Former ballplayer still in a league of her own
Anyone who follows sports realizes there’s a degree of mythology involved. Over time, athletic feats become exaggerated. A 300-foot home run stretches to 500 feet. A running back breaks through a dozen tackles, carrying linemen on his back as he struggles to cross the goal line.
Thelma “Tiby” Eisen, named by Total Baseball as one of the top 20 players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, wanted to dispel one misunderstanding right off the bat.
Several articles about this early-day Ricky Henderson-type speedster mention that she grew up in an Orthodox household.
“No, I didn’t,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. “That was a big mistake, and I looked at that and I thought, ‘Well, it’s already printed; what can I do?’”
The 88-year-old Eisen recounted growing up in a Jewish section of Los Angeles, going to shul with her grandmother, and hearing her parents speak Yiddish, but described herself as “not very religious.”
In those days, any girl looking to make a career out of sports — let alone a Jewish girl — was the object of curiosity and not a little derision from members of her family. A story on the American Jewish Historical Society’s Web site sheds some light:
“‘We played a big charity game in Chicago for a Jewish hospital,’ Eisen recalled in an interview with historian David Spaner. ‘My name and picture were in every Jewish newspaper. My uncle, who had said, “You shouldn’t be playing baseball — you’ll get a bad reputation, a bad name,” was in the stands…bursting with pride that I was there.’”
Generally, though, Eisen told NJJN, “my parents never paid too much attention to what I was doing [as long as] I was a good girl.” Eisen loved playing tennis and softball in the playgrounds of LA. At the age of 18, she played on a women’s professional football team until the LA city council passed an ordinance that prohibited them from playing within city limits.
But it was her prowess on the softball field that earned her an invitation to try out for the AAGPBL, a project spearheaded by Philip Wrigley of chewing gum and Chicago Cubs fame in response to the dilution of minor league baseball during World War II.
Eisen broke in with the Milwaukee Chicks in 1944, a year after the league debuted. She credits her first manager, Max Carey, a Hall of Fame outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Dodgers, with helping her make the transition from softball to baseball.
“He was a wonderful father figure…. Nobody was sure I was going to make it, but I could run fast, so he kind of took me under his wing and taught me how to run [the bases] and how to play the game.”
Eisen was an apt pupil; her 91 stolen bases helped the team win the league championship. She also played for the Peoria Redwings, where, in 1946, she stole 128 bases in only 99 games, led the league in three-base hits, and was named to the All-Star team. Midway through the 1947 season, she was traded to the Fort Wayne Daises, where she remained until retiring in 1952. The AAGPBL folded two years later.
In her nine-year career, Eisen played 966 games, batted .224, and stole 674 bases. At the height of her career, she figured, her highest salary was “probably $100 a week.”
She recalled only one instance that her religion was mentioned. Bill Wambsganss — the only player to pull off an unassisted triple play in a World Series game — was her manager in Ft. Wayne. Eisen had lost track of the outs and headed toward the dugout with only two down. Wambsganss waved her back, saying to one of the players on the bench, “I never heard of a Jew that couldn’t count.
“That’s true,” said Eisen, who heard of the comment about 30 years later. “I was out in the field, and he was waving ‘go back, go back.’ I don’t think it was malice. He was a nice guy.”
The relationships among the women were also good, she said. “Nobody ever bothered anybody. Nobody really cared about your background because you were all there to play ball and to win.”
After retiring from pro ball, Eisen returned to California, took some college courses, and “fooled around” taking odd jobs here and there. She worked for an inventor (“He owned the Playboy Mansion before he sold it” to [Hugh Hefner.]), but when he relocated the company, Eisen got a job with the telephone company. She retired after 18 years.
Forty years later, the AAGPBL enjoyed a resurgence of interest following the release of A League of Their Own, starring Geena Davis, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, and Tom Hanks.
“It was great,” she said of the 1992 film, explaining how it was actually an offshoot of a documentary about her Fort Wayne team. She called the movie “mostly accurate…but it doesn’t really tell the whole story. It only [considered] two teams. You know, we had 10 teams at one time….”
Basking in the glow of the renewed attention, Eisen helped put together the exhibit that now honors the female players at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
“My sister said to me, ‘You know, you’re becoming an old lady and you’re a big celebrity now. What happened?’”
In recognition of her accomplishments, Eisen is in the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, based in Commack, NY, and the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in West Hills, Calif. And on May 20, she was inducted into the Northeast Indiana Baseball Association Hall of Fame.
She and other league players “got offers from different organizations to come and speak, to come to schools and talk to the girls. We’re really quite celebrities in our old age. I can’t believe it.” She is currently involved in Sports Educators of America, which arranges free baseball clinics for youngsters in the LA area.
“They always advertise ‘Boys and girls, come out [to the clinics],’ but the girls never came,” she said. “Then they asked us if [the female athletes] would come out. We said, ‘Sure, we’d love to.’ Then the girls came out in swarms.”
She tells future athletes — with a special nod to the girls — “There’s no limit. If you can do something, just do it. Don’t listen to anybody. Do what you want to do.”
For further information visit the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Web site or read The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League by Merrie A. Fidler (“Her book is really the best of all,” Eisen said.).
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