Girls of Summer: In Their Own League (21 page)

Why didn’t Jochum get her well-merited raise?  “Because I wasn’t the personality kid,” she says
. And it was true. Jochum, an accomplished athlete and well-liked by her peers, lacked the showboat pizzazz of Pat Keagle, Faye Dancer or – above all – Bonnie Baker.

“When we’d sign autographs or talk to the fans, Bonnie’s name would always come up,” says Lou Arnold
. This holds true 50 years later. Today, when people recall the Blue Sox, one name is repeated over and over, like a mantra. The refrain is always the same:  “Remember Bonnie Baker…”

Nor was dissatisfaction confined to the balance sheet
. Players had begun to look upon their managers with a more jaundiced eye. Some of the managers were more or less immune.

Allington and Rawlings, despite their foibles, were men of undeniable achievement
. They merited respect. Others, however did not. As well, players could see that the League was failing to keep its promises on every front. The new recruits weren’t up to snuff.

More and more stories began to circulate
– some true, some wishful thinking – of players lobbying club directors, the manager or local fans.

When Leo Murphy, manager of the Racine Belles (who was highly regarded by most of his players), talked about trading Joanne Winter, Sophie Kurys
– the team’s most valuable player – told him that if Winter went, she would too. Murphy relented, but the moral was not lost. This was not the sort of power players ought to have.

But in spite of rumors, these revolts, whether individual or organized, were rare
. Even though Dr. Dailey left notes to the effect that Tiby Eisen and Mary Rountree had engineered Johnny Gottselig’s ouster from Peoria in 1947, the truth is that they’d both been traded well before Gottselig got the boot.

Given these mutterings in the ranks, it’s not surprising that the League once again asserted its authority on familiar ground, raising the issue of the players’ image
. Players who stood up for their rights were plainly not the All-American Girl.

In 1948, Chet Grant, then managing the Kenosha Comets, composed a players’ manual intended to reassert the principles that had inspired and nurtured the League, and to provide a blueprint for its continued success
. In it, Grant lists several problems he saw as posing a threat – particularly “disloyal” behavior, which he further categorized as “tale-bearing, nagging, cliquing” and nursing grudges. These, he said, should be punished, and players’ conduct should be beyond reproach year-round, not only during the season.

As the final stretch began, baseball fans witnessed the passing of a legend. George Herman Ruth, a.k.a. Babe, died on August16. That evening, the All-American’s teams stood to attention, their heads bared and bowed, as the mournful strains of “Taps” issued metallically from the loudspeakers.

The season’s pace was quickening
. In theory (and according to one of the founding premises invoked by Chet Grant), it mattered not who won or lost, as long as the League provided wholesome entertainment for the community and its young people.

In reality, winning meant money, and the All-American was counting every penny

Unfortunately, although overall attendance had grown, profits had not. Moreover, both Chicago and Springfield had been a terrific drain. Some teams had drawn well. Others had not; their balance sheets were gloomier than ever.

As usual, new and even rosier projections were pinned on the play-offs
– which would be longer than ever before – as a means to boost attendance figures and inject last-minute cash. At least, since players received a share of these revenues, it might quiet the malcontents.

As the days shortened and kids began to twitch at the prospect of a return to the classroom, every game began to matter
. Tempers flared.

In August, Snooky Harrell exchanged words with Gadget Ward, the long-suffering chief umpire
. For this she was fined $25. Harrell considered it a bit much for what she said was a “two-bit argument,” but Carey was on the case.

He had recently mediated a dispute between Chet Grant and yet another official
. The two had repaired to the locker room so they could express themselves more frankly. The argument had turned personal, and Grant, usually a mild-mannered personality, had punched the umpire. Word of this got around, and Carey figured it was time to take Grant at his rule-book word, cracking down both on and off the field.

The season’s countless rain delays came back to haunt the schedule, as planners scrambled to make up for canceled games
. At one point, South Bend played four double-headers (against two formidable opponents, the Chicks and the Peaches) in as many days, straining its already weakened pitching staff.

Harried officials put up a barrage of gate prizes and organized special nights of all descriptions
– anything to entice the fans through the turnstiles.

By mid-August, the Racine Belles were leading the western division, and Peoria, inspired perhaps by overflow crowds, were right behind them
.

Allington’s Peaches, for their part, where in third place
. It had not been Rockford’s most auspicious season. Harrell and Kamenshek had both hit well during the early stages but had fallen in the later season.

Very few players managed to consistently bat .300, but Kamenshek almost always did
. When she faltered, it spread unease and consternation. Allington benched her for a rest and fiddled with the lineup in search of different combinations that might restore his team’s power at the plate.

He and Harrell continued to be at odds
. When Allington made her captain, he said that she shouldn’t mind if he was a little hard on her, to avoid charges of favoritism. Harrell was unconvinced.

Allington was not without a sense of humor
. In August, during a game with the Blue Sox, South Bend’s second baseman worked the old hidden ball trick, luring Kamenshek into making a run for third, where she was promptly thrown out – directly under Allington’s nose in the coaching box.

The press reported that after the game, Allington issued a bulletin announcing “he had fined himself $25 for going to sleep on that moth-eaten trick and allowing one of his players to be caught
. He also gave himself a beautiful bawling out at the end of the inning, and wasn’t speaking to himself for hours after the game.”

And then Rockford began a comeback
. In the course of a week-long road trip, they moved up a notch by beating Kenosha and splitting a two-game stand at Peoria, then blew the chance to move into first place by losing to the Redwings on the same day as Racine lost to the Muskegon Lassies.

The Lassies, embarking on one of their periodic but ultimately fruitless winning streaks, went on to beat Racine twice more, only to watch Rockford sweep by them and into first place in the western standings.

Then the Fort Wayne Daisies took a hand. Despite their shaky record, they put an end to the Lassies’ winning ways, and Racine, faced with easier pickings, moved into first place again, with Rockford half a game back.

The two teams were scheduled to wrap up the season with a three-game series
. Just before the Peaches left Rockford to begin the series in Racine, loyal fans rewarded Allington with a pre-game testimonial, in the course of which he received some luggage and a watch, while a 28-piece band played a medley of his favorite tunes. Better yet, the Peaches won their game against visiting Muskegon 6-0.

In Racine, the Belles, inspired by home-field advantage, won the first game
. To finish in first place, Rockford would have to win both halves of the next night’s double header. Over 5,000 fans saw the attempt. Both teams scored one run early in the first game, but Racine broke the tie in the fourth and went on to a decisive 6-1 victory. Allington got to keep his watch.

In Fort Wayne, the Daisies had finished a miserable eighth, and manager Dick Bass’s head was on the block
.

A somewhat romantic aura had surrounded Bass when he became Fort Wayne’s manager in 1948, his first year with the League
. It was helped by the fact that he was good-looking and, at 39, still relatively young. His minor-league baseball career had been interrupted in 1942 when he nearly lost his life in a defense plant explosion. Later, a playing injury that led to blood poisoning had ended his playing career.

As a manager Bass was likeable, but he didn’t win games
. The Daisies had just missed the championship in 1945 and had been hungering for the League crown ever since.

By the end of 1948, the Daisies’ hopes for a championship seemed to have evaporated again
. Bass’s shortcomings as a manager were aggravated, in the eyes of club officials, by his close relationship with one of the players, to whom he was rumored to be engaged.

The player in question was Marge Callaghan, from Vancouver
. Her younger sister Helen, known because of her hitting power as “The Female Ted Williams,” also played in the All-American for a time, but dropped out, married and later gave birth to Casey Candaele of the Houston Astros – possibly the only major-leaguer to follow in his mothers’ footsteps.

In any case, Marge Callaghan denies that she and Bass were a serious item
. She says they never dated and that his fault lay in an excessive interest in women, plural.

Be that as it may, Bass was unceremoniously sacked by the club directors
. The news was conveyed reluctantly by Harold Greiner, one of the directors. Greiner believed that Bass was doing his best and that he hadn’t been unduly influenced by Callaghan.

“I want you to know this is the toughest job I’ve ever had in my life,” he told him
. “It’s just what the board has decided, and I’m the carrier of the news, and damn it, I wish I was someplace else.”

So did Bass, who was virtually pushed off the bus that would carry the Daisies to their first play-off encounter
.

He was replaced as manager by not one but three players
– Eisen, Rountree and Vivian Kellogg. It marked the first, but not the last time that an All-American would hand a team’s reins to the people who were probably best suited to assume them – the players themselves. Fort Wayne figured that, in eighth place, it had nothing to lose by letting players be manager-for-the-moment. Their tenure lasted only throughout the play-offs. The following season, matters returned to normal.

Now fans and home-town officials could spend a few days alternately looking forward to a lengthy series of play-off games and cursing the system set up by the League
.

The regular season of 120 games had determined that Racine and Grand Rapids were the top clubs
. If they had met immediately in a best-of-five-game contest, it would have made some sense. Instead, with an eye to revenues, the League embarked on what was in essence a mini-season, with only the two worst teams – the Colleens and the Sallies – out of contention.

The advantage to the League could be seen in the attendance figures
. Even given sell-outs of every game, play-offs between the division leaders would have drawn a maximum of 20,000 fans. By staging twenty-five games, the All-American’s coffers were swelled by 75,000 paid admissions.

Of course, this start-from-scratch scenario gave the lightweights
– Fort Wayne, Kenosha and the perennial bridesmaid, South Bend – another chance to make good.

When the play-offs got underway, Racine rapidly defeated Peoria in the western division, while Rockford polished off Kenosha
.

In the east, it took Grand Rapids five games to eliminate the Blue Sox, while the Fort Wayne Daisies, who had halted a
13-game winning streak by the Muskegon Lassies earlier in the season, faced them again and won.

Racine, minus Sophie Kurys, out of the lineup with an ankle injury, then met Rockford
. Kurys’ absence tipped the scales, and Rockford won three straight.

Fort Wayne, meanwhile, was proving to be the Cinderella story of the series
. Having ended the regular season in eighth place, plagued by injuries and with a three-player triumvirate filling in for the sacked Dick Bass, they still managed to defeat the boisterous Grand Rapids Chicks in three straight games.

The Chicks’ surprising weakness might be attributable in part to the shock of losing Pat Keagle, who had slid into second base and ripped her anklebone from its socket
. So severe was her injury that the bone protruded through the skin. She attended the final games on crutches, only to see her teammates lose.

The final series between Rockford and Fort Wayne was a best-of-seven, kicking off at Rockford’s Beyer Stadium, then moving to Fort Wayne three games later
. Rockford had extended its capacity to 9,000 seats, and they almost managed to fill them.

As it turned out, the Peaches had an easy time of it
. Having surprised everyone thus far – including themselves – the Daisies couldn’t pull another rabbit out of the hat. They lost the first three contests, won the fourth (Rockford’s only loss in the entire play-offs), but lost again, to hand Allington’s Peaches the 1948 championship in the fifth and final game.