A League Of Her Own

At a recent gathering of high school classmates, an old friend approached who bestowed a wonderful compliment. “Old Norwood will be gone when we lose you,” he said, referring to literary efforts regarding our town’s past. Nearby was Mark Linehan, who I once interviewed regarding his mother Rhoda, who had played for the Ft. Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Baseball League.

The league was made famous with the 1992 release of A League of Their Own. The film followed organized baseball’s efforts to keep baseball interest alive while droves of professionals, like Norwood’s Ray Martin, went to war. It starred Tom Hanks, Madonna, and Geena Davis of Wareham, barely fifteen miles from Somerset, from which an eighteen-year-old softball star named Rhoda “Nicky” Leonard had emerged.

“It’s pretty cool, when my kids went to school and had show-and-tell, they’d bring a baseball card of their grandmother!” Mark Linehan had told me. “That’s pretty awesome. She grew up in Somerset and played softball and baseball in church leagues. At least four or five women from that team played in that league.

“She loved the movie! She thought it was very true to the way it really was, with the etiquette classes, the uniforms were spot on, she was actually younger than most of the others. They came from all over to play, people couldn’t read, some stuff like that she felt was accurate. They had classes to learn lady skills, it captured a lot of the stuff they were trying to do. They showed them as athletes but also showed them as women.

“She played in nine games and went 2-for-21. We busted her chops! You could have done better with your eyes closed! But the others were so good. In a way, many of them were out of her league. She talked about not playing much, she only got up twenty-one times and because she was younger, she didn’t really fit in because she was eighteen and she couldn’t go to bars.

“She went straight from graduating high school to Indiana for only three months, then came back and went to Bridgewater – I mean, I grew up playing catch with my mother! We’d have neighborhood games and my mother would be the first one picked! She played in a local women’s league in Norwood until her late thirties. You know, it’s one thing to play well locally, and then playing against the best… My mother and Jean Brown started the girls Little League in Norwood. She was elected to her high school Hall of Fame in its first class along with Jerry Remy, they were both second basemen.

“I think it was when the baseball cards and the movie came out that it really started. All of a sudden, she’d get requests from little girls sending their cards to autograph, and she’d always do it – she’d bought extra cards to give out. They sent each player an allotment of cards, and my mother bought extra. She got requests not just from little girls, but from collectors, but that part was a huge deal. And then when that thing opened at the Baseball Hall of Fame, she realized this is a really big deal.

“It was a big deal. The New England Sports Hall of Fame asked her for her glove. She always got a kick out of the fact she was in Cooperstown, and then they came to get her glove. But I think the baseball card is what triggered that – it was a really big deal. The cards came out around the time of the movie, because obviously there was a lot more interest. I think it was when my kids and my sisters’ kids made a big deal about the cards, you know, it was something that gave her a little more energy. She’d have letters from people asking for a card, some would send a baseball, and she’d sign it and send it back.

“I just think it was such a great thing. So few people were part of it. Her parents were pretty strict – I’m shocked they let her go and also that she could play at that level! It just distinguished her and she never made a big deal about it. It was only when she became a grandmother that she enjoyed talking about it.

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“The best part of the movie for me is the very end at the reunion, because they were my mother’s generation. It was a time when people excelled without any help. Now things are so structured, they learned this stuff on their own. Her father had polio and her mother didn’t have a clue about sports, so it was kind of an odd thing to happen. That’s the part that amazes me, that she could get to that level without any structure, or any real parental encouragement.”

Mark Linehan. Our generation thinking of the last one and mentioning the next. When I heard the news, I thought of the interview about his mother, as well as the wonderful compliment I had received within his earshot. I realized that a part of old Norwood is gone when every one of us is lost, not just the guy who writes it down.

Thank you for the memories, Mark.