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And The Pros TodaWomen professional baseball players qiBy ELIZABETH BIRGEKnight-Ridder NewspapersGARY, Ind. — Clara Donahue was playing ball one day in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, when a scout walked over and uttered the words players dream of someday hearing: “How’d you like to try out for a professional baseball team?”So she did.Not long after, Donahue, then 19, was playing for the Peoria Redwings, one of 14 teams in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League that existed from 1943-1954 in the Midwest.For four'seasons — 1946 to 1949 — Donahue played ball six days a week with a doubleheader on Sunday, first as a utility player and later as a catcher for which she was initially paid $60 a week.I thought ‘Boy, this is a dream come true' because 1 really wanted to play baseball every day.” said Donahue, 66, who is retired and lives in Chicago. “A lot of us girls would have played for nothing. ’People age. but dreams never seem to, especially when they’re about baseball. Looking back nearly 50 years, the women who swapped sleep on a bus, bad food and little rest for a chance to play baseball in South Bend, Fort Wayne, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, and Kalamazoo still think it was a good trade. The young men who continue to play the game in the minor leagues would probably agree; playing baseball is worth almost any sacrifice.After the league folded in 1954, Donahue and her teammates slipped back •into the mainstream of everyday life and began working and/or raising a family. When they played baseball it was in the back yard and not on the ball field.The group of women largely faded from the public’s memory until 1988 when the •National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. N.Y., opened a permanent exhibition about women in baseball and 'included memorabilia from the women s -league.'■ “We had hundreds of people crammed into a small area when the exhibition was unveiled,” said Bill Deane, senior research associate at the Hall of Fame. ”Wc never had anything like it,” he said, especially because the exhibit opened in November, not a month noted for high attendance.That interest is likely to skyrocket now that “A League of Their Own,” a movie based on the All American Girls Professional Baseball League starring Madonna. Geena Davis and Tom Hanks, has opened nationwide. Parts of the movie, directed by Penny Marshall, were filmed in Evansville and Chicago.Already the public has shown an appetite for merchandise associated with the movie. In a trial offering last month, viewers ofClara Donahue sits in the kitchen of her lt;Donahue, 71, was the first woman to sig were the pioneer team of the All-AmericaQVC cable home shopping bought 250 “League of Their Own” crew jackets. 400 caps and 1,200 jerseys.When the league started 49 years ago it was because P.K. Wrigley was interested in the very basics of merchandising baseball: He wanted to keep the ball parks open and full if major league players were drafted into World War'll. The parks never did close, and Major League baseball continued to be played, but Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs and the chewing gum company, succeeded with his efforts to bring women into the game.The womens' league flourished, expanding from four to 14 teams and attracting almost a million visitors annually at its height. It even set a number of “firsts” m baseball history. The league's iirst all-star game, in 1943, attracted 7,000 fans to Wrigley Field where the women played at night under temporary lights. 45 years before the Cubs got a chance. Sophie Kurys stole 1,114 bases in her seven years as a professional, while Oakland s Ricky Henderson just passed the 1,000 mark this
Newspaper Details
Logansport Pharos Tribune
Logansport, Indiana, US
Sun, Jul 12, 1992
Page 13
Full Page
Clipped by
Lake C.
IN, USA 30 Jul 2023
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