Why "Blue Sox"? The Worked Example of an Honest Blank

Spring 1943

The documented facts: Few foundings in this city's record are documented as closely as the Blue Sox'. The state historical marker's annotation rebuilds the spring of 1943 out of the South Bend Tribune's own headlines: "Girls Softball," 17 April; "South Bend Approves Team in Girls' Softball League: Business Men Back Plan to Join Circuit," 28 April; "Girls Softball Club Gets Aid of Veterans," 13 May; "Girls Open Softball Play Today," 30 May. The tryout camp at Wrigley Field, the first roster of twenty-three players, the first game against Rockford on 30 May 1943, the fifty-five dollars a week that signed fifteen-year-old Dottie Schroeder — all of it is in the record, most of it in this history's team-history section, at the day level. The club then played twelve seasons under one name, in one city, and the name is the one founding fact none of it explains.

The search, printed as the entry requires: the team's published history — Jim Sargent and Robert M. Gorman, The South Bend Blue Sox (McFarland, 2012), built on the league's archives and the author's interviews with the players — nowhere states why the club is called the Blue Sox or who chose the name; its reviewers noticed the fact from the other side, remarking that "Blue Sox" was an exception to the league's usual practice of enshrining a gender reference in the team name — Belles, Colleens, Daisies, Chicks, Lassies, Millerettes, Peaches, Sallies — with only the Kenosha Comets and the Peoria Redwings going further afield. Merrie Fidler's history of the league's origins, the source the marker's annotation rests on for the founding, gives no reason. The Players Association's own team page gives none.

The marker's annotated text, which annotates nearly every clause of the founding, annotates the name not at all. A second full pass for this section — the marker and its bibliography, the association, the book and its literature — returned the same blank as the first. Guesses exist in the city's conversation, as guesses do: a nod to Boston's Red Sox or Chicago's White Sox of the same stocking-named kind; a uniform color decided in a supplier's office. None of them is attached to a document, a name, or a date in any source reached, and so none of them is printed here as anything but what it is — talk. The name was in use by opening day, 30 May 1943; between the businessmen's vote of late April and that date, somebody chose it, in a room whose minutes either were not kept or have not surfaced. That is the whole entry, and it is the section's worked example: a question with a documentary spine — the founding is documented almost by the day — whose answer the documents simply do not contain, printed at its true size rather than filled.

A companion blank, at its size: the city's earlier champions carry the same kind of silence. The 1915 South Bend Factors won the Southern Michigan Association at 44–24 under manager Ed Smith and were champions of a league that permanently disbanded on 7 July 1915, with South Bend in first — a pennant awarded by a table in a league that did not survive its own season. Why "Factors" is nowhere stated in the sources reached for the Sports section, and its gap is logged there. Two of the city's ball clubs, twenty-eight years apart, thus stand in the record under names the record does not explain; the difference is only that the second club's everything else is documented to the day, which makes its one blank the more instructive.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.2021.1, "South Bend Blue Sox," text, annotation and bibliography — the April–May 1943 Tribune headline sequence; Fidler's league history cited for the founding; no statement of the name's origin.
2. Review of Jim Sargent and Robert M. Gorman, The South Bend Blue Sox (McFarland, 2012) — the "Blue Sox" name as "an exception to the usual practice of enshrining a gender reference in the team name," the gendered names enumerated, Comets and Redwings as the other exceptions.
3. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Players Association), team page, aagpbl.org — the club's history as the association keeps it; no naming account.
4. This history, Team Histories: The South Bend Blue Sox — "The club's name is the one founding fact the surviving record does not explain," printed there and worked at full depth here.
5. This history, Sports section — the 1915 Factors, 44–24, champions when the league disbanded 7 July 1915; the name's reason unpinned in the sources reached, per the Sports leg's notes.