by Cliff Saunders
Milwaukee baseball fans revere their late-season heroes. There was Hank Aaron’s home run to win the 1957 National League pennant. There was pitcher Lew Burdette’s record-setting feat, winning three World Series games to help the Braves take the 1957 title. And Robin Yount’s still-unequaled feat of two four-hit games for the Milwaukee Brewers in the 1982 World Series.
But one hero has never gotten the credit she deserves. Sixty-six years ago, Connie Wisniewski literally pitched the Milwaukee Chicks of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to a championship. Wisniewski was the winning pitcher in all four games against the Kenosha Comets in a best-of-seven series. That’s as many wins as Hall of Famer Warren Spahn had in three different World Series with the Boston and Milwaukee Braves, and more wins than the whole Brewers pitching staff managed in the 1982 Series.
But there is a big difference between Wisniewski’s Chicks and the ’57 Braves or ’82 Brew Crew. Those teams – to this day – are celebrated. But the 1944 Milwaukee Chicks are all but unknown – even to most baseball aficionados.
The Chicks were a hard-luck team: a success on the field but unappreciated by fans. As a result, they lasted just one season in Milwaukee, not unlike the city’s lone entry in the Negro National League, the Milwaukee Bears, who played here for only the 1923 season. Too often, this history is neglected when stories of Milwaukee’s professional baseball teams are told.
There’s a saying about sports fans in Milwaukee. They will support a winner. The Braves set Major League Baseball records for attendance in the 1950s. The Brewers have surpassed 3 million fans in the last two years, an amazing feat for a city this size. When the Brewers claimed the National League Wild Card spot in 2008, thousands of fans packed the Summerfest grounds for a huge pep rally. There was a parade for the 1957 world champion Braves and also for the ’82 Brewers, even though they fell one game shy of winning their Series.
So why so little celebration for the Milwaukee Chicks?
The Girls Professional Baseball League was born in 1943, the brainchild of then-Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley, as an attempt to keep professional baseball alive during World War II. As Milwaukee baseball historian Jim Nitz explains, “The war effort had siphoned away more than half of the major league ballplayers and closed down a majority of the minor leagues.”
The league got its humble start in four midsized Midwestern war-production towns – Kenosha and Racine in Wisconsin, Rockford, Ill., and South Bend, Ind. Because Wrigley’s fellow Major League Baseball owners did not want to put their own money into a women’s league, Wrigley bankrolled the entire operation.
The challenge was whether fans would accept a women’s league. So Wrigley carefully cultivated the image of its players. Each team was given a female chaperone who acted as a mother figure to players. Everything the players did, from whom they associated with to where they lived, had to be approved by these chaperones.
The league also enrolled its players in charm school, which dictated what the players could wear and how they should groom. Players were warned to “be clean and wholesome in appearance, be polite and considerate in their daily contacts, and avoid rough and raucous talk and actions.” Wrigley wanted a league of wholesome All-American Girls.
At first, it looked like Wrigley’s investment would pay off. “Elated by a successful inaugural season,” Nitz notes, Wrigley ventured into the larger cities of Minneapolis (the Minneapolis Millerettes) and Milwaukee.
Milwaukee’s team was a success on the field, though it was a struggle at first. The Chicks were in third place at midseason with a 30-26 record. The team suffered a series of injuries. Wisniewski, the team’s top pitcher, went down with a twisted knee. Dolores Klosowski, who played first base, broke her leg. Milwaukee native Vivian Anderson had two broken fingers that were nearly amputated.
The Chicks needed an infusion of healthy players, and the league stepped in to help. Outfielder Vickie Panos was brought in from the South Bend Blue Sox, and Merle “The Blonde Bombshell” Keagle joined the team as a rookie. In addition, the league moved its 1943 batting champion, Gladys Davis, to the Chicks from the Rockford Peaches. Rookie Doris Tetzlaff came on board as the new third baseman. Left-handed pitcher Clara Cook came over from Kenosha, and another Milwaukee native, Sylvia Wronski (who would later come within one out of pitching a no-hitter), was added as well.
The Chicks also benefited from having a former major league star as their manager. Max Carey had been a star outfielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Robins (precursor to the Dodgers) during a career that spanned from 1910 through 1929. (Known for his baserunning and defense, Carey was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1961.)
The new players, along with a returning Wisniewski, started to turn things around. The Chicks went 40-19 in the second half, earning a spot in the best-of-seven championship series against the Kenosha Comets. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Wisniewski, the “Iron Woman” who won all four games, the Chicks won the league crown.
But off the field, the team faced problems. Other teams in the league had local financial backing. The Chicks didn’t. They had to rely on money from the league just to pay the startup costs.
The Chicks also had problems drawing fans. First of all, they shared Borchert Field (on Eighth and Chambers on the near-North Side) with the minor league Milwaukee Brewers. Even though the Brewers – then owned by the P.T. Barnum of baseball, Bill Veeck – agreed to share the facility, the Brewers played as many night games as possible. The Chicks were forced to play during the day. That would have a big impact on attendance.
“On Opening Day, the Brewers drew 13,694 fans,” Nitz says. “The Chicks, who had advertised more extensively in the local papers, could only muster 2,300 for their entire initial four-game series.”
The local media didn’t help. Because the league delayed giving the Milwaukee team their eventual nickname, the Milwaukee Journal stepped in and dubbed the team the “Schnitts.” The German word meant “small beer,” or in other words, “little Brewers.” The Chicks weren’t given the same kind of coverage the more established Brewers got. The few editorials that did appear in the papers took the team to task for ticket prices they considered too expensive. Wrigley had the Chicks charge 95 cents per ticket. The Racine Belles and Kenosha Comets charged only 74 cents per ticket.
Another issue the Chicks faced was going up against established amateur teams in the area. As Anderson once noted, the local women’s teams had always been a great draw. The players on those teams were well recognized in the area, while all of the Chicks, except Anderson and Wronski, were from outside Milwaukee.
The team also struggled because of a health scare in the city. Toward the end of the season, a polio concern helped keep people away from Borchert Field. “The Milwaukee polio quarantine kept all children in the city 12 years old and under confined to their homes during the last homestand,” Nitz says.
Wrigley did everything he could think of to draw fans to Chicks games, even adding other forms of entertainment. “Wrigley hired the Milwaukee Sinfonietta to perform before many of the Chicks’ contests in the second half,” Nitz says.
But nothing worked. Teams in smaller cities like Rockford and Racine greatly outdrew the Chicks, even though the population in Milwaukee was much bigger than the other two cities combined.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the Chicks were forced to play the entire championship series on Kenosha’s home field because the Brewers needed to use Borchert Field. Winning the series while playing every game on the opponent’s field made the feat all the more remarkable.
Yet the Chicks were so unheralded, Wrigley decided to move them: After the 1944 season, the team left Milwaukee and moved to Grand Rapids, Mich. There, the team found more support, and remained in Grand Rapids until the league disbanded after the 1954 season.
But that isn’t the end of the story. The 1992 movie A League of Their Own, which was based on the Girls Professional League, led to renewed interest in the Chicks and the league (though the fictionalized story concentrated on the Rockford Peaches team). In 2000, the big-league Brewers hosted a reunion, and they now include the league among the “Walls of Honor” at Miller Park. Events to honor the Chicks and the league have been held by the Brewers ever since.
“The fans have always given a great round of applause when we introduce members of the [girls] league and their autograph sessions are well-attended,” says Tyler Barnes, the Brewers’ vice president of communications.
And though the league is long gone, the Racine Belles survive, albeit in a different form. The Belles are now an organization, appropriately enough, committed to the development of girls fastpitch softball in southeastern Wisconsin. To donate or learn more about the organization, go to racinebelles.org.
Remembering all of our pro baseball teams
Milwaukee Bears (1923): A member of the Negro National League for one season. The Bears helped to fill the void created when two other teams in the league – the Cleveland Tate Stars and the Pittsburgh Keystones – folded. The Bears were led by player/manager and prolific hitter Pete Hill (inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006). The roster was made up of players from the disbanded Keystones, the New Orleans Crescent Stars (an independent Southern League team) and from tryouts held in Chicago before the season started. The Bears played their games at Athletic Park (later known as Borchert Field). The team struggled both on and off the field – compiling a record of 12 wins and 41 losses. Like the Chicks 21 years later, the team had difficulty drawing fans. Scant coverage by the media, which in most cities was indifferent to the Negro League, didn’t help. The Bears disbanded after the season.
Milwaukee Brewers (1902-1952): Although there were teams from as early as 1880 using the Brewers nickname, the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association were the first team with that name to enjoy success and stability. The minor league team began play in 1902 and lasted 51 years, winning the league title on five occasions.
Milwaukee Chicks (1944): Won the AAGPBL championship before moving to Grand Rapids, Mich.
Racine Belles (1943-1950): Another Girls Professional Baseball League team, they won two league championships. The team moved to Battle Creek, Mich., in 1951, then to Muskegon, Mich., where they played their final season in 1953.
Kenosha Comets (1943-1951): Another Girls League entry. A League of their Own features the team, but the characters were fictional. The team played at Lake Front Stadium but later switched to Simmons Field.
Milwaukee Braves (1953-1965): Owner Lou Perini brought the Boston Braves to Milwaukee in 1953. In 1957, the Braves delivered Milwaukee’s only World Series title. Perini sold the team to William Bartholomay in 1962, who moved the team to the larger TV market of Atlanta after the 1965 season.
Milwaukee Brewers (1970- Present): Current baseball commissioner Bud Selig began working to bring Major League Baseball back to Milwaukee in the late 1960s. He finally succeeded, buying the bankrupt Seattle Pilots and making them the Brewers in 1970, ending a four-year drought of big-league ball in Milwaukee. Made the World Series in 1982 but lost in seven games to St. Louis.
