Archive for the ‘Female Baseball History’ Category

 

The Philadelphia Bobbies

Young Women Stranded Abroad, Hungary and Destitute, Abandoned by Escorts

The Philadelphia Bobbies were one of the leading female clubs of the 1920s and early 1930s. They derived their name from the gimmick of wearing their hair in a bob cut. The era proved to be the end of the Bloomer Girl heyday. Thereafter, the interest in female baseball languished until the All-American League was formed during the Second World War.

Philadelphia had an array of factory clubs for women, and even leagues. The Bobbies, hailed as champions of 1925, included nonworking young women of various ages. The Bobbies also fielded a popular basketball club during the winters.

To capitalize on their recent success, a traveling baseball tour of the country was organized after the 1925 season, a prelude to a jaunt to Japan to showcase their skills. There, they would play against male clubs, mainly college nines. By this time in history, American ballplayers had been traveling to Japan for decades. Likewise, Japanese clubs made the trip across the Pacific Ocean. By the mid 1910s, a Japanese ballplayer was even playing professionally in the States.

To lead the Bobbies to the Orient, Walter Johnson’s former catcher Eddie Ainsmith was chosen to help market the troupe. Besides being the battery mate of one of the top pitchers of all-time, Ainsmith is known as the first man to test the draft status of ballplayers during World War I. He first joined the majors in 1910 and stuck through 1924, mainly in a part-time role. In 1925, the Russian-born Ainsmith worked in the American Association for Minneapolis.

Ainsmith’s first experience in Japan took place after the 1920 season with a group of American and National Leaguers. The tour proved successful, initially organized by Buck Weaver and Gene Doyle in conjunction with Yumito Kushibiki, “the biggest sport promoter in Nippon.” The success of the trip – the men reportedly earned $830 each above costs – and other forays to the Orient suggested to Ainsmith that the Bobbies’ tour had potential.

Herb Hunter, a member of the 1920-1921 tour, headed back to Tokyo after the 1921 season to coach university clubs. The following year, he took another group of Americans on a barnstorming trip in Japan. Another was scheduled after the 1923 season but it was cancelled in wake of a massive earthquake in September in Tokyo. Instead, Hunter’s troupe, which included Ainsmith, traipsed through Eastern Canada. Ainsmith, who was nearing the end of his playing days, saw Hunter’s inventiveness and wanted to carve out a niche for himself.

Ainsmith invited Minneapolis teammate Earl Hamilton, a pitcher who had performed in the majors from age 19 to 32, leaving in May 1924. A lefthander, Hamilton won 115 games over 14 years split between the American and National Leagues. He would actually have his finest pro season in 1926, going 24-8 for Los Angeles in the Pacific Coast League.

The Bobbies, ranging in age from 13 to 25, were administered by 27-year-old Mary O’Gara who acted as the girls’ manager and chaperone (she may have also played). The team itself included:

• Edith Houghton, 13, shortstop
• Ferba Garnett, 14
• Jennie Phillips, 15
• Loretta Jester (Jaszezak), 17
• Leona Kearns, 17, 6’ lefthanded pitcher
• Annie Gans, 18
• Alma Nolan, 19
• Florence Eakin, 20
• Sara Conlin, 20
• Nellie Shanks, 20
• Edith Ruth, 21
• Agnes Curran, 25

In total, the party included 17 members including Ainsmith and Hamilton’s wives, Loretta and Edna, respectively. The group left Philadelphia on September 23, playing their way to Seattle from whose port they would depart for Japan. Along the way, games were set in Fargo North Dakota, Glasgow, Great Falls and White Fish, Montana, Spokane, Wenatchee, Everett, Tacoma and Seattle, Washington.

The Bobbies left Seattle aboard the American-Oriental mail liner President Jefferson on October 6. The first class fares were provided by a consortium of three Japanese sports promoters. Gate receipts in Japan were expected to pay for the lodgings, meals, return fare and, hopefully, a profit to be split among the party. The girls had been lured with the promise of a potential payday, $500 was mentioned. The tour was expected to last three weeks.

The Bobbies landed in Yokohama harbor to a warm reception. Present were a slew of reporters and representatives of the various university clubs they were set to compete against. The promoters met the party at the Tokyo train station, passing out flowers amid a welcome banner. They were then transported via rickshaw to the newly-erected Marunouchi Hotel, a western-style facility. One report suggests they met the 24-year-old Hirohito who in a year would become Emperor of Japan.

The first contest was a grand affair with the promoters showing their enthusiasm for the endeavor. Over 20,000 eyed the festivities. Ten games were played with reasonable success. However, enthusiasm soon waned amid cold weather. By early November, the girls performed in Kyoto and then Kobe but they didn’t fare well, racking up the losses. Even with Hamilton and Ainsmith acting as the battery fortunes did not changed. Soon thereafter, two of the promoters dropped out, nowhere to be found. The third declared himself to be bankrupt. Bills started to pile up.

This is not totally without precedent in baseball history. Ballplayers had been stranded without cash since the earliest days of the game, even major leaguers. At times during the 19^th century, owners cut men loose on the road without finances. Whole teams have even had to fend for themselves more often than one might suspect. It happened in the minors; it happened more often in black baseball. It also happened at various times, in various places in Latin America. The Global League  is but one example.

The Ainsmith party naturally became very concerned. It now became an issue of survival – lodging and sustenance – and perhaps more frightening the need for return fare back to the States. On November 13, O’Gara and the girls made a stand, confronting Ainsmith and refusing to take the field again without securing some funds for passage back home.

Ainsmith’s plan was to dig himself even deeper into Asia. He wanted to head to Korea where, hopefully, fortunes would change. O’Gara wanted nothing to do with it; she was deeply concerned and desperately wanted to go home. Kobe hotelkeeper Henry Sanborn took pity on the girls and provided lodging for them at his Pleasanton Hotel. He also petitioned the United States consul in Kobe for assistance with little to show for it. At this point, a British-Indian banker named Mody, a guest at the Pleasanton, stepped in and provided the girls with return fare all the way to Philadelphia gratis. The cost was in the neighborhood of $6000.

Mody was a godsend. He saved the girls from a potentially disastrous ending. Yet, there still was one. Ainsmith convinced three girls – Leona Kearns, Edith Ruth and Nellie Shanks – to head to Seoul with him. Off the three girls and the Ainsmiths and Hamiltons went with four Japanese ballplayers in tow to complete the nine. O’Gara’s group hopped on the next vessel out of Hong Kong and landed soundly in Vancouver on December 1, and then in Philadelphia on the 6th. Why O’Gara permitted the three girls to go on without the group is hard to comprehend. Her onus would seem to be with the parents of the ballplayers. Shanks and Ruth were in their 20s but Kearns was only 17 years old.

Unsuccessful in Seoul, Ainsmith and crew headed back to Kobe in early December. They sought police help in securing funds from the promoters but failed. Sanborn stepped in yet again and housed the ballplayers. The Hamilton called it quits and left Kobe on December 13, arriving in San Francisco on the 30^th. Unable to secure enough cash for the girls, the Ainsmiths decided to just ditch the girls, leaving them to fend for themselves. They departed from Kobe harbor on December 27, arriving in San Francisco on January 13.

Sanborn continued to raise money for the girls, including organizing a benefit dance. Meanwhile, the Kearns family sent $300 for a second-class ticket home. The funds proved sufficient and the girls board the Empress Of Asia. Outside Shanghai on January 11, the ship collided with another. The other vessel, the Tungshing, sank and ten people died. The Empress returned to the harbor for brief repairs and then setoff once again. The three Bobbies boarded it sometime around the 17^th of the month.

It soon “encountered a violent and massive storm that … battered the ship from Yokohama to Vancouver Island.” The heavy winds relegated the passengers to the lower decks for days at a time. After being penned up, Leona Kearns, unsupervised, entered the top deck on the 21^st and began running around jubilantly, despite being warned against the recklessness. Nellie Shank, feeling seasick, also went on deck to get some air. Edith Ruth sat indoors in the tea parlor. A massive wave rose, Kearns saw it and screamed for Shank to take cover. The wave cracked on deck and both girls were sent flying. Shank, bruised and battered, was discovered safe clinging to a rail. Kearns was nowhere to be found.

The ship circled the area for an hour but the 17-year-old wasn’t found. Her father met the ship in Vancouver when it arrived on January 29. From the manifest:

One newspaper declared, “Ainsmith is not being criticized for his conduct in Japan, but for his lack of business foresight in bringing the Bobbies so far home without adequate financial guarantees.” That was the synopsis before he ditched Kearns and her two friends. No further contemporary criticism was found. It’s hard to imagine that not one of the Hamiltons, Ainsmiths or Mary O’Gara was brought to account for the debacle which led to the neglect of the teenager Kearns. Ainsmith later oversaw another female club, the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Baseball League.

Edith Houghton

Edith Houghton was 10 years old when she joined the Bobbies in 1922. After the disastrous trip abroad, Houghton left the Bobbies and joined the New York Bloomer Girls, perhaps the top team of the era, run by Margaret Nabel. She played with them through 1931 and also in that year toiled for the Hollywood Girls. With interest in Bloomer Girl teams diminished, Houghton “reluctantly” turned to softball.

During WWII, she joined the Navy Women’s Auxiliary Unit, the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), playing for their baseball team. She returned home after the war and on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1946, Philadelphia Phillies owner Bob Carpenter announced the signing of Houghton to scout for the club. She scouted for the Phillies until being called up by the Navy during the Korean War.

New Orleans Times-Picayune 2/15/1946

At the time she was hailed by some as the first female major league baseball scout but that honor goes to Bessie Largent, who had been doing so with her husband, Roy, for years.

SOURCE LIST

• Americancomesalive.com
• Ancestry.com
• Baseball-reference.com
• Bradford Era, Pennsylvania, 7 December 1925
• Bridgeport Telegram, Connecticut, 13 March 1926
• Dallas Morning News, 30 December, 1920
• Gregorich, Barbara, “Stranded,” The North American Review, May/August 1998, page 4
• Helena Independent, Montana, 23 January 1926
• Indiana Evening Gazette, Pennsylvania, 23 December 1925
• Kokomo Tribune, Indiana, 25 December 1925
• Lethbridge Herald, Albert, Canada, 1 December 1925
• New Orleans Times-Picayune, 15 February 1946
• Oakland Tribune, 28 January 1926
• Nowlin, Bill, “Herb Hunter,” SABR Biography Project
• Portland Oregonian, 1 August 1920
• Reaves, Joseph A. Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
• Seattle Daily Times, 4 October 1925, 7 October 1925, 23 January 1926
• Trenton Evening Times, New Jersey, 13 August 1925
• Washington Post, 9 September 1925, 24 September 1925
• Waterloo Evening Courier, Iowa, 2 January 1926

 

Cleveland Leader: 3 October 1907

 

Pitcher Virne Beatrice Mitchell was due to make her professional debut on April 1, 1931 with the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Class-A Southern Association but rain pushed her introduction to the following day. 

Virne, better known as Jackie, was only a reported 17 years old ( though the 1920 U.S. Census indicates that she was born in 1912 making her 18 in April 1931) at the time and had never really played against stiff competition on the baseball diamond. She was a softball player who dabbled in baseball, at times playing with the boys in her neighborhood and with female clubs. 

So how did a 130 pound, 5’8” (perhaps 5′5″) teenager jump all the way up to Class-A in a large southern city without a proving herself against professional batsmen? This was the 1930s not the 1890s or 1910s before the tiered minor league system took hold. 

A lefty, she didn’t possess much of a fastball; hence, she must have been training hard over the previous winter, working on a wicked curve or slider or perhaps tweaking an eely knuckleball. Actually no, Mitchell hadn’t pitched since the previous summer and that was against amateur/semi-pro female competition. She spent the cold months playing basketball with the self-titled Mitchellettes. 

No doubt Mitchell was a versatile athlete. She excelled further than the other local female athletes, holding her own against the boys. She excelled in swimming, basketball, baseball and softball. Despite her boyish talents, the Middletown Times Herald noted, “Interviews have found her distinctly feminine – she cooks and plays a piano.”

At age 7, Jackie lived next (in an adjoining apartment) to National League strikeout artist Dazzy Vance who taught her how to throw a baseball. As Mitchell’s father noted, “Vance took quite a liking to my daughter. He used to show her some of the tricks of the game.” She soaked it up and practiced though she was very young when she knew Vance. (In 1920, Vance played for Memphis. This seems like the period that he lived next to the Mitchells.)

She also received “encouragement” from Kid Elberfeld who owned an apple orchard on Signal Mountain outside Chatanooga. Elberfeld held a baseball training school in Atlanta. Mitchell attended it briefly in early 1931. 

She also had an attentive and well-to-do father, an optician, (her mother sold hosery) who pushed her and helped market her skills; hence, the Mitchellettes. Joe Mitchell gushed, “She is one of the greatest little athletes I ever saw. She has one of the most deceptive pitching deliveries, hits fair and fields way above the average that a boy of her age can field.” 

So how did someone fresh from a training school hook up with the Lookouts, an high minor league team? She lived three blocks from the stadium. 

In the late 1920s, Washington Senators’ owner Clark Griffith purchased controlling interest in the Chattanooga Lookouts. He sent his chief scout, Joe Engel, to oversee the franchise. Engel remained with the club for much of the next 3+ decades. He soon built one of the few new minor-league stadiums of the Depression era and creatively promoted the Lookouts ala Larry MacPhail and Bill Veeck. An interesting Wikipedia synopsis on Engel’s promotional skills:

One year, Engel had his players parade into the ball park on elephants for Opening Day. He traded a shortstop for a turkey, roasted it and served it to local sportswriters who had been “giving him the bird.” He raffled off houses and automobiles, and had canaries singing in the grandstands. Whenthe New York Yankees went to Chattanooga to play a pre-season exhibition game with his Lookouts, Engel located a female 17-year-old left-handed pitcher, Virnett “Jackie” Mitchell,  who struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Engel’s promotions were a hit in Chattanooga, and fans flocked to the new ballpark.

The Sporting News (8/23/1934) put it this way:

In 1930, Mitchell pitched for Engel’s girls baseball team known as the Engelettes. With the New York Yankees passing through Tennessee during spring training in 1931, Engel hit upon the idea of signing Mitchell and pitting her against the great Yankee lineup. He signed her (through her father) the week before, on March 26. At the time, she was out of town playing basketball. She returned a couple of days later and joined the Lookouts, chaperones by her mother. 

APRIL 2 

What took place on April 2 is astounding if it wasn’t predetermined. She fanned the two biggest names in the sport. Yes, an inexperienced pitcher took the mound and made fools of the great Ruth and Gehrig. Or did Joe Engel chat with the Hall of Famers beforehand and gain their complicity? It’s not hard to read between the lines. (The baseball bible – The Sporting News – took no interest in the subject in its next issue.)

Mitchell hadn’t played much ball since the previous fall. She was immediately pressed into strenuous practice after returning to Chattanooga. Naturally, her muscles rebelled and her pitching arm was quite sore, even with her limited practice schedule. Nevertheless, she was inserted on the mound against the powerful Yankee lineup. 

Washington Post – April 3, 1931 

39-year-old former major leaguer Clyde Barfoot, a two-decade professional, started the game for the Lookouts. The plan was for Mitchell to face Ruth every time he came to the plate. Barfoot faced Earle Combs and Lyn Lary to start the first inning, retiring neither and ceding a run. 

Mitchell was brought in to face perhaps the greatest of all baseball players and the idol of country, Babe Ruth, the mightiest swinger the game had seen. Four thousand sets of eyes watched the confrontation. Ruth played to the crowd, swung hard twice missing. Dismayed, he asked the ump to check the ball. The Sultan of Swat then watched the third strike sail over the played. Disgusted, he “flung his bat away in high distain and trudged to the bench.” 

Gehrig took his place in the box and swung through the next three deliveries. Mitchell then threw four wide ones to Tony Lazzari. She was pulled, her day and career in Organized Baseball at an end. As the Baltimore Sun noted, “The first woman in Organized Baseball had her fling. Then the game was resumed more sensibly…” 

Baltimore Sun – April 3, 1931 

Barfoot returned to the mound. The Yankees won 14-4. Ruth went 1 for 5, Gehrig 2 for 4. 

POST SCRIPT

Dr. Joesph F. Mitchell, Jackie’s father, worked even harder as his daughter’s manager and booking agent after the Ruth/Gehrig affair. A newspaper account two years later claimed that Mitchell had pitched in 156 games to date against male competition – with mixed success. In 1932, she earned $300-$400 for the season from pitching appearances.

In July 1933, Mitchell joined the House of Davids.

SOURCE LIST 

Baltimore Sun, 3 April 1931 

Middletown Times Herald, New York, 12 July 1933

New York Times, 2 April 1931, 3 April 1931 

Washington Post, 27 March 1931, 3 April 1931 

Wikipedia.org

 

The Brief Career of Eleanor Engle

On June 21, 1952, the Harrisburg (PA) Senators of the Class-B Interstate League signed 24-year-old Eleanor Engle (signed by team president Jay Smith and general manager Howard Gordon):

Washington Post 6/22/1952

“Tongue in cheek – today signed a curvaceous, 24-year-old stenographer to a player’s contract.”

Engle was a softball player who dabbled in playing baseball with males since high school. She had no professional experience. She was married and worked as a stenographer for the Public Utility Commission in Harrisburg.

Her hiring created an immediate stir; she was not wanted by the players, umpires or her manager. The opposing Lancaster manager threatened to protest the game if Engle was permitted on the field.

Harrisburg manager Buck Etchison

“She’ll play when hell freezes over. I won’t have a girl playing for me.”

The minor league’s chief executive was equally adamant:

George M. Trautman’s Office

“No rule specifically prohibits signing of women but such contract would not be approved by this office”

Trautman Telegram (from San Francisco)

“So as to remove any possible doubt as to the attitude of this office toward any such contract I am notifying all clubs that signing of women players by National Association clubs will not be tolerated and clubs signing, or attempting to sign women players, will be subject to severe penalties. I have consulted with Commissioner Frick on this matter and he has asked me to express his concurrence in the view that this is just not in the best interest of baseball that such travesties be tolerated.”

They did not want a repeat of the farce that surrounded the signing and use of midget Eddie Gaedel by Bill Veeck and the St. Louis Browns in 1951. In Trautman’s words, the Engle signing by Harrisburg was a “travesty.”

On June 22, a uniformed Engle took infield and batting practice to “much applause,” but did not appear in the game.

Washington Post 6/24/1952

 

Blondes vs. Brunettes

Springfield, Illinois – 9/11/1875

Players are Variety actresses from St. Louis.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat 9/13/1875

St. Louis Globe Democrat 9/15/1875

 

 

Eri Yoshida 

Righthanded, sidearm pitcher 

5’, 114 pounds 

In November 2008, Eri Yoshida, 16, became the first woman drafted by a professional baseball team in Japan. She was selected in the 7^th round by the Kobe 9 Cruise of the four-team Kasai League, a newly-created independent circuit. At the time, she was a 16-year-old student at Kawasaki-kita High School in Kawasaki. 

Yoshida, born in 1992, first started playing baseball in second grade and continued with the encouragement of her father and older brother. She became a knuckleball pitcher, being inspired and developing her specialty after viewing a video of Boston Red Sox hurler Tim Wakefield, a major leaguer since 1992 – the year of Yoshida’s birth. She’s been clocked at 63 mph but typically throws her knuckler in the 50s. 

In December, she was signed by the club and officially became the first female professional in her native land. She made her pro debut on Opening Day, March 26, 2009, at the Osaka Dome. 

In 2009, Yoshida appeared in 11 games for Kobe with a 0-2 record and 4.03 ERA in 10.2 innings pitched. 

She withdrew from the Kasai League at the end of the season. In December, she was invited to participate in the Arizona Winter League with the Yuma Scorpions. Like the others in the league, she hoped to attract major league attention. 

The AWL plays a 20-game season beginning at the end of January. Another woman, Tiffany Brooks, an American from Spokane, also played in the league. In March 2010, Yoshida met and trained with Tim Wakefield. 

In April, she signed by former Dodgers pitcher Mike Marshall of the Chico (CA) Outlaws of the Golden Baseball League, a western independent circuit formed in 2005. The Outlaws are managed by Garry Templeton. 

The GBL, an eight-team league, plays a 90-game schedule and stretches from Canada to northern Mexico and westward to Hawaii. In the continental United States, games are played in California, Arizona and Utah. The league opens in mid May. 

Tiffany Brooks, a first baseman and reliever, signed with Alpine (TX) of the independent Continental Baseball League. 

SOURCE LIST 

• Goldenbaseball.com 
• Indiana Gazette, Pennsylvania, 2009 
• New York Daily News, 2008 
• Wikipedia.com 
• Winnipeg Free Press, Manitoba, Canada, 2008-2209

 

I made some errors in my notes on Florence Knebelkamp in an entry of female baseball.

First, I had in my notes that she woked in the front office of the Louisville Colonels of the National League. That was wrong. She was with the minor American Association Louisville club. Thanks to Rex Hamann for bringing this to light.

Here’s a nice piece:

The Sporting News 1/31/1935