The Supporting Cast, and the City's Own Daughters

1943–1954

A twelve-year club is more than its stars. Shirley Stovroff, Faut's battery mate in the title years, hit .500 across the last three games of the 1951 final. Lil Faralla went 19–9 with two no-hitters in 1949 and 15–4 in 1951, and started the championship decider that September. Betty Wagoner played seven South Bend seasons; her shoestring catch saved the 1951 perfect game, she hit .600 in the last three games of that final and 4-for-4 in its decider, and she closed the club's history with its best batting season of the end years, .320 in 1954. Janet Rumsey of Moores Hill, Indiana, was a rookie on the 1951 champions, won the fourth game of the 1952 final 2–1 in ten innings, and was the staff ace of 1954 — the league's earned run average champion, with a no-hitter and an All-Star Game start. Georgette Vincent Mooney won 13 games in 1951; Gertie Dunn was still at shortstop in 1954, hitting .299 with six home runs; Joyce Westerman's name runs through the 1952 series like a thread.

And the club carried the city's own. Three South Bend daughters wore the uniform: Dorothea Downs in 1945, Janet Sears from 1950 to 1952, and Mary Lou Hamilton in 1953. The city's people register adds Nancy DeShone, Mary Lou Graham and Marie Kruckel to the Blue Sox roll — Kruckel remembered in the city as a thirty-eight-year teacher at Clay High School, the playing career and the classroom career both South Bend's.

Sources

1. Jim Sargent, SABR biographies of Faut, Mahon, Kidd and Baker, and SABR Games Project accounts — Stovroff, Faralla, Wagoner, Vincent Mooney, Dunn and Westerman.
2. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, player profiles — Rumsey's 1954 pitching championship and no-hitter; the hometown players Downs, Sears and Hamilton, with StatsCrew rosters.
3. The city's people register, as carried in the standard references — DeShone, Graham and Kruckel, and Kruckel's Clay High School teaching career.