh dad, I’m not”—he said, “You’re a good
ball player Dolly, I want you to go.” Well, the glove I had was—if you go down to the
hall of fame one day, you’ll see the kind of gloves we had. It was probably from the five
3
�and ten cent store, but I had this glove and he said, “I want you to go down there”. “Ok,
I’ll go down”. (12:03)
I never saw so many girls with baseball gloves in my life.
Interviewer: “Now this is a field you had already played in so, you knew where it
was?”
Right down the street.
Interviewer: “Right down the street”.
In the park district.
Interviewer: “What I’m really impressed with is your father really encouraged you
to do this”. (12:22)
He did, and of course my mother, you know, my mother didn’t really know first from
short, but let me tell you one story. One day I said to my mother, “Mom, does it take
longer to get from first to second or second to third?” and she said to me, “Now Dolly,
that was just the most stupid thing you could ask me”, I was laid back and I said, “Well,
what do you mean?” and she said, “Well, it takes longer to get from second to third”, and
I laughed, “What do you mean mom?” She said, “Well, there’s a short stop in-between”.
13:10 I love to tell this story and I love to tell it in front of her because I don’t know
where she got that information, maybe my father whispered it in her ear, but mama didn’t
know too much about sports.
Interviewer: “What did she think about this idea of you going to try out for this
baseball thing?”
Like I say, she didn’t—she knew I went out to play ball so, it was just another going out
in the afternoon and having fun with the boys, but my father had told me “it’s girls
baseball”. When I got there--Interviewer: “Tell me a little bit about the trip over, what were you thinking about
while you were walking over?” (13:56)
Walking is right, I was fifteen—walking over there and thinking to myself, “You know,
will I be able to catch the ball? Are they going to throw really hard to me? Are there
going to be ladies there throwing? What is this all about?” (14:21)
It was about—I would say about three blocks from the house, maybe four and you know
you skip down there and you think and you smile—baseball, baseball, organized. Well,
when I got there to that gym, I had to sign in and there were a lot of men and there were a
lot of women, young girls, in fact, we weren’t women yet, we were fifteen and sixteen
years old. (14:52)
I walked in there and my eyes must have been almost popping out of my head. I could
not believe what I was seeing. Well, you know, grab a friend and here’s a ball and start
4
�throwing and the ball was—I believe the ball was eleven inches. It had come down from
the twelve inch that the league started with and so, we started playing catch and my name
is Dolly—well’ my name is Mary Lou and my name is Ginger and where do you live?
(15:29)
Well, I live way on the south side and what school do you go to? I go to Tillman, and I
went to Farragut, the conversation was just fun and women throwing hard to me, I did not
have to look for a boy to throw the ball to me like I’m use to catching. It went on, we
played catch and of course it was in a gym and so the men, who were coaches, started
hitting ground balls to us, we were in line and we each took our turn fielding the ball and
throwing the ball and we couldn’t hit, but we could slide—slide on a gym floor? Ouch.
(16:18)
It wasn’t strawberries, it was floor burns.
Interviewer: “What were you wearing?”
I was probably wearing a pair of pants and to this day, and I just bought them last year, I
never owned a pair of jeans. It was always a pair of girl’s slacks, some kind of a shirt, I
don’t remember.
Interviewer: “I was just trying to think. It wasn’t a uniform or anything?”
No, I was what everybody had. They had their jeans on and tennis shoes. I don’t know if
I had tennis shoes or if we could afford tennis shoes.
Interviewer: “What year was this?” (17:01)
This was in 1947.
Interviewer: “Ok, so the war was already over with?”
Right, what they were trying to do is get four teams in Chicago, like a farm system,
which the All Americans never had. They were trying to form the farm system with the
local gals and then we lined up and they told us a little bit about the league and what they
were trying to do—get four teams—there would be two south side teams, two north end
teams, and we would play each other. (17:41)
I must have impressed the coaches because they called my name and they came up to me
and they said, “Does your parents know about this?” I said, “Yes, my dad sent me down
here”, and they said, “Dolly, you’re a good ball player”, no Joe DiMaggio, no Luke
Appling, and I said, “Thank you”, and he said, “Would you be interested in playing on
one of the Chicago teams?” I said, “Oh, yes”. Well, they had some literature, some notes
that I had to take home and show my mom and dad. (18:31)
Interviewer: “Did you have a job at this time?”
5
�Just my paper route, just my paper route, and boy when I would get those penny and
nickel tips—you know when you’re nine years old or ten years old, and I had that job
right into high school.
Interviewer: “What were your options? You had a fairly decent relationship with
your father and with your mother, what did you talk about? Obviously professional
baseball was not in the discussions about what you were going to do with your life
before this happened”. (19:03)
Right, right, it—well, I ran home, I mean I ran, I sprinted, I could have beat Owens that
day. I ran upstairs and I said, “Oh daddy, daddy, daddy”, and he said, “What happened,
what happened?” I said, “Daddy, they want me to play, they want me to play”, and he
said, “I knew, I knew it” so, I said, “Mama, can I play ball? Can I play ball?” “Ask your
father, ask your father”, and I said, “Daddy said yes, daddy said yes” so, I brought the
details home and made these friends, Mary Lou Studnicka you know, Ann O’Dowd, we
were picked for the Southside team (19:56) and my other friends, Ginger and Champ
and some of the gals on the North side, Joan Sindelar, they made the North side team and
so, we were going to be playing against each other. (20:11)
Interviewer: “Now, you were getting paid, right?”
Well, no pay, we got our streetcar fare and I think we got fifty cents and that would have
been a lot of money because streetcar fare was a nickel and that would have been ten
cents round trip and that would leave us fifteen cents for a hamburger and a malt. (20:40)
That was the extent of it, just get on—maybe it was a little less, but fifty cents sticks in—
and that was so much money when I think of those nickel tips. We were paid that and I
was still active in the park districts and we were playing volleyball and we had a good
volleyball team. I love that sport to this day. As a kid I loved to go out there and watch
and my grand kids play, but we were playing in the park district tournament and we were
playing for the championship and we won, we won. (21:35)
We were just so happy, so happy and before they gave the medals out, that’s what you
could win, a nice medal, I was called in the office and the lady who was in charge, the
director of this, she said to me, “Dolly, do you play baseball?” And I said, “Oh ya, I do
play”, and she said, “Do you get paid?” I said, “No, I get money for the streetcar to go
there”< and she said, “Well, we heard you got paid and we have to disqualify your team”,
and I said, “You mean we don’t win? Does that mean we don’t win?” She said, “That
means you don’t win”. (22:27)
Well, our coach, I’ll tell ya, I can feel the pain right now—how could they do this to me
for streetcar fare? So, that’s another thing you know, when you’re fourteen or fifteen and
that—it just—so, I quit playing volleyball and I just played in adult leagues when I got
older. I said, “I’ll show them, just don’t call me grandma” but, I played since and then I
stuck to my baseball—still going to school—still in high school now, not being able to
play sports—the only thing girls could do in high school—we had a swimming team, but
they couldn’t be on the swimming team, but they could be divers. (23:28)
We played, of course we played basketball and taking you back a long time ago, we
played half court and six on a team and of course we played volleyball so, I got my thrill
6
�of playing volleyball in high school, loved it, had more fun and played ball with the boys,
I could practice, they wanted me out there to practice so bad, but when they had a game it
was “See you tomorrow Dolly”. (24:04)
Interviewer: “So, what were your options when you got out of high school? What
were you going work as? Were you going to try to get a job as a nurse or what?”
No, this is the most fun, playing with the boys in the field. I played with a young boy, his
name is Joe Schoenberg, how that stick out in my mind I don’t know, but we had a
Mages Sporting Goods store, Morey Mages and his brothers, I don’t remember his
brothers, names, but Joe lived in the apartment building on the first level and Morey
Mages lived above him. (24:48)
We would talk and he said, “Oh Morey, he owns the sporting goods store” and I don’t
know what made me do this, one day after we played ball he said, “Oh, Morey always
gets home about five thirty from the store” so, the wheels are turning in Dolly’s head so, I
went to the corner where Joe and Mr. Mages lived, and he came by one day and I said,
“Mr. Mages?” and he said, “Hello, how are ya?” I said, “Fine, I play ball with Joe
Schoenberg”, and he said, “Well, that’s nice”, and I said, “We play at Kuppenheimer
Field” and he said, “Oh, that’s nice” and I said, “You know I’m playing ball, baseball
with a girls organized team” , and he said, “Well, isn’t that nice?” (25:47)
I said, “Mr. Mages, I need a job, can I get a job (very blunt—no tact) at your store?” and
I think he was taken back and he said, “We don’t have any ladies in sales, we just have
them in the office part”, and I said, “That would be ok, that would be ok, can you use
me?” And he said, “I’ll tell ya, come by after school tomorrow or Monday (this was on a
Friday) and come see me”, “Wow”, I ran home and told my mom that I talked to Mr.
Mages. (26:45)
A long time ago we called our mother and father—we either called her mother or him
father or mama and daddy, because when dad would go out he would say, “You stay
home with mama”, or vice versa. I said, “Mama, mama, Mr. Mages said I could come
talk to him about a job”. She said, “Doing what?” I said, “I don’t know, just working”
and she said, “Well how much?” and I said, “I don’t know, just working” so, I couldn’t
wait until I got home from school, got my paper route done and hopped the streetcar
because Mages was on North Avenue and Crawford, it was just off Crawford, west of
Crawford and I got dressed up as nice as I could look and I took the streetcar out there.
(27:41)
I was so excited my heart was just beating and I got to the store and asked one of the
sales people and they said he was in his office and to go to his office. So, he said, “Well,
hi Dolly” and I said, “Hi Mr. Mages”, and he said, “Well, have you ever sold anything,
do you have any experience?” I said, “No, just playing ball” and he said, “Well, how
would you like to try to be in the shoe department and sell bowling shoes, ice skates and
ski boots?” I thought and said, “Sure, I would like to try, I’d love to”, and I was the first
saleswoman for Mages Sporting Goods. (28:38)
I loved my job, I loved my job and so, after I graduated and was playing ball, playing
ball in the summer and he knew that. I started going to college and I would go right to
work after that and then of course the All Americans came to be where—we graduated in
7
�1949 and we went on a barnstorming tour and I worked when I could and I thought,
(29:14)
“This isn’t fair, maybe there’s somebody who wants the job at Mages” so, I stuck to
baseball where I made some money and graduated high school, left my paper route, my
customers were very sad too because they got their tips worth when they gave me that
five cents and ten cents, their paper was at their door every night and early on Sunday
morning. I did that before church. (29:51)
Interviewer: “Let’s go back now to—you’ve kind of wrapped up your job and your
paper route and all, but how did you find out about the professional All American
Women’s League? How did you find out about that?”
Well, because of that tryout, which was held by the All American, and I was picked for
one of the four teams, which made me a part of the All American.
Interviewer: “You’re not being paid though, you said”.
We weren’t, but then at the end of 1948, after our season, the four teams were brought
together in a meeting and Len Zintack, who was from Chicago and the director of the
four teams, (30:38) asked who would be interested in going on a barn storming tour of
the United States to introduce the game to the south and the east coast so, Chicago had
two teams, they had the Springfield Sallies and the Chicago Colleens, which in 1948 did
not make it. Chicago had the Cubs and the Sox and the Bloomer Girls and some very
good softball teams and our team just couldn’t bring the crowds in. (31:14)
Springfield had the same problem. They had a good minor league team and they had
some good softball teams. So, they took the Colleens and the Sallies and they distributed
those women to the Peaches and Chicks and the teams in the All Americans, and we
became the women and girls who said “yes” they would go on a tour and we became the
Sallies and the Colleens and we traveled together on one bus touring. We started in
Oklahoma City, toured the south, New Orleans, Pensacola—(31:59)
Interviewer: “Playing against each other?”
Yes, against each other. Maybe on day I was a Colleen and one day I was a Sally, but it
didn’t make any difference, people were out to see the two teams play. We were heavily
advertised and we had wonderful crowds, we had wonderful crowds and they accepted
us. There was no one saying that girls can’t play baseball because we showed them a
very good brand of baseball. (32:29)
Interviewer: “What were you wearing?”
We were wearing the uniforms of the All Americans, the ones the Colleens and Sally’s
had.
Interviewer: “What did it look like?”
8
�It was like the pictures you see today, the uniform of the All American Girls Professional
Baseball League.
Interviewer: “You had a baseball cap and a top, but then there was a skirt.”
The—Mrs. Wrigley designed those uniforms. She wanted every one of the women to
look like ladies and the men, the manager, play like men, and that’s what we wore. It
was a skirted uniform with shorts underneath and the stockings up to our calf. 33:14
Interviewer: “How did you feel about this? This is a different time, now you can
walk around in a skirt and you can have it as short or as long as you want, there is
no difference, but in those days women didn’t wear skirts like that.”
No we didn’t and if you find a picture of the first four women who played ball, you will
notice their skirts are almost to their knees, which was still—you know, if you’re sliding
and your skirts coming up and you’re going see the shorts, but that’s all you’re going to
see. Well, each year the gals took a hem up, which was ok, the chaperones never said
anything and I don’t think anyone was reprimanded for taking a hem up and making the
skirt a little shorter. (34:08)
Interviewer: “The reason is because of the running and the—?”
Probably the running, and people say, “Well how did you ever slide or play in those
skirts?” And this was the easiest thing to do because we had shorts on and like so many
high school and college teams have today, we had a little skirt that covered that, which
made it a little more feminine looking. The charm school of course-Interviewer: “You had to go through the charm school?”
That was in the beginning of the league and I didn’t join the league until, you know, 1949
or 1948 so, I was not into make-up, but the chaperones made sure that when you were out
in public, you looked like a lady in al phases at all times. (35:08)
Interviewer: “You did this barnstorming tour, which was playing basically against
the same teams that you were playing with. When did that shift into being part of
the league that played other cities and other towns?”
After the 1949 barnstorming tour, which ended in—I believe it ended in August,
sometime in August, we were all allocated to teams in the All American League. So, my
friend Delores Muir, who just passed away two weeks ago, we were sent to the South
Bend Blue Sox. Dave Bancroft accepted us and I don’t think I played a game because it
was about two weeks. I think I was there long enough for a 1949 team picture and Grand
Rapids needed an infielder and South Bend needed a pitcher so, I was traded. (36:13)
I joined the Grand Rapids Chicks in 1949. Most of the gals did the exact—they were
sent to South Band and Fort Wayne and Peoria.
9
�Interviewer: “What was your first impression of Grand Rapids when you came
here?”
This is kind of a small city compared to Chicago. I said to somebody, “I would like to go
downtown, how long is it going to take me?” And they said, “Oh, five or ten minutes”. I
lived in Madison Square and I said, “Five or ten minutes, what?” And they said, “The
bus will get you down there”, and that reminds me—my mother came to visit and she
said she wanted to go downtown. Well, I had a game to get ready for so I said, “Ok
mama, you’re going to go to Hall St. and the fire department is on the corner of Madison
and the bus will stop and he’ll take you downtown. (37:16)
Now, notice the number of the bus and where you got off and that’s where you’ll get on”
and she said, “Ok, no problem”. Well, I get a phone call and the first thing she asked the
bus driver was she wants to go down to the loop and he said, “You must be from
Chicago?” Well, she wanted to go downtown and she got off at the wrong stop and she
went into the fire department, which was just down the street, but she didn’t recognize
anything and they told her where she wanted to go. (37:52)
That’s just kind of a side story, but I love Grand Rapids, I love Grand Rapids and it was
so fun to play here and the people I stayed with, they treated us like their daughters. I
stayed on Horton Street, right off Cottage Grove and these people, like I say, we paid
them our rent, I don’t remember what it was a month, not much, but they always told us
the refrigerator is always open. On our day off they would say, “Dolly, would you like to
have dinner with us tonight?” (38:38)
We were so a part of their family and so welcomed here that I’m sure the minor league
baseball teams that we have today stay with these families and are treated like their sons
and you don’t forget.
Interviewer: “Lets go back to—you signed up originally with this one team and you
were traded to the Grand Rapids Chicks. You’re getting paid now and there’s a
contract, give us some idea what that was about. You had to sign a contract for
what. What period of time and how much were you paid?” (39:17)
Well, first of all when I agreed to go on that barnstorming tour, my mother and dad had to
go downtown to the Wrigley Building and sign a contract because I was just sixteen. So,
off on the El we went to the Wrigley Building. They gave their permission and when I
got to South Bend or Grand Rapids, I had signed a contract on my own, I was eighteen
and I made sixty-five dollars a week and that was really big money. (40:00)
I didn’t even make that at Mages Sporting Goods. When I was on the tour, going back
to the tour in 1949, I want to say we made twenty-five dollars a week, but of course
everything was paid for, our hotel, of course the bus, we didn’t have to worry about—we
did have to buy our own meals, but I had enough money that when I left I said to my
mother, “I’m going to send you some money home and I want you to go buy yourself
some stockings or a slip, I want you to treat yourself to something, treat yourself and do
not put this money away, treat yourself, I’m ok”. (40:45)
When I got home, going back now to 1949, when I got home I said, “What did you buy
mama? What did you buy? Did you buy yourself some new shoes or stocking or a slip
or a dress?” She said, “No, I saved the money for you”, and I said, “Mother, why did you
10
�do this? I sent the money for you to treat yourself”, and she said, “I knew you would
need it for school” and so, “Ok, I got money”. I don’t remember what I had, two hundred
dollars or something like that in savings so, I went to my dad and I said, “Daddy can I
buy a car?” He said, “What are you going to use a car for?” I said, “I don’t know, can I
buy a car?” (41:51)
He said, “We’ll see”. Well, he and my uncle, my uncle Rudy, go out looking for a
car—now, I haven’t graduated yet from high school in 1949 so, one day I come home
from school—take the streetcar—came home from school and he said, “I got a surprise
for you”, and I said, “We’re going to get a car, we’re going to get a car?” and he said,
“Come on outside”. I almost cried, I mean I almost cried because here was this 1936
Plymouth four door—here’s your car, and I don’t know if people go back and log into old
cars, but they have the back door—the front door opened this way and the back door
opened this way. Well, I really didn’t want a four door gray car, but what could I say—
he would probably say, “Well, I’ll take it back”. Well Ok, I have a car and the next day I
said, “Daddy can I take my car to school?” (43:08)
Well, he jumped out of his chair and he said, “Are you crazy? Are you crazy? Nobody
drives a car to school, you take the streetcar”. So, there I am ten cents on the streetcar
and I have this 1936 Plymouth sitting in front of my house, but that’s the way it was back
then. If you see the schoolyards today, there are not many that don’t drive. It was fun to
do this, it was fun to do this and in high school I was about to graduate and my class
honored me with the most likely to succeed and in my log, Frigate, you know, the ship—
we had the log and in there it said that I wanted to be a professional baseball player, long
before the dream came true, and being outstanding athlete in my class, which made me
proud. (44:25)
I also was in the concert band and concert orchestra—I played the trombone. I had
wonderful, wonderful years in high school and all through school. Now I’m a
professional baseball player and when we have our reunions, I take the log with me and I
say, “Ok you guys, how many else lived up to what they put in the log?”
Interviewer: “Tell us about your experience with the Grand Rapids Chicks. Do you
remember your first game with them?”
Oh yes, the first game was Racine, Wisconsin and I was put right into the lineup and the
first two times at bat, I got hits and I will never forget that. (45:09)
Since that first game it became a little bit more difficult to get a hit because they knew I
couldn’t hit a curve ball and all those wonderful pitchers we had who threw fast ball with
a hop on it, they had equally wonderful curveballs. All they had to do was throw that to
me, but we played at South Field, the Grand Rapids Chicks played, and of course South
Field was a football field before they made it a baseball field. Of course we had a short
right field and with the fast balls, I could make line drives to right field—I was a good
hitter to right—but of course they knew I wasn’t that speed demon that a long time ago I
was and they would throw me out at first. (46:12)
Well, there went my batting average so, I was good field no hit, but I remember those
first two hits in Racine , Wisconsin.
Interviewer: “What was your position with the Grand Rapids Chicks?”
11
�I played third base, but at times I played second base, when our pitcher Zig would be on
the mound. I think because I was a good infielder and I had played second at one time, I
could make the double play very easy—it wasn’t difficult for me to do that—I started out
as a shortstop back in the schoolyard days, you know, Luke Appling.
Interviewer: “Professionally though, you were a third baseman?”
Yes.
Interviewer: “Who were some of the teams you were playing at that time?”
We played of course, the “Rockford Peaches”, “South Bend Blue Sox”, “Peoria Red
Wings”, “Fort Wayne Daisies”, “Racine Belles”, “Kenosha Comets”, “Muskegon
Lassies”, when the league started to slow down and attendance—Battle Creek bought the
“Belles” so, we had the “Battle Creek Belles”, Muskegon slowed down so, Kalamazoo,
Michigan bought the “Lassies” and we had the “Kalamazoo Lassies”. 47:37
Interviewer: “What was a season like? The first season you played with them?
Was it a lot of traveling; was it a lot of home games? What was the actual season
like?”
I think we were split—home and away games. We played seven days a week, double
headers on holidays and Sundays and there were a lot of rain dances. We looked forward
to rain when we didn’t have a day off for a long time, but occasionally we had a day off.
Usually if we were traveling we’d have a night game and travel in the morning either to
South Bend—wouldn’t make the long trip to Peoria, we would stop at South Bend or Fort
Wayne or Rockford before going on to the longer miles. (48:35)
Interviewer: “What were these road trips like? I that when you’re traveling a lot
and then you have to play a game and then you’re traveling some more, but you’re
young of course, you’re very young, but what were these road trips like for you?
Did you like them? Were they tiring? Were they fun?”
You learn to sleep on the bus. We traveled on the Division Avenue bus line, which was a
step above a school bus, the seats were more comfortable, and so, you could take a nap.
They were fun, you would sit with a friend and chat and sometimes we would sing.
Sunday morning Alma Ziegler give her sermons so, we had a touch of religion in there
one way or another. (49:37)
Interviewer: “This is the baseball playing nun you were talking about?”
No, this was Alma Ziegler, Gabby Ziegler who played for the Grand Rapids Chicks. I
never played with our former nun. I did play with Tony Palermo, his sister Toni Marie
Palermo, she’s still in the convent, and when we have reunions today, Saturday night she
gets on the podium and reminds everybody that Sunday is tomorrow morning and “Do
you have your wakeup call in there? (50:15)
If you don’t go to church you know we’ll pray hard for you.” So, we do have a nun
still in the convent. Alice Harnet was a nun—we had three nuns—we have three
12
�physicians—three doctor. Mary Roundtree, who was a catcher for the Grand Rapids
Chicks sometime ago, just passed away in Miami and she was a surgeon, a very, very
outstanding doctor and Audrey Wagner played for, oh gosh, I don’t want to get this
wrong, I believe the Kenosha Comets and she was a doctoring California and she flew
her own plane and she was going to a medical convention and crashed. So, we lost not
only lost one of the outstanding outfielders and hitters and outstanding physicians, but we
lost Audrey too. (51:26)
Interviewer: “These road trips to other towns, had you traveled—I know you were
from Chicago and Chicago of course is a big city with a lot of different types of
people and different things around you—groups and what not. How different was it
when you went to all these other towns? Was there a sense of I’m in a new town
here, I’m from a big city and this is a small town, what were your reactions to these
other areas and places?”
Of course the towns were all the size of Grand Rapids so we enjoyed it. We stayed in
very nice hotels, we were given three dollars a day meal money so, we always had that
fifty-nine cent breakfast. If there was a good movie and we didn’t have to play until
evening, we took in the first feature. We saved our two and a half dollars for an evening
meal and sometimes that would only cost us a dollar and a half so we saved a dollar.
(52:31)
The towns were lovely, the fans of course were anti-Chicks, but they only treated us that
way when we were at the ball field, you know boo, boo, boo and what have you.
Cheered hard for their teams, Fort Wayne was noted—they had a tailor in Fort Wayne
and of course we had to wear skirts, and it seemed like every team visited this tailor to
have their skirts made. (53:03)
We would pick the material up and he would measure us up and then on our next trip
back, we would pick-up our skirts and you could tell everyone who had their skirts made
by him, they were very tailored. I think I wore them when I was married. I mean the
herringbones and the wool skirts so; I remember that about Fort Wayne. Fort Wayne also
had a sporting goods store that would carry spikes our sizes. Rawlings made the spikes
and they would carry a size four or a size five, specially made for the women. Another
city that’s well known is, I believe, Racine that had the Jockey--Jockey Cooper and they
made the men’s underwear. Well, at one time they would turn their factory over for a
short period and they would make Jockey underwear for the women, of course a whole
different pattern in the front, but we would always order out undies from Jockey so, those
are two towns. (54:34)
Interviewer: “What ever happened to your—the place you worked for, the sports
place you worked for in Chicago?”
Mages? You know, I believe Mages sold his stores when he retired.
Interviewer: “I mean when you became a baseball player and they were actually
paying you to be a professional baseball player did you ever go back there?”
13
�I did, I did and I talked to all my friends there and they kept saying, “You’re playing
baseball now and I’d have some pictures to show them and they were quite proud and I
said, “Now you catch our games if you go to Kenosha, which is a short drive”, That’s
where my mom and dad would catch our games, up in Kenosha. “It’s a short drive—
come see us and call me and let me know if you’re coming and I’ll get you tickets”, so,
they were quite proud that I made a stepping stone to something I loved. (55:37)
Interviewer: “How did your dad react to that?”
Oh, my dad was so proud. He would tell everybody, my Dolly is playing baseball,
softball, my Dolly is playing baseball and we’re going to see her next weekend. They
had a car—I don’t know what happened to my 1936 Plymouth, I guess when I left for
Grand Rapids, I didn’t take that car. He probably sold it, which was good and I don’t
remember back then, but I know I didn’t have my gray Plymouth anymore. (56:17)
People at Mages were quite proud of me and I’d always ask them, “Do you miss me in
the shoe department?” When I’d talk to people, especially when I’d sell them a pair of
ski boots I’d say, “Well, where do you ski?” They would say, “Well, in northern
Michigan”, and I’d say “Northern Michigan, past Grand Rapids?” “Oh, Boyne City and
Traverse City”, and not being familiar with northern Michigan, I said, “Oh, I think that’s
quite a bit North of Grand Rapids, I play ball there”, and they would say, “Oh, you do?”
Of course they wouldn’t see me in the summertime so, I’d sell ski boots and of course
bowling shoes and going back to 19—in the early forties, when the war started, in 1943
my uncle enlisted, that was my fathers very best friend. (57:19)
Now, my dad bowled too and again, “tag along Dolly”, I can remember the Windy City
Bowling—they were bowling alleys back then, not bowling lanes, and he would take me
and they would have the best orange soda in the whole world so, “Daddy, daddy can I go
with you tonight? Can I go with you?” and he would take me with him and the first thing
we would get in there, he would go to the bar and I’d have my orange soda and he would
say, “Now, sit and be quiet”, and I would say, “Oh, I’ll be very quiet”. I would watch his
team bowl and I said to him one time, “Can I try this game? Can I try bowling?” and he
said, “Ok” so, one Sunday morning after church we went to the bowling part and he got
me a ball with small finger holes and my father always bent over, it was very unique, he
always bent over and the ball hung down and he would push away. (58:19)
That’s the way I bowl, I followed his form, and there was sometimes the pin boys, you
know, they were off to war and they wouldn’t have one and he would go back to the pits
and he would set pins for me and then I would go back to the pits and I would set a game
for him. That way it only cost us a nickel instead of a dime to bowl a game.
Interviewer: “Let’s get back to baseball.”
I was just going to say that I became a professional bowler too.
Interviewer: “I didn’t know that. The first game you said you played with the
Grand Rapids, Chicks and you had two hits and after that it was a lot more difficult
to get hits because the pitchers were on to you. Is that because you played you
played these teams so often, they were able to—there weren’t that many teams for
one thing—“
14
�There were eight teams at that time.
Interviewer: “Eight teams.”
They each had—I would say, they each had four pitchers so, I didn’t face everybody in
the same series or time after time, but I’m sure I faced all of the pitchers at one time or
another. (59:40)
Interviewer: “How was your first season?”
It was good, it was good, my batting average wasn’t that bad, of course it wasn’t 300, but
I had a good season on the field, I enjoyed playing along side of my team mates, who
were very helpful, John Rawlings was our manager and he was a member of the
Pittsburgh Pirates and very knowledgeable Hall of Fame player, and because my hitting
wasn’t the best, I would have to go out there every day we were home and he would pitch
to me. Today I realize what I was doing wrong. (01:00:31) I was not throwing my arms
out at the ball, I was kind of crimping in on them and I think back, “No wonder I wasn’t a
good hitter, now I have to tell the kids how to throw the bat at the ball” .
Interviewer: “What were some of your memorable games? Which ones really stick
out in your mind?”
I find that question, not impossible, but difficult, because every game out there was a joy
for me. I looked forward to every game we played, there was never a game where I was
bored, there was never a time in my life I was bored, Always something to do,
(01:01:23)
I guess the one game—it was in Kalamazoo and probably the shocker of my life because
I hit one off the fence in center field and it was right off the top of the fence and it came
back into the field and I only got a triple, I don’t know if I scored or not or what
happened because I was in seventh heaven—to see me hit that ball that far—I think John
Rawlings fainted in the dugout. I don’t even know if my team cheered for me because
they must have all been in shock. (01:02:03)
That’s one game that stands out ant that was extremely fun.
Interviewer: “I have seen film footage of professionals like you sliding into a base
and it doesn’t look comfortable. Could you explain what it was like to actually slide
into a base?” (01:02:29)
One experience that I had—now we’ll be shocked again because I got a hit, and I’m
standing on first and not taking a big lead off and John Rawlings gives me the steal sign
and I’m thinking, “Does he know who he’s giving a steal sign to?” Old turtle Dolly?
Well, he thought I could get a—the pitcher had a high kick and “ok, he’s giving me the
steal sign”, I’ll show him I can do it. So, off I take and I slid and I was safe, but I had the
biggest, hurtingest strawberry in the whole world. (01:03:24) Well, everybody is saying,
“Just shake it off, shake it off”, well I’m not going to cry out there—I’d like to—
eventually a hit was made and I scored. I got to the dugout, Dotty Hunter waiting for me
15
�because she knew. Out came the methialate, we had the fan going, which is all your
teammates blowing and I’m thinking, “This is going to burn, this is going to burn like the
fires of hell”. On goes the methialate, on goes the bandage, a big bandage—get out there
and play. (01:04:09)
Well, I did my job, “It doesn’t hurt until the next day I’m thinking, it doesn’t hurt more
until the next day”. The next time I get up—this should be my most memorable game—
Dolly gets a hit—“I got another hit, this pitcher must like me, she’s grooving it”. I’m
standing at first and I look over across the playing field and John Rawlings gives me the
steal sign again and I’m thinking, “If I have to slide, they’re taking me to Butterworth
Hospital or some hospital that’s nearby, I know it for sure”. He gives me the steal sign—
well, up it goes, a high kick again and I ran in there. The catcher threw it to center
field—I didn’t have to slide and I’m thinking, everybody in the dugout is clapping too,
“Hey she made it to second”. Well, I don’t know if I scored on that one or not, but John,
as I came in, he was smiling at me and I said, “Did you think I was going slide again?”
He just smiled and walked away. (01:05:33)
I guess maybe we’ll chuck that hitting the top of the fence and use this as my most
memorable game. Two hits and a strawberry and the “ouchie”. It takes a while for that
to go away and it starts peeling and you want another hit, but if John gives me the steal
sign again I’ll really cry.
Interviewer: “Did anybody ever get hurt that you remember, beaned on the head
with a ball or anything like that?”
I don’t remember, I remember not getting beaned, but going back to the barnstorming
tour, one of our Cuban gals had a fastball, but she also had a very fast curve ball and I
was batting against her and she had thrown me a fastball and it was high, and I knew she
was going to throw me another fastball—I knew it, I knew it—I stood in that box and
here comes that fastball right at my arm, but I thought it was going to curve because she
was kind of smiling—that she would throw me the curve and get me to go for it—so, I’m
waiting for the fast curve and that ball is coming so fast and it didn’t curve and I didn’t
get out of the way and it hit my arm. (01:07:18) I couldn’t lift my arm for two or three
days and it was black and blue and of course we were on the barnstorming tour and we
were all living together and I said, “I thought you were going to throw me a curve”, and
she said, “I a fool a you, right Dolly?” I said, “You didn’t fool me, you hurt me”, but to
this day we’re still friends.
Interviewer: “The crowds initially were big, but you said there was a period of time
where it started to get less, the crowds were less and less. Did you actually notice
that?”
Of course I was through playing in 1952, but I had still gone to some of the games in
1953. I was in an automobile accident and hurt my leg so, that kind of finished my
playing career, but so many people ask, “Why did the league fold? Why did the people?”
This my own theory, now high schools were-this was really a family gathering, families
came to our games and now high schools were beginning to blossom out and have
activities in the evening. Cars now had gas so, dad could go here and mother could go to
the movies and get her dish. Back then if you went to the movies on Wednesday night,
16
�you could make a dish collection. Of course television was in the ballgame now and who
wanted to go out when Uncle Miltie was on? No body, your Show of Shows, they kept
the family around this new invention, television. (01:09:28) So, we saw the crowds drop
and like I say, it was a family and the family went from a closeness to everybody is out
doing their own thing so, the money wasn’t there to pay us and it wasn’t coming from
anywhere but the fans, and I always like to add this today, “We see the family now today,
coming back together. Who’s at the football games together? Who’s at the soccer games
together? Who takes the kids out to the golf course together? It’s mom and dad and the
kids and this is so wonderful because our children need this today. They need to know
that the family once again cares”. (01:10:27)
Interviewer. “I know you have been asked a variation on this question before, but
we know for a fact, the fact that you played baseball, that women played
professional baseball, did have an impact on the changing attitudes that schools had
toward girls playing sports and whatnot and now, as you well know, there’s soccer
teams, girls baseball team, there’s all kinds of things. What is your personal
opinion? What do you think was the effect, not just you, but your fellow players
had on the attitudes that people had towards girls and women?”
I am so proud to have been a part of the All Americans and to show people that women
had skills and if title nine was passed not only because of us, now young ladies can see
their dreams come true, like we saw our dreams, we are so proud to have been a part of
this and I went to a couple of the U.S. Olympic Softball Team games and these women,
these young women come up and to us and hug us and say “Thank you, because of you,
we can do this”, and not only myself, but you can talk to the oldest player in our league
or the youngest and they have the same pride that I do, and young girls, no matter what
they play, the Olympians, to be so proud of that team and to have them say, “Because of
you, we’re here”, makes us so proud. (01:12:38)
Interviewer: “Baseball Hall of Fame, tell us about—how did you find out? What
happened?”
The Baseball Hall of Fame, you know, we didn’t put on any marches, we didn’t put on
any protests, but we had a group of women in Fort Wayne, Dottie Collins—it was our
first board of directors that slowly went there and show them. Ted Spencer—let me tell
you something about Ted Spencer, the Curator. (01:13:27) He was schooled in Boston
and it just so happens that one of the players we had in 1943 named Mary Pratt, happened
to be a gym teacher, not PE, gym teacher in the one of the Boston schools. One of her
students was this young boy named Ted Spencer. Well, when we started, I want to say
we, but I talk about this board slowly infiltrating—no protests, just presenting the facts.
Going there, she found out that Ted Spencer happens to be the curator of the National
Baseball Hall of Fame. (01:14:27)
Well, what an in. so, she goes there, the Hall has a lot of her memorabilia, she contacts
our board and now they start having meetings with him and this has gone on since we
became an organization, a players organization in 1982, and we now get the word that
there’s a possibility that the hall of fame would recognize the All American Girls
17
�professional baseball league. How excited, how excited—I know a lot of the women
today say that we’ve been inducted and it’s because their proud, but in 1988, November
5th, 1988, the National Baseball Hall of Fame recognized all of the All American Girls.
(01:15:33)
They wanted to induct—there were some names thrown at them for induction, but our
board said, “No, we want to go in as a group. If we’re not inducted, we would be
honored to be recognized”, and Jane Forbes Clark, who is the CEO of—and has been one
of our biggest supporters, they have had us there on Mothers Day, and we have signed
autographs, they have—the tenth anniversary of the movie, they had Penny Marshall and
the movie stars, and we were invited to go along and she signed a book and we had
dinner with them, they have promoted us, they have things in their gift shop that are
related to us, they show the movie, Abbott and Costello, A League of Their Own and in
the bleachers, which is a section of the hall of fame, we had our sixtieth reunion and
Cooperstown wasn’t big enough to hold all the women who were going to be there so, we
stayed in Syracuse, but we had buses take us there. (01:17:03)
We had a breakfast in honor of us, we had, right in the hall where the pictures of the hall
of famers are, they had tables set with white table clothes and they had waiters in
tuxedos and white gloves, and they just honored us in the highest praise they could give
us and they do this, they do this. Now when they remodeled, we have a display on the
second floor which has pictures and memorabilia and the honor they have given us, we
are so proud of. (01:17:55)
Interviewer: “That’s wonderful, that’s wonderful. What’s your relationship with
the Whitecaps here locally?”
Before they became the Whitecaps I knew Lew Chamberlin and I talked to him because
he would have lunch at Crystal Springs Country Club. We belong there and we knew
they were working on bringing a baseball team and so many times I would sit down at the
table and say, “Lew, Grand Rapids, Michigan needs baseball back here again, don’t give
up your dream, don’t give up the pushing, don’t give up the hope, of bringing someone
here”, and Mr. VanderWitte is a friend of Lew’s and a friend of mine so, when I would
see him I’d say,” Please, keep prodding him, keep prodding him, people may give him
negative this and that, look what happened here, look what happened there, we need
baseball here”. (01:19:13)
So, I have been, not the last couple of years—summers have been really—I’ve been out
on speaking engagements and doing a lot of traveling, but we were the first ones to have
box seats out there the first season and I can go up and into the office and knock on the
door and say, “How ya going? How’s everything?” “Good, good”, and Jim Jarecki and
their all very close to my heart. Don’t worry, they’ll bring the—they’ve had so many
championships; you have to be proud of this team.
Interviewer: “They are very supportive of this project by the way. I have met with
Dan McCrath and with Jim and they are very much supporting the idea of doing
this documentary film. In fact they even helped—next summer they are going to
have some announcements and we are going to be helping to be part of this Library
of Congress Veterans History Project, to get the veterans who are in that crowd to
18
�come forward and be interviewed. I was very, very pleased with their respect for
not only the project it’s self, but for the “Chicks”. (01:20:22) It’s interesting,
somebody told me that one of the Grand Rapids Chicks threw a ball out this last
season, was that you or do you know who it was?”
I didn’t throw out this season, but we’ve thrown them out several times and Jim has said,
“You know we’ve got to get you girls back there again this year”. I’ve been kind of
proud because I’ve thrown the first ball out for the Braves and the Yankees. The Braves
in Cleveland, the Braves in St. Louis, down at spring training, and two summers ago,
maybe three, time flies when you have fun, I was invited out to Washington D.C. to the
Nationals game, to throw out the first pitch there, and they were playing the Cubs.
(01:21:11) We had a rain delay for a while, but eventually they called me to the mound.
I threw a perfect strike at the catcher, he never moved his glove, and forty seven thousand
people gave me a standing ovation, but now I don’t know why. Is it because I threw the
strike? Is it because an eighty-six year old lady could run? Or eighty—eighty, what am I
talking about? I’m only seventy-six, or I’ll just call it an old lady, could throw the ball?
(01:21:52) When I finished throwing that pitch, I got off the field and was going back to
the seats, of course everybody was standing and clapping and high fives and there were
two ladies that yelled and came running out there and had to have pictures so, were
standing in the aisle and we even held up the beer man for pictures. That was one of my
extremely fun outings.
Interviewer: “As we close, is there anything that you want to say? Something that
you think is important to get on the record about your experience with playing
baseball?” (01:22:37)
The girls and myself had this extra ordinary experience playing baseball in the All
American Girls Professional Baseball League. It was a time that we don’t know if ever
will happen again. We were born at the right time, we were in the right place and our
experience that we had then and that we have now, speaking and making this type of
documentary, the honor it has given us, and we will keep doing it until the grass is above
us. We love what we do—the grandmas out there now do not baby sit anymore, we’ve
told our children to go get a baby sitter because we’re busy doing and telling our story to
people who want to hear it. (01:23:44)
Interviewer: “Thank you so much, it was a real pleasure”
You’re welcome, you’re welcome.
19
�20
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was started by Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, during World War II to fill the void left by the departure of most of the best male baseball players for military service. Players were recruited from across the country, and the league was successful enough to be able to continue on after the war. The league had teams based in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and operated between 1943 and 1954. The 1954 season ended with only the Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Rockford teams remaining. The League gave over 600 women athletes the opportunity to play professional baseball. Many of the players went on to successful careers, and the league itself provided an important precedent for later efforts to promote women's sports.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-58)</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sports for women
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Personal narratives
Oral history
Baseball players--Minnesota
Baseball players--Indiana
Baseball players--Wisconsin
Baseball players--Michigan
Baseball players--Illinois
Baseball for women--United States
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-58
Format
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video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-58_DKonwinski
Title
A name given to the resource
Konwinski, Dolores L. (Interview transcript and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Konwinski, Dolores L.
Description
An account of the resource
Dolly Konwinski was born on May 27, 1931 in Chicago Illinois. Starting at the age of seven, she played baseball with a neighborhood team and her father who encouraged her to pursue it. In 1947, Konwinski got her big break and tried out for one of the four teams the All American Girls Professional Baseball League was trying to form in Chicago. She began her professional career playing for the Chicago Colleens. In 1949, after the barnstorming tour she was allocated to play for the Springfield Sallies. In 1950, she was traded to the Grand Rapids Chicks and played mainly for them until 1952 but played for a brief time with the Battle Creek Belles in 1951. During her professional career she mainly played second and third base.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Boring, Frank (Interviewer)
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--Michigan
Baseball players--Illinois
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-10-06
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/484">All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection, (RHC-55)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4