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May 2008 |
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Local woman made baseball history |
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Friday, 09 May 2008 |
By KAY LOUTH
Staff Writer
MINSTER — The girl's of summer in the years 1943 to 1954 always had to wear a skirt and lipstick in public, but that didn't stop them from playing baseball, back when sports were thought of as solely for the boys.
Minster native Katie Horstman was 15 and playing ball with a Catholic Youth Organization team in 1951 when a baseball scout for the Fort Wayne, Ind., Daisies scoped her and the coach's daughter. The two girls ended up in Fort Wayne for tryouts and Horstman made the team, a team she would stay with until the All American Girls Baseball League would disband in 1954.
“I was 15 years old, never been out of the state of Ohio. We went to Fort Wayne, I was looking at the skyscrapers (they were only 14, 15 stories high.) When I look back on it I really had a lot to learn,” Horstman said.
As a rookie, she earned $50 a week. By the time she was finished, she was earning $125 a week. She made more money the first year she played baseball than she did the first year she taught school. It was her baseball salary that paid for her college education.
In baseball, she became known as 'Horsey.'
“Everybody had a nickname. I had five brothers and all were called Horsey. I was really proud,” Horstman said.
In 1943, all the men were off to war and Phillip Wrigley — chewing gum mogul and of Wrigley Field fame in Chicago — wanted to see baseball continue and came up with the idea of the girl's baseball league that would play in professional baseball stadiums.
It was an age when most people believed women just weren't cut out for strenuous physical activity like baseball and were relegated to the home or low paying jobs. Horstman loved the game and loved the life of baseball.
“I thought it was terrific. I was making money doing something I would have done for free,” Horstman said, calling it her, “impossible dream,” because at that time women weren't allowed to pay sports. “We really made history.”
She and her teammates knew they didn't have the physical strength of men but also knew that wasn't important. The idea that she was considered too fragile to play sports confused her. She grew up on a farm in Minster and did her share of the chores.
“Going into the field and loading bales of hay, milking cows, it didn't make much sense to me," Horstman said. "What the crowd loved to see, we had all the fundamentals of baseball. We could run, we could throw, we could hit. We just weren't as strong. We admit that.”
Horstman' first year earned run average was 2.35, by 1954 it was 2.85. Her lifetime ERA was 2.50. She says she was a better third baseman than pitcher, but says she pitched because, “I could throw balls pretty hard and fast.”
The teams were always thankful to the veterans partly because it was their actions that gave these women this unbelievable opportunity. When the teams played they would line up in a V formation at the beginning of the game in honor of the veterans.
“Every week, we would go to the Fort Wayne Veterans Hospital to thank them, to say that was the greatest thing that ever happened to us.”
After the ASGPBL disbanded in 1954, the Daisies went on tour. One incident during that tour sticks with Horstman today. In 1956, they ended up in Tyler, Texas thanks to their booking agent or bookie. At that time they were playing men's teams and the bookie had them scheduled for a game in the Texas town.
“It so happened to be black men,” Horstman said, but no one knew that at the time. When the team arrived in Tyler they looked around to see if they could find their advance posters but couldn't. They also couldn't find the ball field. At one point, the sheriff came along and asked if they were looking for something. He looked in the car at the white women.
“Whatever, you're not going to play these men.” Horstman said the manager was adamant they were going to play and asked why, and the reply, 'Because they're black men and white people don't play black people."
Eventually however the team found the baseball field, way out in the countryside and they finally met their opposing team. The stands were full of expectant fans, but before they even got warmed up, five sheriff's cars roared up. The sheriff, a little man, Horstman said, told them, "If you play I'm going to send you across the river to Mexico." The women were stunned by the racism.
“We just couldn't believe it," Horstman said. "We'd never ran into that. I remember telling the sheriff, 'I thought we were in America.'”
She would have said more but her manager warned her she could go to jail. They didn't get to play that game.
Everywhere they played the women were treated like royalty and she said it was one of the best times of her life.
She has a collection of baseball memorabilia from her baseball years including more than a dozen game winning balls she pitched. On her death, the collection Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame.
Horstman is also in the movie, 'A League of Their Own.” In the closing credits, she is playing third base in the scene.
She divides her time between California and Minster. For many years she taught school at Minster School and was responsible for establishing the track and field program at the school. One of the reasons she got to join the Daisies at the tender age of 15, is because her superintendent said girls didn't need education and she could go as long as she had good good conduct grades.
She comes back to Minster every summer.
“I can't stay away from my hometown,” she said, adding this is where her friends are and the people she coached and the people she loves lives.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 14 May 2008 )
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