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 standings. The first is that Jean Faut, at twenty-five, had her fullest year in the circle: 21–9 with a 1.12 earned run average, leading the league in earned run average, complete games with 29, innings with 290 and batters faced. Dottie Mueller, in her first South Bend season, won eighteen games behind her. The second is a departure. On June 6, 1950, Bonnie Baker — the club's catcher since the first game in 1943, its public face, the player Life had put on the league's cover story — was traded to the Muskegon Lassies to become player-manager, the only woman to manage a league team full-time. She took over a 4–11 club; the franchise moved to Kalamazoo within weeks; and the league, having allowed it once, passed a rule banning female managers, so that it could never happen again. The third is an arrival pattern that built the championship clubs: in 1950 the Blue Sox added, among others, pitcher Sue Kidd, who reached South Bend on August 1 by way of Muskegon and Peoria after signing out of the Springfield Sallies' touring team; outfielder Charlene Pryer, who came from Muskegon by way of Kalamazoo; catcher Mary Baumgartner of Fort Wayne; and South Bend's own Janet Sears. The veterans were going and the title teams were coming, in the same summer.

Sources

1. StatsCrew franchise record and Baseball-Reference Register — the 1950 line, 55–55, fifth of eight (settling a figure earlier carried as open).
2. Jim Sargent, SABR biography of Jean Faut — the 1950 pitching line: 21–9, 1.12 ERA, league leads in ERA, complete games (29), innings (290) and batters faced.
3. Baseball-Reference Register, 1950 South Bend pitching list — Dottie Mueller, 18–9, 2.48 ERA, 221 innings.
4. Jim Sargent, SABR biography of Bonnie Baker — the June 6, 1950 trade to Muskegon, the player-manager appointment, and the league's subsequent rule against female managers.
5. Jim Sargent, SABR biography of Sue Kidd, and the Encyclopedia of Arkansas — Kidd's 1950 route to South Bend, arriving August 1.
6. StatsCrew, 1950 South Bend roster — the season's arrivals, including Pryer, Baumgartner and Sears.