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

The SABR Annual Meeting took place in July in Cincinnati this year. We had a good meeting on Sunday with an extra special guest. Bill Marshall helped arrange it so that Pat Scott, former Fort Wayne Daisy player, came and spoke to the group. She did a wonderful job of talking about how she learned the game and some of the highlights of being in the League. Bill also presented some of the positives that have resulted from the existence of the AAGBL while we also looked at some of the difficulties of the league. We hope to build on this idea and do something on a larger scale for next year’s meeting which will be in Toronto.

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. We expect to have the manuscript to the publisher before the end of the year for a 2005 publication.

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

Jim Nitz, Terry Aamodt,

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

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.

Anyone ever here of Ruth Calloway, a second baseman in the 1930s for the Portsmouth Black Sox. She was reported as a fine fielder and a hitter with about a .275 average.

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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.

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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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