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Team Histories: The South Bend Blue Sox, 1943–1954
The Blue Sox were South Bend's team for all twelve seasons of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, one of only two clubs — Rockford is the other — that played every year of the league's life in the same city. They were a charter club in 1943 and they were still standing, in second place, when the league played its last game in September 1954. What they won can be stated exactly, because the league's honors came in two kinds that are easily confused: a regular-season pennant and a playoff championship. South Bend won one true pennant, in 1951, when the club went 76–36, and it won the playoff championship twice, in 1951 and 1952. The near-miss that sounds like a pennant is not one: in 1949 the Blue Sox tied Rockford for the league's best record at 75–36 and were then swept out of the playoffs, and Rockford was declared the season's champion. Everything else in this history hangs off those twelve seasons — the grounds at Bendix Field and Playland Park, the managers from Bert Niehoff to Karl Winsch, Jean Faut, the finest pitcher the league produced, the six-player walkout that preceded the 1952 title, and the protest series that followed it, which remains the strangest championship the league ever decided.
The Fourth City Chosen: The Founding, Spring 1943
April–May 1943
South Bend was the fourth and last city chosen to complete the new league's first circuit, after Rockford, Racine and Kenosha. The league was Philip K. Wrigley's wartime creation, organized to keep professional ball in front of…
The Game They Played: Softball Growing into Baseball
1943–1954
The Blue Sox of 1943 and the Blue Sox of 1954 were playing recognizably different games under the same name, because the league rebuilt its rules almost every year in one direction — from softball toward baseball. The ball shrank…
The Grounds: Bendix Field and Playland Park
1943–1954
The Blue Sox played their first three seasons at Bendix Field and their last nine at Playland Park, and the move between them is one of the few off-field facts about the club that a state marker bothers to record: "Their move in…
The Charter Seasons: 1943 and 1944
1943–1944 · Manager: Bert Niehoff
Bert Niehoff, a former major-league infielder, managed the first two Blue Sox clubs, and both of them were good without being quite good enough. The league played a split season in 1943, and on the league's own split-season…
McManus, Grant, and the Move to Playland: 1945–1947
1945–1947 · Managers: Marty McManus (1945), Chet Grant (1946–47)
Marty McManus, the former major-league infielder, took the club in 1945 and made the trade that stocked its middle years: from Kenosha he brought in outfielder Lib Mahon, infielder Pauline "Pinky" Pirok and pitcher Phyllis…
The Overhand Era and the Tie That Was Not a Pennant: 1948–1949
1948–1949 · Managers: Marty McManus (1948), Dave Bancroft (1949)
Overhand pitching arrived in 1948, and with it the modern shape of the club: a bigger ballpark game played by a smaller professional core. McManus returned for one season and the club went 57–69, third in the Eastern Division of…
1950: Faut's Peak, Baker's Trade, the New Young Players
1950 · Manager: Dave Bancroft
The 1950 Blue Sox finished fifth of eight at 55–55 — a .500 club, a record this history can now state flatly, since the season tables agree on it — but the season matters for three things that had nothing to do with the…
1951: The Pennant and the First Championship
1951 · Manager: Karl Winsch
Karl Winsch — Jean Faut's husband, married to her since 1947 — took over the club in 1951, and the Blue Sox won the only true pennant in their history: 76 wins, the most the franchise ever recorded, against 36 losses, built in…
The Walkout: August 30, 1952
August 29–30, 1952, at Kalamazoo
The 1952 Blue Sox finished second at 64–45 behind Fort Wayne's pennant winners, with Faut having the finest season of her career — 20–2, a 0.93 earned run average, a .909 winning percentage that stands as the league's…
The Protest Series: The 1952 Final Against Rockford
September 6–11, 1952
South Bend swept its semifinal first: Grand Rapids went out in two games, Faut winning the opener 2–1 on three hits — she escaped a bases-loaded jam after an unearned run in the ninth — with Wagoner's run-scoring single in the…
1953: The Farewell Season
1953 · Manager: Karl Winsch
The six who walked out did not come back, and the 1953 Blue Sox could not replace them: 44–62, fifth of six, out of the playoffs. One widely repeated line about these years says South Bend finished last in both 1953 and 1954; it…
1954 and the End of the League
1954 · Manager: Karl Winsch
The last Blue Sox club was, on paper, a strong one, rebuilt out of the league's contraction: after the Battle Creek club folded, South Bend took outfielders Wilma Briggs (.300, with 25 home runs and 73 runs batted in) and Betty…
The Managers
1943–1954
Five men in twelve seasons held the Blue Sox job, and the list is a fair cross-section of the league itself — hired baseball men, most of them former major leaguers, managing a game that was changing under them. Bert Niehoff…
Jean Faut: The Best Pitcher in the League
South Bend, 1946–1953
Jean Faut was born January 17, 1925, in East Greenville, Pennsylvania, and died February 28, 2023, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, at ninety-eight — time enough to be honored by the Hall of Fame, to be written into the league's…
Lib Mahon: The Run Producer
South Bend, 1945–1952
Elizabeth "Lib" Mahon was born November 18, 1919, in Greenville, South Carolina, came to South Bend in Marty McManus's 1945 trade with Kenosha, and stayed eight seasons, becoming the best run producer the club ever had and one of…
Dottie Schroeder: All Twelve Seasons
South Bend, 1943–1945
Dorothy "Dottie" Schroeder was born April 11, 1928, in Sadorus, Illinois, and signed with South Bend at fifteen for fifty-five dollars a week, the youngest of the league's founding players. She played in the league's first game…
Bonnie Baker: The Face of the League
South Bend, 1943–1950
Mary Geraldine Baker — Bonnie — was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, on July 10, 1918 (the Canadian references give 1919; the register's 1918 is printed here and the variant carried in this history's note), and she was recruited out…
Sue Kidd: The Arkansas Teenager
South Bend, 1950–1954
Glenna Sue Kidd was born September 2, 1933, in Choctaw, Arkansas, and was pitching for the Clinton High School boys' team at fifteen when the Springfield Sallies' touring side signed her after a Little Rock tryout in June 1949.…
Charlene Pryer: The Fastest Blue Sox
South Bend, 1950–1952
Charlene Barbara Pryer — later Mayer — was born September 24, 1921, stood five feet one and weighed 105 pounds, and was, at her peak, the most disruptive offensive player in the league. She came to South Bend in 1950 after…
The Supporting Cast
1943–1954
A twelve-year club is more than its stars, and the record keeps some of the others at nearly the same depth. Shirley Stovroff, Faut's battery mate in the title years, hit .500 across the last three games of the 1951 final and…
The Twelve Rosters
1943–1954
The players, season by season, as the registers give them. The lists below are compiled from the two standard statistical registers — StatsCrew's season roster pages and the Baseball-Reference Register, both built on the Chadwick…
What Survived: The Museum, the Marker, the Memory
1955–2021
The league was forgotten for a generation and then, deliberately, un-forgotten, and South Bend sits at the center of the recovery. The city's History Museum is the league's national repository: it holds the official archives and…
The Film's Shadow, Stated Exactly
1992 and after
Most Americans who know the Blue Sox exist know them through a film that is not about them. A League of Their Own (1992) tells a fictional story of the Rockford Peaches: its players are invented, and the league's historians are…