The Walkout: August 30, 1952

August 29–30, 1952, at Kalamazoo

The 1952 Blue Sox finished second at 64–45 behind Fort Wayne's pennant winners, with Faut having the finest season of her career — 20–2, a 0.93 earned run average, a .909 winning percentage that stands as the league's single-season record, 114 strikeouts, the pitching triple crown shared only in its wins column, where Rose Gacioch's 20–10 tied her — and missing the league's Player of the Year award by a single vote. Six days of August undid the club anyway. On Friday, August 29, at Kalamazoo, the Lassies beat South Bend 1–0 on Gloria Cordes' two-hitter. Late in that game, Winsch called for Charlene Pryer to pinch-run; Pryer, who was sitting on the bench in moccasins, hesitated over putting her shoes on. After the game Winsch called her on the carpet and suspended her. That night, at the hotel, the club's veterans talked it over among themselves, and when the team moved on, six players were gone: Pryer; Jane "Jeep" Stoll, the club's top offensive player; Shirley Stovroff, the regular catcher; Dottie Mueller; Barbara Hoffman; and Lib Mahon, who had been with the club since 1945 and was playing a reserve role in her last season. The team suspended the six. Only Stoll and Mueller ever played another game in the league. Mahon, looking back in 1997, did not defend the method: "I know the way we handled it was wrong," she said. "I joined the walkout because I thought a teammate was treated unfairly."

What was left was twelve players, and the Tribune named them with an epithet that stuck: the "dutiful dozen." They were Faut, Janet Rumsey, Gertie Dunn, Lou Arnold, Betty Wagoner, Georgette "Jetty" Mooney, Mary Froning, Jo Lenard, Mary "Wimp" Baumgartner, Joyce Westerman, Sue Kidd and Marge Wenzell. Three of the pitchers had to play the field to fill the lineup — Kidd in right field, Mooney at second base, Faut at third — and Kidd turned nineteen the day the playoffs began. It was with this team, and in this condition, that South Bend went into the postseason: a first round against Grand Rapids, and, beyond it, Rockford.

Sources

1. Jim Sargent, SABR biographies of Jean Faut and Sue Kidd — the August 29 game, the moccasins and the suspension of Pryer, the hotel meeting, the six who left, Mahon's 1997 statement, the two-way pitching trio, Kidd's nineteenth birthday at the playoffs' start.
2. South Bend Tribune, September 12, 1952 — the "dutiful dozen," named in full.
3. Baseball-Reference Register and the 1952 season accounts — 64–45, second place; Faut's 20–2, 0.93 ERA, .909 winning percentage, 114 strikeouts and triple crown; the one-vote Player of the Year margin.
4. Review of Sargent and Gorman, The South Bend Blue Sox