The 2023 HBIC Summer Project

I'm going to have a little fun this summer with a project that involves a number of things that I enjoy. As you may know, I am working this summer as an official scorekeeper for the local minor-pro baseball team, so you know I enjoy baseball. This blog regularly celebrates the achievements and accomplishments of women, so I'm going to add that into the summer project recipe as well. And because this is HBIC, there will be a hockey element to each of these stories that involve baseball and women. On top of that, we're going to focus on stories from Canada, and I'll work in some historical elements. Basically, this summer project will combine all the good things that you normally see here on HBIC, but we'll add a dash of hardball just to change things up a little more!

Because I'm doing more baseball work, I want to take a look at all the women who played professional baseball while being incredible hockey stars during the winter months. As we know, the two seasons hardly overlapped back in the mid-1900s, so there will likely be a number of incredible stories of baseball accomplishments and hockey achievements by women whose names should probably be more well-known to people in this country.

I'm going to start running these every Sunday beginning in June. There were a pile women from Canada who made the trek south to the AAGPBL - the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League - to play baseball, but returned home in the winter and jumped onto the ice for more action. While Penny Marshall did a good job in telling the story of a number of women from the Rockford Peaches in A League of Their Own, I want to shine a light on the women who not only played ball in the top league for women, but were standouts on the ice back in Canada when winter hit.

The stories will be mostly about women, but there were some men who worked in and around the AAGPBL as well. Don't be too surprised if you see a male hockey player on a Sunday because they likely have a tie-in to women's professional baseball. For eleven years from 1943-1954, the AAGPBL brought people to stadiums to watch the women play ball, the men coach and manage teams, and other men and women who were instrumental in keeping the league going. We should be able to find 15-20 stories of Canadian men and women who played ball and shot pucks within those eleven years of action.

Depending on time, I may try to get down to the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and see if they have any artifacts I can photograph to add to the articles, but I enjoy digging into hockey history so why not get some local historical baseball knowledge while I'm at it? In knowing that there were a number of women from Manitoba who suited up in the AAGPBL, this seemed like a perfect project for me with my newly-found baseball responsibilities.

At the end of the day, maybe we all learn something about the women who played in the AAGPBL. Maybe there's a connection to the women that you have for some of the baseball stars I'll feature. Or maybe you know the baseball story, but didn't know about the hockey side of these players' stories. Whatever the case, there's always something cool that I find that keeps me curious, so I hope this look at some of the Canadian AAGPBL stars who played hockey in the winter will keep you coming back every Sunday through the summer.

June 4 will be the first article, so I hope you'll stop by this digital word salad that day. I'm excited to see some of the stats and interesting stories I can dig up, but I'll be crafting a list of players whose stories need to be read, told, and known. This little baseball-hockey-AAGPBL project should keep me busy this summer outside of all the other stuff I'm doing, but I think it will be interesting to find out about the women were two-sport stars back in the 1940s!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!