May 28, 1943

Rockford Morning Star

Twin Bills Open Girls' Professional Softball Loop Sunday

4-Team League Ready to Start

Rockford at S. Bend, Racine at Kenosha to Feature Opening Day

By Jayne Miller

Chicago, May 28 - (UP) - A new league where a slim figure will be as important as a fat batting average opens Sunday with the backing of two major league baseball magnates who are learning that a shiny nose can cause as much trouble as a fielding error.

It will be beauty at the bat, pulchritude on the pitcher's mound, and glamour in the gardens when the nation's first professional girls' softball league opens its initial season with teams from Rockford, Ill., Racine and Kenosha, Wis., and South Bend, Ind.

The schedule for opening day sends Rockford to South Bend and Racine to Kenosha for a pair of double-headers on Sunday.

The 70 girls in the league wound up their 10 days of spring training here this week. Part of the training was done in the Chicago Cubs' Wrigley field. The rest took place in a beauty parlor because league President Ken Sells had decreed that the girls must be beautiful.

Backed by Wrigley, Rickey 

The leading backers of the All-American Girls Softball league are P.K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, and Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who personally probably still prefer a player with a .400 average to one with a Hollywood profile.

But in the girls' league, sister, it's not only can you hit, but can you do it graceful like.

Each player who steps up to the plate will be as trim as a ballet dancer in her short-skirted pastel uniform. Every curl will be in place, her lipstick on precisely, and a tsk! tsk! to the girl who hits a homer while her face is shiny.

The girls will watch their diet, too. Outmoded is the cry to pass the potatoes. It's "hand me the powderpuff, dearie."

One girl who will have no trouble pounding out homers while looking as petite and feminine as a French mannequin is Mrs. Terrie Davis, Toronto, Can.

Rockford Shortstop

Terrie plays shortstop for the Rockford, Ill., team. She stands all of five feet, four inches and weighs 125 pounds in her peach-colored uniform. Her batting average last year with the Toronto Canadian championship Sunday morning class team nudged .400.

Her physiognomy is a little marred right now.

"I've been playing ball for over 12 years," she confided. "I never had a scratch or a bruise. so what happens? The first time I come up to bat here at Wrigley Field, I pop a foul tip. Bang! Down comes the ball right on my eye. Just look at the shiner!"

Her black eye, however, wasn't as noticeable as she made out. Sells had sent her to a beauty operator who laid on grease paint and powder.

Terrie of is one of the few married women in the league. (Most players are enthusiastic 18-year-olds). Her husband, Theodore, works in a Toronto war plant.

Son Is Player, Too

"Both Ted and I love playing ball," she said. "In fact we met on a baseball diamond. But the real batter in the family is our six-year-old son, Gerald. You ought to see him swing. He's going to be a second DiMaggio."

When Terrie isn't keeping house or playing softball, she designs dresses.

"But I never would have thought of anything as cute as these uniforms," she said, pirouetting so that her short skirt flared to show a glimpse of matching tights.

Gladys "Terrie" Davis