“I thought, ‘This is my chance.’ I just gave it my best and kept my mouth shut.” —Dottie Kamenshek
1 Balls whizzed in all directions. Wrigley Field, one of America’s best-known Major League ballparks, was abuzz with activity. Outfielders darted left and right to recover balls purposely hit to make them scramble. Pitchers showed off their best moves while the catchers dove to the dirt. It might have seemed like a typical day of tryouts for Philip K. Wrigley’s Chicago Cubs, except that the only men at the park that day were scouts, coaches, and managers.
2 The 280 players on the field were women. “Girls,” as they were commonly referred to in those days, who had traveled to Chicago, Illinois, from twenty-six states and even from Canada to take a shot at being selected for the brand new All-American Girls Softball League. Some came from cities, and some were farm girls. Some were married with husbands stationed overseas in World War II. Some were teenagers barely out of high school.
3 Each was there with one goal: to play professional ball.
4 Dorothy Kamenshek, whose friends called her Dottie, was just seventeen years old. An outfielder from Cincinnati, Ohio, Dottie knew she had been given the opportunity of a lifetime. She, like many of the girls at Wrigley Field that day, had already been through one round of tryouts back in her hometown. In Cincinnati, the players were asked what two positions they could play.
5 “I’d always been an outfielder,” recalled Dottie. She wasn’t sure what to tell the scouts. “Well, I thought, what does a left-hander do if she doesn’t pitch except play outfield and first base? So, I told ’em first base.”
6 Dottie’s performance at first base and in the outfield in Cincinnati had been enough to earn the trip to Chicago. She boarded a train with five other Cincinnati girls. To Dottie, Chicago was another world. Cincinnati was not a small town, but Chicago was enormous. Back at home, Dottie had never eaten out in a restaurant. Chicago was filled with new and exciting experiences!
7 Unfortunately, one of Dottie’s first experiences at tryouts was not a good one. Her ball glove was stolen on one of the first days, and she had to borrow another from someone to finish tryouts. After that, things got better. She played some of the best ball she’d ever played. She wanted to be sure that if she wasn’t chosen, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying her best.
8 The beautiful Belmont Hotel, located just a few blocks from the ballpark, was the girls’ home away from home for the week of tryouts. Dottie and the others walked to and from the hotel wearing skirts and sweaters, then changed in the locker rooms into pants and sweatshirts.
9 For a week, the girls vied for spots on four original teams. They participated in all sorts of drills designed to separate the good players from the great players.
10 “You played your position, you ran, you slid, you did everything,” Dottie recalled.
11 She also remembered the heartbreak that occurred each time a player was let go. Players with less potential were being cut from the very start. In her hotel room in the evenings, Dottie was afraid to answer the phone for fear she’d be told she’d been eliminated.
12 On a rainy Chicago morning at the end of the week, the remaining girls gathered around a chalkboard in the hotel lobby. They called it “allocation day.” The luckiest girls would be assigned a new hometown. Racine, Rockford, South Bend, Kenosha, the headings read, with players’ names listed below. Dottie stood in the crowd, eager to find her own name on one of the lists, knowing that if she didn’t she would be going home.