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 second and Joyce Westerman scoring the winner in the eighth on catcher Inez Voyce's throwing error, and Kidd winning the second game 6–1 on six hits, with Faut, playing third base, driving in two runs and pitching a scoreless ninth. Rockford, in the other semifinal, beat Fort Wayne two games to one. So the final was South Bend and Rockford for the second straight year — and it turned on a fence.

Rockford's Beyer Stadium had had its right-field fence moved in to accommodate high-school football. Winsch, before the series, measured it: the fence stood 21½ feet short of the 210-foot minimum the league's rules required (Sargent's Faut biography rounds the same measurement as a 190-foot fence, twenty feet short; both versions are in this history's note). In the first game, on Saturday, September 6, at Rockford, Eleanor Callow hit a two-run home run over that short fence, Jackie Kelley won, and Rockford took the opener — 7–2 by the Rockford Morning Star's headline, 7–3 in Sargent's account, Faut giving up thirteen hits either way. Before the second game, Winsch protested the fence to the plate umpire, asking for a ground rule; Rockford's manager, Bill Allington, refused it, and countered with a protest of his own — South Bend, at twelve players, was below the league's fifteen-to-seventeen-player roster rule. The game was played, and Ruth Richard's fifth-inning solo home run barely cleared the shortened fence and stood as the winner, Rockford 3–2, Gacioch edging Rumsey before about 2,000 people. On Monday the clubs were in South Bend and the league held an emergency meeting: business manager Earl McCammon upheld South Bend's protest and erased Rockford's win in the second game. The newspapers differ on whether the ruling came before that night's first pitch or during the early innings; the effect is not in doubt. The game played at Playland that night became the new Game Two, and it ran twelve innings: Kidd started and was perfect through four, allowing three runs, two earned, in eight innings; Faut relieved in the ninth and gave up the tying runs; and in the twelfth Kidd, who had moved to right field, singled home Westerman to win it 5–4.

Rockford won the third game at Playland on Tuesday, 5–4, Kelley going the route while Jetty Mooney lost, two errors by Baumgartner producing three runs and Wagoner's attempt to score the tying run from first on a double cut down at the plate, Callow to Harrell Doyle to Richard. On Wednesday, South Bend won 2–1 in ten innings: Rumsey pitched a complete game and allowed one unearned run, Baumgartner's squeeze bunt tied it in the seventh with Dunn scoring, and Westerman's two-out single in the tenth won it. The series stood two games each, and the deciding game could not be played at Beyer Stadium, which football had taken over. Rockford chose Read Park, a men's softball ground in Freeport, Illinois, with room for 2,000; 2,700 came. On Thursday, September 11, with South Bend officially the home team, Faut pitched a complete game, allowed eight hits, and beat Rockford 6–3 — and hit two triples herself, the first driving in two runs in the second inning, the second, in the sixth, putting her in position to score on Dunn's groundout. Late in the game, exhausted, she sat down on third base rather than try for home; from the Rockford dugout, Gacioch said aloud, "My God, that girl is tired!" — Faut's own recollection, preserved by her biographer. Joan Berger made the final out. McCammon, the man whose ruling had restarted the series, presented the trophy and was booed. For the second straight year South Bend had beaten Rockford for the championship after trailing two games to none — in 1952 counting the erased game, it had trailed in a sense three times. The league record, as this history prints it, is South Bend over Rockford, three games to two.

Sources

1. SABR Games Project, game account of the 1952 final (Belleville), drawn from the South Bend Tribune and the Rockford papers — the fence measurement of 21½ feet, the dual protests, McCammon's ruling, and the game-by-game series; its footnote flags the differing accounts of the ruling's timing.
2. Jim Sargent, SABR biographies of Jean Faut, Lib Mahon and Sue Kidd — the semifinal against Grand Rapids, the fence rounded as 190 feet and twenty feet short, the erased game's 3–2 score (Sargent's account alone), Faut's recollection of the Freeport game.
3. Baseball-Reference Register, 1952 playoff table — the other semifinal, Rockford over Fort Wayne 2–1, and the final, South Bend over Rockford 3–2.