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New York Post
14-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Post
Betsy Jochum, player from women's baseball league that inspired ‘A League of Their Own,' dead at 104
Betsy Jochum, an original member of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that inspired the hit movie 'A League of Their Own,' died at her South Bend, Indiana home on May 31. She was 104 years old. Jochum's death was confirmed by Carol Sheldon, vice president of the league's player association. 4 Betsy Jochum throwing a baseball. 4 Betsy Jochum in the 1946 South Bend Blue Sox yearbook wikimedia 'We lost one of our superstars, the last original 1943 player,' the league told People. Jochum first signed with the South Bend Blue Sox ahead of the 1943 season, where she ultimately spent six years with the team as an outfielder. The Blue Sox were rivals of the Rockford Peaches, the team that the fictionalized 1992 film was primarily based upon. During a 2012 interview with the South Bend Tribune, Jochum described being selected to play in the league as 'amazing.' 'I was actually going to get paid for playing a game,' she said then. 'Girls didn't do that back then.' 4 Former South Bend Blue Sox player Betsy Jochum, 97, autographs a shirt for Devin Hazard, 16, of Granger, during the South Bend Cubs-West Michigan Whitecaps baseball game on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at Four Winds Field in South Bend. ROBERT FRANKLIN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images The Baseball Hall of Fame has since commemorated the league by dedicating a permanent display in the Cooperstown, New York museum in 1988. Jochum's Blue Sox uniform currently sits on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. 'We were lucky, the ones that started out,' Jochum said in an interview in 2010 with Grand Valley State University in Michigan. 'We started out with a softball, and as we kept playing, the balls got small and the bases got longer and the pitchers moved back, underhand, sidearm to overhand, so we were kind of eased into it, the older players.' 4 Former South Bend Blue Sox player Betsy Jochum holds one of her player cards from her pro baseball career, on June 7, 2018, in South Bend. ROBERT FRANKLIN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Jochum started her path into professional baseball by playing softball at a young age, as well as winning a national baseball throwing contest when she was a teenager with a heave of 276 feet. 'The kids in the neighborhood would play on a vacant corner lot, choosing up sides and playing `scrub,'' she told author Jim Sargent in an interview posted on the league's website. 'If we had enough people, we played softball. Sometimes we played with a baseball, or any old ball, until we knocked the cover off. 'Then we would put friction tape on it and keep on playing `till that flew off. Whatever equipment was available was good enough for us!'
Boston Globe
05-06-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
Betsy Jochum, star in baseball's real ‘league of their own', dies at 104
The popular film 'A League of Their Own' (1992) helped renew attention to the players and founders - with a semi-fictionalized story about the Rockford Peaches in Illinois, one of the four founding teams. Ms. Jochum was with the rival Blue Sox out of South Bend. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up She was a hard-hitting outfielder who later pitched during her six years in the league. Sheldon said Ms. Jochum was the last link to the league's original 60 players. 'And, overall, she was the last of the league's superstar players,' Sheldon added. Advertisement Even before the league, Ms. Jochum had found her way to the sports pages in her native Cincinnati. At 17, she won a national baseball throwing contest in Connecticut with a heave of 276 feet. She piled up other medals and trophies from track meets in the Cincinnati area. She later made extra money as a semipro player in fast-pitch softball leagues. For the company team at H.H. Meyer meatpacking, she was paid an additional $16 a week and all-you-can-eat sandwiches and snacks in the dugout. Advertisement One day in early 1943, she noticed a newspaper ad announcing a new women's baseball league. The idea was hatched by Chicago Cubs owner and chewing gun magnate Philip K. Wrigley, seeking to keep fan interest - and paying customers filling the stands - while the ranks of the major leagues were gutted by volunteer enlistments for military service in World War II. The Cubs sent chief scout Jack Sheehan across the Midwest to hunt for players. At Cincinnati's Turkey Ridge Field, Ms. Jochum was among about a dozen women who showed up on a Saturday morning in April 1943. Sheehan took six players for further tryouts, including Ms. Jochum and her H.H. Meyer teammate Dorothy Kamenshek. About a month later at Chicago's Wrigley Field, a group of more than 250 players was whittled down to 60 and they were allocated to their new teams: either the Blue Sox or Peaches or the two teams in Wisconsin, the Kenosha Comets and the Racine Belles. Kamenshek became a star at first base with the Peaches. (The fictional 'League of Their Own' catcher Dottie Hinson, played by Geena Davis, was loosely inspired by Kamenshek, who died in 2010). The league marketed both high-caliber play and a brand of American womanhood that was part Rosie the Riveter and part debutante. During games, the players stole bases, chased down flyballs and turned double plays - all wearing a one-piece uniform with a flared skirt. Off the field, they attended mandatory 'charm school' classes at Helena Rubenstein salons and were given makeup kits. The fancy cosmetics, Ms. Jochum once said, were quickly put away and forgotten. Smoking and drinking were forbidden. Keeping watch was a full-time chaperone - who was never as grouchy as in the movie, Ms. Jochum said. Advertisement Ms. Jochum signed her first contract for $50 a week, plus expenses. 'That was a lot of money because coffee was only 5 cents then,' she said in an oral history in 2010 during a league reunion in Detroit. 'I made more money than my dad made.' In the inaugural season, the 5-foot-7 Ms. Jochum became one of the Blue Sox's most reliable bats - accustomed to facing underhand pitching and a ball 12 inches in circumference, similar to the size of a current regulation softball. Fans sitting behind the dugout yelled 'Sock 'em, Jochum' when she headed for the plate. The Cincinnati Post dubbed her the 'Sultana of Swat.' Ms. Jochum was picked by fans to play left field in the league's first all-star game - Blue Sox and Peaches players versus Comets and Belles - at Wrigley Field under temporary lights brought in for the venerable park's first night game. (Wrigley permanently added lights in 1988.) 'I didn't realize at the time that they didn't have lights at Wrigley Field,' said Ms. Jochum. 'I just thought those lights were there all the time. We showed up for the game, the lights were on, and we played.' The Comets-Belles squad rolled to victory 16-0, and Ms. Jochum went 0-for-2 at the plate. The second half of the 1942 season was dominated by Ms. Jochum, who led all hitters in the closing months. She finished the season batting .295. In 1944, she led the league with a .296 average and once stole seven bases in a single game. In another game, Ms. Jochum blasted a home run to straightaway center field. 'A fellow named Sweeney, one of South Bend's rootingest rooters, gave her $25 for the smash,' wrote one sportswriter, according to Ms. Jochum's biography on the league website. Advertisement The Blue Sox never managed a championship as the rules evolved to reduce the size of the balls, lengthen the base paths and phase in overhand pitching. (The league's initial name, the All-American Girls Softball League, was dropped during the first season, and it eventually became the All-American Girls Base Ball League.) In her pitching debut on May 29, 1948 - with the league expanded to 10 teams - Ms. Jochum struck out five in a two-hit win, 6-0 over the Fort Wayne Daisies. She finished with a pitching record of 14-13 and a 1.51 ERA over 215 innings. But the Blue Sox finished third in their division at 57-69, and Ms. Jochum learned that she was being traded to Peoria. She demanded that she stay in South Bend. 'They said my choice was to either go or quit,' she recalled, 'so I quit.' She walked away bitter, claiming she was being punished for seeking a raise. She finished her professional career with a .246 batting average with 232 RBIs, including seven home runs. Looking back decades later, she recognized that she helped open possibilities for women's sports despite the peculiarities of the league, including the etiquette rules and the watchdog chaperones. 'When I got picked to play in the league, it was amazing,' Ms. Jochum told the South Bend Tribune in 2012. 'I was actually going to get paid for playing a game. Girls didn't do that back then.' Advertisement Betsy Jochum was born in Cincinnati on Feb. 8, 1921. Her father was a carpenter, and her mother cared for the home. After leaving the league, she used some of her savings for college tuition, graduating from Illinois State University in 1957 with a degree in physical education. She taught PE in South Bend junior high schools until retiring in 1983. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, as it was known then, disbanded after the 1954 season. The reason for the collapse, said historian and author Jim Sargent, was partly self-inflicted. The league had moved to near full baseball-style play. Most potential players, though, came from softball and found the adjustments to the league hard to make. 'The league didn't suffer from quality of play,' said Sargent, co-author of 'The South Bend Blue Sox' (2011), written with Robert M. Gorman. 'In fact, the play was as good as it ever was. There just wasn't enough up-and-coming players to keep it going.' In November 1988, Ms. Jochum and other former players attended a ceremony at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y, to dedicate a permanent exhibition on the league. Ms. Jochum's uniform was among the memorabilia at a Smithsonian Museum of American History exhibit, 'Sports: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers,' which toured from 2004 to 2007. Ms. Jochum had no immediate survivors. About 25 former players from the league are still living, said Sheldon. When Ms. Jochum reminisced about her playing days, she often told the story of her first plane journey to Havana for spring training in 1947. The Brooklyn Dodgers also were practicing in the Cuban capital, but Ms. Jochum said her Blue Sox were drawing bigger crowds. Advertisement 'So, why were people watching you and not the Dodgers?' an interviewer asked. 'Women in skirts playing ball,' she replied.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Holyoke Valley Blue Sox kick off 2025 season at Mackenzie Stadium
HOLYOKE, Mass. (WWLP) – The New England Collegiate Baseball League started the 2025 season on Tuesday. 'Flame of Hope' to stop in Hampden County ahead of Special Olympics summer games The Holyoke Valley Blue Sox hosted the Newport Gulls at Mackenzie Stadium in Holyoke Tuesday night. This game was the first for Endy Morales as the Blue Sox's newest head coach. It was a beautiful night for a ball game, with warm and dry conditions. 22News spoke with baseball fans who are hoping for a good start to the season! 'Opening day! With my friends!' chants Gary LaPrade of Easthampton. 'We love coming out for baseball, beautiful weather. How can you go wrong?' The Blue Sox's next home game is this Friday against the Keene Swamp Bats. Single-game tickets go for $7 each. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
