UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 24, Page 2
March 18, 1993
Ballplayer recalls the glory years of the all-girls' league

     Take me out to the old ballgame... Nostalgia was in the air as a
capacity crowd filled Room 100 of the Kirkbride Lecture Hall the evening of
March 9, and Ruth Heverly spoke of her days as a pitcher for the
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
     Director Penny Marshall's film hit, A League of Their Own,
familiarized much of America with the all-girls' teams popular during World
War II.
     According to Heverly, the league was started by William Wrigley Jr. to
keep interest in baseball alive during the war years. By the time Heverly
joined the Ft. Wayne Daisies in the summer of 1946, "the league was
well-established," and it was generally known that the girls "played good
baseball," she said.
     She told the eager audience that while a junior at East Stroudsburg
University, her father saw an advertisement for tryouts in Allentown, Pa.,
and encouraged her to participate. A few days after the tryouts, an
acceptance telegram arrived with money for a train ticket to Chicago to
begin her career.
     Heverly signed on with the Daisies at $55 a week. She stayed with them
for a year and moved on to the Southbend Blue Sox, finishing her pro career
with the Kalamazoo Lassies at $125 a week.
     The pay wasn't great and the schedule, with only 15 players on the
roster, was grueling, she said. Night games and Sunday-morning
double-headers were common in the 115-to 120- game, three-month season,
Heverly said.
     "By trade, I was a pitcher. A junk pitcher. It was all motion and no
pitch," Heverly said.
     But, this "junk" pitcher had a record of 40 consecutive shutout
innings while pitching for the Kalamazoo Lassies. Her streak was broken by
her former team, the Southbend Blue Sox. Some would classify her earned run
average, at 2.19, remarkable for someone with "no pitch."
     The girls league drew large crowds, she said, and on average, 2,500
spectators came out to show their support. She remembers one holiday
pitching before a crowd of nearly 12,000 people. The games received radio
coverage and, eventually, occasional television spots.
     The league dissolved for a variety of reasons. "Girls began to retire
and there was no one to replace them. People had too much to do" Heverly
said.
     Heverly said she felt Marshall's film "was a lot of Hollywood." with
most of the characters composites of real players.
     One thing the movie showed was the bond of sisterhood that formed
between the players, she said. Even after all these years, the women still
keep in touch. They have had reunions all over the country every year since
1982. This year, the 50th anniversary celebration of the league will be
held in South Bend, Ind. "Some players are just destitute and unable to
come to the reunion. Enough players are chipping in to sponsor their trips
so they can come," she said
     Heverly, though she no longer plays ball, is still active with the
league. She has been instrumental in arranging an exhibit of the league in
the Baseball Hall of Fame and emphasized she is still trying to get the
league officially inducted there.
     For her lecture, Heverly brought mementos, and the audience pored over
a table displaying womens' baseball cards, pictures of the ballplayers and
Heverly's spikes, balls and glove.
     When Heverly looked at her glove, she said it brought back memories of
the "eight best years of my life."
                                        -Jennifer M. Collins