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1953 – 1954
The last seasons: The championship core aged out quickly, and the league shrank around the teams that remained. The AAGPBL had peaked in 1948 — ten teams and 910,000 paid fans — but attendance fell as televised major-league baseball and the other recreations of the 1950s spread; the owners had bought the league from its management at the end of 1950 and run it decentralised since, and the contraction ran year by year: six teams by 1952, and five in 1954 — Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Rockford. Faut's career closed in 1953 with her second perfect game. In 1954 the Blue Sox finished second, five games behind Fort Wayne's pennant winners, and reached the playoffs one last time — the seventh playoff appearance in the club's record.
The end: The league's last game was the 1954 championship's deciding game, Kalamazoo over Fort Wayne. The South Bend Tribune reported a league operating deficit of $22,500 for 1954, and on January 30, 1955, the league voted to cease operations. More than 600 women had played in it across its twelve seasons.
The accounting: The club's honors, as the league record states them: playoff championships in 1951 and 1952; the regular-season pennant of 1951; the tied best record of 1949, which was neither; seven playoff appearances. The Indiana Historical Bureau's marker for the club carries the state's own summary: "They won Playoff Championships in 1951 and 1952."
The season line: As the league's own tables give it: 58–50 in 1943, 64–52 in 1944, 49–60 in 1945, 70–42 in 1946, 57–54 in 1947, 57–69 in 1948, 75–36 in 1949, 76–36 in 1951 and 64–45 in 1952, with a second-place finish in 1954.
The book: The club's full history stands in Jim Sargent and Robert M. Gorman, The South Bend Blue Sox: A History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Team and Its Players, 1943–1954 (McFarland, 2012) — the team history on which any deeper telling builds.
Sources:
- Baseball-Reference Bullpen, South Bend Blue Sox — championships 2 (1951, 1952); playoffs 7 (1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1952, 1954).
- AAGPBL Players Association, league history — the 1948 peak of ten teams and 910,000 paid fans, the contraction to five teams in 1954, the more than 600 players.
- SABR Baseball Games Project, July 9, 1954 — South Bend's second-place finish in 1954; the Tribune-reported $22,500 deficit; the January 30, 1955 vote to cease operations.
- Indiana Historical Bureau, South Bend Blue Sox marker — the marker text and annotation.
- McFarland catalogue — Sargent and Gorman, The South Bend Blue Sox (2012).