Merrie’s book
“The Origins & History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League”
All-American Women’s Baseball Classic in Sarasota - November 17 – 19, 2023
https://americangirlsbaseball.org/all-american-womans-baseball-classic/
Past Tournament Video Highlights
BaseballBiz On Deck is at www.baseballbizondeck.com & on iheartradio, Apple & Google podcasts
Twitter: @TheBaseballBiz
Special thanks to XTaKeRuX for the music "Rocking Forward"
Merrie’s book
“The Origins & History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League”
All-American Women’s Baseball Classic in Sarasota - November 17 – 19, 2023
https://americangirlsbaseball.org/all-american-womans-baseball-classic/
Past Tournament Video Highlights
BaseballBiz On Deck is at www.baseballbizondeck.com & on iheartradio, Apple & Google podcasts
Twitter: @TheBaseballBiz
Special thanks to XTaKeRuX for the music "Rocking Forward"
AAGPBL - Merrie Fidler
[00:00:00] Mark Corbett: Welcome to Baseball Biz On Deck. I'm Mark Corbett, your host. And with me today, I have a guest who is, an author, a person who has paid attention to what's going on with women in baseball, and Mary Fidler.
[00:00:17] Mark Corbett: Glad to have you here today. When I look at you and what you've had done with tracking all American girls professional baseball, this isn't something new for you. This is something that's been, you started early on in life, like with, even with a thesis, didn't you? Yeah. I
[00:00:33] Merrie Fidler: Back in 1971, I was working on a master's degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
[00:00:42] Merrie Fidler: And it was at the time one of the few universities that had a sport history master's degree program. And that appealed to me because I was never strong in math. And so the scientific track wasn't all that [00:01:00] appealing. But anyway one of the classes that was offered was women in Sport in America.
[00:01:11] Merrie Fidler: And for that assignment or for that class, one of the assignments was to go through, of course, this was way before computers, was to go through reader's guide to periodic literature and find all the articles we could find about women in sport. So I stayed in Massachusetts that Christmas vacation to do that project because I was working full-time as an intramural sports director at the university.
[00:01:43] Merrie Fidler: Oh, wow. And in the process of doing that, I ran across a 1943 Time Magazine article about Philip Wrigley starting a women's professional softball league. And [00:02:00] I had grown up with a father and two brothers who were avid baseball fans, avid Yankee fans, and also played baseball in the local city team in a little town called Dunmire, California.
[00:02:17] Merrie Fidler: We spent every Sunday afternoon in one little town, ballpark or another. Of course I was rooting for my dad and my brothers, and thinking about one day I was gonna be playing baseball in those parks. As I grew up, I realized that at that time, girls couldn't play baseball, but I was went into softball and I had played softball.
[00:02:47] Merrie Fidler: Inters, scholastically and intercollegiate and in recreation departments until I was almost 40. And I had never heard of this. I [00:03:00] wasn't 40 at that time, but at the time that I was doing this work, I I hadn't ever heard of a professional softball league and I knew about Philip Wrigley because they played the Yankees on occasion and Or the Cubs did.
[00:03:18] Merrie Fidler: So I asked one of my friends who was in the sport history master's degree or PhD degree program, how I could find out more about this league. And he said why don't you write to the league city sports editors and see if there's anyone who remembers anything about the teams. Remember the league had folded in 54 and this was 1971.
[00:03:47] Merrie Fidler: And so I did and bless his heart, Joe Boland, who was sports editor of the South Bend Tribune, south Bend, Indiana Tribune, he had [00:04:00] started out as a scorekeeper for the South Bend Blue Sox, and had worked up to becoming one of their directors. Wow. He wrote me back and he said what you need to do is contact Gene Fout who was probably the top one of the top, if not the top overhand picture in the league.
[00:04:26] Merrie Fidler: And she still lived in South Bend and worked in at the University of Notre Dame. And So I contacted her and asked if I could stop and interview her on the way home from Christmas vacation and or the little bit of Christmas vacation that I got and She, said yes, that I could do that.
[00:04:55] Merrie Fidler: And so I did that. I flew to Chicago and rented a car and [00:05:00] drove to South Bend and got a hotel room and I was planning to be there for a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And Jean Faut was goldmine. Yeah. She talked with me and then on Friday when I got there, and then on Saturday she invited a couple of former players, a former manager, a former chaperone, and a former business manager of the South Bend Blue Socks for me to interview.
[00:05:34] Merrie Fidler: Oh my gosh. And she had a great time talking around a table in her house. And the manager was Chet Grant and he had played football at Notre Dame and he was working in the sports and games collection at the university. And he said why don't you come over to the university? I have some articles I wrote about the league and I have some memorabilia and things.
[00:05:59] Merrie Fidler: And [00:06:00] so the next day I met him over there and We talked about a lot about the team and Gene and various things, and he says what you need really need to do is contact Arthur Meyerhoff. And Arthur Meyerhoff had been Wrigley's advertising agent that helped him start the league. And then in 1945 he bought the league from Wrigley and acted as league commissioner through the 1950 season.
[00:06:33] Merrie Fidler: I. And his expertise, of course, was publicity and promotion, and he was, who really publicized the league nationally and internationally and really helped keep it going in the league cities during those years. So when I got back to Massachusetts I [00:07:00] Contacted him. Chet had given me his contact information and I said could I come and interview you?
[00:07:10] Merrie Fidler: Over Easter vacation the following spring. And he said, sure, I'll be at my my San Diego home. And I did that. I flew to San Francisco. My mom met me and we drove down to Mr. Meyerhoff s home near San Diego. And he was very gracious and we had a good interview. And toward the end of the interview, he said what you really need to do is go to my Chicago office in the Wrigley building and go through my All American League files were, which were stored in the basement of the Wrigley Building, and I wasn't able to do it that summer, but the following [00:08:00] summer I went to Chicago.
[00:08:03] Merrie Fidler: I spent a week of eight hours, days sitting at his desk. Going through his files that his secretaries brought up from the basement of the Wrigley building. That must have been
[00:08:18] Mark Corbett: fascinating to have that history in your hands. It was
[00:08:20] Merrie Fidler: Just incredible. And and and his secretaries would make copies of things that I wanted, or if there were extra copies, they said, sure, fine.
[00:08:32] Merrie Fidler: Take a copy. And then the other thing that Jean Fout had that I was able to get from her on that visit were nine three inch wide binders of league and team board, meeting minutes, newspaper clippings, pictures, oh my gosh. Letters. Just all kinds of stuff. True treasure trove. I looked [00:09:00] at those and I said, Jean, there's no way I can go through these in a weekend.
[00:09:04] Merrie Fidler: Would you let me take them with me? And bless her heart she didn't know me from Adam, but she trusted me to take those with me. It took me with the Meyerhoff files and and those records that Jean had were former president's files the Dr. Daley Harold Daley files. I spent four years going through all of that stuff and cataloging it and putting in topics and finally writing it.
[00:09:42] Merrie Fidler: Part of the problem was I was working full-time. But the one summer I I was able to use a friend's pre-computer. It was called [00:10:00] a electric typewriter. Oh, yeah. Let you make corrections from the keyboard. It had a little correction tape thing, let you make corrections from the T keyboard.
[00:10:11] Merrie Fidler: And I spent the whole summer finishing my thesis. I finished it in the fall of or just before the fall semester of 1976. And my dad had a bad heart attack at that point. And so I left Massachusetts in, oh, actually I was at Pennsylvania at the time. I'd. I've gone to Penn State to work on a doctorate in sport history.
[00:10:46] Merrie Fidler: But I went home and I wound up getting a high school teaching position, teaching English and PE had been my major and and coaching. But every [00:11:00] once in a while, somebody would one of the players would contact me and say, could I get a copy of your thesis? And one day June Peppa, who had played for the Michigan teams.
[00:11:17] Merrie Fidler: She lived in Michigan and she said and her business was printing and she said, could I copies make some copies of your thesis to share with some of the other team members and or other league members? And I said, sure. June got in her head that it would be nice to have. A reunion, a player's reunion.
[00:11:44] Merrie Fidler: And so she developed a newsletter and started getting addresses through people she knew, and then more addresses through people they knew and where they were and what their ad contact information was. [00:12:00] And so that was the beginning of the the first national reunions that the players had.
[00:12:11] Merrie Fidler: And after that reunion, it was held in Chicago in July of 1982. And after that reunion, pockets of players starting having little reunions. There was a group in the Boston area, a group in Midwest, of course a group in the LA area. Some in the Carolinas and the group in in the Midwest was mostly based in Michigan and Indiana and some from Illinois.
[00:12:51] Merrie Fidler: And they learned that one of the gals, one of the non players who had been coming to their reunions [00:13:00] had gone to the Hall of Fame to find out more about the league. And she found that the li, that the Hall of Fame didn't have anything about the all Americans.
[00:13:11] Mark Corbett: Ooh, you. Let me stop for just a minute 'cause I'm trying to figure this in my mind.
[00:13:15] Mark Corbett: 'cause the league was from like the forties to mid fifties. . And then it sounds like basically American history just turned it back on. It had no way it's there and you a person and an athlete yourself and a coach. You, I won't say you fell across it, but I mean it, it wasn't something that I, so what happens then? So then it's, you're talking about now in the 1980s and these people who were playing with a league that. 30, it was 30 years ago. They're just now starting to come together. Yeah. That must have made for some very interesting conversations.
[00:13:52] Merrie Fidler: They, by that time, most of them had raised their families and [00:14:00] retired and they had time on their hands.
[00:14:02] Merrie Fidler: And so anyhow, this group in Michigan, Indiana decided that they wanted to To be recognized. They wanted the league to be recognized for the Baseball Hall of Fame. So they started petitioning the Hall of Fame to include them as part of baseball history. And I won't go into the details, but in the fall of 87, the players incorporated so that they could collect memorabilia to give to the Hall of Fame.
[00:14:38] Merrie Fidler: And in the fall of 1988, November of 1988, the Hall of Fame opened its first Women in Baseball exhibit. And they said that there were so many people that came to it that it was like going to an induction in the summertime. Oh, wow. [00:15:00] They couldn't believe how many people came to it. It was in the meantime, in the fall of 87, 1 of the player's sons, Kelly Kde and his girlfriend Kim decided to do a documentary of the League and they named it a League of Their Own.
[00:15:24] Merrie Fidler: And it was aired on P B Ss TV, and one of Penny Marshall's aids saw it. And I don't know if Penny Marshall was a rabid Yankees fan too. Ooh boo. I'm just kidding. And she came to the opening of the Women in Baseball exhibit at the Hall of Fame, wearing a baseball hat and dark glasses and it [00:16:00] was there.
[00:16:01] Merrie Fidler: Talking to players and listening and that sort of thing that she decided she wanted to do a movie about the league and Wow. So she was able to get in a position to direct a League of their own, which hit theaters in the July of 1992. And It became one of the best baseball movies in history and is the highest grossing baseball movie in history.
[00:16:40] Merrie Fidler: And it there were some little pockets of women in baseball, playing baseball in those Midwest towns and some in the northeast. But it, they weren't real organized. But after [00:17:00] the movie came out, more girls decided they wanted to play baseball. And and then when title IX passed and the first little league girl to To sue little league to let girls play baseball.
[00:17:22] Merrie Fidler: Those things all came together. Yeah. And the groups of women, girls and women who were playing baseball in the country expanded. San Francisco had a group for a while. LA has a group, I think there's a group in Florida. There's a group in Boston and Detroit area. And Last November, one of the former players, her name is Sue Zipay, who lives in Sarasota.
[00:17:58] Merrie Fidler: She's also a board[00:18:00] a players association board member. She has made it her objective to try to start a new professional league of their own. She organized a women's classic baseball tournament. She had four teams. She named them after the first four teams in the All American League. I love it.
[00:18:27] Merrie Fidler: And their jerseys were the same colors as the colors of the first four teams. Teams. And I was there and I was very impressed with the caliber of play. Wow. There's gonna be another tournament at the Orle Stadium in Sarasota this November 17th through 19th with the four teams.
[00:18:55] Merrie Fidler: And so anybody who lives in that area put those dates [00:19:00] on your calendar and go see those gals play. I'll
[00:19:03] Mark Corbett: make sure I put that in the notes of the podcast as well. Thank you for
[00:19:06] Merrie Fidler: that. Yeah. And I. One of my personal things is because it was what Wrigley and Meyerhoff did is they shortened the base paths and the pitching distance for the girls the first season.
[00:19:30] Merrie Fidler: But they were longer than softball. And at that time, softball only had 10 players and the league only had nine players and. Wrigley felt that baseball was a better spectator sport than softball. And he had the the winning regional men's and women's softball teams play in his park in Chicago.
[00:19:57] Merrie Fidler: And also at that time, he had a park in [00:20:00] la so he, he knew that a women's softball was Was well skilled, highly skilled. And in the fall of 1942 the war department contacted all of the major league owners and told them not to plan to have baseball in 1943 because there was going to be a big manpower push and that they felt that the.
[00:20:34] Merrie Fidler: The the population of the country would not look kindly on guys being able to stay home to play baseball when their sons and daughters were going off to the war. And so that's when Wrigley decided to organize the girls' baseball, or actually called it softball to begin with, [00:21:00] but by Midseason.
[00:21:01] Merrie Fidler: He renamed it all American Girls Baseball League because the rules that he started with were baseball rules. And the only differences between the girls game and regulation baseball at that time was that the baseline were shorter. Pitching distance was shorter, and they used the large softball rather than the baseball.
[00:21:28] Merrie Fidler: Because that's what his talent pool was familiar with and baseball rules don't stipulate how the ball has to be delivered. So they stayed with the underhand pitch. Except that every year they lengthened the base paths a little bit and the pitching distance a little bit till by 1948 they decided to go to overhand pitching.
[00:21:54] Merrie Fidler: Ah, To [00:22:00] be better with the distance of the base pass and the pitching distance 'cause the underhand pitchers weren't doing very well. Pitching at 55 feet or 52 feet probably in 1948.
[00:22:17] Mark Corbett: Yeah. I look at that and I've tried to do transposition into major league baseball, and when you were mentioning the uniforms earlier, I cannot imagine some of these people who are stealing bases and sliding in the base and having their legs exposed.
[00:22:32] Mark Corbett: And good lord. The scrapes, the bruises I. Yeah those gals were tough, I'll tell you. And they did. I have pictures of just like floor burns on their thighs from Oh, wow. From sliding into base and.
[00:22:54] Mark Corbett: And there were there, there was tenacity and toughness. Oh yeah. From some of the videos I've seen [00:23:00] yeah, there's collisions sometimes.
[00:23:02] Mark Corbett: Yeah. Yeah. You don't get to own that home plate, Mrs. Catcher there's somebody coming in and bam. I wanted to talk to you two briefly 'cause you mentioned the South Bend Blue Sox and I occasionally get to work down at the Tampa Baseball Museum, and I guess the whole thing. There was one part featured about Sushi Worth, who's actually from the Ibor area, and that kind of stimulated my mind, alter to this because I hadn't thought about this since that movie came out.
[00:23:32] Mark Corbett: And I certainly hadn't thought about it before. But now with conversation with you and with with Ms. Is it Sue's doing in Sarasota those sort of things, I think bring it back to life for a lot of people. Can you tell me a little bit about. Do you know much about Shu shoe?
[00:23:52] Merrie Fidler: One thing that, and this was Wrigley's pet peeve, [00:24:00] was that major League baseball didn't do very much, if anything at all to make competition equitable among the teams.
[00:24:16] Merrie Fidler: And so when he organized the All American League, He stipulated that the player contracts were made with the league, not with the individual team directors. Okay. So every spring they had a mutual spring training. All teams would go to one site, the managers and the league officers would run the gals through drills.
[00:24:48] Merrie Fidler: And this was especially true the first season, and they appointed players to teams based on their skill to try to [00:25:00] equalize the competitive skill of each team so that no team would be way down in the cellar at the end of the season or way up at the top at the end of the season,
[00:25:11] Mark Corbett: m l B needs to take a page from that side.
[00:25:13] Merrie Fidler: Yeah. And then as time went on, of course, the teams were allowed to keep a nucleus of players and as rookies came in and all they during the spring training, they would evaluate them and assign them to to teams according to skill level. Again, trying to keep the skill level as close as possible so that all teams would be competitive throughout the season.
[00:25:40] Merrie Fidler: It was really good in theory. And it worked a little bit, but it didn't account for injuries, illnesses, players having to leave because of family problems, that sort of thing. But they also had a system where they could loan a team [00:26:00] could loan a player to another team for a short period of time like if that player was sitting on the bench.
[00:26:09] Merrie Fidler: Could help out a team that needed a first baseman. They'd go and play first baseman for the other team until the original first baseman was able to come back, if at all. And if not, then they stayed with that team for the rest of the season. Wow. So it was interesting. But or in one of the, and getting back to your question, one of the spring trainings.
[00:26:36] Merrie Fidler: Was held in Havana, Cuba, and that was 1947. And that was the year that the Dodgers held spring training in 19 in Cuba because of Jackie Robinson. They didn't want to take him to the south where they knew he be discriminated against. And so they went to spring [00:27:00] training in Cuba. And I don't know if you know this, but Branch Ricky was one of the three trustees to start the league.
[00:27:10] Merrie Fidler: It was Wrigley, Ricky and Wrigley's lawyer. I can't think of his name at the moment, but those three were the first trustees of the league and they ran the league on a nonprofit basis because of the war. But anyway, this spring training in Cuba it was organ organized, started to be organized.
[00:27:39] Merrie Fidler: In the fall, winter of 1946 because there was a a gentleman in Cuba who organized a group of girls baseball players. They played in the streets with the boys, just like most of the all-American players grew up [00:28:00] doing right. And And they had uniforms made that were very similar to the All American uniforms, except that instead of a being a one piece dress uniform, it was a shirt and a short skirt.
[00:28:17] Merrie Fidler: And anyway, when the all Americans went there they played at grand Stadium in Havana. And drew large crowds in the thousands 15, 16,000 Wow. Fans. The the Hawaii, the Cuban men were intrigued with women baseball players in short skirts. And not only that, but they were good players, right?
[00:28:52] Merrie Fidler: Good baseball players. They put on a good show. From that event[00:29:00] in 1948, there were three or four Cuban players that came to the US to play with the All American teams. And Shu being of Spanish descent and speaking Spanish could Could communicate with them or help them communicate with the managers and that sort of thing.
[00:29:34] Merrie Fidler: But Shu wasn't Cuban, but she was a link to the Cubans and she was a very good player. I believe she was picked as an all star, either her rookie year or her sophomore year.
[00:29:52] Mark Corbett: Wow. I saw she played shortstop and you don't get that position unless you're able to Yeah. Be a good athlete and handle [00:30:00] the game.
[00:30:00] Mark Corbett: Yeah.
[00:30:01] Merrie Fidler: And then what the teams would do after spring training, they'd pair up, have two teams on a bus, and they'd drive back to their home cities and stop and play exhibition games along the way. And that was one way of promoting the league, advertising it. Also they used those exhibition games as a means to recruit new players.
[00:30:30] Merrie Fidler: The publicity guy would go ahead of the teams and put in the newspapers that the games were gonna be played and anybody interested in trying out come on such and such a date for a couple of hours. And they picked up some good players that way. Oh, wow.
[00:30:52] Mark Corbett: Yeah. Do you have a favorite story of the league that you'd like to share with us?
[00:30:59] Merrie Fidler: [00:31:00] Oh, gosh.
[00:31:03] Merrie Fidler: I, I think I, one of the team Bat Girls and she was Bat Girl for South Bend. Her name was Ruth Davis, and she just passed away last year. But she she served as Bat Girl for the Blue Socks in 1953 and 1954, and she said that she had earned a A contract to play during the 55 season.
[00:31:42] Merrie Fidler: And of course that never transpired. And she said she cried almost all summer because she wasn't able to realize her dream to play professional baseball. But one of the things that she said about the league [00:32:00] when I interviewed her was she said I grew up in a. In a environment where I didn't know that I couldn't do anything because I was watching women play baseball and women weren't supposed to play baseball.
[00:32:22] Merrie Fidler: And she said I watched them become lawyers and doctors and professionals. And I realized that I could do anything. I wanted to do, she said not only were they the best skilled base women baseball players of the time, they were among the best people that this country had to offer. And as I've gotten to know the players I have to concur with her she said you can't say [00:33:00] that.
[00:33:00] Merrie Fidler: Across the board because there were some players that were mischievous and didn't follow the rules and that sort of thing. But she said statistically she'd say that was true of the most of the players in the league. And there like Gene Fout. Giving me those binders.
[00:33:29] Merrie Fidler: Yeah she didn't have to do that. Dolly White who played for Kenosha in Fort Wayne She was president of the league. I should back up a little bit. Af I was able to go to the opening of the Women in Baseball display at the Hall of Fame in 88. In fact, I took time without pay to go to that.[00:34:00]
[00:34:00] Merrie Fidler: But after that, all of the reunions were held. In the fall when hotel rates were cheaper and the players were all retired. So it was good for them and, but I was teaching and coaching and couldn't go to the annual reunions that they started having. But when I retired in 2003, my, the first thing on my bucket list was to go to the next reunion, which that year was held in Syracuse, New York.
[00:34:37] Merrie Fidler: And Dolly White was the president of the Players Association at that time, and she was from Mobile, Alabama. And That's a story in itself. But anyway, she had occasion to read my thesis and [00:35:00] apparently most of the members of the board at that time had read or had seen it and and so she encouraged me to try to get it published.
[00:35:13] Merrie Fidler: And that was the furthest thing from my mind. But one of the activities was to that reunion was to go to the Hall of Fame and revisit the women in baseball exhibit and While we were there, I talked to Tim Wiles, who at that time was research librarian at the Hall of Fame and asked him if I was gonna submit my thesis to be published.
[00:35:43] Merrie Fidler: First of all I gave the Hall of Fame a copy of my thesis, and then I asked him if if I were to publish, get, try to get it published, who would I send it to? And he gave me a couple of suggestions. And [00:36:00] so I. Checked them out. And McFarland publishers at that time was doing a lot of women's history and they've always done a lot of sport history.
[00:36:10] Merrie Fidler: That sounds like a good match. And they agreed to, to publish it with some revisions, which I was happy to do. And but Can you tell us again
[00:36:27] Mark Corbett: that the title
[00:36:28] Merrie Fidler: of your book, Mary, the title of my book is The Origins and History of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.
[00:36:37] Merrie Fidler: Yeah. And I know you, and sometimes you can get it on Amazon. If you look for it and can't find it you can write to McFarland or call McFarland. If they don't have any in stock, they can print you up a copy within a week. Cool. Cool. And they're happy to do that. I, in fact, I order some from them every once in a while.[00:37:00]
[00:37:01] Mark Corbett: Send me that contact info and I'll put that on the notes as well. Okay. One thing I wanna make sure too, I'll let you know, I know I was looking earlier today, it is available on Amazon and paperback and Kindle for those of us who have no longer have space on the shelves Yeah. For our books.
[00:37:17] Mark Corbett: So kudos to you on that part too. I'm sorry, go ahead.
[00:37:21] Merrie Fidler: Oh, I was just gonna say it's got lots of good pictures in it too.
[00:37:27] Mark Corbett: That's good. 'cause it's, my eyes get weaker. I need the photos as much as I do everything else. Yeah. Oh gosh. So tell me again what's coming up again in, in Sarasota?
[00:37:39] Merrie Fidler: Sarasota is the second Women's Baseball Classic Tournament.
[00:37:46] Merrie Fidler: I'm, it'll feature the The Kenosha Comets, the Racine Bells the South Bend Blue Sox and the Rockford Peaches. [00:38:00] Oh,
[00:38:00] Mark Corbett: man, I love it. I absolutely love it. We gotta talk that up too at the museum, the Tampa Baseball Museum. And I'll talk to Susan Pay, I think she's, you said she's the lady who's Yes.
[00:38:11] Mark Corbett: Facilitating all this. Yes. Yeah. That's great. Man. Oh man. Is there a I just wanna say, I guess one last thing is this team, this league, I think it would've fallen into anonymity if it wasn't for some of the things that you did. If Penny Marshall hadn't seen some of what was going on.
[00:38:33] Mark Corbett: Yeah. And then in it to, but it sounds, even if none of that had happened, the one thing that came from all of this was women who understood. They could do what they wanted, that it wasn't. There weren't the restrictions or there shouldn't be restrictions. And to me that is a strong tale in and of itself.
[00:38:52] Mark Corbett: Yeah.
[00:38:53] Merrie Fidler: That's a legacy of the war years because women [00:39:00] were thrust into working positions that had historically been reserved for men and they did a fine job and yes, indeed. They realized just like in baseball, they did a fine job. They realized that they could do well at whatever they.
[00:39:23] Merrie Fidler: Were assigned to do or wanted to do, and even though at the end of the war they were encouraged to go back home to let them in, have their jobs back to go home and raise the kids and that sort of thing, most of them appreciated. Getting paid for the work they were doing right. And wanted to continue and appreciated the work that was an important thing for them.
[00:39:59] Merrie Fidler: [00:40:00] And and especially the gals who played baseball, they, most of them, when the league folded they not, maybe not most, but a fairly large number of them pursued professional golf, professional bowling, professional tennis, and did well, like Gene Fout became a professional, a bowler and and did very well in, in that.
[00:40:31] Mark Corbett: Again, that's encouraging and again, I can't thank you enough, Mary, for joining us here today on Baseball Biz On Deck. Appreciate you sharing the tale you know of your own journey as and bringing to light a sport. Many have had forgotten and. Pro brought to life for all of us.
[00:40:52] Mark Corbett: So with all that's going on and seeing what Su Susan pays doing in Sarasota, I'm excited about this. I'm, I gotta tell you, a couple [00:41:00] years ago I got reengaged to watching softball with watching Oklahoma F S U. University of South Florida, watching those teams and to me watching the athleticism, the tenacity that these women were putting out there on the field. And I found that fascinating because I gotta tell you, there's, it's, it seems to be this way a lot of times in college and professional sports. I see grit, I see determination more there than I will sometimes at a professional level where I see with the men.
[00:41:31] Mark Corbett: So it's engaging. So thank you so much, Mary, for sharing your story today. Oh, my pleasure. Alrighty. Okay. That's Mary Fidler. I'm gonna get this right, do an extra list better. So apologize for that in front. Anyway, but I do wanna thank you. This has been great. You've given some real insight to me and others.
[00:41:51] Mark Corbett: So good. I will reach out. I have reached out to Sue by email and I'll do more so later on that there'll probably a week before I have this posted. [00:42:00] So anyway, this has been fantastic and I can't thank you enough.
[00:42:04] Merrie Fidler: Oh my pleasure. Always enjoy sharing about the All American League. Yeah. All right. And I became, I just one little tidbit.
[00:42:12] Merrie Fidler: I became secretary of the Players Association in 2007 and I'm still working in that capacity. Okay, so I keep up on it.
[00:42:23] Mark Corbett: Yeah. That's great. See, and it's, to me, that's fascinating in itself that there still is an organization in some capacity. But wow. Continue the good work. Oh, thank you.
[00:42:37] Mark Corbett: All right, Mary. You take care and I'll talk with you soon. All right.
[00:42:40] Merrie Fidler: Bye-bye. Bye.
Show Notes
Merrie’s book
“The Origins & History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League”
All-American Women’s Baseball Classic in Sarasota - November 17 – 19, 2023
https://americangirlsbaseball.org/all-american-womans-baseball-classic/
Past Tournament Video Highlights
BaseballBiz On Deck is at www.baseballbizondeck.com & on iheartradio, Apple & Google podcasts
Twitter: @TheBaseballBiz
Special thanks to XTaKeRuX for the music "Rocking Forward"