“We lost one of our super stars,” the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League said in a statement
NEED TO KNOW
- Betsy Jochum, an original member of the women’s baseball league that inspired the film A League of Their Own, has died
- Jochum was 104 when she passed away in South Bend, Indiana
- Her original South Bend Blue Sox uniform is on permanent display in the Smithsonian Institute
Betsy Jochum has passed away at age 104.
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League confirmed that Jochum, the last member of the original group that inspired the 1992 film A League of Their Own, died on Saturday, May 31.
“We lost one of our super stars, the last original 1943 player,” the league said.
An obituary for Jochum, a former outfielder, first basewoman and pitcher, said the baseball icon was in Southfield Village when she passed away. She is survived by her sister, Frances Jochum, and “her good friends, Phyllis Smallwood and Diane Gram.”
Jochum played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) beginning in 1943, when she was signed by the South Bend Blue Sox, and remained on the team for five years.
Listed at 5-foot-7, Jochum was a multi-talented player at bat and on the mound, the AAGPBL said, who is remembered as one of the “fastest runners in the early years of the league and rarely struck out” in her career. She was also named an All-Star of the league and won a batting title.
In addition to her baseball legacy, Jochum earned her bachelor’s and master’s degree in physical education at Illinois University and went on to became a Physical Education and Social Studies Teacher at Muessel School for 27 years before retiring in 1983, her obituary said.
In a 2012 interview with The South Bend Tribune, Jochum said it was “amazing” when she was selected to play in the league. “I was actually going to get paid for playing a game. Girls didn’t do that back then.”
The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York dedicated a permanent display to the women’s league in 1988.
Jochum’s South Bend Blue Sox uniform is also on permanent display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as part of the Sports: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers exhibit.
In Jochum’s honor, a screening of A League of Their Own will take place at Howard Park as part of the city’s “Movies in the Park” event, ABC57 reported.
A funeral service was held on Saturday, June 7 in South Bend, Indiana. Jochum will be buried at a “later date” at Arlington Memorial Gardens in Cincinnati, Ohio.
