Free Girls of Summer: In Their Own League by Lois Browne Page A

manager, Max Carey, had succeeded in molding his Chicks – a name inspired by a popular book of the day, Mother Carey’s Chickens – into a first-class team. But 1944 would be Milwaukee’s only year. The Chicks moved in 1945 to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they would remain until the League’s demise.
    This failed attempt at expansion was alarming to League officials, who wanted to make sure fans were getting their money’s worth one way or the other . Several changes were put into effect in order to dynamize the game.
    Scorers were instructed to lower the number of recorded errors when high figures threatened to make the players sound fumble-fingered . In midseason, a hastily convened gathering of League managers stepped up to the plate themselves in order to figure out why there was such a scarcity of .300 hitters.
    The Rockford Register-Republic reported their consensus that “the dead ball was the problem.”  The ball size was promptly dropped to eleven and a half inches and the basepath was lengthened, to slow down base-stealing.
    This was the first of many tinkerings that would continue unabated until the League disbanded . Their effect was to make the game more like baseball, less like softball. In fact, the League now decided that it could legitimately change its name. In 1944, it became the All-American Girls Ball League. In 1945, it was finally changed to “Baseball.”
    Pat Keagle’s first assignment in the All-American landed her with the ill-fated Milwaukee Chicks, as part of the League’s player allocation scheme . When she reported to Max Carey at Milwaukee’s Borchert Field, the team was riddled with injuries. Their left-fielder had sprained an ankle; their sparkplug second baseman had a twisted leg; the third baseman had a sprained finger. The club’s performance showed it.
    The night that Keagle arrived, Milwaukee had lost the first game of the double-header against the Blue Sox, and was lagging woefully in the standings.
    Connie Wisniewski was the starting pitcher for the second game. She saw Keagle coming and decided that the stylish blonde was not the answer to Carey’s prayers. Keagle was of barely average height. Although sturdily built, she seemed unathletic, perhaps because she’d shown up in best Charm School ensemble.
    “She had on real spike heels and her hair was in an updo and she had on a fancy silk dress,” says Wisniewski . “I thought, oh, my goodness; we’re going to lose 20-0 with her in the outfield.”  What Carey thought is not a matter of record, but he got Keagle suited up and ready to go.
    Far from standing helplessly by, Keagle took immediate control of the game, smacking two singles, a double and a home run.
    “She was a team all by herself,” says Wisniewski. “We started jumping around and hugging her. She knocked in all the runs.”
    Nor was Keagle quite so unassuming as she appeared . She liked the limelight, and played well to it. On another occasion, when Wisniewski was coaching first base (common practice for a pitcher if her side was up), Keagle was called out at first by the umpire.
    “She’d been out by about two steps,” says Wisniewski, “but she was right in there yelling at him, gesturing with her hands, like she’s saying, ‘I was safe by this much. ’ I tried to stop her, because I didn’t want her thrown out of the game. But when I got close enough to hear, she wasn’t even arguing the play. The crowd was booing the umpire, but she was telling him how big the fish was she caught last week. She was a real crowd pleaser.”
    Shored up by Keagle's timely arrival, Milwaukee soon improved its showing to such an extent that the League launched a flurry of baffling player reallocations. The Milwaukee team had captured third place only after asking for and getting better players. Now they looked capable of going much higher in the standings, and so the Kenosha Comets declared themselves in need of immediate help; pitching ace Helen Nicol was