Girls of Summer: In Their Own League

by Browne, Lois

  Golden’s performance must have lived up to this heated prose. She was recruited early in 1943 and assigned to the Peaches. Before the end of spring training, however, she packed her bags and returned to Canada.

  The explanations for her departure differ markedly. Rumor had it that she demanded special privileges, including, according to Bonnie Baker, a separate hotel room. But Gladys “Terrie” Davis, another Canadian who, with Baker and Olive Bend Little, could be counted on to project the requisite feminine grace under pressure, noted that Golden couldn’t cope with power-sluggers: “They started hitting her into the lake.”

  Golden told Canadian sportswriters that she didn’t like the League’s grueling schedule. As a rule, Canadian teams tended to play less frequently – perhaps only two or three times a week. The League’s season was, by comparison, action-packed, with games six nights a week and a double-header on either Saturday or Sunday.

  Wrigley’s scouts uncovered a wealth of talent at the Detroit championships, but they were confirming what they already knew or had heard about.

  Though softball in the United States and Canada was supposedly an amateur sport, in reality, it followed the Chicago model; it was highly commercialized, especially in large cities.

  Firms such as Dr. Pepper or the Bank of America in Los Angeles, Admiral Corporation in Chicago and every brewing company everywhere sponsored workplace teams. Many were all-female teams. Chrysler had 60 such clubs in the Detroit area alone.

  Companies offered people jobs based on their ballplaying skills – a variation on today’s athletic scholarships. This was a tremendous inducement to compete, especially during the Depression, and was as much the norm in Canada as in the United States.

  Many firms recruited from distant parts in order to field a winning team. Players were offered higher salaries than their non-playing co-workers, along with time off for games, free meals, travel expenses and other perks.

  This practice continued even when jobs became more plentiful.

  In 1939 in Toronto, a talented left-handed pitcher named Bea Hughey, then unemployed, had agreed to play for Toronto’s Langley Lakesiders on the condition that they get her a job. When a team owned by Orange Crush came up with a job for her within a couple of days, she switched – to loud complaints from the Lakesiders, who refused to release her. The dispute went to arbitration, but the Lakesiders lost Hughey to Orange Crush.

  Helen Nicol, of Edmonton, Alberta was western Canada’s foremost pitcher of the early 1940s and would win the All-American League’s pitching championship in 1943 and 1944. Both she and Bonnie Baker, who lived in Regina, Saskatchewan, worked in Army and Navy department stores by day and played ball on a company-sponsored team a couple of times a week. For her efforts, Nicol received twice the normal rate of pay.

  By February 1943, Wrigley’s plans were well underway. Thanks to judicious use of the Cubs’ scouting network, he had targeted players as far away as New York City and Memphis, Tennessee.

  On the Canadian prairies, the driving force was Johnny Gottselig, who had enjoyed a successful career as a defenseman with the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team during the 1920s and 1930s. He came from Regina, where he had played amateur baseball before injuring his pitching arm, and he coached women’s teams in the off-season. By 1942, he was managing the Blackhawks’ Kansas City farm team, but he still had useful contacts among sports figures in the prairie provinces.

  One of his friends, a Regina-based hockey scout named Hub Bishop, was the person responsible for signing Bonnie Baker, who in turn pointed out to him an extraordinary number of top-ranked western Canadian players.

  No one has ever figured out why half of the fifty-odd Canadians who would eventually play in the All-American came from Saskatchewan, but Baker’s theory is as good as any: there was nothing else to do there “except play ball and chase grasshoppers.”

  At any rate, Wrigley went public with his plans for the League – known then as the All-American Girls Softball League – in February 1943.

  The press release was couched in predictability patriotic terms, with emphasis on the need to entertain war workers and bolster civic pride.

  It introduced the four cities and their teams, heaped praise on local backers and hinted at imminent expansion to centers both large and small. This was the first suggestion that the League might eventually include franchises in cities as large as Chicago and Detroit. Wrigley stressed that the presumably greater attendance in such locations would mean more money that could then be distributed to help carry the smaller cities.

  The League’s non-profit charter was unveiled to general applause. No one said anything about Wrigley’s actual concern – that major-league ball might be headed down the tubes.

  At this point, matters began to pick up steam. Word spread among players that something was happening in the Midwest, and that it would be wise to get in line.

  Mary Baker, whose nickname “Bonnie” was given to her by a reporter smitten by her smile, first learned about the League in the Regina newspaper: “I was in the coffee shop I went to every morning before work, and I opened up the sports page and there was a picture of Mrs. Wrigley with Johnny Gottselig and a model with this uniform on. I read it and said to myself, ‘Oh, God, it’s happening. Now, am I going to be lucky enough to get in?’” That very afternoon, she got a call from Hub Bishop.

  “I was ecstatic”, she says. “I knew I was on my way to what I’d dreamed of.”

  Dorothy “Dottie” Hunter, a tall, striking brunette who worked in a Winnipeg, Manitoba, department store and played ball during the summer months, heard about the League from her friend Olive Bend Little. Little called to say that a scout had arrived at the city’s Marlborough Hotel.

  “It was on Good Friday, and I was entertaining some fellows who were over at Carberry (an armed forces base). But Olive came flying out to my place in a taxi and said, ‘Come on, get in here, you got to go down for an interview.’ So I just left everybody and went down there, and before the day was over I’d signed a contract, even though I was 27 years old. The scout told me he wasn’t sure they’d take me at that age, that they were looking for younger girls. But they took me, so I went down to play.”

  By May 1943, newspapers in Toronto and Edmonton reported that the League’s recruiting was “playing havoc with some Canadian teams.”

  An Edmonton columnist suggested that the softball clubs “who make it possible for these girls to develop their latent talents” should be suitably compensated for players lured away by the All-American, much as amateur teams were reimbursed by the National Hockey League.

  In Chicago, two entire teams were wiped out by Wrigley’s raiding. The Chicago owner-managers were incensed, and they publicly berated Wrigley for taking these players, some of whom held war-related day jobs, out of the work force.

  Elsewhere, players were signed up by ones and twos.

  Mildred Deegan, a catcher, came from Brooklyn, New York. Irene “Choo Choo” Hickson, the alleged 28-year-old who wound up being called “Grandma” by the fans, came from North Carolina. Madeline “Maddy” English, third baseman in a Boston league that played indoors on a cement field with painted bases, was from Everett, Massachusetts. Ralph Wheeler, a Boston sportswriter and sometime scout for the Cubs, came to her home to offer her a tryout, having heard of her from male athletes at her high school. She made the League, along with two other Massachusetts players, Mary Pratt and Dorothy “Dottie” Green.

  Were they eager to go when the All-American came knocking? You’d better believe they were. Younger players especially jumped at the chance to get paid for doing what they’d have done for free. Plus, they were dazzled by the sums involved. Most were making a pittance – perhaps $10 a week – in offices or factories. Store clerks made rather less. Dottie Hunter’s father, a family man, was making $35 a week.

  The League’s $55 entry-level salary was unheard of for young women. Besides, players would be on the road half the time, with those travelling and livin
g expenses paid. They could bank money and plan on attending college to make something of themselves, or they could at least escape from the limited horizons of dead-end jobs and one-horse towns.

  But there were obstacles. Many prospective players were still teenagers, and subject to the wishes of their families; even those in their 20s, holding down steady jobs, were often living at home with protective parents, people who had barely survived the Depression.

  To a Saskatchewan farm family, South Bend or Kenosha sounded like Sodom and Gomorrah. They were hopeful of a better life for their daughters, but this seemed a bit much.

  While most parents had misgivings, however, few were adamantly against the idea. Convinced of Wrigley’s bona fides, and having learned that chaperones would be thick on the ground, they usually relented.

  The players, of course, had their suitcases packed and were two steps out the door. Professional softball represented the opportunity of a lifetime. Amid a climate of wartime restraint, as North America battened down for rationing and sacrifice, this was a chance for adventure.

  In a few cases, it wasn’t parents but husbands who cried foul. Bonnie Baker’s husband, Maury, was stationed overseas with the Royal Canadian Air Force when Bonnie was given her chance to play pro ball. She had good reason to believe that he would be less than thrilled at the prospect. They had been married for nearly five years. In 1942, she had had to pass up a chance to play in Montreal for a team sponsored by Ogilvie Oats because he insisted she stay home. This time, however, her mother-in-law encouraged her to go now and tell Maury later. This bold maneuver worked.

  When Baker became the South Bend Blue Sox catcher – and the League’s most widely recognized star – Maury burst with pride. But he accepted her ball career on the understanding that Bonnie would call it quits when he came marching home.

  The players reported for 1943 spring training – held for the first and only time at Wrigley Field itself – in a state of great anticipation. Only 60 players would survive, chosen to fill berths on the All-American’s four founding teams.

  They traveled by train, with one or two delays en route. War work had priority; so did anyone in service uniform. Players scrambled for early-morning or late-night connections, clutching cardboard suitcases and other must-have gear, including, in one case, a portable gramophone. Some had never been on a train before.

  To many of them, Chicago must have seemed like another planet.

  Lillian Jackson, recruited from Nashville, Tennessee, was thrilled to discover that she and the other hopefuls would use the same locker rooms and showers as the Cubs.

  All the players had been told beforehand that there’d be myriad rules and regulations governing personal conduct. They had received the patented no-shame, no-blame pep talk, and knew that chaperones would monitor their every move.

  Unsuitable behavior was spelled out in their contracts, complete with the penalties - $10 for back-chatting umpires, $50 for appearing “unkempt” in public. The League was keen on comparing its standard document to an Actors’ Equity agreement. This suggestion added a touch of show-biz panache.

  Smoking and drinking hard liquor in public were forbidden. Every social engagement had to be cleared ahead of time with the chaperone. A curfew called for players to be tucked safely into bed two hours after the game – just time enough for a shower, change and a bite to eat. Even close friends and blood relatives were kept well away from the bench; a no-fraternization clause prohibited off-the-field contacts with rival club members.

  All this was understood – but the League uniform came as an unwelcome surprise. Unless the players had seen the photograph that caught Bonnie Baker’s eye, they hadn’t realized they’d be playing in skirts.

  By the early 1940s, young women everywhere were wearing pants. Rosie the Riveter – the symbol of a woman’s ability to do a man’s work – went about her business in slacks or overalls. Shorts were customary for casual wear; jeans (known as dungarees) were big with teenagers. But the All-American wanted something entirely different.

  Most female softball teams wore modified men’s uniforms, but there were exceptions. Clubs from the southwestern states, notably the Arizona Ramblers, wore shorts. So did the Moose Jaw Royals, from wind-swept Saskatchewan – but in deference to the prairie climate they wore them with leotards, which made the players look like trapeze artists.

  The ultimate fashion statement was made by Toronto’s Sunday Morning Class, as described in the 1942 scouting report: “Their entire uniform is white. On their heads they wear a small stocking cap about the size of a small plate. The fact that none of the girls have a boyish haircut makes the tiny cap appear even smaller than it really is. Instead of shirts they wear a tight-fitting long-sleeved sweater that makes them appear like a group of Hollywood sweater girls. Flowing out from the bottom of the sweater is a short full-pleated skirt that barely reaches their knees. The pleats are very small and as the players cavort about the field they give one the impression of a group of ballet dancers as their skirts flare out.”

  Dazzled by this image, the League opted for skirts.

  The final version was apparently designed by Mrs. Wrigley, with the aid of Ann Harnett and Otis Shepherd, the artist responsible for most of Wrigley’s advertising billboards.

  The result was a belted tunic dress with short sleeves that buttoned up the front, but on the left side, leaving the chest free for a circular team logo.

  The dress came in four team colors: pastel shades of green, blue, yellow and peach. Only the Blue Sox and Peaches were fortunate enough to match color and name.

  The skirt was flared and unhemmed. Players were expected to hem it to suit their size, but no shorter than six inches above the knee. Underneath they were elasticized shorts, an absolute necessity given their energetic style of play.

  They wore a small cap with a large peak and stockings rolled to reach just below the knee. It looked like a tennis outfit or, more precisely, a British field hockey uniform.

  The result, according to Marie Keenan, the League secretary, nicely fulfilled Wrigley’s intentions. “We do not want our uniforms to stress sex, but they should be feminine, with emphasis on the clean American sports girl.”

  The sports girls, for their part, found the design ridiculous.

  Dorothy Hunter, playing first base for the Racine Belles, thought some of the players looked “like some old lady walking around with an old-fashioned dress….I was tall enough that mine came right to my knees. Besides, I had heavy legs and I didn’t want to show them off too much.”

  Players stuck to the hem rule at first, but gradually shortened them how they pleased.

  Lucille Moore, the South Bend Blue Sox chaperon, remembers that a lot of people were rather shocked because some of the players showed a lot of thigh. “Each year,” she said, “the hemlines went up and up.”

  The skirts raised eyebrows and created problems.

  Joanne Winter, who was assigned to the Racine Belles, found that they cramped her pitching style. The shoulders tended to bind and the skirt flared out, impeding her release. “It was great from the spectator viewpoint,” she said. “From our standpoint, not many of us enjoyed it. If I’d had a brain and a seamstress, I would have changed it.”

  Perhaps the most serious difficulty – aside from chilblains inevitable when playing games in the Midwest in early spring – was that the skirts made sliding an exercise in masochism. Most players carried terrible abrasions known as “strawberries” – large areas of raw, scraped skin that would scarcely heal before another slide tore them open again.

  At least one manager was so undone by the inevitable pain and suffering that he averted his eyes each time a player came careening into base.

  Occasionally, the League would attempt to tinker with the uniform design, but the solutions were always worse. At one point, Marie Keenan wrote the manufacturer suggesting that the pitcher might be issued a skirt fitted with an elastic band that would hold it close to her legs, into which she coul
d step like a pair of slacks. This tube-dress or stovepipe concept was never inaugurated.

  Some aspects of the uniform had players in stitches. Winter and teammate Sophie Kurys remember their first glimpse of Thelma Walmsley in a catcher’s uniform. Walmsley sported a high pompadour, a popular hairdo of the time. It was without question feminine, but when coupled with a catcher’s mask, it was also absurd.

  On the pitcher’s mound, Joanne Winter recalls, “I turned my back to the plate and then turned around. And there’s Walmsley behind the plate, and I cracked up.” Kurys looked at Winter and joined in. But soon she was charging the mound, yelling, “Cut it out, will’ya! Straighten up!”

  “The whole bunch of them were after me,” says an unrepentant Winter, “but you know how it is when you get the giggles.”

  During the League’s earliest days, the publicity mill was working overtime. The writer of a Muskegon Chronicle article celebrating Arleene Johnson, another player from small-town Saskatchewan, was baffled when told that she liked curling, an activity many Americans had never heard of.

  The writer felt compelled to explain the game’s mysteries: “The sport where the players wear kilts and make with the brooms on an ice rink, pushing little black pots that largely resemble cuspidors. The game is a sort of cross between shuffleboard, bowling, ice hockey and floor sweeping.”

  Press releases centered on domesticity at every turn.

  Ann Harnett was presented as “an accomplished coffee maker.”

  Clara Schillace “enjoyed nothing better than to whip up a spaghetti dinner, work with her father in the Victory Garden and wash dishes with her pretty niece.”