Rose Gacioch
| Rose Gacioch | |
|---|---|
Clinton Township, Michigan | |
Batted: Right Threw: Right | |
| debut | |
| 1944, for the South Bend Blue Sox | |
| Last appearance | |
| 1954, for the Rockford Peaches | |
| Teams | |
| |
| Career highlights and awards | |
|
Rose M. Gacioch (
Brief history
During the early 1940s, the AAGPBL recruited young women to play baseball to keep the spirit of the game alive while men fought overseas. The league, created in 1943 by the
Early life
A native of
One afternoon in 1934, the president of the corrugating company came to a Little Cardinals game. He meet Maud Nelson, the manager of the All-Star Ranger Girls, and asked her if she could swing through Wheeling on her next tour, and give Gacioch a tryout. Gacioch did good, as Nelson signed her for the Rangers.[3] She alternated between the outfield and pitching. By then, women athletes hurried right into these teams. The trousers she used gave their name to pioneer women's baseball players, who were called Bloomer Girls.
1934 was the last year that the Bloomer Girls teams would play. Local companies that had sponsored women's baseball were switching over the less expensive game of softball, an activity that relied mainly on a strong player, as is the pitcher. Gacioch, like most other women players, switched to softball, barnstorming around the Midwest on weekends for as much as $50 for two days' play. She was working in a factory during World War II when she read about the new women's baseball league, the All-American Girls Baseball League, being formed. At 29, she was a bit old to play baseball. Nevertheless, a co-worker said her that his daughter was a chaperone for the South Bend Blue Sox, and he would ask her to come and look Gacioch up. Her chance came with a tryout at Pulaski Field in South Wheeling, just two blocks from her home.
Professional career
For Gacioch, the result was a return to baseball as a member of the 1944 Blue Sox. The team was
At the end of the 1945 season, Gacioch was one of the ten players on the Blue Sox that Niehoff asked to have protected from being traded at a league meeting in
After the transaction, Gacioch blossomed as one of the most consistent AAGPBL players, starring on three championship teams for the Peaches, and by setting several league records as both a hitter and a pitcher. During her first year in Rockford she set a league record of 31 assists from outfield, a mark she matched two years later. Then in the 1946 season, she led the league with nine triples while hitting a hefty .262 of batting average.
Peaches manager Bill Allington moved Gacioch from the outfield to the pitcher's mound in 1948, and she responded with 14–5 mark. Her most productive season came in 1951, when she posted a 20–7 record to become the league's only 20-game winner. She also pitched a no-hitter in 1953, and while not pitching played in the outfield, she amassed averages of .294 in 1951, .285 in 1953, and a top-career .304 in 1954 at age of 38, when she was old enough to be the mother of some of her teammates. Also in her final season, she recorded a significant total of 13 home runs.
A good-contact hitter, Gacioch only struck out 162 times in almost 3,000 career at-bats, and she ranks eight in the AAGPBL All-Time list with 352
Personal life
Between AAGPBL seasons, Gacioch took whatever job she could find in Rockford. She worked at bowling alleys, peeled potatoes and even made cigars.
Following her baseball career, she worked for 20 years as a press operator with Amerock Corporation in Rockford, Illinois, retiring in 1978. She then moved to Sterling Heights, Michigan. She never married and excelled in bowling. In 1954, she was the national champion in doubles bowling.
Gacioch visited Cooperstown for the AAGPBL exhibition opening in 1988 and reveled in her niche at the Hall of Fame. As she said in the interview reflecting on her career: "I always say: 'Now I got something on Pete Rose. I got there before he did'."
Rose Gacioch died in
Career statistics
Batting
| GP | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | TB | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 925 | 2954 | 270 | 703 | 69 | 34 | 18 | 352 | 167 | 894 | 200 | 162 | .238 | .286 | .303 | .589 |
Sources
- All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book – W. C. Madden. Publisher: McFarland & Company, 2000. Format: Paperback, 294pp. Language: English. ISBN 978-0-7864-3747-4
- Girls of Summer: The Real Story of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League - Lois Browne. Publisher: HarperCollins, 1992. Format: Paperback, 213 pp. Language: English. ISBN 0-00-637902-8
- Women in Baseball - Gai Ingham Berlage. Publisher: Praeger Trade, 1994. Format: Hardcover, 224pp. Language: English. ISBN 978-0-275-94735-4
References
- ^ Rose Gacioch – Biography / Obituary Archived 2023-02-08 at the Wayback Machine. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Retrieved 2019-04-13.
- ^ "Pinkowski Files". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2014-03-30.
- ^ "Gacioch, Rose (1915—) | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on 2021-09-20. Retrieved 2021-09-20.
External links
- AAGPBL Official Site
- The Girls of Summer article
- Historic Baseball profile
- Rose Gacioch, a Star in Women's Pro Baseball, Dies at 89. New York Times. Goldstein, Richard (2004-09-16). Retrieved 2019-04-07.
- Biography: Rose "Rosie Gaspipe" Gacioch. Ohio County Public Library. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
- Wheeling Hall of Fame: Rose Gacioch. Ohio County Public Library. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
- Rose Gacioch at Find a Grave