The Other Team
(originally appeared in Boston baseball July 2018)
Has a women ever hit a ball over the Green Monster?
Someone asked me that the other day, and I had to say “I
have no idea.” As far as I can tell, the
answer is “No,” but I think it’s high time someone receive that opportunity (You’re welcome, Sox PR Department. Think
that would raise some money for charity and get some attention???). The
Coors-sponsored, all-female Colorado Silver Bullets did play at Fenway in 1994
and had the opportunity, but were shut out 6-0 by the Boston Park League
All-Stars. But as Linda Pizzuti takes on an ownership stake, it got me thinking
that women have not been widely recognized for their role in the history of
this team.
Oh, they’re there. In
fact they’ve been here all along. Here’s
just a start:
Lizzie Murphy
didn’t play for the Red Sox, but she is likely the first woman known to play in
Fenway Park, appearing in a charity All-Star game in 1922, playing first base
and helping her team beat the Red Sox 3-2.
Credited by some as the first professional woman ballplayer, Murphy, a
Rhode Islander, had a long career playing semi-pro ball throughout New England.
Isabella Stewart
Gardiner was one of Boston’s grand dames, a philanthropist and art
collector who smoked cigarettes, drove too fast and didn’t give a damn what
anyone thought. After husband Jack died
in 1898, Gardiner beat the Red Sox to the Fenway by nine years, building the
house-turned-museum that bears her name.
She also became a frequent and very recognizable visitor to both the
Huntington Avenue Grounds and Fenway Park. After the Sox won the 1912 World
Series, she created a scandal when she attended a Symphony Hall concert wearing
''a white band around her head and on it the words, 'Oh you Red Sox' in red
letters.''
Marie Brenner
made history in 1979, covering the Red Sox for the Boston Herald, the first woman to do so on a regular basis. Given
the assignment by editor Don Forst to take an “anthropological approach” to her
task and told “For God’s sake, don’t write about the game,” Brenner fulfilled
her assignment, capturing the “25 cabs” atmosphere of the club as well as any
male reporter at the time. Her 1980 Esquire
story “Confessions of a Rookie in Pearls,” appears in my Red Sox anthology
“Impossible Dreams.”
Lib Dooley taught
Phys. Ed. and Health in Boston city schools for nearly four decades and was
mainstay in the box seats at Fenway Park for 55 years, watching more than 4,000
games. A self-described “friend of the Red Sox,” she passed out cookies and
candies to her favorite players. Her
father was famously a member of Nuf Ced McGreevey’s Royal Rooters and Dooley
herself was a member of the BoSox club. She was also known to be a special
friend of Ted Williams.
Speaking of Ted, he’s the reason I’ve chosen to include only
one player’s wife, Ted’s first partner, Doris
Soule. In January of 1954 she filed for divorce, alleging among other
things that Ted had struck her. When the
couple failed to settle over the next year, Ted decided to retire from baseball
after the 1954 season rather than share a new contract with his Ex. Two days
after the divorce became final, on May 13, 1955, Ted unretired and signed a
contract for $98,000, stiffing Doris out of the new contract and the Red Sox
out of a month of play. All because of money.
I wonder if this story will make that “American Masters” documentary
that’s in the works?
Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee, aka “The Spaceman” always credited
his aunt, Annabelle Lee, of the All-American
Girls Professional Baseball League, with teaching him how to pitch. She played seven years in the AAGPBL, even
twirling a perfect game. A self-described “junkball pitcher,” Ms. Lee was not,
however, responsible for teaching her nephew the infamous eephus pitch that
Tony Perez sent into orbit in the 1975 World Series.
Elaine Weddington
Steward was a pioneer in several capacities. Named Boston’s assistant GM in
1990, primarily performing legal and contract work, at the time Steward was first
black woman and only the second minority to hold an executive position of any
kind in major league baseball, something that is both hard to believe today,
and well, not so hard to believe. She now serves as an attorney for MLB.
Jean Yawkey is
one of only a handful of women to own a major league team, taking over the Red Sox
after her husband died in 1975. While the Sox mostly remained competitive for
much of her tenure, she made the same mistake her husband did, turning over
most day-to-day management of the team to others, namely men like Heywood
Sullivan and John Harrington.
Ms. Pizzuti, take note: Maybe she should have done it
herself.
Glenn Stout’s next
book with Richard Johnson, The PATS: An Illustrated History, is due out in November. See glennstout.net.
He is also the author of Young Woman
& the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the
World, soon to be a major motion picture.
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