Dorothy Schroeder

Today Tuesday July 17, 2012 the AWOD is Dorothy Schroeder born in Champaign, Illinois April 11, 1928. I was inspired from our recent trip to the Louisville Slugger Museum/Factory. I have always been a baseball fan and I played softball my entire childhood and continued into adulthood. You may know Dottie from one of my favorite movies of all time “A League of their own”. Dottie was played by Gina Davis and I must say the casting was spot on, she looks just like her! There was a display at the factory of a uniform from the “All American Girls Professional Baseball League” and a photo of “Dottie”.

The youngest player in AAGPBL history, Dorothy “Dottie” Schroeder was 15 years old when she started her professional career with the South Bend Blue Sox. She holds the record for most games played (1,249) and was the only woman to play in all 12 seasons of the AAGPBL. She racked up the most career RBI’s in the league with 431, and was also a stellar shortstop described as a “vacuum”. Schroeder, who never married, is one of the few All-Americans pictured individually in the exhibit on Women in Baseball at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, which was created in 1988. She lived the rest of her life in her homeland of Champaign, working for Collegiate Cap & Gown Company for 36 years until retiring in 1993. She died three years later, at the age of 68, following complications of a brain aneurysm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Schroeder