Jim Sargent - We Were the All-American Girls: Interviews with Players of the Aagpbl, 1943-1954

We Were the All-American Girls

Foreword by Merrie A. Fidler

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-0180-9

2013 Jim Sargent. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: Betsy Jochum follows through on a swing at Playland Park circa 1946 (courtesy of Betsy Jochum); top to bottom left: Isabel Lefty Alvarez (courtesy of Isabel Alvarez); Betty (Petryna) Mullins (courtesy of Betty Mullins); Audrey (Haine) Daniels (courtesy of Audrey Daniels); Dottie (Wiltse) Collins (courtesy of Patricia Collins)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

To the exceptional women
of the All-American League,
heroines all

Jean Faut, who played for the South Bend (Indiana) Blue Sox from 1946 to 1953, was considered by her teammates and opponents alike to be among the best, if not the best, overhand pitcher in the history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Contributing to this reputation was the fact that she was the leagues ERA leader in 1950 (1.12), 1952 (0.93), and 1953 (1.51), and her lifetime ERA was a tidy 1.23. As one of only two players to earn Player of the Year honors twice (1951 and 1953), she was instrumental in helping the Blue Sox win the World Series of Womens Baseball in 1951 and 1952. Jean missed acquiring her third Player of the Year Award in 1952 when Betty (Weaver) Foss received one more vote than she did. In addition, Jean pitched two perfect games in her career with the Blue Sox. The rst occurred July 21, 1951, against the perennially tough hitting Rockford (Illinois) Peaches, and the second occurred September 3, 1953, versus the up-and-coming Kalamazoo (Michigan) Lassies.

Jean played her last game with the South Bend Blue Sox at the end of the 1953 season, and at that time, no one could have predicted that during the next sixty-plus years, she would become a stellar primary resource for the publication of a history of the AAGPBL, a history of the South Bend Blue Sox, and now, this book containing 42 AAGPBL player interviews and proles.

In 1972, Jean graciously and magnanimously loaned an invaluable collection of league and team documents, given to her by former South Bend Blue Sox team president Dr. Harold Dailey, to an unknown University of Massachusetts, Amherst, grad student interested in researching and writing a masters thesis about the AAGPBL. The publication of the updated thesis would occur 34 years later as The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (McFarland, 2006).

In the summer of 1995, Jean met Jim Sargent through league mate Helen Gig Smith, whom he encountered at an all-sports card show at the Roanoke Civic Center in Virginia. Gigs tenure in the league lasted only through the 1947 and 1948 seasons, so she referred Jim to Jean. She knew Jean could provide him with more information about the league.

Prior to Jims chance encounter with Gig, he had not seen A League of Their Own and even though his expertise is in American history of the time period, he had not previously encountered the AAGPBL. However, as both a historian and baseball enthusiast, he was intrigued to learn more about the league and its players, so he rented the lm and sought an interview with Jean. She graciously consented, and as a result Jim wrote articles about Jeans baseball career which were published in baseball magazines. He also sought and obtained interviews with the team and league mates Jean referred to him.

In 2012, Jim Sargents continued acquaintance with Jean, his growing knowledge of other AAGPBL players accomplishments, and his friendship with Bob Gorman (reference librarian at Winthrop Universitys Dacus Library, where Jean and teammate Lib Mahons AAGPBL memorabilia are held), led to the publication of The South Bend Blue Sox: A History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Team and Its Players, 19431954 (McFarland, 2012).

Now, in this book Jim has compiled an invaluable collection of AAGPBL player interviews and proles which began with Jean in 1995 and emanated from her.

When Jean met Jim, she recognized that his background uniquely qualied him to write her baseball prole and she didnt hesitate to refer him to her team and league mates. She learned that as a Flint, Michigan, native, he played on school and community baseball teams through the 1950s; he collected baseball cards as a kid when Al Kaline was king to him and his buddies; and he was still a longtime Tigers fan. In addition, Jim related that hed earned a masters and Ph.D. in U.S. history at Michigan State University in the late 1960s with particular interest in the FDR/New Deal era, and that he was teaching U.S. history at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke.

Jean also learned that Jims educational credentials were complemented by the prior publication of Major League Baseball player prole articles, as well as prole articles of professional basketball, football, and hockey players who competed from the 1930s through the 1970s. Thus, when Jean chaired the AAGPBL Players Association National Reunion in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in 1997, she invited Jim to be the keynote speaker. His presentation was The AAGPBL in 1947: 50 Years Later.

In the process of preparing for that presentation, Jim made a research trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and to South Bend, Indiana, to visit the University of Notre Dame, where Jean had donated Dr. Harold Daileys collection of league and team documents, and to the Northern Indiana Center for History (now the Center for History), the national repository for the AAGPBL Players Association. The Players Association was incorporated in 1987 for the purpose of providing memorabilia to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for the opening of its Women in Baseball display on November 5, 1988. During that trip, Jim met and interviewed some of Jeans South Bend teammates and opponents, including Dottie Collins in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Lib Mahon, Betsy Jochum, and Fran Janssen in South Bend.

At the 1997 reunion in Myrtle Beach, Jim met and interviewed a number of other AAGPBL players who then, over time, introduced him to additional players. He was impressed with how unique the players achievements were and continue to be because what they had the opportunity to experience and accomplish has not been replicated to date. These interviews led to Jims publication of and posting of more than a dozen AAGPBL player proles in baseball magazines, on the AAGPBL website, and for the Society for American Baseball Researchs Biography Project.

The publication of the AAGPBL player interviews in this book is the culmination of Jims now decades-long interest in and research of AAGPBL players stories, which began in 1995 with Jean Faut. It contains interviews begun in the 1990swhen player memories were sharper and before collecting and publishing AAGPBL player interviews became a focus for league authors and documentarians. The questions asked come from a U.S. and baseball historians perspective, so the responses elicited contain some otherwise unknown content.