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 walked out in 1952 with the rest. Lil Faralla, a Californian who came in 1948, went 19–9 with two no-hitters in 1949, spent 1950 on loan to Kalamazoo, returned to go 15–4 in 1951 and started the championship decider that September, leaving it for Faut with the bases loaded in the third. Betty Wagoner, from Missouri, played seven South Bend seasons; her shoestring catch saved the 1951 perfect game, she hit .600 in the last three games of that final and 4-for-4 in its decider, and she closed the club's history with its best batting season of the end years, .320 in 1954.

Janet Rumsey of Moores Hill, Indiana — the register's birthplace, a Dearborn County town — was a rookie reliever on the 1951 champions, won the fourth game of the 1952 final with a complete game, 2–1 in ten innings, and became the staff ace of 1954, the league's pitching champion by earned run average with a no-hitter and an All-Star Game start. Georgette Vincent, later Mooney, won 13 games in 1951, won the 1951 final's fourth game, and played second base through the 1952 playoffs because the roster had twelve names on it. Gertie Dunn, the slick-fielding recruit shortstop of 1951, was still there in 1954, hitting .299 with six home runs. The dutiful dozen are named in full in the walkout entry — Dunn, Lou Arnold, Wagoner, Mooney, Mary Froning, Jo Lenard, Baumgartner, Joyce Westerman, Kidd, Marge Wenzell, Rumsey and Faut — and Westerman's name runs through the 1952 series like a thread: the semifinal's winning run, the walk-off's run in the replayed game, the tenth-inning single that won the fourth game of the final.

South Bend's own daughters played for the club in three of its years: Dorothea Downs in 1945, Janet Sears from 1950 to 1952, and Mary Lou Hamilton in 1953 — and Indiana supplied the club steadily, from Elaine Roth of Michigan City (1950) and Dorothy Christ of LaPorte and Nancy Rockwell of Elkhart (1948) to Jaynie Krick of Auburn (1948–49), Mary Baumgartner of Fort Wayne (1950–54), and, in 1953, Shirley Salisbury of Goshen and Ann Hosted of Avilla. The widest reach on any South Bend roster was 1948's, which carried Luisa Gallego of Havana, Cuba. Two future Rockford greats began as Blue Sox, as the charter-seasons entry records — Lois Florreich (1943–44) and Rose Gacioch (1944) — and the league's most famous name of all, Dorothy Kamenshek, never wore the uniform; she is Rockford's, and this history leaves her there.

Sources

1. Jim Sargent, SABR biographies of Faut, Mahon, Kidd and Baker, and SABR Games Project accounts — Stovroff, Faralla, Wagoner, Vincent Mooney, Dunn, Westerman and the dutiful dozen's roles.
2. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, player profiles (Rumsey, Mooney) — Rumsey's 1954 pitching championship and no-hitter; Mooney's two-way 1952.
3. StatsCrew season rosters and Baseball-Reference Register — the hometown and Indiana players (Downs, Sears, Hamilton; Roth, Christ, Rockwell, Krick, Baumgartner, Salisbury, Hosted), Gallego of Havana on the 1948 roster, and the roster years for Florreich and Gacioch.