The Baseball Guru - Women in Baseball - June 2004 by Leslie Heaphy

The new baseball season is now underway for both men and women. New teams have been formed (such as the Motown Magic or the team from Philadelphia), lots of tryouts are being held and Team USA has been narrowed down to 34 players.

The SABR Annual Meeting is coming before you know it and is in Cincinnati this year. We will have a committee meeting on Sunday Morning and you should watch for more exciting details as we hope to have a couple of special guests present to make some presentations.

I attended the Vintage Baseball Association annual meeting in March and was excited by what is happening there. They are doing a fair amount of research on 19^th century women’s teams and more teams are being created to play by those rules now. Rochester seems to have been an area where women’s participation was encouraged.

The 2004 season is underway for a lot of women’s teams and before long you’ll see articles with some tournament results we hope. If you see any send them along.

Has any one heard anything yet about Shanna Kook the newest female umpire in the game?

Please send me any and all articles, programs, citations etc that you find. It will be better for me to receive the information four times than not at all. You can either mail the materials to me or attach them as e-mails or even fax an article to me at 330-494-6121. Thanks in advance for your continued help in preserving the history of women in baseball.

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Book Project Update: Articles are being revised and the manuscript is slowly coming together. The project grows every day as I continue to hear from players and others, especially those involved today.

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Recent books, articles, websites and other projects. Thanks to the following people for sending material.

Dick Clark, Larry Hogan, Justine Siegal

(**Denotes item available for a SASE, 1 stamp per 4 pages).

Reviews of Pat Brown’s A League of My Own

**Reviews of Girl Wonder: A Baseball story in Nine Innings—a story based on the life of Alta Weiss

** “Women’s League Brought Dream to Life” September 1993

** “The Second Career of Woody English” September 1988

** “Playing Hardball’s A Down and Dirty Escape from Real Life.”—June 1993

** “No League of Their Own”

**Articles on the NYWBA

Check out the National Women’s Baseball Hall of Fame website if you have never been there before. They archive all copies of their monthly newsletter and it includes information on each year’s inductees—this year’s have already been named.

The 2004 World Series is scheduled for July 15-23 in Uozo City, Japan. This will be followed on July 30 by the start of the IBAF World Cup of Baseball in Edmonton, Alberta.

Over the July 4^th holiday many teams will be in Washington, D.C. at their invitational. And the WBL sparks play in Cooperstown from July 2-9.

Labor Day will find the Great Lakes invitational taking place.

September 23-26 is the West Coast Invitational—lots of baseball out there for us to go out and be supportive of.

Research Requests

What are you looking for? What are you currently working on? Let us know and we can help one another as we are doing our research.

If you have a topic you are researching let me know what it is and I can now check the bibliography I have for what articles, collections etc I am aware of on all kinds of subjects.

Anyone with any information about the Dolly Vardens please send to Leslie Heaphy and it will be passed on to a student working on a school paper.

Anyone with any information at all about former player Urseal Williams of the Knoxville Giants or Isabel Baxter please pass that on to Leslie Heaphy.

Anyone with any knowledge or information about the South Side Bloomer Girls of Youngstown, Ohio please pass that on the Leslie Heaphy and it will be given to the person searching.

Farren, Patricia

Farren grew up playing little league with her brothers but ended up on the high school softball team because there was no baseball team for girls. Farren played softball, basketball and field hockey in East Windsor, Connecticut but no organized baseball. She played softball at Southern Connecticut State and then got married and moved to Virginia. She played for three seasons in the Washington Metropolitan Women’s Baseball League, taking trips for tournaments to Florida. After her family moved back East Farren continued her career with the Lowell Robins in the NEWBL in 2000. {Kaster, Julie. “Baseball Diamonds this Girl’s Best Friend.” Eagle-Tribune, 25 July 2000.}

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Trivia question:

Who led the AAGPBL in hitting in 1946 and what was her average?

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Ever get a chance to interview any women ball players? We need to be thinking about documenting the current game as women are playing so that we are not searching for the stories 30 years from now.

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Member News

An interesting question posed to your chair and one I continue to share with all of you—If you had to put together a women’s all-star team with 5 pitchers and 3 utility players in addition to your regulars who would you include and why? Send your replies to me and the results will be shared with the rest of the committee in future newsletters and in the near future on our newly revamped website.

Women’s All-Star Team

C Mary “Bonnie” Baker

1B Dottie Kamenshek

2B Toni Stone

3B Jean Weaver/Maddy English

SS Dorothy Harrell/Dorothy Schroeder

OF Helen Candaele

OF Betty Foss (Weaver)

OF Jane Stoll/Joanne Weaver

P Jean Cione/ Ila Borders

P Helen Nicol (Fox)/Linda McGill

P Doris Sams/ Connie Wisniewski

P Pat Scott/Mamie Johnson

P Dottie Wiltse (Collins)

U Sophie Kurys

U Elizabeth Mahon

U June Peppas

Others suggested:

Charlene Wright

Katie Pappa

Ruth Richard

Jean Faut Eastman

Dottie Ferguson

What do you think? Agree/disagree? Who would you want on your team? What about some of the earlier women ball players like Loretta Lipski? Send me your picks and I’ll continue to add them in the next newsletter.

Fairies of the Field

A team calling themselves the Fairies of the Field reported losing a game to a men’s team in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1885. They lost the game 14-4. The team was composed of all ladies except the catcher who was a man. {New York Clipper, 12 September 1885, 403.}

Did you know that Rhonda Palmer hit .518 last year for the S.F. Fillies?

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Please send correspondence, questions, suggestions, ideas to Leslie Heaphy for future newsletters. Our committee is only as active as you the members help to make it. Thanks for your help in keeping our list updated. Just a reminder that some of you have not paid your dues to SABR yet this year and should send that in if you also want to continue receiving other SABR publications.

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Thanks,

Leslie and Claudia

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