Rockford Peaches

The Rockford Peaches were a women's professional baseball team who played from 1943 to 1954 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). A founding member, the team represented Rockford, Illinois.

The Peaches were one of 2 teams to play in every AAGPBL season, the other being the South Bend Blue Sox. They played their home games at Beyer Stadium on 15th Avenue in Rockford. The team's uniform consisted of a peach colored dress featuring the Rockford city seal centered on the chest, along with red socks and cap. In later years, the Peaches wore a white home uniform with black socks and cap.

One of the more successful teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the Peaches won the league championship in 1945, 1948, 1949, and 1950 and had its share of star players.

Team names and colors were picked by Mr. Wrigley according the location proximity of the cities that did not have a major league male baseball team. Rockford, Illinois was one of them. Mrs. Wrigley, Wrigley's Art Designer, Otis Shepard, and Ann Harnett worked together to design special uniforms for the League. Ann Harnett, Chicago softball star and the first girl to sign a contract with the league for the one-piece short-skirted flared tunic that resembled a figure skating costume, tennis skirt and field hockey uniforms at this time period. All uniforms were based on pastel colors. Satin shorts (a darker color than the tunic), knee-high baseball socks and baseball hat the uniform. Each city had a different colored uniform and its own symbolic patch decorated the front of the uniform. Femininity, was a high priority for Mrs. Wrigley and she employed Helena Rubenstein's Beauty Salon to teach personal hygiene, makeup, hair and mannerisms to make each Rockford Peach and all AAGPBL players the most attractive they could be. Part of the uniform was a makeup kit and instructions on how to use makeup to be part of the overall look for each team in the league.^[1] Rockford Peach player, Dorothy "Kammie" Kamenshek, recalled, "The first year was very difficult because [the skirts] were too flaring and too long. You'd go to stoop for a ground ball and the skirt would be there. But we accepted it." Ballplayers also accepted the wounds from sliding called 'strawberries' due to the shortness of the skirt and shorts.^[2]

Olive Little threw the first no-hitter in team and league history, on June 10, 1943.^[3]

Peaches players who were named to the All-Star teams from 1946 to 1954 included Dorothy Kamenshek, Lois Florreich, Dorothy Harrell, Carolyn Morris, Alice Pollitt, Ruth Richard, Rose Gacioch, Eleanor Callow, and Joan Berger. Pitcher Olive Little hurled the first no-hitter both in team and league history.^[4] In addition, Florreich was the pitching champion in 1949 during the league's overhand era, and Gladys Davis won the league batting crown in the 1943 inaugural season, while Kamenshek earned the honors in the 1946 and 1947 seasons.

The last living player of the first Peaches roster in AAGPBL, pitcher Mary Pratt, died on May 6, 2020, at the age of 101.^[5]

The Rockford Peaches feature in the 1992 film A League of Their Own by Penny Marshall. However, all of the characters in the film are fictitious. The team did not play in the 1943 league championship, as depicted in the film. In real life, the Racine Belles faced the Kenosha Comets in 1943; the Peaches won their first title in 1945. The formation of the AAGPBL and the Rockford Peaches are also centered in the 2022 TV series A League of Their Own.

Source:^[6]

Bold denotes members of the inaugural roster

• Women's baseball
• Women in baseball

• Gregorich, Barbara (1993). Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball. Harcourt Brace and Company. pp. 131–140. ISBN 0156982978.

• Official Website of the AAGPBL