Thelma Eisen

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

Center fielder/Manager

Born: May 11, 1922
Los Angeles

Died: May 11, 2014 (aged 92)
Pacific Palisades, California

Batted: Right

Threw: Right

debut

1944

Last appearance

1952

Teams

Milwaukee Chicks (1944)
Grand Rapids Chicks (1945)
Peoria Redwings (1946–'47)
Fort Wayne Daisies (1947–'52)

Career highlights and awards

All-Star Team (1946)
Championship Team (1944)
Seven playoff appearances (1944–1945; 1948–1952)
Tied for the single-season lead in triples (1946) and home runs (1949)
National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum induction (2004)
Women in Baseball – AAGPBL Permanent Display
at Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (1988)

Thelma "Tiby" Eisen (May 11, 1922 – May 11, 2014) was an outfielder who played from 1944 through 1952 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5' 4", 130 lb., she batted and threw right-handed.

Thelma Eisen was among the top players in the early years of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. A durable player, Eisen averaged 107 games appearances in each of her nine seasons in the league. An All-Star in 1946, she made the playoffs in seven out of nine possible seasons, including the champion team in 1944. Noted for her enthusiastic and great knowledge of the game, she excelled defensively at all three outfield positions, mainly at center field. Regarded as a disciplined hitter and a daring base runner, she posted a career .295 on-base percentage and utilized her stunning speed to snatch 674 stolen bases in 966 career-games. A fast and fine defensive outfielder, she often took away extra base hits from opponents, offering a variety of excellent catches over a substantial period of time. Additionally, she moved from one place to another constantly, playing with four different teams and cities, as the league switched players as needed to help teams to be competitive.

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League operated between 1943 and 1954 and started with four teams: the Racine Belles and the Kenosha Comets, both from Wisconsin; the Rockford Peaches from Illinois, and the South Bend Blue Sox from Indiana. Originally, the game was a combination of baseball and softball. Differences were only in the distances between the bases, the distance from the pitching mound to home plate, the size of the ball, and pitching styles through the 12 years of existence of the circuit. It was a neglected chapter of sports history at least until the early 1980s, when a group of former AAGPBL members led by June Peppas organized a retired players association and lobbied to have the circuit recognized in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, New York. After that, filmmaker Penny Marshall premiered her 1992 film A League of Their Own, a fictional history centered in the first season of the AAGPBL. Starring Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna, Lori Petty and Rosie O'Donnell, this film brought a rejuvenated interest to the extinct league.

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Wikipedia