Pepper Paire
| Pepper Paire | |||
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| All-American Girls Professional Baseball League | |||
| Catcher/Infielder | |||
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Born: May 29, 1924 Los Angeles, California |
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Died: February 2, 2013 (aged 88) Los Angeles, California |
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| debut | |||
| 1944 | |||
| Last appearance | |||
| 1953 | |||
| Teams | |||
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| Career highlights and awards | |||
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Lavone A. "Pepper" Paire Davis (May 29, 1924 – February 2, 2013) was a baseball catcher and infielder who played from 1944 through 1953 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m), 138 lb., she batted and threw right-handed.
An All-Star catcher, Paire was a fine defensive player with good range on the field and a strong throwing arm. She exhibited an aggressive catching style, leading to a broken collarbone in her rookie season. She suffered numerous injuries thereafter, but kept on playing. Basically a line-drive hitter, she had a compact swing and tremendous plate discipline, collecting a significant 2.63 walk-to-strikeout ratio (308-to-117). A lifetime .225 hitter she made good contact, hitting safely more frequently with runners on base or when the team was behind in the score, as her 400 runs batted in ties her in fourth place with Elizabeth Mahon on the all-time list, behind Dorothy Schroeder (431), Inez Voyce (422) and Eleanor Callow (407). In addition, the versatile Paire played shortstop and third base, and even pitched. She also was a member of a championship team and made the playoffs in nine of her ten seasons.
In 60 playoff games, she hit .211 with one home run and 16 RBI, including one triple and seven stolen bases.
Lavone A. Paire was the daughter of Charles Edward Pair from Montana and Hortense Theresa (née LaPage) Paire Blazek from South Dakota. A native of Los Angeles, California, Paire grew up playing baseball with her older brother, Joseph L. "Joe" Paire, and started playing baseball at age nine for a grocery store of Santa Monica, in a time that each victory earned the players free groceries during the Depression Era. She attended the University Senior High School, located in West Los Angeles, and continued excelling in sports, playing on semi-professional softball teams along with Faye Dancer, with whom she was recruited by Bill Allington for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
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