Girls of Summer: In Their Own League Read online

  Girls of Summer

  In Their Own League

  By Lois Browne

  Copyright 1992 Lois Browne

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover photo: Rockford Peach Alice Pollitt is about to get her leg torn up in a slide. In the League’s latter years, the leg burns became too much for a few of the players and some refused to slide. (Courtesy Time-Life)

  Sign up for Lois Browne’s blog at intheirownleague.wordpress.com in which she highlights items from her research on the League and the women who made sports history.

  Girls of Summer

  In Their Own League

  By Lois Browne

  What others have said about Girls of Summer: In Their Own League

  “…a good book about a great subject … Girls of Summer sweeps away the melodramatics of [the film] A League of Their Own.” – The New York Times Book Review

  “…it’s a fascinating story and a worthwhile addition to any baseball fan’s library.” – The Toronto Sun

  “Browne’s book could not be more timely. Ignored for more than three decades, this extraordinary chapter in sports and women’s history is at last being told.” – Boston Herald

  “…a lively and energetic book.” – The Sporting News

  C O N T E N T S

  Preface

  Introduction

  1943: The Amazing Mind of Mr. P.K. Wrigley

  1943: The Hoydens Meet Helena Rubinstein

  1944: California Girls and “The Silver Eagle”

  1945: Home Bases and Victory Overseas

  1946 Bedbugs and Beanballs

  1947: Our Girls in Havana

  1948: The Last Ascending Season

  1949-1954: The Final Innings

  Where Are They Now?

  AAGPBL Teams

  AAGPBL Champions

  AAGPBL Batting Champions

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Victory Song of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

  — Written by Lavonne “Pepper” Paire

  Batter up! Hear that call!

  The time has come for one and all

  To play ball. For we’re the members of the All-American League,

  We come from cities near and far.

  We’ve got Canadians, Irishmen and Swedes,

  We’re all for one, we’re one for all,

  We’re All-American.

  Each girl stands, her head so proudly high,

  Her motto Do Or Die.

  She’s not the one to use or need an alibi.

  Our chaperones are not too soft,

  They’re not too tough,

  Our managers are on the ball.

  We’ve got a president who really knows his stuff,

  We’re all for one, we’re one for all,

  We’re All-Americans!

  You had to see it to believe it, and even then you didn’t.

  — Reminiscence of the All-Americans in action

  Preface

  To tell the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is to illuminate an important part of sports and women’s history.

  Most of the women mentioned here are still alive, and most of them spoke to me of their memories as professional baseball players. However, as they constantly reminded me when I asked for some behind-the-scenes insights: “We were just kids then, and all we wanted to do was play baseball.”

  In the 1940’s, they were, by and large, teenage girls employed by the middle-aged and older men who wanted them to play the best baseball they could and otherwise keep out of trouble. How decisions were made and by whom, how the League was organized and managed, who made decisions concerning changes to the game were, by and large, questions beyond their knowledge. Moreover, it was not an era when women, especially very young women, were expected to share their opinions with their elders. Of the players under contract to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball league, former player Joanne Winter says: “we were chattel.”

  In the era of the All-American, every female – regardless of age – was a “girl”, and almost all references in print or in interviews to the “girls” of the AAGPBL. In truth, it defined very well their relationship to the parent-figures who had control of their lives. I gave up early on trying to fight the tide, and the language of the time is reflected here.

  Among the players, even memories of specific games, or the championship battle in a specific year, have faded. What they all remember most clearly is the camaraderie.

  For nearly thirty years after it folded in 1954, the League disappeared, except for the friendships that they did not allow to lapse. Any references you find in today’s baseball encyclopedias – and they are not extensive – are due to awakened interest in the last decade.

  In the 1980’s, these women – now in their sixties and seventies – found each other again. They have formed a League Association of former players and hold regular reunions. The prospect of seeing best friends and teammates again each year has had an effect on the League’s oral history. When they get together, these former professional ball players do what a lot old ball players do – they tell stories, and some of them are just about as true as ball players’ stories usually are.

  Every player seems to have kept a scrapbook of newspaper coverage of her team’s progress during the season, and issues that were important to the League, and to fanatic followers of the individual teams, were regularly reported in the press. One of the first tasks of the League Association was to set up an archive to hold players’ personal records, scrapbooks and other memorabilia. The archive is located in South Bend, at the Northern Indiana Historical Society, and it’s open to the public.

  For the more businesslike details of the League’s progress from birth to death, there are scattered records available. Minutes of the League board meetings and correspondence between club officials and the League head office still exist. Thanks to a rather cantankerous dentist in South Bend, Indiana – Dr. Harold Dailey – there are also detailed records of the life of one of the clubs, the South Bend Blue Sox. They are housed at the Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana.

  Like anyone who has done any research on the League, I consulted Merrie Fidler, today a teacher in northern California. In the mid-1970s, Ms. Fidler researched and wrote a master’s thesis on the League, providing a base for all subsequent research. She generously shared her material with me, including copies of taped interviews with Arthur Meyerhoff and others connected to the League who have since passed away.

  Many people took the time to help me in my research by sharing their memories and their mementos.

  Introduction

  There were more than 550 players in the All-American League by the time it was all over. At least one was only 15 years old when first recruited; most were in their late teens or early twenties. The oldest was 28, or so she said. The scout suggested that she knock off a couple of birthdays, just to improve her chances. Then again, maybe she already had.

  They came from all over North America. Roughly 10 percent were Canadians, but half that number came from the province of Saskatchewan, including Mary “Bonnie” Baker, whose well-groomed style and dark good looks established her as the embodiment of the All-American virtues.

  They were superb athletes.

  Dorothy “Kammie” Kamenshek, rated the best all-round player in the League, even got a solid offer of a contract from a men’s professional baseball team.

  Pitcher Connie Wisniewski’s win-loss record for a three-year period was 88-30, during which time she routinely swatted 240-foot home runs.

  Jean Faut racked up a lifetime 132 pitching victories (two of them perfect
games) against 62 losses, with a 1.24 earned-run average. One year, she went 20-2, hit .296 and played third base when she wasn’t on the mound.

  Joanne Weaver hit .429 in 333 at-bats.

  Sophie Kurys stole 1,097 bases, 201 in the course of one freewheeling summer; the All-American changed its rules in an attempt to slow her down.

  The men who founded the League wanted to be the sports czars of a new national game to rival men’s baseball. Almost by accident, they discovered a niche for their new league in small-town America.

  Never satisfied with the new game’s format, they changed the rules annually, sometimes in midseason, edging the game from softball to baseball in painful and often bewildering installments.

  Many players met the challenger with ease.

  Dorothy Schroeder, the graceful 15-year-old shortstop from Sadorus, Illinois, was blessed with such ability that Connie Mack (or Charlie Grimm, or one of the two dozen other baseball legends quoted about the girl pro baseball players) was moved to declare: “If she was a man, I’d give $50,000 for her.” Schroeder never made $50,000 in all her 12 seasons with the League. Nor did anybody else.

  They played for pennies, because they loved the game, and because it was the only game in town.

  They grew to womanhood under the watchful eye of mostly male authority figures, their lives regimented at every turn. They suffered shocking injuries without complaint, and they played outrageous practical jokes to keep the blues at bay.

  Many were lesbians, in an era when single women couldn’t admit to even a heterosexual identity. Some were married; one pitched until she was five months pregnant. Another’s new-born daughter was sent a contract, effective 16 years down the line.

  The All-American victory song inspired camaraderie off the field. But its do-or-die theme also stimulated stiff competition among the teams.

  On the ball field, Daisy Junor says, they were “out for blood.” Off the field, their managers tended not to know which way was up.

  Plucked from anonymous sandlot leagues, the All-American girls became pawns in a chewing gum mogul’s social experiment. Their rough edges were smoothed by beauty school mavens; they were paraded like starlets to a sensation-hungry media.

  From 1943, when the world was at war, to 1954, when it had changed beyond recognition, in floodlit, small-city stadiums on a long-gone circuit through America’s industrial heartland, they played – against all odds and expectations – some of the best baseball anyone’s ever seen.

  1943 The Amazing Mind of Mr. P.K. Wrigley

  In January 1943, Philip K. Wrigley was not a happy man. The previous year, his baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, had landed with a thud in the National League cellar, not for the first time.

  Back in the 1930’s, Wrigley had asked a psychologist from the University of Illinois to determine why his players won the league pennant every third year, then fell apart during the World Series. The psychologist did his best but failed to come up with helpful theory.

  Betrayed by science, Wrigley then paid $5,000.00 to a man who claimed to have the “evil eye” to put a hex on opposing teams, with the promise of a further $20,000 if his players went the distance. They didn’t, and the warlock went away.

  Nor did Wrigley overlook more obvious solutions. He habitually employed between eight and 13 coaches, changing his head coach every couple of months just to keep the organization on its toes. Nothing helped, but Wrigley was unapologetic.

  “I really don’t see why people think I acted strangely,” he said. “If the orthodox doesn’t work, why shouldn’t we try the unorthodox?”

  Restless experimentation of every sort was Philip Wrigley’s credo, and he could afford it. He had inherited the Cubs from his father, who started his gum business in 1891 with $32 in capital. In 1940, the company’s after-tax profit exceeded $8 million.

  Freed from financial unease, Philip Wrigley was able to indulge his whims.

  He kept a set of tools in his desk and delighted in repairing the watches of astounded visitors. He rode to work on a motorcycle and answered his own phone (but despaired of dialing it; his wife did that for him). He perfected a non-slip screwdriver and assigned the patent to loyal employees.

  In the depths of the Depression, he gave everyone who worked for him a 10 percent raise in an effort to jump-start the economy; then he guaranteed their jobs for 30 weeks a year, come what may.

  He kept several garages full of luxury automobiles, with which he constantly tinkered. General Motors adopted his ingenious modifications to a Cadillac’s electrical system.

  When his technical staff was unable to devise a gum that would not stick to false teeth, he suggested that they formulate a material from which false teeth could be made that wouldn’t stick to gum.

  Wrigley was undeniably odd, but his business acumen was not in question. He had increased the family fortune by a series of shrewd and aggressive moves.

  He believed, as had his father, in the vital importance of advertising and oversaw all the company’s campaigns. He launched new advertising campaigns claiming that chewing gum helped to reduce the thirst of workers in offices and on factory floors, battling monotony and nervous tension.

  Wrigley was also notable as a patriot. He was enraged by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and saddened by America’s entry into World War II. His responses were decisive and swift. Even before war was declared, he had consigned his stockpile of aluminum, necessary for gum wrappers, to the government.

  Within days of America’s declaration, he had dismantled the firm’s mammoth illuminated sign in Times Square, which consumed enough electricity to fire up a town of 20,000 people, and donated its materials to the war effort (thereby garnering more publicity than he could possibly have bought).

  He sponsored radio programs about the armed forces and war workers at home. One series of broadcasts urged enlistment in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps; another lauded the United Service Organizations.

  Wrigley’s factories packaged combat rations, including free gum, wrapped discreetly in olive drab.

  When chicle, sugar and other raw materials became difficult to obtain, Wrigley sent his entire output of first-quality gum overseas and convinced civilians to chew an admittedly inferior brand called Orbit, in support of the troops.

  Wrigley’s competitors laughed; they thought he was unhinged. The public, impressed by these and other actions, bore with him (and with the second-rate Orbit) while the conflict lasted, and would remain loyal to his products when it ended.

  For Wrigley, patriotism and business sense always marched hand-in-hand.

  Meanwhile, however, Wrigley’s worries as a baseball team owner went beyond the fact that the Cubs turned in yet another less-than-champion season. The war had placed doubt the very future of major-league baseball.

  The 1930’s had seen attendance plummet, with 1933 marking an all-time low. Although high in 1940, the numbers had dropped again in 1941, despite spectacular performances, including Ted Williams’s .400 batting average and Joe DiMaggio’s hit streak of 56 consecutive games. They would drop again when 1942’s gate receipts were tallied.

  Wrigley had deep pockets, but he had no wish throw good money away, and the future looked bewilderingly dark.

  Wrigley believed that the war would not soon be over, and that it would profoundly affect American society in ways that most people couldn’t imagine. He had discussed a wide range of gloomy scenarios with his fellow major-league owners (for whose business sense and foresight he had little regard) and with fellow industrialists and manufacturers of every stripe. He also relied heavily on his correspondence with Ken Beirn, a manpower specialist attached to the Office of War Information.

  Beirn had briefed a meeting of major-league owners in late 1942, after which he wrote privately to Wrigley. Beirn said that the Bureau of Intelligence had been monitoring public opinion about the war and reporting these finds to President Roosevelt. It had confirmed that most people would wholeheartedly support the war
effort if they were assured that it was necessary and that everyone would share the burden. But, Beirn said, as the fighting continued and a manpower shortage became increasingly apparent, public attitudes would change, and people would become critical of those not making sacrifices for the war effort.

  In Beirn’s opinion – which Wrigley shared – the real crunch would come in 1943.

  “Millions are going to have to transfer their non-essential occupations to war jobs,” Beirn wrote, “added to the three or four million who will go into uniform. This summer, every baseball fan or potential baseball fan is going to be very conscious of the way their lives are affected by manpower needs, because of their own experience or that of a brother, sister, father or maybe even a mother who has had to change jobs, sometimes with a sacrifice in income.” (Beirn’s projections would prove conservative. Between 1940 and 1945, five million women entered the work force. By late 1943, the Parent-Teacher Association was asking mothers to think twice about taking full-time jobs, for their children’s sakes).

  Having left Wrigley to speculate on the probable reaction of citizens who saw generously paid athletes swatting balls while their loved ones were dying on foreign shores, Beirn concluded by stressing that a happy ending was not just around the corner.

  “We have not really started winning the war,” he said. “We have barely stopped running away.”

  Wrigley didn’t much like Beirn’s conclusions, but they made plenty of sense. Baseball was at risk, one way or the other.

  Immediately following Pearl Harbor, the United States had instituted a draft. No one had suggested that professional baseball players should be exempt. Indeed, the major-league owners seized every opportunity to deny that players should receive preferential treatment; they did this so often that it looked as if they were hoping somebody would disagree with them. They did, however, argue that professional baseball shouldn’t be closed down for the duration.

  Will Harridge, then president of the American League, optimistically announced that baseball was approaching “its finest opportunity for service to our country that the game ever had – the opportunity for providing a recreational outlet for millions of fans who will be working harder than ever to help achieve our common cause of victory.”