“We had to look nice,” says Terry Donahue of her days as a catcher in the All American Girls Baseball League. “We had to have our makeup on, our lipstick on, and we could not have short hair. We had to have long hair. Mr. Wrigley was very strict about that. Someone was always yelling at me, ‘Terry get on some lipstick!’” She sits back and laughs a laugh that seems too big to have come from her slim frame. “We wore cleats, which had to be shined. We wore dresses, which are not very good for sliding. But he made it very feminine.”
“And oh, my gosh, it was quite an experience. It was so warm there, and our workouts–oh! They really put us through it. The Cuban guys were so cute! They wore white shirts and white pants, and they had those black mustaches and black hair.” She shakes her head. “We had chaperones–very strict, very strict. We couldn’t even go out on a date. We’d be out there trying to get in shape and the Cuban guys would be wanting autographs.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
At 66, Terry Donahue is still giving autographs, more and more since the Hollywood hype machine has geared up for the opening of Penny Marshall’s film about the girls’ league, A League of Their Own.
She’s dressed in slacks and a polo shirt with yellow lettering commemorating the league’s 1988 induction into the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame. That was something, she says, but somehow this movie is turning out to be more. On the phone is someone from the Today show hoping to film her and another woman throwing the ball around. With luck she’ll get a new mitt: the ones she has out on the dining-room table to show me–along with five balls of various sizes, a photograph of the Cooperstown display, and a mound of photographs from the starfest in Skokie–look hazardous.The fielder’s glove has no webbing: Donahue used to catch with the equivalent of a five-fingered oven mitt.
The league had been around a few years already, and some other women from Moose Jaw had joined. “My one dream, I told my dad, was just to play ball every day, I loved it so. Well. We played May through September, a 126-game season. We played six days a week and twice on Sunday. We traveled by bus and prayed for rain. But even if we were rained out one day, we’d have to make it up the next. We were in tremendous shape.”
“I got tickets for a Cubs night game and I brought a friend. We wore our down coats. Behind us was a family, and the little girl knew every player’s name. She was so enthusiastic, cheering. And finally I turned around to her and said ‘I’ll bet you’re a ball player.’ ‘I am,’ she said. ‘What position do you play?’ ‘Third and catcher.’ ‘I knew you were in that hot box. It’s all there. I’ll tell you what, on July 1 you go see A League of Their Own, about women who played baseball in the 1940s. I was one of them.’ Well then the parents got involved. The father went down to buy a Cubs book, which has an article about the league. This little girl was so cute, so I sent her a league pin and a picture of myself. But all through that game she had that enthusiasm and that love for the game. Then her little brother came up and said to me, ‘Were you really that good?’”
