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 "Sugar" Koehn — and sent Dottie Schroeder the other way, the first move in the shortstop's twelve-season tour of the league. The 1945 club finished fifth of six at 49–60. The season's national moment was publicity, not standings: Life magazine's 1945 photo essay on the league opened with Bonnie Baker's picture in mask and chest protector, South Bend's catcher standing for the whole experiment. In 1946 the club changed managers and grounds at once. Chet Grant — the Notre Dame man, D. C. "Chet" Grant, whose papers on the club are kept at his university — took over, the team moved across town to Playland Park, and the Blue Sox won 70 games against 42 losses, third in an eight-team league. Mahon drove in 72 runs, a league-leading total and a league record at the time, stole 114 bases in 116 attempts, and led the league in total bases advanced; Baker hit .286 and led the league with 94 stolen bases. The first playoff appearance in club history ended in the semifinal against Racine, three games to one; the opener ran seventeen innings before Racine won it 3–2, Anna May Hutchison beating a young South Bend pitcher who had arrived that season as a third baseman — Jean Faut.

Faut's conversion is the hinge of the club's history, and it belongs to 1946. She had been scouted out of Pennsylvania, signed after the league's spring tryout at Pascagoula, Mississippi, and allocated to South Bend as an infielder at sixty-five dollars a week. When the league approved sidearm pitching late that season, Grant put her in the circle; she started nine games and went 8–3 with a 1.33 earned run average. In 1947, at eighty-five dollars a week, she was a pitcher outright: 19–13 with a 1.15 earned run average over 298 innings. On July 31, 1947, at Racine, she pitched all twenty-two innings of a 4–3 South Bend win, allowing sixteen hits and striking out eleven before 1,456 people. Two weeks later the club held the first Jean Faut Night at Playland — she was given a cedar chest and answered with a two-hitter to beat Kenosha 7–0. The 1947 club finished fourth at 57–54 and lost its first-round playoff series to Grand Rapids, three games to two. The softball game was nearly gone by then — 1947 was the last season of sidearm pitching — and South Bend had found, in Faut, the player the new game would reward most.

Sources

1. Jim Sargent, SABR biographies of Lib Mahon and Jean Faut — the 1945 Kenosha trade (Mahon, Pirok, Koehn; Schroeder to Kenosha); Mahon's 1946 season (72 RBIs, 114 steals in 116 attempts, 326 total bases); Faut's signing, conversion by Grant, 1946 and 1947 lines, the 22-inning game of July 31, 1947, and the first Jean Faut Night.
2. StatsCrew and Baseball-Reference Register, league records — 1945 (49–60, fifth), 1946 (70–42, third), 1947 (57–54, fourth) season lines; Baker's .286 and league-leading 94 stolen bases, 1946.
3. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and Baseball-Reference Register, playoff records — 1946 semifinal, Racine over South Bend 3–1, with the league's contemporary account of the seventeen-inning opener; 1947 first round, Grand Rapids over South Bend 3–2.
4. Jim Sargent, SABR biography of Bonnie Baker — the 1945 Life photo essay opening on her image.