Maddy English

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Maddy English
Runs batted in
209
Stolen bases439
Teams
Career highlights and awards

Madeline Katherine English (February 22, 1925 – August 21, 2004) was a

right-handed
. At age eighteen, she became one of the youngest founding members of the league.

English played all nine of her AAGPBL seasons with the Racine Belles. She anchored third base for the Belles and usually batted second in the batting order. A three-time All-Star, she helped the Belles win three pennants and two championships in the AAGPBL, by combining a sharp defense, opportune hitting, and a flashy base running. A natural teacher who cared most about being on a baseball diamond, she excelled as an educator, teaching a variety of subjects for over 30 years after retiring from baseball.[1][2]

Early life

A native of

Boston area playgrounds. In 1939 she joined a Massachusetts 14-year-old softball team, which competed against opponents from Connecticut and New York in summer exhibitions. Like her brother, she played at third base and had a strong throwing arm. English and her Bay State teammates were coached by some players of the Boston Bruins hockey team, and they played their home games on the concrete floor of the Boston Garden when the Bruins and the Boston Celtics basketball team were out of the town.[3]

In 1943, a baseball

Chicago, Illinois. English was assigned to the Racine Belles of Wisconsin, one of four original AAGPBL teams.[4]

AAGPBL career

English enjoyed many firsts in her illustrious baseball career. She was one of the original 60 players in the league, and her team, the Belles, won the first AAGPBL Championship Title in 1943, defeating the Kenosha Comets three games to none. From 1943 to 1945, the league had not yet developed an All-Star contest. Was in 1946, for the first time, when the team's managers voted to select the best players to join the All-Star Team. English became the first AAGPBL third base player to be named an All-Star, a distinction that she repeated in 1948 and 1949. Her most productive season came in 1948, when she posted career-highs in batting average (.231), hits (95), doubles (16), triples (eight) and home runs (five).[1]

English tied a league record by stealing seven bases in a 1947 single game, but she also responded in pressure situations. In 1946, the Racine Belles won the championship in the preliminary best-of-five series over the South Bend Blue Sox, three games to one. In Game 1, English drove in the winning run by hitting a double in the bottom half of the 14th inning. Then, in decisive Game 5 she knocked the winning run with a single in the bottom half of the 17th inning. In this first round series she went 11-for-31 for a .353 average, including her two game-winning RBI. After that, the Belles beat the Rockford Peaches four games to one in the final best-of-seven series to clinch the Championship Title.[5] During the off-season, English attended Boston University evenings and Saturdays to attain her degree. But combining baseball with going to college nights took her nine years to graduate. Nevertheless, playing professional baseball did help to pay her college expenses. Before the 1951 season, when the team moved from Racine, Wisconsin to Battle Creek, Michigan, English and some original Belles members were disappointment and decided not to make the move. During eight years, the Belles were a close-knit team, always like a family away from home. English and teammates thought that all would be different, like a new team, maybe a new manager and, specially, a new location.[6]

English was a light average hitter in the pitching-dominated AAGPBL, but her play for Racine was outstanding. She hit .171, scored 357 runs, stole 439 bases and belted 13

fielding average, including 1,439 putouts, 2,255 assists, and 106 double plays.[7]

Milestones

English wait the required two years to regain her amateur status. After that, she served as player-manager of an all-star softball team in Lynn, Massachusetts for five years. English earned her B.S. degree in education in 1957 and a master's degree in 1962. She worked as a recreation leader in Everett and had a 27-year career at Parlin Junior High School, spending 10 years as a classroom and physical education teacher, and 17 years as the school's guidance counselor. She retired in 1984.

In 1980, former AAGPBL player

Chicago, Illinois in 1982. Stemming from that reunion, a Players Association was formed in 1987 and many former AAGPBL players continued to enjoy reunions, which became annual events in 1998. Regularly, English attended the reunions of the association and collaborated on many aspects of its purposes.[8]

In November 1988, the

Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York dedicated a permanent display to the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. The association was largely responsible for the opening of the exhibition. English also has been inducted into the Boston University Athletics Hall of Fame, the Women in Sports Hall of Fame, and the Sports Museum of New England.[9][10][11][12]

A League of Their Own

In

Madonna, Lori Petty and Rosie O'Donnell, this film brought a rejuvenated interest to the women's baseball. While the film does not use real names, Marshall seemed to be aiming for realism, as her film includes fake newsreel footage and pseudo-documentary present day scenes at the beginning and end of the story. A League of Their Own itself was inspired by the 1987 documentary of the same title, written and produced by Kelly Candaele, one of the five sons of Helen Callaghan, who in 1945 won the AAGPBL batting championship with a .299 average. English, like many of her colleagues, was relatively unknown until the film was exhibited for the first time.[13]

A few months later, Maddy English died in her home town of Everett at the age of 79, following complications from cancer.[1] The city of Everett, MA honored Maddy English by naming one of their K-8 elementary schools after her.

Sources

  1. ^ a b c All-American Girls Professional Baseball League – Madeline English – Profile / Obituary Archived 2019-03-30 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
  2. ^ Everett Massachusetts Files – Maddy English Pro Athlete. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
  3. ISBN 0-7864-2100-2
  4. ^ All-American Girls Professional Baseball League History Archived 2019-03-02 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
  5. ISBN 978-0-313-29884-4
  6. ISBN 978-0-7864-1474-1
  7. ISBN 0-7864-3747-2
  8. ^ "SABR Biography Project, by Jim Sargent". Archived from the original on 2011-08-06. Retrieved 2010-01-11.
  9. ^ "Boston University Hall of Fame". Archived from the original on 2009-06-01. Retrieved 2010-01-11.
  10. ^ The Diamond Angle – Maddy English. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
  11. ^ "Madeline English School". Archived from the original on 2019-03-12. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
  12. ^ "Sports Museum of New England". Archived from the original on 2009-12-25. Retrieved 2010-01-11.
  13. ^ "A Remembrance of a Racine Belle, by Lou Parrotta". Archived from the original on 2012-07-17. Retrieved 2010-01-11.
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