The Grand Rapids Chicks: women's pro baseball

Long before today’s Whitecaps, Grand Rapids had a professional baseball team made up entirely of women: the Grand Rapids Chicks. They played from 1945 to 1954 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. That’s the league later made famous by the movie “A League of Their Own.” It was started during World War II by the chewing-gum businessman who owned the Chicago Cubs. His goal: keep ballparks lively while many major-league men were away at war. The Chicks were good. They drew as many as 5,000 fans a game at the old South High School field. They won league championships in 1947 and 1953. Their pitcher Connie “Iron Woman” Wisniewski was named the league’s very first Player of the Year, back in 1945. The players didn’t just play ball, though. The league made them attend “charm school,” wear short skirts on the field, and live with chaperones and curfews. All of it was meant to keep up a proper “feminine” image. The Chicks faded along with the rest of the league after the men came home from the war, and attention turned back to men’s sports. But they’re remembered as part of a groundbreaking chapter in women’s sports.