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By MARQUES G. HARPER [email protected]
Sunday, July 28, 2002     Page: 1B

It wasn’t easy, but Joyce Steele became one of the girls of summer. Born on
Christmas Day 1935, she showed promise early on as an athlete, playing
football and baseball with the boys in her hometown of Wyalusing.
   
Her success on the field, though, came after years of gender
discrimination. For example, as a youngster she was kicked off the town
baseball team decades before Title IX – the 1972 landmark legislation that
obligated federally funded schools and colleges to offer more opportunities to
women.
    The unfair treatment was because of her gender, not her playing skill,
Steele said.
   
“I was 8 years old,” she said. After getting kicked off the team, she
spent three weeks in her room depressed. Later she and her family drove from
Wyalusing to the northern part of Northeastern Pennsylvania where, on
weekends, she played ball in a girls league.
   
“There were no sports for girls in my area,” she said. “I played with
the boys because there was no sports for girls.”
   
Her big break came when she was 17. She heard about the All-American Girls
Professional Baseball League. Her father, Cecil Steele, a mechanic, and her
mother, Genevieve, who worked for a company that made gas meters, sold their
war bonds so they could send Steele to baseball tryouts in Battle Creek, Mich.
   
“We were poor,” Steele recalled.
   
In April 1953, she and her mother took a train to Michigan, where Steele
was one of 210 women trying out for 12 spots. She got one.
   
Nicknamed “Lucky,” Steele left Pennsylvania alone a few months later, the
day after her high school graduation, having signed with the Kalamazoo Lassies
of Michigan, a team that had relocated from Muskegon, Mich. At 5-foot-7, 125
pounds, Steele, a switch-hitter, played first base and outfield. She made $75
a week.
   
“Hell, I had never been out of Wyalusing. I was homesick before I
started,” she said. “I’ll never forget the first time I was in uniform.”
   
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League had gained a footing in
American culture as a result of World War II. Instead of the
testosterone-driven pastime, the league offered its crowd something a bit
softer, something pretty in a skirt.
   
In the foreword to “A Guide for All American Girls,” which was given to
each player in the early days, League officials made it clear: “When you
become a player in the All-American Girls Baseball League you have reached the
highest position that a girl can attain in this sport.”
   
However, when Steele joined the baseball ranks in the early 1950s,
enthusiasm for the women’s baseball league was waning. No longer was it the
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that moviegoers saw decades
later in “A League of Their Own,” a 1992 film about the League directed by
Penny Marshall and starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna.
   
The League was started in 1943 by Philip K. Wrigley, the chewing-gum mogul
who had inherited the Chicago Cubs franchise from his father. He was looking
for a way to fix the baseball crunch that had emerged because most young men
were being drafted into the armed services to fight in World War II.
   
Wrigley was interested in forming a softball league that could play games
in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis. The owner of major
league teams said no. But Wrigley persisted and created the All-American Girls
Softball League.
   
By mid-season, the League had switched to hardball, and Wrigley changed its
name to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
   
Young women, some of whom were homemakers and dreamers looking for a big
chance to leave small-town life, tried out for the original teams that
included the Rockford Peaches, and those who made the cut were signed to a
professional league contract. They were paid $45 to $85 a week. Teams
consisted of 15 players and included a coach, business manager and female
chaperone.
   
In the early days of the League, each player received a beauty kit that
included cleansing cream, lipstick, medium shade of rouge, cream deodorant,
mild astringent, face powder for brunettes, hand lotion and hair remover. And
each player had to attend etiquette classes, which were later dropped after
World War II ended.
   
The guide each player was given focused on beauty and health. “Always
remember that your mind and your body are interrelated, and you cannot neglect
one without causing the other to suffer. A healthy mind and a healthy body are
the true attributes of the All-American girl.”
   
In the three years after the war, teams attracted between 2,000 and 3,000
fans per game, according to a history of the League by the All American Girls
Professional Baseball Player’s Association, based in Toms River, N.J.
   
That fan number was down significantly from July 4, 1946 when an estimated
10,000 people caught a double-header in South Bend, Ind. Two years later,
attendance peaked when 10 teams attracted 910,000 paid fans.
   
In the late ’40s, the league began to fall apart. Two teams, the
Springfield Sallies and the Chicago Colleens, lost their franchises. In 1951,
the League’s president resigned, and each host city took full control of its
team. Financial problems continued to plague the League.
   
Other factors adding to the decline included the rise of other types of
recreation, the start of televised major league games and the smaller pool of
talented players.
   
By the 1954 season, only five teams remained, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand
Rapids, Kalamazoo and Rockford. More than 600 women played in the League by
the time it folded after the 1954 season.
   
Steele, who played one season with the Kalamazoo Lassies, continued her
sport by switching to softball – a game she still plays. Her past with the
League is captured in her official baseball card. She is one of about 25
players from Pennsylvania.
   
She and some of her former teammates appeared in Marshall’s hit film.
“Hell, we were forgotten until Penny Marshall saw that little documentary on
TV” about the women’s league, she said.
   
Although the League is defunct, its players association has annual events.
This year’s will be in Fort Bend, Ind., while next year’s will be in
Cooperstown, N.Y. – where the women’s league was officially inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame.
   
Steele, who is single, said her family, including her sister, Joani
Sweeney, and her best friend of 35 years, Millie Farr Smith, helped her
achieve her dream. After all, her parents drove her for many years to baseball
practice, and they cheered her on.
   
“Without some kind of a backing, it wouldn’t have been the same,” Steele
said.
   
These days, Steele can be found at her bar, Colley Pub in Colley Township.
At the pub, she has memorabilia from the All-American Girls Professional
Baseball League. Patrons still ask her about her time as a Lassie. And she has
stories to tell, like the time when she got hit in the head by a foul ball and
didn’t cry because, as Hanks said in the movie, “There’s no crying in
baseball.” Or when she did cry decades later when the women’s league players
were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
   
Overall, she said she’s just happy she got her chance to be a ballplayer.
   
“Back then, girls weren’t allowed” to play baseball, she said.
   
“We were the pioneers for the girls today. I’m very proud of that. I got
in on the tail end of it. I feel very fortunate now that girls do have a
chance.”
   
Marques G. Harper, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 831-7324.