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Pros Today Think They Havei\ baseball players quietly weathered their hardships during tAssociated Pressgsrwere the pioneer team of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.QVC cable home shopping bought 250 year, his 14th season in the majors v • • Kurys only had to sprint 65 to b5 reet“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 ol the Chicago Cubs and the chewing gum company. succeeded with his efforts to bring women into the game.The womens' league flourished, expanding from lour to 14 teams and attracting almost a million visitors annually ut its height. It even set a number of “firsts in 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 stoic 1,114 bases in her seven years as a professional, while Oakland s Ricky Henderson just passed the 1,000 mark Lhisdown the basepath rather than the 90 feet separating major league bases, but Henderson doesn't have to slide in a skirt.“Mr. Wrigley wanted feminine-looking girls,” said Donahue. Instead of wearing baseball pants as the men could, the women were required to wear a skirt with shorts underneath.“It wasn’t the best uniform for sliding,” said Donahue.“Yeah, we were tearing up our legs all the time,” agreed Wolf. “Yep. We had lots of strawberries.And it didn’t matter if they injured themselves. We played hurt,” said Donahue. We weren’t like the Cubs. If we had a sprained ankle, you wrapped it up.”The league folded in 1954 after interest fell off. Donahue attributes part of that to the increased number of television sets in American homes and regular television broadcasts of major league games. ABC began televising a “game of the week in 1953.Until then, however, members of the league spent six months each year touring the Midwest by plane, train and automobile playing up to 130 games, For the South Bend Blue Sox, the Fort Wayne Daisies, the Chicago Colleens and other teams, spring training began in April in Kentucky or Florida or Havana, Cuba, and included drills on fielding the ball, hitting the ball, throwing the ball, oh yes, and on how to wear makeup on the field.“They didn’t want us to be man-ish looking or act man-ish so (they) caught us how to walk, how to put makeup on and how to fix our hair,” said Eleanor (Dapkus) Wolf, 68, of Lansing, III., who pitched and played right field and atlended charm school for the Racine (Wis.) Belles from '43to '50.“We had to w-alk with books on our heads.” laughed Wolf. “We thought it was funny.”Like Donahue, Wolf was “discovered on the playcround doing what she did best: playing ball Someone saw her play, told her”about tryouts at Wrigley Field and the
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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