Once upon a time, girls played professional baseball. And few—if any— were better than Jean Faut. A right-handed pitcher and third baseman, Jean was a four-time All-Star and a two-time Player of the Year in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She gave the South Bend Blue Sox, not to mention the loop’s fans, nine excellent seasons from 1946 through 1953.

Jean is regarded by many as the AAGPBL’s finest pitcher. She also typified the quality of athlete and the type of woman that helped make the Girls’ Pro League (as it was often called) successful during the 1940s and the early 1950s. Although no character based on her exploits appeared in A League of Their Own—Penny Marshall’s iconic 1992 film about the AAGPBL—Hollywood studio executives easily could have picked Jean for a starring role. Jim Sargent, co-author of McFarland & Co.’s 2012 book The South Bend Blue Sox, profiles Jean in this JockBio Legend.

Jean Faut was born on January 17, 1925, in Greenville, Pennsylvania. (Click here for today's sports birthdays.) She was the second oldest daughter of Robert and Eva Faut. Jean grew up with her two sisters and three brothers during the Great Depression in a working class family. The energetic, talented young girl soon developed a love for sports of all kinds, especially baseball. During those years, East Greenville fielded a semipro baseball team, the Cubs. By the late 1930s, Jean was hanging out with friends at the ballpark and sometimes shagging fly balls. Seeing her interest, the team’s second baseman taught her to throw different pitches.

Jean loved baseball so much that she never played fast-pitch softball—the nation’s most popular sport in the 1930s. Standing 5’4” and weighing 130 pounds, she was an exceptional athlete at East Greenville High School, starring in field hockey, basketball, and track. She graduated in 1942 and worked in a clothing factory in Pennsburg. Later, at a knitting mill, she earned $25-$30 a week.

In the spring of 1946, after being contacted by an AAGPBL scout from Allentown, Jean traveled by train to Pascagoula, Mississippi, to try out. During spring training camp, the league allocated the players to teams for the purpose of maintaining a competitive balance. At Pascagoula, an abandoned naval base near the Gulf of Mexico, team managers and officials watched more than 200 rookies and veterans, running them through calisthenics, drills, and practices on several rough-surfaced diamonds. Two weeks later, with 17-18 players allocated to each of the league’s eight teams, four pairs of clubs barnstormed their way north playing exhibition games to prepare for Opening Day on May 22.

The AAGPBL originated in 1943 when Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley and his associates devised a plan for skilled and attractive “All-American” girls to play hardball in short-skirted uniforms on teams led by male managers and assisted by female chaperones. Unlike men’s baseball, the Girls’ Pro League evolved through many stages, including shifting from underhand pitching to sidearm to overhand pitching; lengthening the distance to the pitcher’s mound and from base to base; and decreasing the size of the ball—from 12 inches in circumference in the 1943 campaign to 9.25 inches (the size of a regulation baseball) in 1954, the AAGPBL’s final season. Baserunners, however, could lead off and steal from the league’s first day, so the girls’ game on the diamond was always fast-paced.

Six teams had competed in the league’s 110-game regular season in 1945, finishing in this order: the Rockford (Illinois) Peaches, the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Daisies, the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Chicks, the Racine (Wisconsin) Belles, the Blue Sox, and the Kenosha (Wisconsin) Comets. In the best-of-five Shaughnessy Series playoffs, runner-up Fort Wayne defeated fourth-place Racine,and first-place Rockford eliminated third-place Grand Rapids. Rockford went on to win the league championship by outlasting Fort Wayne in five games.

For 1946, the AAGPBL added the Lassies in Muskegon, Michigan, and the Redwings in Peoria, Illinois. Other league changes included decreasing the ball’s size to 11 inches in circumference, increasing the distance between the bases to 70 feet apart (from 68 feet in 1945), and moving the pitcher’s mound to 43 feet away (instead of 42 feet) from home plate. Later in the season, the league allowed a below-the-shoulder sidearm delivery. The new rule led many pitchers to add a curve or sinker to their arsenals (usually a fastball, curveball, and change-of-pace), all of which Jean threw before she joined the league.

Jean enjoyed a good rookie season in ’46. South Bend took third place with a 70-42 record, but the team lost in the playoffs to Rockford. Jean played 101 games, mostly at third base, batting .177, with 61 hits in 344 at-bats, scoring 37 runs, and—since she often hit best in the clutch—producing 40 RBIs. Jean’s batting average seems low, but she had never before batted against underhand pitching. Also, even though the Blue Sox led the league with a .220 mark, more than half of the circuit’s players hit less than .200. Indeed, the league was still playing a modified game of softball, but with baseball rules and a smaller ball—circumstances that helped the underhand pitchers who threw the hardest.

South Bend’s manager was Chet Grant, a minor league ballplayer before the Great War and a star quarterback for Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame eleven in 1920 and 1921. He sent strong-armed Jean to the mound when the sidearm motion was approved. She started nine games, completing eight of them, and came in as a reliever three time. In 81 innings, she fashioned an 8-3 record with a 1.33 ERA.

Jean became the highest-paid South Bend player in 1947, signing for $65 a week. The league’s salaries at the time ranged from $55 to $85 (later raised to $100 per week), even though a few players received additional off-the-record compensation. Former Daisy Vivian Kellogg, who joined the league in 1944, remembered signing for $75 a week, a figure that doubled her pay as a Bell Telephone operator and made her baseball salary larger than her father’s income.

The big adventure of 1947, as it was recalled fondly by many players, was a spring training jaunt to Cuba. The league flew team personnel and 200 young women from eight clubs to Havana, where they trained, played a week of exhibitions, and won cheers from 75,000 fans.

For the season, South Bend finished in fourth place, and Jean enjoyed a good year. In 44 games, she pitched a career-high 298 innings, compiling a 19-13 record with a 1.15 ERA. She batted .236 in 56 games, which ranked 19th in the league. Her greatest performance came on July 31, when South Bend outlasted Eleanor Dapkus and the Belles in 22 innings, 4-3. Jean scattered 16 hits, struck out 11, walked five, and contributed two hits. South Bend’s Betsy Jochum remembered that contest, played before 1,456 fans at Racine, as one of the best games she ever saw.

Jean married former minor league pitcher Karl Winsch, who also came from East Greenville. The couple set up housekeeping in South Bend, and Jean worked in the off-season for Ball-Band, a local division of the U.S. Rubber Company. On August 17, 1947, Ball-Band employees hosted “Jean Faut Night” at spacious Playland Park, home of the Blue Sox. In a pregame ceremony, the excited pitcher was honored with a variety of gifts, including a cedar chest. She capped the evening by hurling a two-hitter to beat the Kenosha Comets, 7-0.

South Bend’s season ended in early September. The Blue Sox lost a playoff series in five games to Grand Rapids. Jean was two months pregnant at the time.

She gave birth to her first son, Larry, at the end of March of 1948. (Nine years later, Jean had Kevin, her only other child.) Already a housewife and an ace pitcher, Jean now became a mother—all of which combined to make her baseball career more distinctive, albeit more difficult to pursue as well. The majority of AAPGBL players remained single and enjoyed the social aspects of baseball, including road trips, dates, late-hour talk sessions and card games. Almost all those who married did so after they ended their baseball careers, so the league featured few ballplaying mothers.

As a new mother in 1948, Jean missed the league’s spring training camp in Opa-Locka, Florida. It took her until mid-July to pitch herself into top condition, but she still produced a fine season, pitching 250 innings in 34 games and posting a 16-11 record with a 1.44 ERA. She ranked seventh in that category among pitchers hurling 45 or more innings.

On September 4, Jean twirled her first no-hitter, beating the Belles at Racine, 7-0. Except for three walks—two to Sophie Kurys—Jean was in control all the way. The Belles hit four balls to the outfield, and all were easy outs. In the first inning, South Bend second baseman Bonnie Baker led off with a single, center fielder Betty Wagoner advanced her with an infield out, shortstop Senaida “Shoo-Shoo” Wirth walked, and cleanup hitter Elizabeth “Lib” Mahon doubled to left center to score both runs. The Blue Sox added one run in the fifth and clinched the game with four more runs in the eighth. South Bend’s Lil Faralla had previously thrown a no-hitter against Racine, on May 11. So two Blue Sox pitchers actually stumped the Belles that season.

Jean set herself apart from her teammates in ’48. Married with a baby, she began handling baseball like a job. She couldn’t socialize after games. As she recalled in an interview, “I had to go home, take care of my family, cook and clean, and all of those things.”

In 1949, Jean recorded her best season to that point, and probably the best individual mark in the league that summer. On the mound, she produced a 24-8 record with a 1.10 ERA, including a league-best 12 shutouts. In 34 games, she worked 261 innings, fanned 120 and walked 118. Nobody won more games, and only two pitchers gave up fewer earned runs. At the plate, Jean paced the AAGPBL with a .291 average, though her 117 at-bats did not qualify her for the batting championship. Often used as a pinch-hitter when she wasn’t pitching, she scored 14 runs and contributed 21 RBIs.

On September 3, in the final home game of the regular season at Playland Park—where the dirt diamond sat in the middle of an oval cinder-topped racetrack for the popular sport of auto racing—Jean gave a superb performance. She hurled her second no-hitter, a near-perfect game, and stopped Fort Wayne, 2-0. She walked Daisy shortstop Dottie Schroeder to open the eighth inning, but first baseman Vivian Kellogg grounded into a double play. Jean faced the minimum 27 hitters, and only Schroeder reached base. Jean also singled, stole second, and scored the first run in the third inning. In the sixth, Jean accounted for South Bend’s second run with a sacrifice fly.

In her second full season as an overhand hurler, Jean had become one of the league’s best pitchers. Although her excellent performance fell short of leading South Bend to a title in 1949, her team did climb from sixth place to a tie for first.

In 1950, during manager Dave Bancroft’s second year in South Bend, most pitchers had adjusted to the new 10-inch baseball introduced the season before. Jean struck out 118 batters, but she also walked 104. Still, she led the league with a 1.12 ERA and in complete games with 29, innings pitched with 290, and batters faced with 1006. The right-hander also batted .217, going 43-for-198. She scored 23 runs, stole 15 bases, and collected 26 RBIs.

Total attendance for the AAGPBL had peaked in 1948 at 910,000 fans. But as paid admissions declined in the major leagues, minor leagues and the AAGPBL, everyone in pro baseball began looking for ways to cut budgets. In 1951, the Girl’s Pro League’s eight clubs voted to end the contract of their management corporation. Arthur Meyerhoff, Wrigley’s chief advertising agent, operated skillfully from 1945 through the 1950 season. He supervised everything, including promoting the league nationally and regionally, hiring scouts, recruiting players, operating spring training camps, running the two rookie touring teams in 1949 and 1950, and handling all the loop’s business. Without him, each club had to finance everything from advertising to the hiring of umpires to scouting new talent. Now, the renamed American Girls Baseball League continued to slide downhill, ultimately to insolvency.

But there was still baseball to be played. In 1951, South Bend hired a new manager, Jean’s husband. Perhaps to avoid charges of favoritism, Winsch pitched his spouse in fewer games, 23 (down from 36), and less innings, 190 (down from 290). Still, her 1.33 ERA ranked third in the league, and her 15-7 record helped South Bend win first place in the season’s second half. The team, in turn, qualified for the Shaughnessy Championship Playoffs.

The highlight of Jean’s season came when she hurled a perfect game against Rockford on July 21, 1951, before a crowd of 1,490 cheering fans at Playland Park. Commenting on the first perfecto in the league’s overhand history, Paul Neville of the South Bend Tribune summed up her performance this way: “Jean Faut, a sturdy gal with a lot of heart, a fast ball that hops, and a curve that breaks off like a country road, pitched a perfect no-hit, no-run game to subdue the Rockford Peaches, 2-0, at Playland Park Saturday night.”

Jean was tough on the hard-hitting Peaches. Throwing mainly a fastball with zip and a sharp-breaking curve, the right-hander displayed excellent command. Reflecting later on her control, Jean explained that her foot always landed in the same spot when she completed her follow-through. A model of consistent motion, she also memorized the pitches that she threw to each batter, changing the sequence each time she faced the same hitter. In addition, she received excellent fielding support—notably a running shoestring catch by the speedy Wagoner near the right field foul line. Shirley Stovroff, Jean’s batterymate, had also caught her previous no-hitter. A modest person who usually understated her achievements, Jean later complimented her fielders and remarked, “I had a very good game.”

South Bend scored the only two runs of the game in the bottom of the aixth. Third baseman Audrey Bleiler started the inning with a walk. Second baseman Charlene “Shorty” Pryer moved the runner along with a sacrifice bunt. When Rockford second sacker Bobbie Payne fumbled a grounder by Wagoner, Bleiler went to third. Shortstop Shoo-Shoo Wirth scored her with a squeeze bunt—one of Winsch’s favorite plays. Cleanup hitter Lib Mahon then smashed a bounder down the line to Rockford’s All-Star first baseman Dottie Kamenshek. Dottie fielded the ball, stepped on first for the second out, and threw to second base for an apparent double play on Wirth, who had rounded the base too far. But Kamenshek’s throw got away from the second baseman, and Wagoner scored on the error.

Staked to a 2-0 lead, Jean got tougher. She struck out five of the last nine hitters, finishing the game by fanning Rockford hurler Nicky Fox. Jean’s fired-up teammates swarmed her after the final out, carrying the ace right-hander off the field in triumph. Before the game, Jean had an 8-5 record, with all five losses coming by one run. Quipped Mahon, “I guess Jean figured she had to pitch a no-hitter for us to win a game for her!”

Jean’s performances kept improving, the Blue Sox finished first in the second half of the regular season to qualify for the playoffs, and she was voted Player of the Year. In the best-of-three semifinal round of the Shaughnessy Playoffs, South Bend beat Fort Wayne, two games to one. Jean pitched complete games and won the first and third contests, both by scores of 2-1. Scattering eight hits, she won the clincher in 10 innings. Fort Wayne’s Jean Weaver doubled in the ninth, and with two outs, she attempted to steal home but was tagged out at the plate. In the tenth, Shirley Stovroff led off with a double, moving to third on a sacrifice bunt. After Pat Scott gave intentional walks to Faut and Mahon, South Bend first baseman Dottie Mueller squeezed home the winning run with a perfect bunt.

At Fort Wayne’s Memorial Field in the best-of-five championship round, defending league champion Rockford won the first two games, and rain pushed back the third game in South Bend. On a Tuesday evening, Jean pitched her team to a 3-2 victory, striking out 11 and walking two. Rockford rookie Marie Mansfield, known for her wildness, issued 13 free passes but allowed only three hits. The Blue Sox won with three unearned runs in the third, thanks to Stovroff’s single, Jean’s double, an error, two walks, and a hit batter. Though behind in the count on most of Rockford’s hitters, Jean proved superb in the clutch, allowing six hits, striking out the last batter in six different innings, and fanning the side in the sixth.

In the fourth game of the series, which was shortened by rain and also at Playland Park, the Blue Sox won 6-, in seven innings. South Bend’s Georgette “Jette” Vincent outdueled Nicky Fox, and the home team won with a three-run sixth inning, thanks to hits by Pryer, Wirth and Mahon, along two errors, a walk, and a sacrifice. Stovroff led South Bend with three hits in four trips to the plate. With the Blue Sox leading 6-3, Jeep Stoll led off the home half of the seventh with a double, but a downpour ended the game at that point.

In teh fifth game, Faralla started against Rose Gacioch. The visitors scored an unearned run in the top the first inning, but the Blue Sox bounced back with five runs in the bottom half of the frame. Pryer led off with a bloop double, and Wagoner, who went 4-for-4, singled her home. Gacioch walked Wirth and Stovroff to load the bases. Next, Jean hit a line drive that was misplayed for a two-run error, and Mahon plated the fifth run with a sacrifice fly. South Bend pounded out 13 hits on the evening, winning the championship in a breeze, 10-2. Jean started the game at third base. But Faralla when tired after two innings, Jean pitched the reminder of the game and earned the victory. Considering that Rockford had won nine straight games—including the first two games in the championship series—South Bend came away a surprise winner of the club’s first AAGPBL title.

South Bend had combined good pitching with good hitting all summer long. Winsch told the South Bend Tribune that the Blue Sox came from behind to win 24 times in 1951, compared to four in 1950. In addition to Jean’s standout pitching, Wagoner batted .600 and Stovroff hit .500 in South Bend’s last three playoff victories.

In 1952, with the league suffering financial difficulties, it contracted from eight teams to six. To make matters worse, the Blue Sox, who were nearly sold to Toledo, were plagued by dissension. As Barbara Gregorich explained in her book Women at Play, there were groups of South bend players who would not speak to the manager or Jean. Winsch, who now wasn’t speaking to his own wife either, had produced a positive first season in 1951, but evidently he became increasingly tough in his treatment of the players in 1952.

Though she was caught in the middle, Jean refused to let off-field problems affect her performance at the ballpark. Batting cleanup most of the year, she hit .291 in 73 games, scoring 30 runs, driving home 32, and leading South Bend to a second-place regular season finish. On the mound, Jean was dominant, posting a 20-2 record with a league-best 0.93 ERA. Her 20 regular season wins (she won three more and lost once in the playoffs) left her tied with Rockford’s Rose Gacioch, who was 20-10 with a 1.88 ERA.

Dissent within the South Bend club peaked on in late August, just before the season ended. The controversy occurred when Winsch suspended Pryer from the team after she responded slowly to his order to pinch-run late in Friday’s game. In short order, five other players joined Shorty in a walkout, leaving the Blue Sox with twelve active players.

“I am the most proud of our team for winning the 1952 championship than anything else,” Jean later remarked, “because we won that championship with only twelve girls.”

In the opening round of the Shaughnessy Playoffs, South Bend faced Grand Rapids. The Chicks had beaten the Blue Sox in Grand Rapids in a doubleheader the night before. Jean pitched the opening playoff game and won 2-1. She allowed just three hits and an unearned run in the ninth. After getting into a bases-loaded jam in the ninth, she wiggled out of trouble. Wagoner drove in a second-inning run with a single. First baseman Joyce Westerman, who singled in the eighth and moved to second on a passed ball, scored the winning run when Jean bunted and catcher Inez Voyce threw to third to catch Westerman. The throw got away from third sacker Renae Youngberg enabling Westerman to reach the plate. The “dutiful dozen”—as the South Bend Tribune tagged the team following the six-player walkout—beat Grand Rapids again the following night when Arkansas right-hander Sue Kidd, who played the outfield when she didn’t pitch, scattered six hits for a 6-1 victory. Jean, playing third base, knocked in two runs and saved the win by pitching a scoreless ninth.

In the championship round, South Bend faced perennially tough Rockford. On September 6, Jean had a rare off-day, yielding seven runs on 13 hits, topped by a two-run homer in the seventh inning off the bat of Eleanor Callow. The manager pulled Jean after the inning, but the damage was done. Rockford, cruising behind the pitching of Jackie Kelley, won 7-3.

The second game, in Rockford, proved controversial. Beyer Stadium, known as the “Peach Orchard,” was being prepared for football, so the distance to the right field fence was shortened to 190 feet, 20 feet less than the league’s required length. Winsch filed a pregame protest based on the field’s smaller size and the fact that Rockford’s management would not accept a ground rule covering the new fence. To retaliate, Peaches pilot Bill Allington announced he would protest South Bend’s violation of the rule requiring a squad of at least fifteen players.

The Blue Sox took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning when Jean doubled home the now-married Jette (Vincent) Mooney and Jo Lenard. Rockford tied the score in the third on three hits, a stolen base, and a wild pitch. The Peaches won 3-2 when catcher Ruth Richard broke the 2-2 tie in the fifth frame with a homer over the shortened right field fence. Richard’s blast was the difference in a pitching duel witnessed by 2,000 fans.

Returning to Playland Park the following night, the Blue Sox won 5-4 in 12 innings. Kidd pitched into the ninth and held a 4-2 edge, but she allowed a leadoff double by Callow. Jean relieved Kidd and gave up two runs on three singles, one an infield chopper. Thereafter she dominated the Peaches, holding them scoreless for three innings. She earned the victory when Kidd singled in the bottom of the twelfth to break the 4-4 tie, scoring Westerman.

The Blue Sox were successful off the field too, as the league’s business manager, Earl McCammon, upheld Winsch’s protest and ordered a replay of Sunday’s game. On Tuesday evening at Playland, Rockford rebounded to win what was effectively the third game of the series. The Peaches took a 5-1 lead before the Blue Sox hitters got rolling, and Rockford made five double plays in seven tries to kill several South Bend rallies. Jackie Kelley pitched the route and earned the win for Rockford. Jette Mooney also hurled a complete game, but she suffered the loss when two errors by Blue Sox catcher Mary “Wimp” Baumgartner led to three of Rockford’s runs.

Facing elimination the following evening, South Bend came back to win a 10-inning nail-biter, 2-1. Janet Rumsey started and hurled a complete game. She allowed the Peaches one unearned run in the fifth inning, but the Blue Sox tied the score in the seventh when shortstop Gertie Dunn singled and went to second on an error. Right fielder Marge Wenzell sacrificed Dunn to third base, and Baumgartner laid down a perfect squeeze bunt to tie the contest. South Bend won in the tenth frame on Westerman’s two-out RBI single. Baumgartner led off with a single, and Rumsey sacrificed her to second. Wagoner picked up an infield hit, moving Baumgartner to third, and Mooney walked. After Lenard flied out to center field, Westerman smashed the game-winning single between first and second base for the victory.

“Out-hit, out-fielded, out-pitched, but never out-fought,” reported the South Bend Tribune. “That’s the Blue Sox story as the defending American Girls Baseball League champions trek off to Freeport, Illinois, today for the final game of 1952.”

On September 11, at a neutral field in Freeport (Beyer Stadium in Rockford was unavailable), Jean played one of her greatest games. She spaced eight hits in her fourth playoff appearance, and she slugged two triples to pace a 12-hit South Bend attack. The Blue Sox, officially the home team, took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning when Westerman doubled home Mooney, who had reached first on an infield error. South Bend scored three more runs in the second. Wagoner singled to right field and took second on a throwing error. Mooney singled in the first run, and Lenard followed with a single. Later, with runners on first and third, Jean blasted a long triple to right center (the field had no fences) to lift the Blue Sox to a 4-0 lead.

Rockford cut the deficit to 4-1 in the fourth inning on a single, a walk, and an error. The Blue Sox regained that run in the sixth as Jean belted a triple to deep center, and then scored the fifth run on Dunn’s groundout. In the seventh, Wagoner and Lenard each singled, and Westerman laid down a squeeze bunt to score another run, giving the Blue Sox a 6-1 lead. Worn out by the ninth, Jean gave up a triple and two singles and yielded two runs, but she finally retired Joan Berger for the season’s final out and the Shaughnessy Championship.

“My second triple could have been a home run,” Faut recalled, laughing about the memory. “I could have beaten the throw, but I was so exhausted after I rounded third base that I turned and walked back, and I sat down on the bag!”

“Sitting there, I heard Rose Gacioch’s deep voice come booming out of the Rockford dugout, ‘My God, that girl is tired!’”

Jean returned for her final season in 1953. Once again she was voted Player of the Year, although South Bend—minus the six players that walked out in 1952—finished fifth, missing the playoffs. Still, Jean produced a league-best 1.51 ERA and a 17-11 record. She tied for tops in wins with Eleanor Moore of Grand Rapids, who went 17-7 with a 2.00 ERA. Jean also hit .275 with 11 doubles, one triple, and a career-high four home runs, while scoring 33 runs and driving in 38. Jean’s homers were the only ones the Blue Sox hit all year.

The season’s highlight came with Jean’s second perfect game. On September 3 in Kalamazoo, she blanked the Lassies, 4-0. By this time, Jean had decided that being married to the manager was no longer worth the dissent. The 1953 campaign would be her last. Jean’s final game came the following Sunday at Playland, when the Blue Sox and 1,500 fans again honored her with a Jean Faut Night, showering her with $400 in merchandise. Unfortunately, she lost to Grand Rapids, 3-0.

Still, Jean longed to compete. She began bowling—something she could do in the evenings after work. With her talent, motivation, and dedication, the former diamond star had turned professional by 1960. She bowled for years on the women’s pro tour. Fifteen years after she ended her baseball career, she was divorced from Winsch. Later, she learned to play golf and became a scratch golfer.

Baseball, however, was Jean’s game. When she stepped on the ball field, it brought simplicity and salvation to her complicated personal life as a mother, homemaker, and manager’s wife. Speaking for almost every woman who got the opportunity to play in the AAGPBL, Jean—with a faraway look in her eyes—reminisced, “Those were the best years of my life.”

Jean’s remarkable achievements included four no-hitters, two of which were perfect games. Nobody else hurled a perfect game after the AAGPBL shifted to overhand pitching in 1948. JEAN notched 140 victories—second most in league history—and won the pitching triple crown in each of her last two seasons. Her lifetime 1.23 ERA was unmatched in league play.

“Jean was an awesome pitcher and a really complete ballplayer,” All-Star shortstop Dottie Schroeder observed. “Jean could do it all and with excellence. A top pitcher with few equals: great hitter who was so good with the bat, she played infield or outfield when not pitching. I can’t remember ever getting a hit off her pitching. She could literally ‘freeze’ you in your tracks at the plate. Always admired her greatly, even more so for her competitive nature on the field.”