Read Online Girls of Summer: In Their Own League by Lois Browne - Free Book Online
Authors: Lois Browne
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which would contribute to his withdrawal by the time the 1944 season was out.
1944 California Girls and “The Silver Eagle”
Pepper Paire was nine years old when she first began to play organized softball in Depression-era Los Angeles. It was 1933, when unemployment and poverty were at their peak. Pepper’s first neighborhood team was sponsored by Sattinger’s Grocery store.
“If we won, I got to go to the grocery store, get a brown bag and put as much as I could into it . So I learned real early that it was valuable to win.”
Paire was one of the Californians who descended on the League in 1944 . They were brasher and cockier and surer of their abilities than most of the other players. They seemed as different from the other Americans as the quieter, meeker Canadians did.
Illinois must have come as a rude surprise . In California, practices were held on the beach at Malibu – a far cry from the city parks of the Midwest. But California, despite its sophistication, was just as softball-mad as anyplace else.
Major studios such as Paramount and Columbia sponsored teams . Stars like George Raft (who specialized in gangster roles, and kept refusing parts that made Humphrey Bogart a star) and Burgess Meredith hung around having their pictures taken with the players. In fact, Wrigley had seriously considered transporting the League’s teams to L.A. for a season of winter ball in 1943. But for various reasons – among them, residency problems for the Canadian players, who would have had difficulty obtaining year-round work permits – it didn’t pan out.
By early 1944, Wrigley had settled on the League’s ne xt two new centers of operation – Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, where local backers signed up to support, respectively, the Chicks and the Millerettes. These schemes – in which Wrigley took a personal hand – would very shortly prove disastrous.
Just prior to spring training, 1944, however, the League’s future looked bright, despite one or two problems with player allocation . Wrigley’s original notion – to return everyone to a central pool and distribute them afresh each year – had already fallen by the wayside.
The 1943 season had shown that local fans quickly became attached to favorite players, either because of their winning personalities or specific skills . If a team lost a popular player, it lost a guaranteed ticket-seller.
The League therefore decided on a compromise . Each team could keep a core of players from the previous year but would throw the rest of its roster back into the pool. That would still leave plenty of room for trading. But that wasn’t the end of it. Mid-season injuries took their toll. If a top-ranked player was benched, her team would expect the League to supply it with someone of equal skill. There weren’t any farm teams, so replacements had to come either from spring training rejects or (under protest) from another club.
Most organizations wound up feeling hard done by, sometimes with strong justification.
Meanwhile, some of the Chicago teams that Wrigley had raided were setting themselves up as the National Girls Baseball League, which was neither national nor baseball; it was the same old grab-bag of teams, who continued to play softball. They were, however, prepared to give Wrigley a taste of his own medicine by trying to raid his players.
This development consolidated a pattern of mutual raiding that would last for years, and give the All-American’s top ranked players a threat to use when negotiating their contracts . If the All-American wouldn’t meet their price, they had an alternative employer for their skills.
Having skimmed all the players he wanted from Chicago, Wrigley now needed 30 new faces for the two expansion teams. His scouts had been beating the bushes all winter long.
One of their most promising acquisitions was Connie Wisniewski, a blonde, Polish beanpole from Detroit, who had perfected a dramatic
1944 California Girls and “The Silver Eagle”
Pepper Paire was nine years old when she first began to play organized softball in Depression-era Los Angeles. It was 1933, when unemployment and poverty were at their peak. Pepper’s first neighborhood team was sponsored by Sattinger’s Grocery store.
“If we won, I got to go to the grocery store, get a brown bag and put as much as I could into it . So I learned real early that it was valuable to win.”
Paire was one of the Californians who descended on the League in 1944 . They were brasher and cockier and surer of their abilities than most of the other players. They seemed as different from the other Americans as the quieter, meeker Canadians did.
Illinois must have come as a rude surprise . In California, practices were held on the beach at Malibu – a far cry from the city parks of the Midwest. But California, despite its sophistication, was just as softball-mad as anyplace else.
Major studios such as Paramount and Columbia sponsored teams . Stars like George Raft (who specialized in gangster roles, and kept refusing parts that made Humphrey Bogart a star) and Burgess Meredith hung around having their pictures taken with the players. In fact, Wrigley had seriously considered transporting the League’s teams to L.A. for a season of winter ball in 1943. But for various reasons – among them, residency problems for the Canadian players, who would have had difficulty obtaining year-round work permits – it didn’t pan out.
By early 1944, Wrigley had settled on the League’s ne xt two new centers of operation – Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, where local backers signed up to support, respectively, the Chicks and the Millerettes. These schemes – in which Wrigley took a personal hand – would very shortly prove disastrous.
Just prior to spring training, 1944, however, the League’s future looked bright, despite one or two problems with player allocation . Wrigley’s original notion – to return everyone to a central pool and distribute them afresh each year – had already fallen by the wayside.
The 1943 season had shown that local fans quickly became attached to favorite players, either because of their winning personalities or specific skills . If a team lost a popular player, it lost a guaranteed ticket-seller.
The League therefore decided on a compromise . Each team could keep a core of players from the previous year but would throw the rest of its roster back into the pool. That would still leave plenty of room for trading. But that wasn’t the end of it. Mid-season injuries took their toll. If a top-ranked player was benched, her team would expect the League to supply it with someone of equal skill. There weren’t any farm teams, so replacements had to come either from spring training rejects or (under protest) from another club.
Most organizations wound up feeling hard done by, sometimes with strong justification.
Meanwhile, some of the Chicago teams that Wrigley had raided were setting themselves up as the National Girls Baseball League, which was neither national nor baseball; it was the same old grab-bag of teams, who continued to play softball. They were, however, prepared to give Wrigley a taste of his own medicine by trying to raid his players.
This development consolidated a pattern of mutual raiding that would last for years, and give the All-American’s top ranked players a threat to use when negotiating their contracts . If the All-American wouldn’t meet their price, they had an alternative employer for their skills.
Having skimmed all the players he wanted from Chicago, Wrigley now needed 30 new faces for the two expansion teams. His scouts had been beating the bushes all winter long.
One of their most promising acquisitions was Connie Wisniewski, a blonde, Polish beanpole from Detroit, who had perfected a dramatic
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