Dorothy Maguire

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

Catcher/Outfielder

Born: November 21, 1918
LaGrange, Ohio

Died: August 2, 1981 (aged 62)
Spencer, Ohio

Batted: Right

Threw: Right

debut

1943

Last appearance

1949

Teams

Career highlights and awards

All-Star Game (1943)
Two-time Championship team (1943–1944)
Six playoff appearances (1943–1945, 1947–1949)

Dorothy Maguire (November 21, 1918 – August 2, 1981) was a catcher and outfielder who played from 1943 through 1949 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Maguire batted and threw right-handed. She also played under the name of Dorothy Chapman.

An All-Star catcher, Dorothy Maguire was one of the sixty original members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. While only a modest hitter at the plate, Maguire displayed considerable skill in handling pitchers and an ability to understand the strategy of the game. She achieved a playoff berth in six of her seven seasons in the league, including the championship teams in 1943 and 1945, though she played with three different teams based in four different cities, because the league shifted players as needed to help teams stay afloat. Her life was full of energy, excitement, and risks unfamiliar to many women through the years, as she worked in cabbage fields during the Great Depression, raised horses, worked in factories, and drove taxi cabs in Cleveland during World War II. She was dubbed Mickey after Detroit Tigers catcher Mickey Cochrane, due to her tenacity to accomplish any task she set out to do and her amazingly warm-hearted spirit.

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was introduced in the spring of 1943, featuring young women with both athletic ability and feminine appeal. During World War II, Philip K. Wrigley was in charge both of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company and the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball club. Wrigley decided to found the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League as a promotional sideline to maintain interest in baseball as the military draft was depleting Major League rosters of first-line players. Arthur Meyerhoff, Wrigley's advertising director, was given the responsibility of coordinating operations with city officials and civic leaders in the communities, as well as a projected budget was developed. Hundreds of girls were eager to play in the new league, and 280 were invited to final tryouts at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Of those, sixty were selected as the first women to play on the first four teams: the Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles, Rockford Peaches and South Bend Blue Sox. Each team had fifteen players, a manager, a business manager and a female chaperone. Players in the AAGBBL made between $50 and $125 a week during a three-month, 108-game season, which were generous in comparison to those for other work at the time. The average full-time worker made $1,299 a year in the 1940s, according to one estimate, or about $25 a week. Most AAGPBL games were played at night, including the All-Star game of the inaugural season on July 1, 1943, which also was the first contest played under artificial illumination at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

...
Wikipedia