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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. She worked her way through the league's lower stops — Muskegon, Peoria, Kalamazoo in one account of the chain — and reached South Bend on August 1, 1950. She was part of the young pitching staff behind Faut and Faralla on the 1951 champions (briefly loaned to Battle Creek that season), and her own years as a front-line pitcher were the three that followed: 11–7 in 1951 in total, 13–7 with a 2.00 earned run average in 1952, 13–15 with a 2.37 earned run average and a team-high 258 innings in the bare 1953 season, and nine wins in 1954. Her career line was 47–45 with a 2.49 earned run average. The games that made her a South Bend name are in the series entries: the 6–1 win over Grand Rapids that finished the 1952 semifinal, with Faut at third base behind her; the eight strong innings and the twelfth-inning walk-off single — as a right fielder by then, because the dutiful dozen had no bench — in the replayed second game of the 1952 final; and the doubleheader she swept alone against Grand Rapids on July 4, 1953, before more than 5,000 people at Playland. She taught and coached for twenty-five years in Logansport, Indiana, after baseball. Filmgoers have seen her without knowing it: she had a bit part in the 1992 film. She died in Choctaw on May 4, 2017.
Sources
- Jim Sargent, SABR biography of Sue Kidd — the Clinton boys' team, the Sallies signing, the 1950 route and August 1 arrival, the season lines, the 1952 playoff games, the 1953 doubleheader, the Logansport teaching career.
- Encyclopedia of Arkansas — Kidd's life and career, including the bit part in the 1992 film.
- All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, player profile of Sue Kidd — the career line (47–45, 2.49 ERA) and the 1954 mark as 9–5, against 9–6 in one Arkansas account.