A League of Their Own

A League of Their Own has been airing on cable TV in recent weeks. I saw it when it came out in 1992, and I watched it again today. The film evokes so many fond memories for me.


The Rockford Peaches in A League of Their Own
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Growing up in Berwyn, Ill., only 10 miles southwest of downtown Chicago, baseball was an important part of my summers. We lived two short blocks from the field where amateur baseball teams played on weekend afternoons and early some evenings. My buddies and I played baseball during the day on that same field.

My father was a dedicated Chicago Cubs and Chicago Bears fan all of his life, but he loved to watch amateur baseball, too. He played semi-pro football in Chicago between 1928 and 1935, striking up a lifelong friendship with George Halas. Sometimes on summer evenings we would go to a stadium in nearby Forest Park to watch semi-pro baseball league teams, including women's baseball teams. I don't remember if we ever saw the Rockford, Ill., team portayed in A League of Their Own, but if they played in Forest Park, then we saw them.

These games were well-attended. They were played near our home, easy to get to, and not as expensive as the Cubs or Sox games. It was fun to watch these games, because the players showed so much spirit, the same spirit that comes through in A League of Their Own.

When we got our first TV set in 1949, my father would watch the Cubs on TV and listen to the White Sox on the radio, or vice-versa. In the autumn, he did the same thing when the Chicago Bears and Chicago Cardinals played. We sometimes went to Wrigley Field in late November or December to watch the Bears in person--and froze!

I've seen the TV show about "When Baseball Was Baseball" that has aired in recent years. Players salaries' were still in the ballpark in those days, and fans were as dedicated as ever. We often went to see a White Sox night game at Comiskey Park. "I don't know why the hell the Cubs don't play night games!" my dad often complained.

But we could see night games at that great field in Forest Park....

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Post Script--I asked Bill Egan, a classmate of mine at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Ill. in the mid-1950s, if he remembered the name of the baseball stadium in Forest Park. Bill sent me the following email:

"The stadium was Parichy Memorial Stadium, home of the Parichy Bloomer Girls of the National Girls Baseball League. I used to go to the games with my parents. Emory Parichy, a Forest Parker roofer, owned the team and built the Stadium designed roughly after Wrigley Field. I was put in touch with Emory Parichy in 1990 and helped him organize a Reunion of the Bloomer Girls. Their star was pitcher Wilda Mae Turner who was written up in LIFE Magazine in 1946 as the best woman softball pitcher in America. The pitching was fast pitch underhand and the league was a rival of the All American League made famous by the movie A League of Their Own. That league was made up of teams from Rockford, Kenosha, Racine and South Bend. The Bloomer Girls were big in Chicago from about 1946 to 1954 and all the teams in the National league were from Chicago. I realize you only asked for the name of the Stadium, but I have wonderful memories of that Stadium and the Bloomer Girls."


The 1946 Bloomer Girls at Parichy Memorial Stadium
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