Girls of Summer: In Their Own League

by Browne, Lois

  To draw the crowds, Wrigley felt that there had to be a season-long edge-of-the-seat excitement about every game. It was the only way to keep the turnstiles clicking.

  Now, he saw women’s professional ball as a controlled experiment. He wanted to start afresh, with female players as guinea pigs. If his proposals didn’t work, he’d lose relatively little, by his standards.

  At best, however, a started-from-scratch women’s league would validate his theories, which could then be applied to major-league operations – just as the women’s teams could be moved, when the time came, into major-league parks.

  He would road-test his premise, like the out-of-town premiere of a Broadway play, and wait to see what happened.

  But Wrigley was also a patriot, caught up in the middle of a war. How could he guarantee government approval and public acceptance for women’s pro ball in wartime? His credibility was high, but it would be unseemly to mount a league, given the valuable resources it would require, simply with a view to lining his pockets or filling an empty stadium.

  He took a look at the map and was inspired by what he saw.

  The need for increased military output meant that a number of medium-sized cities, forming a wheel around the hub of Chicago, were busily converting their industries to war production.

  The factories in question were not small. They were aviation manufacturers, heavy-equipment suppliers and other firms that employed many thousands of workers, who needed the entertainment his teams could provide.

  The cities were large enough (from 50,000 to 175,000) to support a team and close enough (all within 150 miles of each other) that Wrigley could monitor the experiment – close enough also that moving teams around to play out a schedule wasn’t an impossible task. Wrigley decided to focus his efforts on these locations.

  “This way,” he confided in a memo, “we’ll be doing a sincere, patriotic job, not merely selecting the eight biggest cities where we know we can make money.” And where, truth be told, he’d met with precious little interest from his major-league peers.

  So it was that in mid-1942, Wrigley began to assemble another sort of team.

  Ken Sells, a Chicago Cubs employee, was appointed president of the new, and as yet unnamed, women’s league. Arthur Meyerhoff, whose public relations firm handled all Wrigley’s corporate advertising, became heavily involved. Branch Rickey agreed to be named a trustee, as did Paul Harper, the Cubs’ attorney. James Gallagher, the Cubs’ general manger, and Jimmy Hamilton, their chief scout, were also on hand throughout these formative stages.

  Quietly, Wrigley’s representatives began to sound out local business leaders in a number of targeted cities.

  In essence, the idea was this. Each city could obtain a franchise if it showed good faith by raising $22,500 among a group of local supporters.

  Wrigley preferred that a number of backers were involved in each center, each man contributing a modest sum. This would demonstrate broad-based community support and, not incidentally, pose no challenge to the central authority.

  Wrigley would match these contributions out of his own pocket.

  The League, located in Chicago, would provide a total start-up package to what were essentially franchises. It would attend to all the publicity and furnish everything from umpires to uniforms and equipment. It would recruit, train and sign the players, then dole them out to each club according to their abilities, so that every team would start the season evenly matched.

  Players would sign a one-year contract with the League, not with a particular club. At season’s end, each player would become a free agent to the extent that she could choose to remain or to sign with another league. If she chose to remain, she would be returned to a pool and reassigned all over again the following year.

  Salaries ranged from a base of $55 weekly during the regular season; experienced players could negotiate for more, up to a (theoretical) maximum of $100. If a team made the play-offs, its members would receive a share of the gate. All the players’ expenses would be paid to and from their homes and while on the road. They would be responsible for maintaining themselves in their home team cities, but the League would help to arrange suitable lodgings at modest cost.

  How would the League make money? It wouldn’t. That was the patriotic selling point of Wrigley’s plan.

  The League began as a non-profit body, and remained non-profit while Wrigley was at the helm. During the first season, the League didn’t take a penny at the gate; Wrigley underwrote the entire enterprise. Any profit was a club’s – not to keep, for the backers’ personal gain, but to fund worthy local projects.

  In 1944, to help cover costs, the League began to receive three cents on each admission, which ranged between 74 cents and a dollar, for the first 90,000 fans per franchise. At that time, the start-up fee per franchise was increased, but any shortfall continued to be Wrigley’s responsibility.

  Wrigley’s approach to potential backers ran like this:

  You are professional men, successful in your chosen fields. You don’t know much about softball, but you know that it’s popular. Your employees are interested in it. They play it; they like to watch it played. They should be encouraged in this; softball is wholesome entertainment. It is something we can all be proud of, particularly during wartime, now that everyone, including the President, feels that people everywhere need a break from their jobs.

  You also know me and my company. You can be certain of my good intentions. I have made sacrifices in my business to help the war effort. They are a matter of public record. Now I am willing to spend money, to take a financial risk, to enable you to join me in supporting that same cause. You are leaders of your communities; you too should adopt a patriotic stance, as part of your civic duty. This League will be our thank-you present to hard-working Americans.

  Better yet, we are sensitive to your community standards. We will select the kind of players that people will want to see in action. Then we will groom them, to make sure they are acceptable. It won’t be like the bad old days of peep shows and Bloomer Girls.

  As for the League’s organizational structure, you have nothing to fear. It is headed by well-known trustees. This is a familiar concept in every city. It ensures the success of hospitals and schools. It guarantees the utmost respectability. You can be assured that Branch Rickey and I will have nothing to do with anything fly-by-night or shoddy.

  Most important, you yourselves run no risk. I will cover any deficit out of my own pocket. Any profits will return to your community. If you do your part, by promoting the League’s activities, there will be profits to distribute. This will enhance your personal reputations. The League will be good for your community, good for the country, good for the war effort and good for you.

  It was an offer that held considerable appeal to these small communities. The possibility that the teams, if they proved successful, would eventually become such a draw that they would be pulled out and parachuted into irregularly attended grandstands in Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit was never mentioned.

  Four cities responded to Wrigley’s urgings by raising money for a franchise and picking a suitably resonant team name. They were South Bend, Indiana (the Blue Sox); Rockford, Illinois (the Peaches); and Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin (the Belles and the Comets).

  Each of the four was to become a mainstay of the League. Racine and Kenosha lasted until its fading years, while Rockford and South Bend stayed aboard until the bitter end.

  In these formative months, Wrigley was busy refining his plans almost every other day.

  A Rules Committee had determined the mechanics of the game, which was still softball. But Wrigley and his advisers quickly concluded that softball pure and simple wouldn’t do. It was too slow – a pitcher’s game. It held a spectator’s interest in a municipal park, but not in a larger stadium.

  To speed it up, the base paths and pitching distance were enlarged to 70 and 43 feet. The result was a field with measurements roughly halfway between a softbal
l and baseball diamond. The underhand pitch was retained, but the number of players was cut from ten to nine. They played a full nine innings instead of softball’s seven; runners could lead off base while attempting to steal. The ball would measure 12 inches in circumference, slightly smaller than a regulation softball.

  In short, the result looked very much like baseball as played in its formative stages, back in the previous century.

  Other directives flowed from Wrigley’s office. He had very clear ideas about the kind of players he wanted. He insisted that they be feminine – not hard-boiled or mannish – with none of the “is-she-or-isn’t-she-a-he” aura that surrounded earlier teams. The subtext here was, of course, lesbianism, a fear that was spoken of only in whispers.

  The League’s attempts to project a totally feminine image were sometimes faintly ridiculous. Most players had a long-standing nickname. However, on orders from the League, they were never employed by the All-American’s stadium announcers because they might be construed as “unladylike.”

  Year after year, every team member was fully and properly introduced while everyone struggled to remember that “Thelma” was actually “Tiby”, including Tiby herself, who hadn’t answered to Thelma since public school.

  But a comely appearance alone was not enough. Wrigley wanted quality players, the very best available. He believed that a combination of femininity and expertise – they looked like women and played like men! – would intrigue and excite the fans. He wanted a cross between Ty Cobb and the girl next door – to all appearances winsome, but a terror on the base paths.

  Later, when Arthur Meyerhoff assumed control of the League, he would deny that any outstanding prospect had ever been turned away because of her appearance. The organizers, he said, would rather try to make a ball player beautiful than turn a beauty into a ball player.

  When the sister of League player Viola Thompson was named Mrs. America, Meyerhoff rejected the idea of having her join a team for publicity purposes – until he learned that she really knew how to play.

  The sister, however, perhaps to safeguard her award-winning looks, did not appear on the All-American roster.

  Wrigley was a man of his time and place – a benevolent despot. He noted with sincere approval that women had made a smooth transition into war work; that they were every inch as patriotic as men; that they were prepared to serve overseas in arduous and dangerous circumstances.

  Whether he expected that they would return to their “proper place” once the war was over is impossible to say.

  Certainly – despite freeing his players from the shackles of the reserve clause – Wrigley saddled them from the outset with all manner of laborious, literally girlish restrictions.

  To convince the public of their respectability, he borrowed a figure from college sports – the chaperon. Each team would be required to hire one, an older and supposedly more experienced woman who would travel with the players and enforce strict codes of conduct, dress and deportment. This would reassure parents, husbands and straight-laced landladies.

  The chaperons would be paid the same as a middle-salaried player and they would earn their money by acting as buffers between flighty post-pubescent, hard-living veterans of the softball wars and bemused male managers.

  As for the bemused males, Wrigley set out to recruit as managers former major-league players, whose names were familiar to the majority of potential fans.

  With the decline of both major-and minor-league teams, coaching jobs had become scarce. Experienced managers could be hired for not much more than a top-ranked player. Their salaries started at $500 a month, but they could, if successful, augment this sum with performance bonuses. Ideally, they would be drawing cards on their own.

  Some were excellent teachers, remembered fondly by their charges.

  The League’s first four managers were Josh Billings of the Kenosha Comets; Johnny Gottselig of the Racine Belles; Bert Niehoff of the South Bend Blue Sox; and Eddie Stumpf of the Rockford Peaches.

  Three of these men had extensive experience in the big leagues, but only one – Gottselig, who’d never made it to the majors – had coached female players. He was the only one of the four who would last longer than two seasons or achieve any measure of success.

  As the best managers began to be reabsorbed into the majors at war’s end and the number of managers the League needed increased, some clubs had to settle for second-best. Some of these men were over-the-hill, dependent on drink, beset by personal problems, and should never have been put in charge of a baseball team.

  Past achievements in the ballpark were no guarantee of success.

  Jimmy Foxx – known variously as “Double X” or “The Beast” – was a truly outstanding player in his day, hitting 58 home runs in 1932. Unfortunately, neither he nor such personalities as Bill “Raw Meat” Rodgers, so named because of his boasted fondness for raw hamburger, succeeded in bringing much glory to the All-American.

  But success or failure was still in the future. From such unlikely material as he had to hand, given such unlikely ground rules as he had established, Philip Wrigley’s goal was to forge a brave new League of female ball players.

  His time was short, and so the search for players began in earnest.

  1943 The Hoydens Meet Helena Rubinstein

  Wrigley had dispatched his scouts to the World Softball Championships, held in Detroit in September 1942. The unknown author of the report handed to Wrigley displays considerable style in describing many of the League’s first players.

  The New Orleans Jax had been the play-off favorites. “In their attack,” said the scout, “they could be compared with the heavy-hitting New York Yankees of old. The majority are long-ball clouters. Their base running and fielding keep pace with their hitting. Flashing spikes and perfect hook slides are regular practice with them. They can bunt to perfection. All in all they possess remarkable baseball sense and are considered by many fans as the greatest girls’ softball team in the game’s history.”

  Despite this glowing recommendation, however, none of the Jax was signed by Wrigley’s organization. Time magazine might have been referring to the Jax when it reported that, in recruiting for the League, scouts “turned down several outstanding players because they were either too uncouth, too hard-boiled or too masculine.”

  The Saturday Evening Post described the New Orleans brigade: “Good, substantial girls like the sinewy Savona sisters and the strapping Miss Korgan. Give ‘em a cud of tobacco and these female softball players would look just like their big-league brothers.” This was not the image Wrigley had in mind.

  Nonetheless, Freda Savona, the captain, was supposedly offered a contract, but she refused; the Jax were about to lose their (male) coach to the draft, and she was slated to take his place. In any event, the Jax stayed intact.

  It didn’t matter; a wealth of talent remained.

  Close behind the New Orleans contingent were teams from Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and Cleveland, as well as Canadian teams from Saskatchewan and Toronto. All displayed a hard-driving style, and many of their players made favorable impressions.

  Edythe Perlick of the Chicago Rockolas, who later joined the Racine Belles, “out-hit most of the right fielders in this district.”

  Her teammate, Tila “Twi” Shively, who would be assigned to the Grand Rapids Chicks, was considered to be the championship’s most outstanding defensive outfielder, covering her position with “long, easy strides.”

  The pick of the “short fielders,” a second shortstop position peculiar to softball, was the “diminutive seed-merchant,” Shirley Jameson of the Garden City Brew Maids: “Fast as lightning on the bases or in the field, she has a great arm and is a good hitter. Opposing pitchers say she is one of the hardest hitters to pitch to, because of her size and the power in her bat. She is smart and plays heads-up ball at all times.” Jameson went to the Kenosha Comets, and on retirement from active service became a scout for the All-American.

  Charlotte
Armstrong, a pitcher with the Phoenix Ramblers, was fast, with good control and a good hook: “Her delivery is also very deceptive. Although there is plenty of back swing in her normal windup, she has a habit of releasing the ball with no windup at all. To a batter at the plate, it seems that she just flicks her shoulder a trifle, flips her hand, and the ball comes sailing over the plate.” These skills earned Armstrong a place with the South Bend Blue Sox.

  Ann “Toots” Harnett was already well known to the scouts, thanks to her third-base duties with Chicago’s Rheingold Brew Maids. Sturdy, well-built and blessed with a strong accurate arm, Harnett was “a free-swinging power-ball hitter who sends her drives whistling over the infielders’ heads. She covers her position beautifully and has one of the best cross-diamond throws in softball.” She was the first player to be signed by the All-American and was soon after sitting at a head-office desk, phoning prospects in remote corners of the continent and urging them not to commit themselves to their teams until they heard what the new League had to offer.

  Canadian teams had taken part in the championships and in occasional U.S. exhibition games since 1933. The scouting reports noted with approval that the Canadian teams “show more of the girlish side of the picture when it comes to the style of their play. Their actions in throwing and batting do not have the tinge of masculine play like the United States girls. They do not go for boyish bobs and do not have the fire and fight of the average American teams.”

  Nevertheless, only two Canadians caught the scout’s eye.

  Olive Bend Little of the Moose Jaw Royals (later a mainstay of the Rockford Peaches) was a “fire-baller” and “one of the fastest pitchers in the game.”

  Thelma Golden played with Toronto’s Sunday Morning Class, a team organized by a church parish, who were then the Canadian champions. Golden was supposedly one of the hardest pitchers to bat against. To see her in the daytime, the scout reported, she was almost skinny and didn’t seem to have much on the ball. Under the light, however, “she seems even taller than she really is. She cups the softball in front of her and draws her arms close to her sides, leaning over at the same time. As she gets ready to release the ball, the batter has a vision of giant spider unfolding on the mound. And out of those uncoiling long thin arms, the ball comes zooming over the plate.”