Out on the Chicago Circut

[b]Midge Ryan[/b]: I was playing softball in Chicago. I loved it. I was born in Chicago, raised in Chicago. There wasn't much for girls to do in the way of sports, and I guess I was sort of a tomboy. I ran track because it was something that girls could do without much of a bother.

I think I was 13 when I heard about softball for the first time, and I think I must have played as much as I could get. About a year later, I found out there was a local tire company that was called Flesch's Tires that started a women's softball team. Now I told Flesch's that I was 16 and they let me try out. I didn't make the team but Henry Flesch said that I should keep playing. I think it was the first time that someone didn't look down their noses at a girl playing ball.

By 1942, I was playing softball for the Chicago Rockolas. I tried college for a year, didn't like it. Rockola made jukeboxes, and as far as I was concerned the eight hours on the assembly line were just something to do until ball practice.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: I was in New Orleans, playing for the Jax Maids. I think it was August when we read in The Sporting News that major league baseball was going to have women playing baseball. Not softball, mind you, but the real thing - baseball.

I think that every pitcher in Louisana softball began practicing overhand pitching. You'd see them, they'd be warming up overhanded and then they'd switch to that underhand throw when they hit the mounds. If you liked hitting, and I liked hitting, it made for some great games. Those girls would throw overhand and it would either wear down their arms or break their rhythm. I figured I had it easy. I just had to hit.

[b]SPORTING NEWS, 1942[/b]

The National and American Leagues are looking for girls and women of all ages to participate in baseball for women on an experimental basis during the 1943 season. Sixteen teams of honest baseball. No Bloomer Girls. Players will be chaperoned, but must be willing to travel. 140 game schedule. Players must have real skill. Contact Women's Baseball League, P. O. Box 900, Chicago Illinois.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: The secretaries at the Commissioner's Office expected a trickle, and they got a flood. They had to send back printed replies after a while - the office would send back a form and the applicants would fill out the particulars.

[b]Madeline Tucker Lacy[/b]: My mother, Michelle Tucker, said that she cut the ad out of The Sporting News and when she sent the answer back - she was about 34 - she wrote across the top of the form, "you said [b]all[/b] ages".

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: Most softball in the 1940s was industrial league softball. Chicago of course, but Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland. Any big city in the Northeast. There was also a lot of Canadian softball, but it wasn't as well scouted.

Pay was going to be a big issue. The plan was that the WBL would mirror major league baseball, making the same train trips and a very grueling schedule of games. The schools of thought were that the women had to be brought up to speed quickly and if they failed, it would be an argument that they couldn't handle the rigors of sports.

Some major league representatives went to the national softball championships in Detroit. They found out that a lot of these women were not going to play for peanuts. They probably didn't put their best foot forward as major league baseball's league-building wasn't very well thought out.

[b]Madeline Tucker Lacy[/b]: They offered my mother $1,000 a season. Now that was a lot of money back then just to play baseball. But you couldn't really live well on $1000. My mother said "no dice" and the word was getting around to the teams that the majors weren't really serious about letting women play.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: Someone asked me if I'd play for $1000. I told the man, "I'd like to see the money first, and I don't think you have it. I don't think you have any of that money you're talking about. That's just a starting amount."

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: One thousand dollars a year would be the equivalent of a part-time minimum wage job today. These women were being asked to do a lot. They would be moving away from their homes, away from their husbands - many of whom were overseas - some had children. Most of them would have jumped at the chance of playing baseball for money under ordinary circumstances, but the rumor spread that it was really a joke and that they wouldn't be paid anything.

[b]"Lucky" Linda Spolsino[/b]: We leave Detroit, we go back home, and we get a postcard in the mail. "The standard contract will be $1500. - Women's Baseball League." (Smiling.) After I got that, I went to go pick out curtains. I figured I was going to be moving in 1943.

[b]Eileen Senter[/b]: We had it good for those industrial league teams. We got free meals! We got traveling expenses. If something was calling itself a major league, it better match. We were getting perks!

[b]Elnora Sunderman[/b]: The $1500 contract absolutely destroyed the industrial leagues. Just wiped them out. I believe that every single player on the Jax Maids told the brewery in New Orleans that if they made the WLB squads, then the players wouldn't be back next year.

[b]Tulla Zimmerman[/b]: I talked about this with my mother and father. My father wasn't happy, but my mother was impressed with the fliers that were being sent, and that we'd be chaperoned. I think she called the league office, paid for the call herself to find out if it was on the up-and-up. My suitcase was already packed and the only thing on my mind was "when is spring going to get here?"