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Episode 8 - Bonnie's Friends Were Roommates
44 Plays4 months ago
In the Second World War, women softball players were recruited from all over North America to help keep baseball in the public eye while many of the men were off fighting overseas. This is an episode where Heather speaks fondly of playing softball but also dives into the controversy surrounding early professional women's sport and how Bonnie Baker of Regina, Saskatchewan was embroiled in it.
If you liked A League of her Own, then this is the episode for you!
This episode is being released just after Vancouver Pride concludes so consider it our contribution to Canada Pride 2024.
News item:
https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/where-is-louis-riel-heritage-minute-of-métis-leader-quietly-removed-1.6936849
Heritage Minute:
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/mary-bonnie-baker
Shawinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) first nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.
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Transcript
Nostalgia and Family Games
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, Tamarack, have I told you about the time or the first time I played Cards Against Humanity? No, I don't think we've ever talked about Cards Against Humanity.
00:00:13
Speaker
Okay, sure we have. What? You asked me that one time!
00:00:19
Speaker
ah Fair enough. This is a story from 10 years ago. And what my first time playing cards against humanity involved myself, my now sister-in-law, my brother, my now ex-wife, myself and my mother and my aunt. You've played cards against humanity, right? I have. Do you remember much of the content in that game? Yeah, the cards are a little special sometimes. Yeah, that's one way of putting it. Well, if any of you haven't played Cards Against Humanity, you're presented with a whole bunch of scenarios. Usually they're pretty, they're pretty bad. It's apples to apples, but you basically pick the rudest options.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, okay, it is like apples to apples. That's a good comparison. And so, you know, we started getting some pretty interesting cards. The word queefing came up at the table, you know, with family members. but Finally, my aunt is playing and she has a scenario in front of her and I delight the hell if I remember what the scenario is. And she puts down a whole bunch of cards from she's received from us. And one of them said, golden shower.
00:01:46
Speaker
Okay, go on, go on. And my aunt immediately asks, what's a golden shower? To which you explained a storm at sunset. I did. Sure, I did not explain a golden shower because I refused to. But then my mother whispered it into my aunt's ear. And that is the day that I learned that my mother knows what that is. Oh, oh, I told you. Yeah, so sometimes you learn things about your parents at inopportune moments.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, I could have done gone my entire life without learning that about my mother, though. Anyway, shall we start the show? Sure. One, two, three.
Swinigan Moments: A Baseball Pivot
00:02:42
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Swinigan Moments podcast. My name is Heather Ayashide Pronouns. My name is Tamarack. I use the them or it it's pronouns because this is the only pod. But what? Oh, I don't know. Christ. Anyway, we were we were just having a fun conversation about something I hope to never talk about again. ah Welcome to our podcast. We are talking about sports for the next few episodes.
00:03:13
Speaker
We are. We have looked at our YouTube analytics and determined that that we should pivot into a baseball only podcast. um For three episodes only, though. For three episodes. And also, I haven't looked at the YouTube analytics because I don't respect them on premise. Well, they don't respect you either, to be fair. It's mutual. Yeah, exactly. I have no respect for analytics. I get emails sometimes from like random people saying, hey, are you interested in having podcast analytics? And I'm like, no. Yeah. Can we do whatever the opposite of search ah search engine optimization is? I don't think you know what money ball is, but I'm just kind of wondering if there is a money ball for podcasting. ah Do you even know what money ball is?
Moneyball and Canadian Sports
00:04:02
Speaker
I do know what Moneyball is. It's a movie starring, I think, Brad Pitts in it. Okay, well, Moneyball is a movie, but it's also a book. Isn't it, like, basically, like, doing stats-based, like, team procurement? So, it comes up with the concept of, what do you call it, sabermetrics, I think. And the idea is to look for players who were, like, They weren't necessarily the most valuable players like out in the, uh, in the minors and the majors and so forth. But what they would do is they would look at their statistics and then come up with like, you know, a winning strategy based on the numbers. So like, yeah you may have a player that isn't necessarily good in all, um, all positions, but then because they can be augmented by another player and all this sort of stuff.
00:04:55
Speaker
you can just come up with like a really effective team. I want to be able to explain this very well, um because the book Moneyball came out in what, 2003. And you can just go and pick up that book if you're ever interested. And there's also the movie by Brad Pitt. Yeah, it's it's sort of the opposite strategy of like having the the like headliners to anchor your team and building around them. It's sort of a distributing that throughout all the team members. If I remember the gist of it. For someone who's not into sports, I'm rather confused by how much you know about Moneyball. Having the headliner as the anchor of the team has been the strategy of the Vancouver Canucks to their doom basically my entire life. Yeah, that's why I'm actually a Habs fan.
00:05:45
Speaker
You're a Habs fan? Are you only a Habs fan because they're the last Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup playoffs? No, I'm actually a Habs fan because of an ex-boyfriend of mine that got me into hockey. Oh dear. Well, not everybody's perfect, I guess. I'm sorry this has produced a rift between us. Oh, that's fair. we We'll continue that rift. Shall we do the news? ah Yes.
00:06:18
Speaker
What do you got for me this time? This time I've got a conspiracy.
Louis Riel: Historical Controversy
00:06:23
Speaker
A conspiracy? Do you know how most conspiracies are true? That's what, like, this guy on YouTube told me. Uh, yeah, just the ones about like, i ah queer people and and stuff apparently, I don't know. This one's a conspiracy that is very topical to us because it revolves around a heritage minute that I swore I remember seeing, but it is it wasn't on their site when we went to start this podcast.
00:06:53
Speaker
No, we actually spoke about this at the bar yesterday. yes We were like, I brought this up and said, like Hey, we missed this. And it was like just a couple weeks ago, but I felt like we'd be remissed if we didn't mention it. Yeah. And ah so, like, we we have this long standing kind of long standing. We have this eight episode running ah ah gag about ah about Mackenzie King, your boy, ah my boy, my boy. You keep saying he's my boy. And i just it's only because he's the longest serving prime minister in Canadian history that I keep referencing him.
00:07:32
Speaker
True, but also you keep referencing them with that specific tone. And and now i've made now I've made a kingship JPEG to insert into the YouTubes. So you're welcome. Thank you all to people who watch on YouTube who didn't didn't ah bring it up to to Heather when I started making it. But my boy is Louis Riel, the leader of the Red River Provisional Government at the time. And first premier of Manitoba. And first premier of Manitoba as of February of 2024. But I'll get into the timeline of things. There was a Heritage Minute made about Louis Riel. And they made a very interesting artistic choice with it.
00:08:23
Speaker
ah where it's primarily just a close-up of the actor's face who's portraying Louis Riel. And it's i basically a narrator goes through what their i think the intention was the last thoughts going through his head before he in 1885 is illegally ah ah executed after a sham trial by an illegitimate prime minister. I have thoughts.
00:08:52
Speaker
It is a rather macabre video because I do know and have seen this video. It's it's it's not like it's it's very it is graphic but it doesn't necessarily show the graphic part if you get what I mean. No, but it does it very much encapsulates the horror of what is being done, and I think the framing of it is intended to make it seem like what it is, a horrific crime and transgression done by the early government of Canada.
Recognition of Louis Riel
00:09:25
Speaker
the The particular article that we have on this is from is from CBC. It's very brief. ah So sorry for the not very large text blurb. But it's interesting that they even quote that he's executed for high treason, of course, high treason being only a crime. High crimes are when you are in a position of authority. So a high treason is like somebody from government doing something treasonous, which is interesting because he was never at the time a like recognized leader of any Canadian province or territory. It was pretty much his entire time at odds with the Canadian government. But I want to walk you through the timeline kind of around this heritage minute because it's rather interesting
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, let's do this because it's we were talking about this briefly yesterday and it's not a new heritage minute. No. So the the cliff notes of this all is there's sort of a movement in Manitoba, particularly driven by the Métis population. If you go back to our last episode on flags, I was surprised that there was a a movement to preserve the Red Ensign in Manitoba of all places because of this strong movement by Métis people to rehabilitate the Red River provisional government.
00:10:54
Speaker
in general, and Louis Rial in particular. And in 1971, this baffling ah nude abstract Louis Riel sculpture is installed ah in the gardens around the Manitoba legislature. 1991 is where this Heritage Minute is released. And social studies textbooks around the day around the time, ah even in the time that I was in school, had a very mixed view of Louis Riel and the Red River rebels. But the next year,
00:11:27
Speaker
in 1992, an active provincial legislature declares Louis Riel as the founder of Manitoba. The year after this Heritage Minute is made, in 1996, the abstract statue is replaced with a more standard statue of a leader of Louis Riel, the one that stands out today, where he has on his Métis sash, and he's holding the Manitoba Act in his hand. In a pose I feel is quite defiant, but it's open to interpretation. So this is in 1996, big statue of Riel.
00:12:02
Speaker
goes out in front of the legislature ah to replace this the abstract art one. In 2016, he has declared the first leader of the province of Manitoba in addition to its founder, again by act of provincial legislature. And in 2020, the heritage minute is quietly removed.
Rethinking Manitoba's History
00:12:22
Speaker
and Yeah, and one I was gonna say I think around the same time it I was mistaken during our conversation it was actually just in February of this year where the 2016 declaration was amended once more to Not just declare I'm the first leader but the first premier of the province of Manitoba again an active provincial legislature and
00:12:50
Speaker
you know Technically speaking, that means that Louis Riel is the first premier and the only premier to ever be executed in this country. Yes. ah He also was essentially one of the first premiers as we would understand it.
00:13:06
Speaker
what year was this city What year was he um executed in? was it He was executed in 1885, and this declaration is essentially saying that in 1869, before the province of Manitoba was declared, Louis Riel was officially created within the Dominion of Canada, Louis Riel had already created it and was its first premier. That makes perfect sense in my my head. which full disclosure is an action I support. I think a lot of, and this is a gripe that I have with social studies and like the teaching of history in like middle and high school, ah Canadian history in particular, is we often leave out the like leaders in what is considered the territories or in Hudson, the ah Hudson's Bay Company, um like
00:13:59
Speaker
big land grant over the Northwest. We leave them out even though they were the people who founded and like governed and ran most of these cities that we like understand as provincial capitals. like hubs of industry and stuff like that like that. There were people here before we just drew lines on a map, and those people were important to to our country's founding ah more so than the more so than prime ministers, realistically.
00:14:33
Speaker
because the government in Ontario, up until the invention of the telegraph and like the creation of the railway in 1885, was kind of irrelevant to most people outside of the St. Lawrence River basin area. Yeah, one one of the things about ah Canadian history, the way it's taught in school, like Tamrick mentioned, it's very narrow focused, it's a lot of stuff is left out. And, you know, like, curriculums are are so constrained by the amount of time that they have to talk about it that in order to actually talk about, say, Louis Rielle, in this particular case, you'd have to talk about all the nuances around, you know, the existence of the Métis and
00:15:15
Speaker
um and the expansion of, you know, Britain into the rest of Canada. And to kind of make things clear about my end, when I was in university, I did study history and I admittedly dropped out. um One of the things that I, exactly. and One of the things I picked up on was like, hey, you know, I got told so little about this country in the grand scheme of things. And it doesn't, it's hard to explain my interest in this country. Because, you know, when I read this stuff, I just go like, how am I supposed to be proud of this again? No pride in genocide. Yeah, pretty much.
00:16:00
Speaker
it's It's interesting that we have the actual news item is just there are some people making public inquiry to historical Canada and it's been noticed that this Heritage Minute was removed. And that's good. We will cover this eventually at some sort of milestone episode. ah Yeah. one One thing I wanted to add, because ah I think it's important, is um there was an interview on CTV about this around the same time that the CBC article came out. One of the museums in Winnipeg, I want to say it's definitely a provincial museum.
00:16:39
Speaker
was asked by historical Canada to remove the video that was being played about Louis-Rouille. And they I don't think ah think they gave some sort of really wishy-washy explanation of things, but then um the local Métis leaders in Manitoba were not consulted. Yeah, that's ah that's how these often go, unfortunately. I'll include the news articles in the show notes. So if you want to take a look at what's being said about it and you can draw your own conclusions. um What we will do in an episode at some point, definitely a milestone episode about the L'Oreal saga. Yeah, it's going to be a multi parter. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I think I think the whole Red River Rebellion is definitely worth talking about, especially if we want to talk about a few other topics that are touched upon by historical Canada.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yes. ah is To summarize, I joke about like the Cold War being the story of the good guys versus NATO. But this is the Red River Rebellion is like unequivocally a story where the bad guys win. Yeah, that is the news. All right, Tamarack. Yes.
Baseball vs. Softball
00:17:50
Speaker
We're about to talk about sports. We are about to talk about so much sports. I have learned so um many baseball terms. Yeah, this one's gonna be fun for you because I actually watch baseball. But let me play a clip first and then we'll dive right in.
00:18:05
Speaker
Are you a member of a team? Yes. Are you a professional baseball player? Yes, I am. So that is a clip from Historica Canada's 2023 episode on Bonnie Baker, Mary Bonnie Baker, who's actually portrayed by. Go ahead, go ahead. Who's actually portrayed by Michelle Millett, who is the actress um who plays Katie in the TV series Letter Kenny. Oh, interesting. I just want to note, I'm so glad I didn't watch this one because wow, that is something. Yeah, no, I was like watching this ah clip and I was like, is that?
00:18:48
Speaker
It's Michelle Millett. It is Michelle Millett because like I've watched all letter Kenny. I really liked it. Although the last few seasons were a little bit, yeah but she is portraying Mary Bonnie Baker, a woman from Saskatchewan who made a big in professional baseball during the second world war and a little bit into the 1950s. However, I want to talk about something a little bit different from baseball. What might that be? Do you know what softball is in contrast to baseball? Is it like baseball, but the ball is softer? Oh, no. It is absolutely not. Let me tell you, the fucking bruises on my legs right now are indicative of that. My my knowledge of baseball and softball is literally from a like high school gym class. So we were at the bar last night. I had to explain what was going on at the pitch. at Sorry, at the ah
00:19:43
Speaker
and like during the game and explain to you what was happening with the ball. Yes, yes, I do remember, I do remember you explaining what the dick box is.
00:19:55
Speaker
of About the dick box. Well, okay, so we'll talk about softball here. So the softball is actually a sport I play and I'll talk a lot a little bit about my relationship to it um as we go along. Softball is a newer sport than baseball, as while baseball has its origins in the sport of rounders, which comes from the United Kingdom, originating sometime around the 18th century. Softball itself wasn't created until 1887 in a gymnasium in Chicago. but didn't really have a name until the 1920s. For those of you who are a fan of cricket, it's this game plus um baseball and rounders. They all come from an origin game of bat and ball or safe haven games. Safe haven referring to the bases in baseball and softball.
00:20:37
Speaker
or the field outside of the pitch in cricket. I'm actively trying to learn how to play cricket because somebody gifted me a copy of Cricket 24 for the PlayStation. And it's not that hard to learn, but the strategies are not what I would normally expect. Have you ever watched cricket? I have watched cricket. um I don't really understand it in the same way that I don't really understand baseball. You played California kickball though, right? Yes. Yeah, so if you can play California kickball, you can understand baseball and softball really quickly. Hypothetically, yes. yeah But I'm also a moron, so. I wouldn't call that about my friend. Or rather, I wouldn't call my friend that. Anyway, what I will say, though, is you know how Americans like to call baseball the all American game?
00:21:29
Speaker
I'm assuming it is very much not. It is absolutely not. What I will say is the United States' love for baseball owes it to Canada for coming to them by way of English immigrants with the first recorded game being played in Beechville, Upper Canada, then or rather now Ontario, located in fake Oxford County ah on June 4th, 1838. But the Americas not recording any game played in their country until eight years later. That's okay. Y'all got hockey on us. Yeah, basketball was invented in the United States. um yeah We're going to talk about basketball. We're going to talk about that. We got beef. So there are two variations of softball. ah Just going back to softball with slow pitch being I think the original but around the 1940s fast pitch became popular, which is the variation that I am familiar with. I don't want to dwell too much on the differences between baseball and softball because
00:22:27
Speaker
This is not a baseball podcast. Yes, it is. For the next three episodes, fine, it is. This is a baseball podcast. So let me talk about the equipment. The first part here is we're gonna talk about the baseball itself, or rather the ball, I should say. So baseball uses a smaller ball of a circumference of 230 millimeters or nine inches. Softball uses a 300 millimeter or 12 inch. I will say that the softballs also weigh 350 grams on average. And I can also safely say that getting him in the face with them is extremely unpleasant. I will imagine. It happened to me a couple weeks ago during a warm-up prior to the game. I just missed the ball and it made contact with my cheekbone. It did not bruise my face amazingly, but my teammates were kind of mortified that they had done this to me and I just kind of laughed about it. so Like, that's ah that's a block of tofu to the face. I would not like that.
00:23:23
Speaker
I'd rather get hit by the block of tofu, it'd kind of like splatter instead. ah Yes, you are the crumple zone in this instance. Yes, the softball's going to win when it hits me. The color of the ball is white in baseball and in slow pitch, but both fast pitch and slow pitch can use what is referred to as optic yellow. I like this color. You can see it it against a blue sky or a gray sky, um whereas with a like a white ball, it's not particularly pleasant to to find.
00:23:55
Speaker
Bats are longer in baseball with a length not exceeding 42 inches or 1100 millimeters. Softball uses shorter bats at 34 inches or 860 millimeters. And also to add to the bat part, um professional baseball generally I shouldn't say generally, it only permits wooden bats, but levels below it may permit metal. Whereas in softball, you can use anything like you can use all aluminum or wood, although I have not seen anyone ever play with a wooden bat in my league. Really? But they're so they're so satisfying to hold. The wooden bats? No, I'd rather swinging and with a metal bat. Oh, yeah, for swinging. Sure.
00:24:36
Speaker
So let's talk about the field because this is probably the, like softball fields in baseball and I guess in softball are rather storied, but um I might talk about it a little bit at some point in this podcast, we'll see. Baselines in softball are shorter. ah They're 18 meters apart as opposed to 27 in baseball. There's also a concept in a softball called a double first base, which does not exist in baseball outside of Little League. And basically what you do with, uh, first base is you basically have two bases there. And the idea is the runner can just get to first base, but touch a, like an orange colored side of it. And that's good enough. It's a safety thing. Um, in slow pitch, it's permitted, but fast pitch, it depends on the league, but my particular league uses them.
00:25:31
Speaker
It's to avoid somebody doing like a first base slide right into the first base person, right? i will Well, you're not you can slot you're not supposed to slide into first base in my league. I don't know if it's like that in other leagues, but I definitely freight train right into first base. like I will just bolt. like you've seen photos You saw those two photos of me like just bolting right into first base. Yes, the blur that was header. What's that? The blur that was Heather. I wasn't really blurred, but you can see how close that ball was as I made it to first base. Okay, fine. Don't let me talk you up. I don't like being talked up. I'm not that fast. I'm not Sonic the fucking hedgehog. Yeah, so your listeners don't know that.
00:26:14
Speaker
That's fair. I'm also nearing 40. I'm not going to be that fast. So there's also differences in outfield sizes, which is what I was kind of referring to. It's kind of complicated. Um, and it's, ah it's a problem in baseball as well. Like there's no standard outfield size. technically speaking, in Major League Baseball. And I say technically speaking, because they're trying to move towards a standardized playing field. So if you go to a newer baseball stadium, I'm thinking of target field, which I have been to, or um the other one that I've been to, um the ones where the Nationals play, I can't remember the name of it. Those are those would be considered a standard baseball diamond. There's they have like a
00:26:57
Speaker
the field is generally one particular size but another park that I've been to which is Fenway and to give me an idea what sort of baseball fan I am I did go to opening um like the opening season game um or the opening game of the season um last year and that field is legendary you just look up the green monster and you'll understand why it's it's a very old field. Red Sox also last team to desegregate The spread socks are the last team to desegregate. We're going to talk about that in the next episode anyway. Yes.
00:27:29
Speaker
So there's also um other weird stadiums like the ones that are multi-purpose.
The Uniqueness of Baseball Stadiums
00:27:34
Speaker
I want to say as the San Diego Padres are the only team left that do this, where you have a multi-purpose field that does both football and and does also baseball. And that presents all sorts of weird configurations. So that comes up. I think it also was a problem with the Montreal Expos. They played in the same field as the Alouettes who are in the CFL. What would you do with the mound? You'd have to like take it down. You just just take it down. It's just dirt. Okay, fair. I imagine there might be more to it, but ah don't ask me how this works. But also one plays on a rectangle and the other plays on a square. Oh, and that's the reason why it's actually really strange. when After this recording, you'll look up the fields. You'll understand why it's weird.
00:28:22
Speaker
The other thing is pitching distance. um It's 60 feet 6 inches for baseball and 43 to 46 feet depending on gender because for whatever reason that's what they've decided. Slow pitch does permit a 50-foot pitching distance due to the arc you must throw. And I will say this right now, and I will talk about this a little bit um later. I do think it's harder to hit a softball than in a baseball. And I will explain this when we get to pitching speeds and then just a bunch of random and ah bits about playing baseball. You have nine innings as a minimum softball seven base stealing in baseball is so much easier. If you can get away with it, you just go for it in softball. ah Yours truly is an idiot.
00:29:09
Speaker
say the least and have been caught by Ums for leaving before the ball has left the pitcher's hand, which is required to do such actions in fast pitch. In slow pitch, generally you're not allowed to steal bases. I think at my school we all played slow pitch or otherwise we just weren't allowed to steal bases. Did you like how did you have somebody throw the ball up in the air and then you had to hit it? I don't think there was really rules around that. Okay, so maybe you played some sort of variation of it. Yeah, the the pitching style is what Dick takes slow pitch, and then there's a couple of other random things. I don't play slow pitch, it's not for me. So kind of getting to pitching, actually, this is going to become important for the purposes of this episode, pitchers throw out underhanded in softball as opposed to overhand in baseball. And
00:29:58
Speaker
Just like I mentioned earlier, Slowpitch uses an arc, whereas Fastpitch can be in an arc or direct. It depends on the level of play. The pitchers in my team, particular in particular, in our division, um generally throw direct, although some other teams that we play with will throw with a slight bit of an arc. One small thing, pitchers in upper level Fastpitch can achieve anywhere between 90 and 105 kilometers an hour. But some of them we play. row Yes. Holy shit. Yes. But Monica Abbott ah in 2012, Monica Abbott's like really famous in professionals, professional softball. She managed to achieve 124 kilometers an hour. Jesus. Yeah, she's impressive. I've watched her pitch and it's it's incredible. The game is an underhanded throw. Well, OK, so it's called a use a windmill and the windmill ah generates like a bit of um it generates quite a lot of power right into your your swing. That's still incredible.
00:30:57
Speaker
Oh no, absolutely. I, I've watched people like pitch in on the upper division of my league and it's, I do not want to hit their balls. Um, the thing is I was in contrast to baseball. Baseball will get up to 145 kilometers per hour on a pitch. Yeah. But again, overhead throw, way less impressive. So let's let's talk a little bit about the politics of pitching a little bit here. um There's a video um on a YouTube channel called ah Baseball Doesn't Exist that talks about this a lot better than I will. But a tier channel name, holy shit. it's It's actually one of my favorite sports YouTubers. I hope that this person's not a chud. i don't I don't think he is, but, you know, whenever I promote anybody, just assume that I haven't looked into their background ah too much. But so far, I've been enjoying their YouTube channel for a couple of years. One of the topics that comes up is, is a softball pitch harder to hit than a baseball pitch? I don't know.
00:32:00
Speaker
Well, that's the debate because Monica Abbott, for example, who throws 124 kilometers per hour is throwing it at a distance of 46 feet. And whereas in baseball, they're throwing it say 145 kilometers per hour from 60 feet. So you're going to go and do the math thing, right? What is that? in Okay, 14 meters and and 18 meters. just Okay, yeah. ah Yeah, that's... See the debate? And it's the reaction times and all this coming to play, right? Yeah.
00:32:36
Speaker
I hold the belief that it is harder to hit just sorry, I hold the belief that it is harder to hit a softball. I will through lack of through lack of any like tangible evidence agree because 14 meters that's tight. It is and the baseball players have gone up against Monica Abbott and have managed to just get struck strike out like they'll just get struck out. this is this is my this is my like a side of like watch watch women's sports oh yeah women's sports are much better uh yes you will see plays that you wouldn't imagine because professional men's sports are so locked in a deep meta that that's why i watch women's hockey which i talked about before
00:33:23
Speaker
Yes, women's hockey. Honestly, the best damn hockey you will ever see because the Canucks are never getting the cup. I'm sorry. Probably not. No, that's why I also like going to um like, that's why I went to the women's World Cup a couple of years ago. Like I went and watched like, I don't know, five games. Yeah, I guess I guess the alternate pitch is like if you like watching World Junior's hockey, watch women's hockey. It's just that but more. Yeah, exactly. So that is kind of a breakdown of what it like was is a breakdown of what the difference between softball and baseball is. I again, I'm not going to explain baseball.
00:33:59
Speaker
just go watch a baseball game. You can find tons of games on YouTube. And you'll probably understand that's very straightforward. it's It is a very straightforward game. It becomes more of a strategy game eventually. So let's talk about Bonnie Baker. Yes. Mary Baker, born Mary Geraldine George, aka Bonnie, was born in Regina, Saskatchewan on July 10, 1919 to Hungarian immigrants. Her father was a mechanic, but not much is written about her mother other than dying when Bonnie was 11. Her family was quite large, however, as she had four sisters and five brothers. Just for the record, my family is pretty small these days, but my grandfather's family, which were born roughly around the time that ah Bonnie came into being, his family had like, had like 19 siblings.
00:34:48
Speaker
Yeah, my this is ah this is actually a very small prairie family for the time. Were prairie families that much larger? Because like my family was not... Well, I'm first year like second generation in Canada. like My family would were all from Ireland. I don't remember how many non-descript or censored last name ah boys there were, but there were
00:35:18
Speaker
Families back then were huge. So like this isn't my point is this isn't like a standout large family with nine kids. That's fair. At the age of 13, Bonnie began to play softball with older girls and took on the role of catcher, which is one of the hardest defensive roles to take on in the sport. It's physically demanding, to say the least, and it's a position I do not care to play. It is hard on your fucking knees and hips. you're the one who's on the other side of the dick box god damn it okay just for the record just so we can explain why tamara keeps going on about the dick box is we were again at the pub last night because we were going over this episode and the episode we're doing after this
00:36:02
Speaker
And they kept talking about the box that was around like the strike zone, explaining like, oh, that's the dick box, right? Because where the ball has to go. And yes, in a roundabout way, I guess you could call it that, but it's called the strike zone, Tamara. Perfectly, rule of thirds, the catcher and ump's dicks. Like, you could not frame it better. Anyways. It wasn't surprising she took on catching as all of her other siblings took the same role. Her siblings were all playing the game and one of her sisters will become part of the story very briefly we're telling here. As she progressed through her teenage years, she played for the Regina May affairs of the girls inner city league. And in 1938, she joined the army and Navy bombers. Her team won the 1940 provincial championship. Hell yeah. Let's talk about some good guys. Okay. Let's talk about the troops.
00:36:58
Speaker
Lovely excuse to drop that clip. In 1936, at the age of 17, she married Maurice Griffith Baker, a man nine years older than her. cra don't have much ship out he imo is this a I don't have much say about him other than he enlisted in the RCAF and would fight in the Second World War. leaving Bonnie at home, which was important for the purposes of the story. In May of 1943, Bonnie was recruited by a professional scout named Hub Bishop to travel to Chicago to try out for a women's baseball league being organized by the owner of the Chicago Cubs and of chewing gum empire fame, Phillip Knight Wrigley.
Bonnie Baker and the AAGPBL
00:37:38
Speaker
Hub would go on to discover Mr. Hockey, that is Gordie Howe, also of Saskatchewan, who himself would go on to win four Stanley Cups with the Detroit Red Wings between the 1950 and 1955 seasons. Absolute god tier player. During this time, Bonnie was playing for the Moose Jaw Royals, alongside pitcher Doris Barr, originally of Starbuck, Manitoba. Barr would also become part of the recruitment effort. Hub had chosen to recruit the two because of their synergy while on the field. A good pitcher and capture combination is extremely valuable.
00:38:11
Speaker
yeah because they have to like communicate strategy on the fly between each other Is that what you figured out by looking at the dick box? Uh, that is not from looking at the dick box. That's, uh, literally from the Wiki page for baseball. right These are the depths that I go for you. ah Dear listening. Have you learned about what signals are? Uh, that's the thing that they use to communicate. It's like hand signals and stuff to. Okay. I'm glad you expanded upon this because yes, that's what a signal does.
00:38:43
Speaker
Yes, ah they wave flags with semaphore on them and and use that to transmit encrypted messages. There's actually, a there's been a lot of controversy around those signs. So there has been like a lot of cases where teams have like figured out what's being communicated and they'll then communicate stuff to the pitcher by doing things like smacking a garbage can or whatever. Why all that shit? Like there's a lot of espionage in baseball. Yeah, there's like ah a whole like sequence of like breaking the other team's code and it's it's crazy. This is the only thing I actually knew about baseball going into this. It's extremely controversial too. um you just their Teams had gone in trouble. There was a story from 2022 or 2021 with, I think it was the Houston Astros, where they did something along those lines and it was found to have broken light rules in MLB.
00:39:41
Speaker
for what, decrypting another team's code? Yeah, they did so using means that weren't considered fair. Ah, all's fair in love and war and also baseball, I suppose. Yeah, well, war is basically glorified baseball. With the Americans entering the Second World War, this presented the problem for the leagues of Major League Baseball. Keep in mind there are two leagues in MLB. There's the National and the Americans. When I say leagues, that's what I mean. Ablemen who had ample talent for the game were in droves ending up in the war. While American president Franklin D. Roosevelt saw baseball as important to keeping Morrell afloat on the home front, concessions had to be made for the lead to continue, including games being played at night so workers in factories could have entertainment in the evenings. Believe it or not, despite that, a lot of teams didn't, what was it, not in a lot of teams, in particular, I think it was the Chicago Cubs, did not have outdoor lighting until the 1980s at Wrigley Field.
00:40:37
Speaker
That Mr. Wrigley was too busy like scouting women's teams to actually actually invest in some goddamn floodlights. Yeah, it was like 1988. That was the year that ah the regular field finally got outdoor lighting. Wow, those must have been some inscrutable games, particularly. Well, I guess they wouldn't have been watching them on TV so much. It would have mostly been on radio or in person. Yeah, well, television did not exist in the Second World War. Well, at least not in the way we know it. No, no.
00:41:10
Speaker
So with about 500 MLB players having left for the war, this man on average across the 16 teams, each of them would see around 30 of their players just fighting overseas. So imagine 16 teams losing 30 players each. Yes. Devastating and absolutely devastating. It would have been like all their like kind of new up and comers because their older players would have probably been able to avert the draft. Uh, things never got that dire in the United States for, uh, for for uh enlisted for drafting enlisted folks you need nine players to play baseball if i remember correctly i'm pretty sure it's the same as softball and if you are losing 30 players you're probably playing with just a skeleton team like you probably had maybe 12 like i don't know how many people are typically on a baseball team's roster but i don't know if that number also included people that were in the minors and that's probably another thing that came up
00:42:07
Speaker
The other thing about all this is in 1942, attendance at home games saw an average decrease of 8.6%. Like they just weren't getting as many people, but in 1943, it got way worse and it dropped to around 30 to 50%. Yeah, but also you're seeing a lot of the people who would attend who would attend baseball games were currently attending a massive anti-fascist rally over in Europe. Spring training with traditionally no comment. No, I just don't have a comment. I just think that's that's fine. I'm going to leave that in there.
00:42:42
Speaker
do spring training Spring training, which traditionally would be elsewhere in their home cities, were forced to be nearby for the 1943 season due to government imposing restrictions on gasoline consumption and rail travel. Traditionally, teams would travel far further the spring training. For example, the Yankees would a train in Texas and the Washington Nationals would find themselves in Florida. Today, teams typically find themselves either in Arizona or Florida. ah Arizona being in the Cactus League and Florida being the Grapefruit League. This was done to ensure that no unnecessary travel was being made. And so the Yankees instead of going to sunny Florida would end up across the Hudson in New Jersey and the Nationals went off to Maryland. Oh, that must have been the biggest burn for for New Yorkers. Travel into Jersey.
00:43:29
Speaker
I'm trying to remember where a nerd jersey they ended up and I just can't remember. Games, however, were played through the entirety of the war with the exception of June 6, 1944, which we know as D-Day. Again, large anti-fascist rally in attendance. Wrigley, owner of the Cubs, and a number of other baseball executives, including Branch Rickey, who you'll learn about in the next episode, and Paul V. Harper, one of Wrigley's lawyers, got together out of concern for baseball falling out of the public spotlight due to restrictions imposed on MLB. This resulted in the formation of the
Founding of the AAGPBL
00:44:00
Speaker
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, or the AEGPBL, gpb ah very unfortunate acronym for those of us who are trans, which not only has an unfortunate acronym in my opinion, it's also a mouthful to say, and I'm only going to refer to it as the League from now on. I feel like it can be interpreted as being trans-inclusive.
00:44:25
Speaker
oh Yeah, I don't like that description of that and I'm not keeping that. Do not do that. Okay, fine. I was hoping you'd make an AGP reference. Uh, no, because I don't respect Blanchard and refuse to acknowledge his existence because he refuses to acknowledge non-binary existence. That's fair. Scouts were initially told the search within the Chicago metropolitan area, but after local women's baseball league saw many of their players leave, it forced them to form the National Women Baseball League, which would last as long as this league, but was less well known. Because of this, scouts were further a far looking at places such as Saskatchewan, and that's how we ended up with Bonnie Baker being invited to tryouts in Chicago. As a side note, and again, we're gonna be touching base on this in the next episode,
00:45:17
Speaker
This was a game purely for white women, just like the MLB. And there was also a color line and thus black women were excluded. Was it like the MLB where it wasn't an official policy of segregation? They just, it was the the whites only club was kind of unofficially. I think it was basically like the MLB was unsaid. I see. Yeah. yeah But enforced. Okay, this is ah it's interesting that ah Branch Rickey is involved in this because this is not the only scheme that Mr. Rickey has going on at this exact time to revitalize baseball. Well, we're going to talk about that in the next episode, I guess. It's literally the subject of the next episode.
00:46:06
Speaker
All in all, 200 women were invited to try out at Wrigley Field in Chicago, and of them, 60 were selected to four teams, which also included the recruitment of Bonnie. Selection for these women were not based solely on their ability to play, but also their marketability as wholesome and feminine. ah And this would exclude a lot of fucking people from my goddamn softball league, including me. ah this is all this I'm going to be talking about this. Sometimes the problem with women's sports is that fuckability is like somehow a requirement. And as an ace person, this just disgusts me. Want to see me connect this to Vichy France? Yes.
00:46:50
Speaker
Okay, furthermore, these women would not only need to be ready to play baseball, they would be subject to charm school classes run by Helena Rubenstein, one of the world's richest women due to her involvement in the cosmetics industry, and also chief rival to Elizabeth Arden, whose label still exists on products today, but Rubenstein's does not. Rubenstein's label got purchased by L'Oreal in the 1980s. Oh, good. And L'Oreal collaborated with VC France government. Yes, so did Chanel. let's let's yeah Well, Chanel actually just straight up collaborated with Nazis. but So one of the things, I don't have the notes here and I'm going to like kind of just bullshit my way through this, but I think Ruben Stein's
00:47:39
Speaker
Name is used for like some sort of grant that's given up to women now And so like the Rubenstein name does not exist on any cosmetics now L'Oreal's obviously does and so does Elizabeth Hardin's yes, but it was highly controversial in the 1980s when L'Oreal bought um the Rubenstein name from I think it was Colgate Palmolive that owned it after Rubenstein died, but yeah Interesting anyway because of the high rate of concern by the league over player behavior, fines would be issued if players were out of line to the point that it was more strict than with the men. So let's go over this slightly because it sucks. Guess what? Wearing pants? Not allowed.
00:48:23
Speaker
Oh, fuck this. both and Smoking or drinking anywhere in public? Not allowed. but Guess what? That's the thing. That's America's pastime. Smoking and drinking while watching baseball. We can't do it in public. Where's McCarthy? This is deeply un-American activity right here. You also must wear lipstick all the time. ah And how about this? The first fine? Five dollars in 1943. Second. Ten dollars. A third. Suspension. What the fuck? Yeah, I know. Oh, and also, short hair? You could be fired. And that did happen. Where in the 1944 season, Josephine Jojo DeAngelo was fired for cutting her hair too short. Described as butchy. I must see this. I must see this butchy hair. This cannot be... That's not even that short.
00:49:19
Speaker
Hey, hey, Helena thinks it's too short. don Well, whatever. Your name is now owned by fascist sympathizers. Rotten hell. So this was despite the fact that she was her team's second best player, appeared in the All-Star Game in the league's inaugural season, and was only struck out three times during her 358 home plate appearances. absolute cartoon league fucking sucks as i mentioned with the pants because it gets worse the uniform chosen for the women consisted of a short-sleeved tunic dress belted with a flare on the skirt with regulation dictating that the skirt was no more than six inches above the knee can i say fuck no
00:50:08
Speaker
ah Yeah. Like the point is in the context, playing with shorts like I do still gets shit into your nether regions. Like I took a spill a couple like think it was like last month I was playing a game and I went to catch a ball and I have a hip injury from ages that ago from roller derby. And when I started twisting, I started feeling my hip doing its warning like, hey, idiot, you're about to do something really bad. So I felt right. Like that's the simplest thing for me to do. I'll take that injury over going through walking with a cane again. And, you know, it was a pretty hard fall and like my teammates were all like, are you okay? And I was like, I think so. And I continued playing after that. But when I got home, um I took my shorts off and all this sand spilled out of it. Well, the flare skirt will help with that because all the stuff's just going to fall. That doesn't, you're just going to get a shit ton of blood with it.
00:50:58
Speaker
Yes, yes. I'm going to talk about this a little bit later, but in the league of their own, it ends up showing why you don't play with skirts. So for the inaugural teams at the league, we got the Comets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Bells of Racine, Wisconsin, the Peaches of Rockford, Illinois, and the Blue Sox of South Bend, Indiana. There are two good names out of here, and they are not the Bells or the Peaches. We have a Peaches in our league. They're actually a pretty good team. Yeah, but Comets, Blue Sox.
00:51:33
Speaker
Good team names. Yeah, it's like you have Red Sox and White Sox in Major League Baseball. Bells of Racine. Peaches is fine, but of Rockford? is you gotta get You gotta have a little, like, the the consonants in Blue Sox is South Bend. Yeah, that's fair. Comets of Kenosha. Wrigley, you're fired. Coming back to Bonnie, she found herself on the South Bend Blue Sox. In their first season, they had 58 wins and 50 losses, putting them in second place in composite standings. ah Basically, the first half of the season, they got 28 and 26, and the second half, they did 30 and 24. They played a shit ton of games.
00:52:14
Speaker
I'm going to talk about that. I guess that's the whole that's the whole season, not the yeah. OK, never mind. Yeah. So despite um having played, you know, 58, getting 58 wins, they were only one ah one loss behind the first place team. But for whatever reason, and I don't quite fully understand this and it might have something to do with standings and how many teams there were, um her team did not make it to the playoffs that season. There's four teams like the idea of having a playoffs in with four teams is absolutely baffling. Like we do a tournament every season to to close off the season. that ah That's a sentence that makes no sense. But anyway, there's like six teams in each division except for one of them, which has four. And like, I just don't understand how you would do a playoff like a finals tournament I could see, but not a playoff. It doesn't make any sense.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah, because especially if like, if one team is eliminated from the playoffs, now you're really doing a playoff of three teams or possibly two. In the 1944 season, they had eight teams. And I actually included the schedule for the, I believe it's the 1944 season on the left. And I'm not sure about the nineteen the ah list on the right, but you get an idea of how often they're playing, which is what I'm going to talk about here. They just do not make flyers like they used to, do they? No, they don't. my my ah My league just issues out a Google spreadsheet. Boring. Yeah, it's fine. It's only used by us. Like a typography on this is amazing. Yeah, I actually like how they used to do um ah printing back in the day. and Nowadays, it's like you can just load up whatever editor and just make it in five minutes. Paying the league worked out to anywhere between $55 and $100 every week. Which is not bad.
00:54:06
Speaker
No, it's not terrible. Well, okay, so how it worked out is the season is about 16 weeks long. And you were at best making about 1600 US dollars that each season and converting for inflation that was 29,000 US dollars or $40,000 in Canadian money today. Yes, but at a time where women weren't allowed their own bank account. That's true. And it is it's a substantial amount of money for 16 weeks of play, like it's especially considering the economics of that time period. The women were coming home with you know you know up to $40,000. Yeah. But generally speaking, they'd probably come back with 20. But even then, like that's still quite a bit of money for just 16 weeks of work.
00:54:54
Speaker
leak in 1945 was sold to Arthur Mayer Hoth. He was a, I believe he was a printing house magnet. I'm trying to remember offhand for about 10,000 US dollars, about $175,000 today. He saw the typography and was like, gotta Well, okay, so Wrigley explained that one there. Didn't see much use in the league after the war had ended, 1945 being the end of the Second World War. And he was struggling to get the league to expand to 10 teams, and he couldn't see the league filling up his baseball park, for example. He wanted them to play in much larger ballparks than
00:55:35
Speaker
the standard ballparks that they were in. As the seasons would progress, the style of play also changed. The start in the 1943 season, the distance between bases was 65 feet. But by 1948, they'd be at 72 with it peaking at 85 in 1954. The distance between the pitchers now grew over time from 40 feet to 60 feet. And then by 1948, underhand pitches were no more and were replaced with mandated overhead. There was no more windmill. Okay. So we're, we're, we're now we're in baseball territory. Yeah. So like, I wasn't explaining this at the start, but like I had mentioned that Bonnie, for example, came from softball and a lot of the women that were brought into the league were softball players. And to accommodate the softball players, they just gradually moved the teams, uh, into softball positions. So basis were extended, pitching was extended, uh, and then the type of throwing was extended.
00:56:33
Speaker
Yeah, they sort of like frogboiled them into playing baseball from softball. It's not hard to transition from softball to baseball from a fundamental standpoint. But like, there's a lot of um physical actions that just don't exist in softball that exists in baseball. And you can't just go and quickly go from an underhand to an overhand pitch. like Throwing a ball is a lot of work. there' is a lot it's with Throwing an underhand doesn't require you to use your entire body as much, but with an overhand pitch, you absolutely have to be able to throw your body during the throw. And that puts a lot of strain on your elbow and on your shoulder. Yeah, for sure. That's also where a lot a lot of that more velocity comes from.
00:57:20
Speaker
Oh, the pitchers have a limited lifespan as a result in MLB, um, just because of the fact that they have to throw so aggressively. Again, entrenched league metas that you don't see in, in junior and women's sports. Although I think that one's probably a foregone conclusion. So by the 1948 season, um, the tennis would peak at 910,000. That's the entire season. That's how many people they got to come out to games, which is not a small feat, considering they're playing in stadiums that maybe at best held 2,000 people. Yeah, that's pretty good. In 1950, Bonnie left the Blue Sox to go play for the Kalamazoo last season. This was a trade for her to become a player manager and to act as League spokesperson. She was the only woman in the League's history to have the manager title. Uh, yeah, that'll, that'll come up in next episode too.
00:58:11
Speaker
Oh, this is gonna come up in this episode too. ah In 1951, Bonnie skipped the season and gave birth to her daughter, Maureen, AKA Chicky. And I didn't play that part, but there's a narration at the end of the Heritage Minute and Maureen is the person narrating. Oh. Oh, that's cute. Yeah. In that scene here, her former Blue Sox would win the championship. She never won a championship. Just keep in mind. She returned to the league for one more season in 1952, but would not make it to the finals. This would become her final season, however, and she left without a championship to her name, as I mentioned. During her absence, I should mention on the league banned women from main managers.
00:58:58
Speaker
What? Why? I don't know the full story. Why? Again, this is a league that made women play in skirts. ah Sure. Maybe they're afraid that a woman manager would be like, you know what? Fuck this. You get shorts. She did, however, finish with a 235 average at bat, meaning that she made it to first base 23.5% of the time. One home run, 465 runs in her entire career. And her fielding average was .953, which is pretty damn impressive. Basically, 95% of the time, she did what she was supposed to do with the ball.
00:59:38
Speaker
Oh, Rad. Okay, so she's actually better at fielding than our famous fielder in the next episode, which is a little tragic. On August 17, 1952, she made an appearance on the CBS panel show What's My Line, which is what is featured in the Heritage Minute, and a contestant successfully deduced who she was. She returned to softball in 1953, where she led a team in Regina to the World Lady Softball Championship, which that year was hosted in Toronto. Go Queen. I wanted to find specifics on this and I spent a good four hours trying to find anything on this world lady softball championship. But there's nothing there is a world softball championship, ah which was first recorded in 1964 65 something like that. But there's just no data that I have on this. I imagine if I went through like um the Saskatchewan archives, I might find something but it just didn't have the time. Yeah, that's it.
01:00:34
Speaker
That's the frustrating thing about women's sport is that like documentation and recording when it happens wasn't necessarily always preserved or well preserved. However, by 1954, the league itself would have come to an end. And there's a couple of reasons for this.
Decline of the AAGPBL
01:00:51
Speaker
Many of the players were not enticed to play in the league or like rather they just weren't as interested. And many were leaving just to go play softball due to the changes made to pitching styles and whatnot. As teams dwindled because they were shutting down, tennis would also soon follow and the league would close with just five teams. The final championship was won by the Kalamazoo Lassies, but with no baker on the team. Also, the finances of the league were pretty bad. At the end of the 1953 season, they were approximately 80,000 US or almost a million dollars today.
01:01:25
Speaker
The other problem that was in debt. Yeah, they were just the they were in. That's where a million dollars for like, you know, a very small baseball league. Right. Television was also eating to ticket sales because 1950s and women were slowly returning into quote unquote traditional roles because men were back and from the war and they were in charge. Yes, i boom in every returning GI having a good union job was at the expense of psychotic anti-communism and also ah horrific gender and racial segregation.
01:02:02
Speaker
Sources are iffy, but anywhere between 53 and 68 players were record as being recruited from Canada during the history of the league. This is taken from the Canadian Journal of Baseball, so we have the following breakdown. 24 players were from Saskatchewan, 11 from Manitoba, 9 from Alberta, 6 from Ontario, and 3 from British Columbia. So Saskatchewan has something in their blood. Yeah, that's it. If you've ever been to... I'm actually surprised... Actually, you know what? I'm not surprised by this ah by this spread. If you've been to the prairies, baseball diamonds are everywhere. They're easy to find and in Metro Vancouver, I would say.
01:02:43
Speaker
I'm talking like little towns of a few hundred people have have a decent baseball diamond. Well, then again, all you need is a flat surface, like a flat grassy field, right? And you know what Saskatchewan's got a plenty of? yeah Having been to Saskatchewan, yeah.
01:03:00
Speaker
In 1962, Bonnie's husband would pass away. He was 52. Two years later, in 1964, she would go to work for the Regina Station CKRM and would become Canada's first women's sports broadcaster. Hell yeah! She also became manager of the Wheat City Curling Club, which is also Regina, for about two and a half decades. The club ceased to exist in 2003 when it was absorbed by the Tartan Curling Club, which itself was absorbed by the Caledonian Curling Club in 2018. And I mention it only because this club is one of two LGBTQ curling leagues, or rather spaces for LGBTQ curling leagues in Saskatchewan. Oh, hell yeah. So let's talk a little bit about Bonnie Baker and how she became a little bit more mythologized. In 1992, film director Penny Marshall, coming off having directed Big a few years prior, directed the film A League of Their Own, starring Gina Davis, Tom Hanks, of also Big fame, and Madonna.
01:03:56
Speaker
It also included John Levitz, Rosie O'Donnell, and Laurie Petty, plus a voiceover by Harry Shayer. That's quite the cast. Yeah, it's quite the cast. I will talk about this a little bit because it's kind of interesting. Gina Davis plays Donnie Hinson, who goes from working on Cows at a Farm in Willamette Valley in Oregon to becoming a baseball sensation alongside her sister Kit, played by Petty. This movie is not a true story, but it's all but confirmed that it borrows from the life of Bonnie and it plays up this supposed rivalry between her and her sister, which doesn't exist in real life. Like her sister did go to play for a different team in the league, but not at the same time. And I'm trying to remember how the overlap between Bonnie and her sister was now, because I didn't make write this down, but they didn't play on the same team. I think that's the simplest thing for me to say.
01:04:45
Speaker
It also um like Bonnie Baker was shown an expose in life, which I have a screenshot from earlier in the notes here. And she never appeared on the front cover of life. It was just in like, you know, a couple of pages within the magazine. I can't remember was on the front page, but wasn't that. But in the movie, it shows Dottie Hinson on the front cover. So a little embellishment. a little bit of embellishment. The movie also made it seem like it was all like it takes place all in one season. And that Dottie made it to the finals and all that sort of thing. But that didn't happen either with Bonnie because Bonnie never made it to like never won a championship.
01:05:24
Speaker
One interesting fact about this movie, so originally it was supposed to star ah Demi Moore, but she was not cast due to her being pregnant at the time. So then it went to Deborah Winger, who then weeks prior quit when Madonna was brought onto the cast. She quoted that it was being turned into an Elvis movie. I mean, given the embellishments, and kind of fair. Well, the really funny thing is like Madonna's billed as a star in this movie, but like, I don't feel like she has that much of a, like, I don't feel like her character is that strong, but they still build her as like, you know, as third in the movie. Yeah, this is sort of the era of like, you need a headliner and apparently Gina Davis wasn't enough. Or Tom Hanks. Or Tom, to okay, Tom Hanks wasn't like quite that name yet. Well, he was two years away from being in the movie, Forrest Gump, because Forrest Gump was 1994, I think.
01:06:16
Speaker
Yes, and that's that's I think where his career kind of became like a household name. The film did well at the box office, grossing nearly $108 million dollars US s in place first in ticket sales on its second week. It also got turned into two TV shows as well. There's a CBS TV show that picks up on the universe a little bit. It has the same characters. And there's an Amazon show as well. And that one is very different from the original, I should say. um There's also a play called Diamond Girls, which is, I can't remember who wrote it, but I got to see it last year at
01:06:51
Speaker
at the Deep Cove Stage Society in North Vancouver. And I would say that's a little bit more faithful. Yeah, I had a chance to go watch it last year. And I very much enjoyed my time. There's also a lesbian bar in Washington, DC that I've been to a couple of times. And it's called A League of Her Own. Oh, that's cute. It's a very cute bar. Excellent name. I was very happy to find out when I was in Washington DC about two years ago that it was still alive and well after the pandemic hit us. Yeah, that's that's extra good news because oh man, a lot of queer spaces died during the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, lesbian bars were becoming fewer and far between. Lots of gay bars still survive and not that I'm knocking there were anything that's just sad that there's no lesbian bars as plentiful.
01:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, it it turns out that the the Ace and Bee not really big into lesbian bars. Yeah, that's fair. Bonnie did get to see the movie and her comments on it were that it was funny and and very entertaining. She did like the movie. I'm glad that's always good.
Bonnie Baker's Legacy
01:07:56
Speaker
The movie was also added to the Library of Congress as well, so it was a good enough movie for it to be recognized as a significant work. In 1998, she was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. I also believe she's in the American one as well, and I believe she's featured, but again, don't quote me on that.
01:08:14
Speaker
And on December 17, 2003, at the age of 85, she passed away. She was posthumously inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2018. And in 2023, the heritage minute we are talking about was released. Yeah, this is like a this is a recent one. It's a freshen. I think it's the most recent one so far. Yes. Yes. You may have noticed the title of this episode, Bonnie's friends were roommates. And that is intentional. I've been making references to my own softball league, but there's a story within the AG PBL that hits a little close to home. My softball league here in Vancouver, which consists not only of women, but of trans men, trans women, non binary persons, and basically marginalized genders is probably the best way to describe it. It's a queer league to put it simple.
01:09:00
Speaker
And many of us would have just have never been recruited or if we got close to it, we would have been rejected outright or found ourselves kicked out. A lot of us are gender nonconforming. We would never be able to survive charm school. You know, we just we would have never fitted in. And with the expulsion of D'Angelo, just because she cut her own fucking hair. Yes, you could tell how much as far as we know. Yeah, Jenna norms were really enforced in this league. It was, you know, like, don't get me wrong. I think it's important that this league existed skirts and lipstick summer sport where they're running and sliding around what the actual but finishing school for for the athletes. this is It's ridiculous.
01:09:44
Speaker
Wearing li makeup in hot weather sucks shit. And i and isn't it fucking human in that part of the Midwest? There are a lot of other players who were close to finding themselves kicked out of the league for similar circumstances. And this led to a lot of bad things happening or sad things, I should say. I want to bring up a story of Terry Donohue of Saskatchewan and Pat Henschel of Nova Scotia. Terry was a player from Saskatchewan who played for the Pure Red Wings from 1946 to 1949. And during um some sort of practice that was out in Nova Scotia, she met Pat. Terry and Pat eventually sparked a relationship, but for nearly 70 years kept it secret.
01:10:26
Speaker
under the guise of roommates and close friends. They did not marry until 2015, 10 years after Canada made gay marriage legal and not long after that it was made legal in the United States. They only moved to Saskatchewan in 2017, so they lived in Chicago. That is fucking heartbreaking. I have this ah um on my agenda to watch, but this is documented in the film Secret Love. It's um filmed by Terry and Pat's grand nephew, Chris Bolan. And in 2018, he was lucky enough to document their story and the homophobia that followed it. um It's just time constraints have limited me from watching the movie. you
01:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, let's do a watch party when you watch it. Invite me over. Let's hang. I'll bring beer. Sure. Terry died in 2019 in April at the age of 93, a year before the film was released. But to the best of my knowledge, Pat is still alive. And that is the story of the AG PBL and what we can fit into an hour. Queer people have always been here. And we will always be here. Queer people have always been here, yes. it's I always have to remind people that you know being queer is not a new thing. It existed exists now. It existed in the 1940s. It existed in the 1800s. It existed in the Roman Empire, especially if we can start talking about Roman birth certificates.
01:11:58
Speaker
And it existed even before then. And enforcing gender norms is fucking bullshit. Expecting people to be a certain way is fucking bullshit. Skirts are for everyone. Skirts and dresses are for everyone. Skirts are fun. Just do not play sports in skirts. But not for baseball. There's only a handful of sports I can think of where I'd be comfortable wearing a skirt. Like I think curling is one of them. Field hockey. Yeah, actually, I was going to say ice hockey. You could pull it off, but it would be kind of miserable, but field hockey, I could agree with. If you're running around, but you're not like expected to like slide or duck or crouch or anything. i i like I think it's pretty good. If you're going to wear a skirt in a sport, it should be a skort.
01:12:42
Speaker
Yeah, it should be a skort because weirdos, particularly in the age of televised sports. But yeah, skorts are ideal. I wear skorts hiking most of the time. Yeah, they're they're comfortable and they let your body breathe a little bit better. I'm gonna include a lot of this stuff in the show notes if you're interested in knowing more about this. I do think that watching a League of their own is ah the movie at least. I can't comment on the Amazon show too much. I do think it's worth watching. I imagine what I've heard the Amazon show is pretty good. I just don't watch a lot of television personally. I have nothing to say about the cbc or the CBS show, excuse me.
01:13:21
Speaker
And if you do see Diamond Girls as a play at a theater, do check it out. Like, do support local theater to begin with. But um Diamond Girls was definitely a good play. Tamarack, what did we learn? ah that That the world of 40s baseball was weirdly interconnected. And also, yeah, gender norms are bunk. But also, I'm fucking agendered, like queer as fuck person. Like, of course I'm going to say that. All right, well, what's our next episode going to be on? All right, our next episode is going to be on Branch Rickey's other little project that he had going on around this time. ah It's not going to be any less sad or tragic. Well, I guess that's a podcast. That is a podcast.
01:14:08
Speaker
Well, if you have any comments or questions, you can send an email to mailbag at shawanagamoments.ca. And I believe by this point, we'll have a Patreon, it'll be patreon dot.com slash shawanagamoments. There will be fun things like bonus episodes, discord maybe, other things perhaps, who knows. Yeah, we're going to fix the price of ah our Patreon to the cost of a Tim Hortons coffee. Although we'll have other tiers. You can, if you really feel like throwing us more than what is it $2 now, I think we'll have like a $5 and $10 tier, but the $2 tier itself will always be fluctuating because we will just find out that Tim Warren's increased it by 10 cents and we'll just always round it to the nearest quarter. I think that's the best way to do it. So like the first or whatever Patreon lets us do, I guess the first tells us we can.
01:15:01
Speaker
the first tier will be the cost of a large double double the second tier no no no it's just a regular cup of coffee have you you i walked by tim hortons i know how much it costs okay but the second tier will be the cost of an ice cap because that's about five bucks like for We will review the, when we we have a chance, we will review the prices of ah of Tim Hortons and then we'll use that to fix, like, we'll use that to index our tears. I solemnly swear to you that I will fight tooth and nail for a Tim Hortons based pricing setup. All right. Well, I think that's, that is actually a podcast. That is in fact one metric podcast. All right. Goodbye everybody. Bye.
01:15:58
Speaker
Schewinnegan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, Stolo, and Tsawatuth First Nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.