Girls of Summer: In Their Own League

by Browne, Lois

  But the local boosters were human, too. Some, confronted with a troop of young, attractive and seemingly eligible young women, developed a roving eye. One or two club directors – and a couple of managers – were known for their unwelcome gallantries. The League intervened when necessary.

  Harold Greiner , a Fort Wayne board member, recalls that, in the course of a later season, the club was looking for a new manager, and Hans Mueller enthusiastically volunteered.

  “Let me put it this way,” says Greiner. “Hans fancied himself as a lady’s man. The players would come to us and say, ‘Keep him away from me.’ I was 42 then, but he was up around 60 – too old to be chasing women, even though he didn’t get anywhere with them.”

  Greiner’s fellow board members quietly vetoed Mueller’s offer, appointing in his place the circumspect Greiner.

  But that didn’t stop the overtures.

  Tiby Eisen remembers that another, recently widowed, director invited her to a dinner for two. “He told me how lonely he was,” she says, “and that he hoped I would stay in town when the season ended, not go back to California. He said he wanted to get to know me better and that something might come of it.” Eisen, then in her mid-20s, was in doubt as to his intentions.

  “Are you asking me to marry you? ” she asked. “Oh no,” said the director, in a shocked tone. “Nothing like that.”

  After this cryptic response, the conversation lagged – and to this day, Eisen isn’t sure whether he wanted her as a daughter or as a girlfriend.

  By this time, of course, a team’s backer couldn’t afford to be side-tracked by infatuation. They were first and foremost businessmen and had their investments to consider. The clubs were non-profit entities, so any contributions were tax deductible, but no one wanted to be out of pocket for shortfalls. The head count after each game was anxiously tallied. Ticket revenues not only kept the clubs afloat, they covered the League’s shared costs and the services of Meyerhoff’s Management Corporation.

  By mid-1945, the teams had relatively few concerns. Fort Wayne and Grand Rapids were doing reasonably well; there would not be a repeat of the previous season’s big-city fiasco. In fact, almost three times as many people would pay to see the League play in 1945 as they had in 1943. The future looked secure, and good news arrived from every quarter.

  Betsy Jochum, Lou Arnold and Lib Mahon were on the road with the Blue Sox in August when the end of the war was announced. The news came on August 15 when they were in Grand Rapids. All games were canceled and the team traveled overnight to Racine, to a hotel overlooking a park.

  “God,” says Mahon,” at four of five in the morning, people were still out there celebrating in the streets, throwing each other into the fountain. They celebrated all night and all the next day. I was happy myself. I had two brothers in the war.”

  But when the war ended, one of the League’s founding premises went with it. People were no longer asked to support the teams out of patriotism. Instead, the twin themes of family and community came rapidly to the fore – family because reunion was on every returning serviceman’s mind, and community because the League cities would enter upon a period of upheaval.

  And so the All-American shifted focus. Now it would present the players as role models, the game as a sport worth emulating, something that young people could aspire to.

  Now the backers turned their attention to juvenile delinquency. Civic administrators looked for ways to keep idle youngsters occupied. Hence the creation in most League cities of the Knot Hole Gang, or fan club. Any kid who joined got a membership card and was entitled to reduced admission on special nights.

  Players who appealed to the younger fans, including Jo Lennard, a “wise-cracking left fielder” who single-handedly started a bubble-gum craze among her pre-pubescent admirers, were moved front and center in a team’s publicity efforts.

  Beginning in 1945, cities began to foster spin-off teams (composed of both boys and girls) that adopted the All-American’s rules.

  Racine’s Junior Girls League would draw over 100 hopefuls to its spring training sessions, and often played a game at Horlick Field before the scheduled contest.

  Muskegon, a 1946 expansion club, would set up a six-team league that drew 350 kids to the initial tryouts and played throughout the entire summer.

  In Kenosha, the Kiwanis Club sought to “cultivate the young as future fans” by letting them “pick their favorites, seek autographs and go into huddles for concerted cheering during the games.”

  In Muskegon, the Optimist Club (whose somewhat exclusive motto was “Friend of the Boy,” although they were co-ed and all-girl Knot Hole Gangs aplenty) drew 700-odd youngsters to Monday and Saturday night games.

  No wonder, then, that the All-American’s code of conduct rules continued to be enforced. Discipline would not be relaxed, as Marie Keenan, the League’s secretary, rather ungrammatically made plain in the course of a newsletter.

  “If you gals think you are going to get away with wearing slacks during the post-season series and other times, and other things that went on, you have another think coming, and it’s going to be quite an expensive experience for you.”

  The players couldn’t get a single moment’s peace. Having narrowly survived the war, they were now expected to be idealized, skirted, heavily made-up Big Sisters.

  By 1945, girls’ baseball was making an impression on the sports world. People argued about whether it was real baseball, but whatever side of the argument they took, no one could deny the players were popular – often more popular than men’s teams.

  The Baseball Blue Book, a regular publication that reported baseball statistic for the major leagues, decided to try to figure out why. Blue Book publisher Earle Moss chose Fort Wayne, home of the Daisies, for his research project because there were two champion men’s teams the Daisies could be compared to.

  Fort Wayne’s local businesses sponsored a men’s professional world champion softball team and a semi-professional baseball team. The men’s teams had excellent facilities, played during the day and charged low or no admission. The All-American League team was in its first season, played night games, had temporary bleachers holding a maximum of 3,000 and charged 74 cents admission.

  Moreover, there was a six-week newspaper strike in Fort Wayne right in the middle of the baseball season. During the strike, the Daisies used word-of-mouth advertising to build their following to average over 1,500 a game, and fan interest grew even more after the strike. The men’s pro softball audiences plummeted when there was no newspaper to advertise their games, while the semi-professional men’s team won the Indiana state title, playing in Fort Wayne, but the gate for the entire series was under 900.

  Moss declared that girls’ baseball was not just another version of softball. It was baseball, albeit a form more popular 30 years ago than in 1945. The girls’ game drew larger crowds because there was a constant alertness on the playing field, Moss said, and the play contained “spotlighted episodes subordinate to the game contest,” such as runners on base constantly poised to steal.

  “There were more intentional passes, strike-outs and bases-on-balls and a larger proportion of runners left on bases to runs scored than in standard baseball practice…. It brought about a continual pressure and movement toward the plate – an around-the diamond threat… to reach that focal point of game interest,” wrote Moss.

  The Blue Book editor also timed the players, right down to how long it took for a pitch to reach the plate and how long for the average player to make it from home plate to first. Given the game’s slightly shorter distances, it took the female players just about the same time as men to make a specific play, he said.

  As a final argument in favor of what the girls’ game could teach men’s baseball, Moss pointed out that the League game “produced more sandlot activity in the city among both boys and girls, than any influence of the last 25 years.”

  New figures on the scene for the 1945 season included Fort Wayne’s man
ager, former major-leaguer Bill Wambsganss, who had changed his name to Wamby because it fit better in the box scores.

  Wamby was distinguished by the fact that he’d made the only unassisted triple play in a World Series game. This story was paraded out with such regularity that even Wamby got thoroughly sick of hearing it.

  His feat took place in 1920, when he was playing second base for the Cleveland Indians against the Boston Red Sox. In the fifth inning of the fifth game, there were two Red Sox on base, who had been given the sign to start running. The batter swung and sent a liner straight to the vigilant Wamby. He caught it, thus making one out. He then touched second, eliminating the runner who’d started for third. The runner who was heading from first to second, transfixed by these developments, stopped dead in his tracks. Wamby calmly walked over and tagged him, completing the triple play.

  This was the high point of Wamby’s major-league career, but he did reasonably well upon joining the All-American. He spent two seasons at Fort Wayne, followed by another two with the Muskegon Lassies, when they entered the League. He was remembered with affection. Almost every year, his teams stood high in the standings, or lasted in the play-offs until the final game.

  In South Bend, Bert Niehoff’s replacement as manager was Marty McManus, who had arrived from Kenosha. He was in his early 40s, having spent 15 years in the majors with the St.Louis Browns, the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox. But his playing days had been over for a decade, and McManus sometimes sought solace in drink.

  McManus’s arrival coincided with South Bend’s decision to expand their board of directors from the customary eight men to a larger, consultative board numbering 25 – one of the club’s less sensible tinkerings. The Blue Sox president took advantage of the confusion and embarked on a series of unilateral moves, undercutting the manager’s authority.

  Doris Barr, a speed-ball pitcher from Starbuck, Manitoba, who also wielded a good bat, ran into trouble early in the season. McManus decided to shift her to the outfield for a rest. The president, however, insisted that she be put on waivers, and she was picked up by Racine, where she recovered her momentum and helped beat South Bend silly.

  McManus attempted to reassert his authority by yelling at those players who remained. “He’d just bawl the heck out of girls if they didn’t move,” says Lucille Moore, the chaperon. “The minute they got a hit, regardless if it was a foul, they had to take off. And if they loafed to first base, there were no words spared.”

  On the road after the game, however, McManus’s mood would improve and he’d tell stories about the good old days.

  At one point, the board passed a resolution reaffirming that he had full charge of running the team, but nevertheless continued to meddle. At season’s end, McManus resigned and took two years off – only to be lured back in 1948 by the election of an old friend, Dr. Harold Dailey, as club president.

  His return would prove illfated. He continued to drink, his health declined, and he tried to leave again to manage the Springfield Sallies, an expansion team. Dailey dissuaded him from doing so, a decision he would live to regret.

  “I should have let him go,” Dailey later wrote.

  Meanwhile, in Grand Rapids, the relocated Chicks were making do with Bernhard “Benny” Meyer. This was his first and only season in the All-American. He had spent four years in the majors as an outfielder, and had extensive experience coaching the minor-league men’s teams. He freely admitted that he once considered girls’ baseball a joke.

  “But in a few days,” he said, “I felt like apologizing to every girl in the League. The entertainment they give the public is nothing less than superb.”

  Meyer himself was no slouch when it came to mounting a show, but showmanship ran a distant second to the need for victory. He liked to win.

  His nickname, “Hungry Ben” stemmed from an early-season double-header, in the course of which Meyer sent his best pitcher to the mound in both games against the ailing Blue Sox. A South Bend sportswriter found this a bit much, pointing out that Meyer had four top-notch hurlers to choose from, that the Chicks were in first place and that more than 90 games remained in the schedule. Under these conditions he wrote, “such hungriness is uncalled for.”

  Meyer disagreed. The previous year (under Max Carey), the Chicks had begun each game with a morale-boosting huddle, during which someone recited an inspiring message. Most of these homilies dealt with such ennobling themes as courage, friendship and faith.

  When Meyer took over, his pep talk was short and to the point: “Girls, here’s what I want to say. If we win this game, I’ll give each of you a $5 bill, including the chaperon.”

  Meyer also liked clowning amiably for the fans. One of his stunts was to bait the umpire.

  In South Bend, he loved to make life difficult for Gadget Ward, who had quite enough to deal with already. Carey had been on his case about the umpires’ personal habits, which included chewing tobacco. Ward received a memo stating that, if they couldn’t get through a game without spitting juice all over the field, he was to fire them.

  As for Meyer, Ward recalls that he “came down on every strike I called. He’d waddle over to home plate, and each time he got there, he’d take his hat off and get right up in my face. Then he’s says, ‘You know something, you’re the best-dressed umpire in this League. Matter of fact, you’re the best umpire in this or any other league.’ ” After several more compliments, back would go Meyer to the coaching box as fans yelled encouragement, delighted that someone would stand up to the hated official.

  “The crowd was going wild,” says Ward. “But the third time Meyer came over, I called time. I told him, ‘Mr. Meyer, I know I’m the best-dressed umpire. I know I’m the best umpire. And I’m going to run your fanny out of this ballpark the next time you leave the coaching box.’ So he put his hat back on and went back to third base.”

  Despite these diversions, the Chicks could not be inspired. They slid badly in the standings (but managed on one occasion to score a questionable ninth-inning win over Racine, which so appalled Charlie Stis, the Belles’ manager, that he attacked the home-plate umpire). Grand Rapids finished the season in third place, a comedown from their championship performance the previous year. Benny Meyer retreated to a men’s league, the Chicks found themselves another manager in Johnny Rawlings, and Bill Allington’s Rockford Peaches won the championship. The All-Americans headed home again, this time to a brave new postwar future.

  1946 Bedbugs and Beanballs

  Back on the Canadian prairies, those players who had stayed at home had been fascinated for the past three seasons by the experiences of their friends returning from the All-American. In 1943, Daisy Knezovich had been about to marry Dave Junor, so she’d refused the League’s initial offer and settled down. But every year, “everyone came back raving about this glamor League down south, and everybody was having such a good time. I was just busting to go, but I thought, ‘Well, I can’t now, I’m married.’ ” Then the news came that the League would be holding tryouts in Pascagoula.

  “Dave and I talked it over, and he knew I really wanted to go, and he said, ‘Well, you know I could never afford to take you down there.’ So I decided to go.”

  As for Bonnie Baker, she had promised Maury that she would quit when he returned from the service. “And my intentions were good. I was going to stay home like a good wife, but the closer it came to the time to go, the more miserable I got.”

  Spring training in 1946 was over and the regular season about to start when Maury looked at her and said, “I know you’re not going to be happy here all summer. You might as well go where you’re going to be happy.” Which Baker very promptly did.

  Restrictions on domestic travel had been eased, and the All-American looked forward to a relaxing session in the Deep South. Pascagoula was far from the sleet and snow of the Midwest; but spring in Mississippi had its own trials to offer.

  Pascagoula was an abandoned air base, located on the Gulf of Mexico just west o
f the Alabama state line.

  Dr. Harold Dailey, the avid chronicler of South Bend’s woes, vilified the site as “the worst mess I ever saw. The housing conditions were terrible. They were war-built barracks used by the shipyard workers. They were alive with roaches and bugs of all kinds. The main field was rutted and the smaller diamonds were unmown grass. We got the diamonds repaired, and they tried to build extra diamonds that were finished about the time we were through.”

  The players of the Glamor League coped as best they could. Jean Faut recalls that “we bought that place out of DDT. You’d sprinkle it across the doorway, or the bugs would march right in.”

  Daisy Junor was filled with a mixture of horror and admiration: “The cockroaches were so big, they didn’t scurry, they strolled.”

  Connie Wisniewski shared Junor’s sentiments: “You could have put saddles on ‘em.”

  People kept the lights on and their suitcases firmly closed.

  Betty Tucker, a novice pitcher, lost no opportunity to turn the situation to training advantage. “We’d get oranges for lunch,” she says, “and instead of eating them, we’d take them back with us, and if we saw a cockroach on the wall, we’d whip the orange at it.”

  At least this remote starting point gave teams a chance to play outdoors every day during spring training. There were also a series of games en route back north, through what Dailey called “bad mountain country on long night jumps.”

  The idea here was to expose the All-American to other centers, to attract new recruits. In 1946, the clubs played 27 cities in 11 states. It was in fact a good investment – spearheaded by Meyerhoff – in publicity and recruiting, but a somewhat cost-intensive one. Most of the proceeds went to local charities, including the Colored Orphans and Industrial Home of Lexington, Kentucky, which benefited to the tune of $300.