Anika Orrock - Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

This book is dedicated to the women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and to all women and girls everywhere throughout time who perpetuate the gift of possiblity by having the grit and tenacity to stay true to themselves.

For Ray Orrock.

Copyright 2020 by Anika Orrock.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Orrock, Anika, author. | Afterman, Jean, author of foreword. Title: The incredible women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League / by Anika Orrock ; foreword by Jean Afterman. Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 2020.Identifiers: LCCN 2019043567 | ISBN 9781452173641 (hardcover); ISBN 9781452174266 (epub, mobi); Subjects: LCSH: All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--History--Juvenile literature. | All-American Girls Professional Baseball League--Biography--Juvenile literature. | Women baseball players--United States--Biography--Juvenile literature. | Baseball players--United States--Biography--Juvenile literature. | Baseball for women--United States--History--20th century--Juvenile literature. | Baseball--United States--History--20th century--Juvenile literature. | BISAC: HISTORY / WomenClassification: LCC GV875.A56 O77 2020 | DDC 796.357082 [B]--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043567

Cover design by Jessica Hische and Anika Orrock.

Interior design by Maggie Edelman.

Chronicle books and gifts are available at special quantity discounts to corporations, professional associations, literacy programs, and other organizations. For details and discount information, please contact our premiums department at or at 1-800-759-0190.

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107

www.chroniclebooks.com

By Jean Afterman

Barely twenty-five years after women gained the right to vote, young women and girls answered the call and took to diamonds all over the United States to play baseball. They came not only for sport and pleasure, but as professionals, to support their families and communities during a time of war. They came from cities and small towns, from farms and areas of industry. They followed a strict code, donning ladylike skirts and lipstick along with their mitts, and they barnstormed throughout the United States playing the peculiarly American game of baseball.

I was born and raised in the lovely city of San Francisco, California, where my life in baseball began in the bleachers of Candlestick Park. Since the end of 2001, I have been privileged to be the Assistant General Manager of the New York Yankees, a franchise that is historic, proud, timeless, and iconic. When you walked onto the playing field at the old Yankee Stadium, you could not help but hear the echo of the crowds from a hundred years past, and see visions of Yankee greats striding out onto the field. When we played our last game in the old Yankee Stadium in 2008, Yankees Captain Derek Jeter told the packed house: Were relying on you to take the memories from this stadium and add them to the new memories we make at the new Yankee Stadium. Ten years in and the memories of those long ago times are ever presentmemory is the engine that drives our baseball lives.

That sense of tradition, honor, and pride has been carried down the decades, from stadium to stadium, all of which is to say I have been witness to greatness and to history. I have met Major League Hall of Famers and ball players who have the Hall of Fame in their future. I have been privileged to be the third woman Assistant General Manager in Major League Baseball history, and alas, as of my writing this in 2019, I am the only woman currently holding the position. The New York Yankees are the only team in all of professional sports to have hired not one, but two female Assistant General Managers (myself and my predecessor, Kim Ng), which I feel is another achievement to be added to the long list of superlatives about my organization.

On a day during the 2018 season, I had the immense pleasure of coming into contact with women who blazed a trail across this country that young women are following to this day. In celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), we honored some of these great players in a pre-game ceremony on the field at Yankee Stadium. I was able to spend part of the day with these veterans I laughed at their sense of humor, I was awed by their stories, and I felt a pull at my heart. Their stories are remarkable, and resonate today.

One player recounted to me a memory from shortly after her AAGPBL days, touring and playing baseball with Bill Allingtons All-Stars. While barnstorming through Texas, the All-Stars heard that a Negro League team was in town, so they went over to challenge them to a game. The local sheriff got wind of this and showed up with other law enforcement to prevent the game from happening. When the sheriff threatened the woman personally, saying if she took the field, he would throw her back across the border, she looked at him and said, I dont see any border around here, so you better have a good arm! In the end, the women stood up to the sheriff by refusing to leave and the game was played. Some things never seem to change, and we need women like these, now more than ever.

Sometimes coming into close contact with the past gives you a renewed sense of purpose for the future. It is my hope that this book about those extraordinary women of character and ability, by an extraordinary woman, brings them to life for a new generation, and that it encourages more girls and young women to follow their dreams and to admit no barriers to their own success.

During the 2017 season, I came to know Anika Orrock when someone gave me a thank you gift for a speaking engagement. It was one of her drawings inspired by the AAGPBL. I was captivated. Through the miracle of the internet, I located her, and likewise learned that her grandfather, Ray Orrock, had been a syndicated columnist in the San Francisco Bay Area as I was growing up, writing columns I had read when I was young. Kismet!

Within these pages, Anika has stitched together a remarkable panoply of the AAGPBL players love, their longing, and their passion for the game of baseball. These are not only echoes from the past, but rich voices that need to be listened to today. As I think about the women of the AAGPBL, I am mindful of the quote about the dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The story goes that Bob Thaves, a cartoonist for a Los Angeles newspaper, drew a cartoon for his Frank and Ernest series as follows: Frank and Ernest are shown gazing at a billboard announcing a Fred Astaire film festival. The caption reads: Sure he was great, but dont forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did... backwards and in high heels.

In these pages, you will learn how the AAGPBL came to be, that the girls and women of the league played just as hard as the men, but did it in short skirts and makeup (this was the 1940s and 1950s, after all). Hollywood gave these women a lovely, albeit somewhat fictional, treatment, but these women have real stories to tell, real voices to be heard. They remind us that women still need to fight for equality in the world. And they remind us of our own lives, how we fell in love with the game of baseball at a very young age, and like the veterans of the AAGPBL, we love it just as much as we ever did.