women in baseball | The Baseball Zealot

Odd Black Mountain University Magnet

Solve this mystery for me. I found this refrigerator magnet (actually two of them) in my son’s room when cleaning his room with him. I have no idea where we got them.

With two bats crossed and a smiling bear in the middle, the text of it says:

Lady Bruins

1954

Black Mountain University

Fossil Conf. AAA Winter League

After a web search, the only possible result that matched was a Black Mountain College that was founded 1933 near Asheville, North Carolina. The school closed in 1957.

I couldn’t find anything on a Fossil Conf Winter League.

Keep in mind that it could either baseball or softball (I’m thinking softball).

Odd mystery and even odder that it would show up in my kid’s room.

RIP Dottie Collins, 84 member of the AAGPBL

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

Dottie Collins, star pitcher in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, passed away from a stroke Tuesday in Fort Wayne Ind.

Not only was she one of the biggest names in the women’s baseball league and one of the best players, she did a lot to keep the memory of the league alive.

According to Richard Goldstein in the NYT, she was quite a hurler:

She pitched underhand, sidearm and overhand; she threw curveballs, fastballs and changeups; and in the summer of 1948, she pitched until she was four months pregnant. She won more than 20 games in each of her first four seasons. She threw 17 shutouts and had a league-leading 293 strikeouts in 1945 for the Fort Wayne Daisies, when the women’s game resembled fast-pitch softball.

She also had a lot to do with the Women in Baseball exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Without her, it wouldn’t have happened.

On This Date… women in baseball

Sixty-five years ago today on February 20, 1943, Phil Wrigley and Branch Rickey chartered the All-American Girls Softball League. The purpose was to generate interest in the sport in case our government closed down major league baseball.

The AAGSL eventually switched to hardball and became the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The pitching distance was 40 feet and bases were 68 feet apart.