Girls of Summer: In Their Own League by Lois Browne

the second baseman gave me the old phantom tag. She missed me by a foot. Lou was out of position and he called me out. I was lying flat on the ground, and I could see him make the call. I jumped up, but when I landed on my feet he was behind me, still bent over from making the call. I swung around, and my fist hit him square in the chin and knocked him flat. So he’s lying there looking up at me, and he says, ‘Pepper, I guess you know I gotta throw you out.’ And I said, ‘Yeah but dammit, I was safe. She missed me.’”
    A short while later, Bert Niehoff, then managing the South Bend Blue Sox, was warned by other managers about the Milwaukee Chicks, whom Max Carey had inspired to heights of aggressiveness . They were trying to make up for a bad first half of the season by pushing for the League pennant in the second half. These warnings were born out almost immediately in the course of a double-header.
    In the seventh inning of the first game, Gabby Ziegler, the Chick’s captain, was caught between first and second base . Taking a run at second, she flattened lanky Dorothy Schroeder, the Blue Sox shortstop. Schroeder’s teammate Lee Surkowski retaliated by flooring Ziegler. Both teams, accompanied by their managers, swarmed from their respective dugouts as umpires struggled to restore order. During the second game, tensions escalated. Two Blue Sox players took turns mowing down the Milwaukee catcher. The first collision knocked her out cold.
    The next night, it was Pat Keagle and Bonnie Baker who tangled . Baker had caught a throw from the outfield and tagged Keagle out at the plate before she could retreat to third.
    “Keagle very plainly gave Baker the elbow after she was called out,” a sportswriter reported the next day, “the same elbow first knocking the ball out of Baker’s hands and then winding up on Baker’s chin.”
    The umpire sided with Baker, but that wasn’t good enough . Baker went after Keagle, while Max Carey roared his head off from the sidelines and Niehoff demanded loudly that Keagle be thrown out of the game. Players could always argue that such encounters were accidents. But, as Baker recalls, “You got to know when something was a real mistake.”
    This incident was Baker’s second major brawl inside a month . A few weeks earlier, after Niehoff had been ejected from a game between the Blue Sox and the Kenosha Comets, Baker argued a call with an umpire who threatened to throw her out as well.
    At the end of the evening, spectators surrounded the umpires as they tried to get off the field, someone threw a punch, and the police had to call on the services of a group of navy officers who happened to be attending the game to disperse the crowd and get the officials into their dressing room without serious injury.
    Obviously, managers had their crosses to bear – especially those who stayed in touch with their players year-round. Johnny Gottselig spent his winters on hockey skates with the Chicago Blackhawks. The Racine Belles, provided with free tickets, occasionally formed a cheering section.
    During one closely fought contest, Gottselig eluded the opposition defenseman and set up a clear shot at the net . Just then, the very audible voice of Clara Schillace was heard above the crowd noise, yelling, “Bunt, Johnny, bunt!”
     
    The first example of the League’s willingness to blame managers for bad results came about halfway through the 1944 season.
    The team that started the ball rolling was the Rockford Peaches, who were losing steadily under Jack Kloza . The scene was Rockford’s home stadium, in early July. It was Sunday afternoon and time for a double-header. The bleachers were filled with happy families; hot dog vendors plied their greasy wares.
    The Peaches were playing the Kenosha Comets. If the Comets won both games, they would finish the first half of the season atop of the standings . Rockford, on the other hand, would finish fifth in a field of six no matter what the