This woman who played professional baseball made lifetime of memories

WHITE LAKE — As a woman who played professional baseball, Mary Moore is in rare company.

The 90-year-old is one of fewer than 50 women still alive to tell of their playing time in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which was launched 80 years ago at the height of World War II.

"When I was in the league, I was just happy to be good enough to play, and travel and get paid. I was not thinking about what people would think in the future," Moore said. "That was the best time. Now we sit back and think, ‘We’re so lucky, so blessed to have been able to do that,’ when that wasn't what girls back then were supposed to do."

Moore will share her story, which had a spectacular start, a devastating twist and a comeback — and, ultimately, made for a lifetime of memories, during a presentation at 6:30 p.m. June 8 at the Milford Public Library, 330 Family Drive.

AAGPBL Players association board member Carol Sheldon accompanies Moore on most of her speaking engagements and said she is one of the association's "go-to girls."

"Mary is the only one left out of 65 players that came from Michigan," Sheldon said. "Countrywide, there are only about 47 or 48 players left who can speak about their experience.

"Besides keeping alive the history of their league, they remind us that women have played baseball professionally, that it's OK to be a female athlete and celebrate that you have an athletic ability," she added. "These women not only opened the doors of athletics, they opened the doors of corporations. That generation put things in motion and then they packed their ball gloves and their memories and put them in the attic."

In Moore's home, above her sofa, there is a canvas print of Moore in her skirted uniform, tagging out an opponent at second base in 1950. It was her first year as a member of the Springfield Sallies, a traveling exhibition team. Above the print is a sign that reads, "No Crying in Baseball," a Tom Hanks line from the movie, "A League of Their Own."

Moore lost some of her memorabilia about 20 years ago in a fire, but she still has binders filled with newspaper clippings with headlines about "girl baseballers" and "beauties," as well as cards and letters. She also has plenty of photos of herself, teammates, and famous athletes and actors she met after her baseball career ended.

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Moore, born in Detroit, grew up playing baseball with boys in Lincoln Park, even using a sickle and scythe to cut weeds down in the fields to make way for a baseball diamond. Her older brother didn't play, but he had a paper route and because she helped with it and made money, she purchased bats and balls. If the neighborhood boys wanted to play baseball, they had to get Moore, who didn't miss a chance to play outside.

It helped, too, that Detroit Tiger Eddie Lake lived three blocks away and on his days off would hit balls to the kids out in the field. Moore credits him with teaching her how to judge a high fly ball and to not run in too far.

Lake, she recalled, even took them to Tiger Stadium a few times in the late 1940s, where the kids got autographs from players, including Hank Greenberg and Hal Newhouser.

As a child, Moore was unaware of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which Major League Baseball owners began in 1943 to help keep the sport in the public eye while most able-bodied men were fighting World War II.

Even the idea of being on an organized team was foreign to Moore, who said there were no sports teams for girls in high school at the time. Instead, girls were allowed to take one hour of gym their senior year, the extent of sports activities they were provided.

Moore learned about the chance to play for pay from her English teacher at Lincoln Park High School.

And after she graduated in January 1950, Moore went with other young women from the area to practice ball at the Kronk recreation gym in Detroit. One of those women, Helen Filarski, took Moore to a tryout in Indiana in 1950 at which there were about 100 girls and women vying for spots on two teams of 15 that would travel the country to play exhibition games against each other.

Moore credits her experience playing basketball and softball for Wyandotte Chemicals in helping her land a spot on the Springfield Sallies. After two weeks of training, Moore and her 14 teammates, as well as the 15 members of the Chicago Colleens, started traveling by bus. They played baseball in 21 states and Canada.

Those were thrilling times for a 17-year-old when jobs were scarce, but she was getting paid $46 per week on tour: $25 in base pay with an additional $21 in untaxable meal money.

"(It was) good pay for traveling and doing what you loved to do," she said.

She was seeing new places and meeting new people, including baseball heroes Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizutto and Yogi Berra before playing a game in Yankee Stadium. While in New York, she also visited Radio City Music Hall and Coney Island.

"You could do things during the day, shopping or a movie, as long as you were back by the time the bus was leaving to go to the ball field," Moore said. "It was very exciting, to be away from home and earn money and do what you were loving to do. You couldn't ask for anything more back then."

Her parents were supportive, happy their daughter had a job. Her father, a General Motors tool and die maker, and mother, a housewife, had gotten by OK during the hard times of the war, but "sure didn't have a whole lot."

They did have a lot to cheer for in 1950 as their daughter led the Springfield Sallies in every category, including games played, 77; hits, 75; total bases, 96; runs scored, 65; runs batted in, 48; and home runs, 3.

But she never reached those numbers again. Disaster was coming.

After playing that season with the Sallies, Moore was drafted by the Battle Creek Belles in 1951. However, before the season began, she suffered an accident at her offseason job at a small auto parts factory. A punch press machine came down on her right hand, severing parts of two fingers and damaging two more.

"That kinda hampered me for the ’51 season," Moore said. "I went to spring training and they wouldn't keep me because they didn't want to be liable."

The team called her in just before the end of the season because they were short on players due to injuries, but she struggled to throw the ball and couldn't hold on to the bat, "either because my fingers wouldn't bend, or weren't there."

Still, Sheldon noted, Moore persevered. She returned in 1952. Two weeks before the end of that season, she injured her ankle sliding into second base.

When the league reached out seeking her return in 1953, she declined.

"I didn't go back because I was so disappointed in myself," Moore said. "I also knew I would be keeping someone else from doing this."

Moore found another job in the offseason. Had she known the league would fold in 1954, she said she might have played two more years.

Moore never married or had children and attributes this in part to being responsible for the care of her baby brother when she was just 13, due to their mother being very ill.

Several years later, Moore had a boyfriend who wanted a traditional wife and family, but she knew she wanted something different.

"That was what you were supposed to do and I decided it was too much work," Moore said. "He wanted to get married and he wanted me to stop playing ball and he wanted me to stop working and I wasn't having any of that."

Instead, she continued with the life she wanted, including a 35-year phone company career working for Ma Bell and of course, playing recreational sports, which besides baseball, included softball, golf and bowling.

Just a few years after Moore's 1989 retirement, director Penny Marshall began filming the movie, "A League of Their Own," a fictionalized account of the league.

Women who played in the real league were invited to a movie set in Illinois, and about 40 also went on to Cooperstown, New York, to film scenes at the Baseball Hall of Fame, where an exhibit is dedicated to the AAGPBL.

At the end of the movie, which was released in 1992, Moore can be seen in several shots, including when the women celebrate their induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, as well as when the end credits are rolling and the real women of the league are playing a reunion game. In that scene, Moore slid into home and also was shown in a run-down play between second and third.

She is proud of the movie and described its content as about 85% accurate, adding that it really brought attention to the league.

"You’d tell people you played baseball and they’d say, ‘That's nice,’" Moore said of the time before "A League of Their Own" was released. "When the movie came out, they’d say, ‘Why didn't you tell us?’ I said, ‘We did, but you weren't listening.’"

Moore attends yearly player reunions of the AAGPBL, at which fans line up for their autographs. She has regular speaking engagements.

"I am just so happy that it has come so far that girls nowadays have the chance to take part in whatever sports they want: baseball, basketball, soccer, and I think it's a beautiful thing," Moore said, noting there is room for improvement. "There are scholarships and things like that and if us playing ball back then helped pave the way, I think that's great."

Moore and her fellow AAGPBL players have certainly been an inspiration for Sheldon.

"Their bottom line message has been, ‘Go ahead and dream big, you can make things happen,’" Sheldon said. "It's been the best living history class I’ve ever taken."

Seats are limited for the free program "A League of Their Own," from 6:30 to 8 p.m. June 8 at the Milford Public Library. Reserve a seat by calling the Milford Historical Society at 248-685-7308.

Contact reporter Susan Bromley at [email protected] or 517-281-2412. Follow her on Twitter @SusanBromley10.