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1925–2023 · South Bend, 1946–1953
Jean Faut was born January 17, 1925, in East Greenville, Pennsylvania, and every one of her eight professional seasons was played in a South Bend uniform, 1946 to 1953 — the tie is played here, and it is total. Her career line is the finest in her league's history: 140 wins against 64 losses with a 1.23 earned run average, the lowest the league ever recorded among pitchers with 500 innings; 913 strikeouts, third in league history; and the second-most wins, behind only Helen Nicol Fox's 163. She threw four no-hitters, two of them perfect games — the only pitcher in league history with two perfect games, and the only perfect games of the league's overhand era, 1948–54. The second of them came on September 3, 1953, in the last win of her career. She was an All-Star in 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1953, and the league's Player of the Year in 1951 and 1953; in 1952 she went 20–2, a .909 winning percentage. She hit, too: .291 in both 1949 and 1952, and in 1953 she led her own club in batting average, home runs and runs batted in while also leading its pitching staff. In the 1951 playoffs alone she won four games. The team history tells the seasons; this entry holds the career, and Dottie Schroeder's judgment stands as its summary: "Jean could do it all and with excellence… I can't remember ever getting a hit off her pitching."
The life around the pitching was as full. She married her own manager, Karl Winsch. She worked off-seasons at Ball-Band, pitched a full season in the year her son was born, and retired at twenty-eight under the strain of being managed by her husband; the marriage ended in divorce in 1968. She turned professional bowler and toured for years, married Charles Eastman in 1977, and lived to ninety-eight, dying February 28, 2023, in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Her name stands on a plaque at Coveleski Stadium, in the city where the whole of her career was played.
Sources
- Jim Sargent, SABR biography of Jean Faut — the career line and its league standing, the perfect games, the honors, the marriage and the life after baseball.
- All-American Girls Professional Baseball League records — the 1.23 earned run average's standing, the strikeout and wins ranks, the Player of the Year awards.