By Raymond Rolak
Bill Veeck said after World War II, “I wish I could have made the St. Louis Browns…….nine Dotties.” Veeck, when he owned the Chicago White Sox, always had a kind word for the Norwood, Ohio, native because of her dedication and perseverance.
In 1999, Sports Illustrated for Women named Kamenshek, # 100 on its list of top women sports figures for the century.
The left-handed first baseman and lead-off hitter for the Rockford (Ill.) Peaches was one of the first stars of the league, which was founded in 1943 during World War II.
The league was started to give war production personnel some entertainment because of shift work. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
She won back-to-back batting titles in 1946 and ’47 and was the league’s all-time batting leader with a .292 lifetime average. She also was selected to seven All Star teams (1943, 1946-51).
Her drive and personal philosophy was spelled out when she frequently said, “Anything less than my best is failure.” Even though she was only 5’-6” she excelled at first base. She was known as the first women to do the full splits to help get that out at first base. As a true student of the game, she knew that defense was just as important as run production.
“She was the greatest ballplayer in our league,” said Pepper Paire Davis, 85, a catcher and 10-year veteran in the league who remained friends with Kamenshek. “She was one of the few ballplayers in our league who hit .300, which is like hitting .400 in the majors.”
Added Davis: “She had the complete game, including the brains. She could hit with power, she could bunt, she could run, she could slide and she played a great defensive first base. She had what I call the three Hs — head, heart and hustle — besides all the talent in the world as a ballplayer.”
Davis, who served as a technical advisor on “A League of Their Own”, the 1992 movie about the AAGPBL, said the character played by Geena Davis “was symbolically named Dottie as the best ballplayer in the league, and that was after Dottie Kamenshek.”
Davis said Kamenshek, known as Dottie by her fans and Kammie by her friends, “was a great gal, very serious about her baseball. She religiously practiced, as practice was serious for her.”
A back injury caused her to leave the league in 1953, a year before its final season.
Kamenshek, who earned a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from Marquette University in Milwaukee, moved to California in 1961. She worked as a staff physical therapist, supervisor and chief of therapy services for Los Angeles County. She retired from L.A. County in 1980.
In 1943, Kamenshek was a high school senior playing for an industrial league softball team in Cincinnati, when a scout for the new girl’s league held tryouts in that city.
Kamenshek was among those selected to participate in the final tryouts at Wrigley Field in Chicago and was one of two Cincinnati girls to join the league.
She told Marquette Magazine, “At first we only got 500 people in the stands, and then it got up to 10,000, which is good for a town that supports minor league baseball. Eventually, we won them over. At first they just came to see the skirts, and then we showed them we could play.”
In 1993, Kamenshek was quoted as saying in “Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball”, “Baseball gave a lot of us the courage to go on to professional careers at a time when women didn’t do things like that.”
She never considered herself the best player in the league, in the book by Barbara Gregorich, she said. “Other people did. “I just went out and played every game to the best of my ability.”
She stole 109 bases in 1946 even though playing in short skirts. Dottie recollected, “I developed calluses instead of strawberries,” referring to sliding abrasions. “She was one tough competitor,” said Davis.
This past March, the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, honored the participants of the AAGPBL with a symposium during Women’s History Month.
Connie Wisneiwski, a Detroit native and AAGPBL All-Star pitcher for the Grand Rapids Chicks, before her death in 1995, said it so simply, “Dottie was my toughest out.”
There are no immediate surviving family members and a private funeral will be held.
(Raymond Rolak is a Michigan based sports broadcaster)