A Project of
the San Diego County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls,
the Women's Museum of California,
SDSU Women's Studies Department, and UCSD Women's Center.
Alice "Lefty" Hohlmeyer
2005
Spirit of the Women's Hall of Fame
Alice "Lefty" Hohlmeyer turned her youthful fastpitch hobby into a baseball career. At age 20, Hohlmayer had the unique chance to play in a professional baseball league, an opportunity women players of her day had only dreamed of. Hohlmayer was born in 1925; and when professional baseball lost its male players to World War II military service, baseball fans turned to the women of America to fill the national pastime gap. Alice joined the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1946 at its heyday--boasting 8 teams and playing 110-game schedules.
The women of the AAGPBL had to adapt from women's softball to baseball's 90-foot baseline with 9 players (instead of 10) and grueling road schedules. Still, they had to live up to society's idea of femininity, complete with skirts and make-up worn on and off the field--those bare legs paid the price with every slide into base. In 1948, Alice pitched 42 scoreless innings and got a hit off the great Satchel Paige in an All Star game. Years later, she was the only woman in the 1981 "fifty-five years and over World Men's Slow Pitch Tournament." An engaging speaker on the national scene, Alice also consulted on the Geena Davis film "A League of Their Own." Rosie O'Donnell portrayed a character in the film loosely based on Alice. Alice died in 2017 at age 92.