Women's baseball pioneer Doris Sams dies at 85 - Chicago Tribune

(Reuters) - Doris Sams, one of the stars of the women's professional baseball league that inspired the movie "A League of Their Own," died at age 85, a funeral home spokesman said on Monday.

Sams died on Thursday and her funeral was held on Sunday in her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, Don Haynes of the Stevens Mortuary Chapel said.

Sams played for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the brainchild of Major League team owners Philip Wrigley and Branch Rickey as a wartime diversion, and they paid some 600 women players between $45 and $75 a game, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Their salary was several times what the mostly working-class players could make in jobs traditionally reserved for women, author Barbara Gregorich wrote in her book, "Women at Play."

Wrigley reasoned that, if women could be used to build ships and aircraft, they could also be used to fill the nation's ballparks while male players were at war, Sharon Roepke wrote in her book "Diamond Gals."

"The women ballplayers would serve as inspirational examples to further the 'manpower' mobilization," Roepke wrote. "In addition to playing ball they would raise money for war bonds, develop youth programs and visit service hospitals."

The 1992 movie "A League of Their Own" featured actor Tom Hanks as the heavy-drinking team manager depressed about coaching women. After making one player cry, he memorably said, "There's no crying in baseball."

The women's league's teams were coached by men.

Hanks' players included the fiercely competitive Dottie Hinson (played by Geena Davis) and the rebellious, gum-chewing Mae Mordabito (Madonna).

Sams pitched and played the outfield for the Muskegon Lassies and the Kalamazoo Lassies from 1946 to 1953, in what was largely a Midwestern league.

She won the league's player of the year award in 1947 after pitching a perfect game. In typical fashion, she humbly credited her fielders, saying she was hit hard that day, according to an account on the Hall of Fame website.

The women played hard, raising welts when they slid in their short skirts. But Wrigley wanted them to act like polite ladies, hiring beauty consultant Helena Rubinstein to teach etiquette and how to use makeup, the Hall of Fame said.

Sams was inducted into the Women's Professional Hall of Fame in 1970. After baseball, she became an office worker for the Knoxville Utilities Board, according to the Knoxville Sun-Sentinel. She never married nor had any children.

(Reporting by Andrew Stern; Editing by Mary Slosson and Lisa Shumaker)