Carol Sheldon AAGPBL Women's Baseball Historian & HOF on Alan Alford Sports Talk Show!!!

welcome everybody to another great episode of the Allen Alfred Sports St show I'm Allan and today we have a fantastic guest for you we have none other than Carol Sheldon from The allamerican Girls Professional Baseball League that's right and she's also a woman's Hall of Famer so we're going to hear from Carol in just a few moments but before we get started let's thank our wonderful sponsor Chef G's Florida barbecue sauce so delicious and addicting you may need a support group please feel free to visit Chef G's right here in Tampa at 301 South 22nd Street Tampa Florida can't come down to Tampa that's okay visit Chef G's atbbq sauce.com and it's FL BBQ sauce.com pick up one of the great four delicious flavors and definitely let them know that the island Alfred Sports show sent you thank you so much Chef G's let's go ahead and get started and bring carolon let's go all right welcome everybody to another great episode of the Allen Alfred Sports show I'm delighted to have a wonderful guest Carol Sheldon and we're going to go ahead and talk about baseball in fact she has a great passion for women's baseball so out of all the sports we'll start right there why baseball what was your passion about baseball well my dad loved baseball so growing up I've always been a Detroit Tiger fan and as an adult I've been able to afford partial season tickets in it's too hard to go to 81 games so I have a a Friday night package and gives me about 30 Games a year and then I buy another half dozen but uh I've always loved baseball but I'm from that generation that wasn't allowed to play t-ball or baseball yeah so I grew up playing sball but I didn't even get started with that until I was in seventh grade which in today's standards is pretty late but I ended up coaching softball High School softball for about 38 years got a chance when I was 43 one of my softball teammates uh she and another gal started a Michigan league and we had five teams in Michigan and then on weekends we played in the Great Lakes League which actually at that time was the longest running League since the ladies that played back in the 40s and the 50s there's a a league out east in pocket for girls and women so they have a way of moving up uh as they get older but anyhow so I got a chance to play baseball at 43 years old and I got a basee hit my first time up and then it was all great from there I guess you could say enjoyed a career playing baseball from probably about 1997 to around 2013 or 14 I even went to Hong Kong to play in the Phoenix cup so it was great I really enjoyed it it gave me another reason to watch the Tigers a little closer with the players out on the field to pick up some tips I was mainly a third baseman and a first baseman and so for first base is a little different in slow pitch and different in fast pitch and obviously different in hard ball so you know I watch the Players a little bit closer to get some tips and I was fortunate to have Jim Glenny as one of my first coaches an old school guy who actually started the USA program so and Jim was the Assistant Attorney General for the state of Michigan so he was pretty well connected on a lot of different levels but thanks to Jim and his coaching I picked up the sport very quick after you know I've been watching it all my life so but it was a lot of fun I enjoyed it a lot yeah in fact you've done so well you got inducted to National Women's Baseball Hall of Fame talk about that experience yeah well you know it was kind of funny I I knew about this it's an online Women's Baseball Hall of Fame and I was aware of it and so I would check it each fall to see if I knew anybody that was going in in fact more recently I've been working on getting some of the players from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League inducted into it and so I opened it up and I was reading and I'm I'm reading and I saw one of my teammates names there and I'm like okay and then I read down a little further and I saw my name and I had to reread it to figure out okay how come I don't know about this and it's already being published and I traced everything back it was my coach from South Bend that put me up for the Hall of Fame and it was kind of funny cuz I was kind of like an extra coach out on the field being older and that and he said one of the lines in his little letter was she can look horrible on one pitch and then just turn around on the next pitch and rip the cover off the ball I couldn't tell you somebody threw me a curveball versus a fast ball I probably still couldn't do that but uh you know in fact uh was it Rob Deer no not Rob Deer the gravedigger played for Pittsburgh in Detroit anyways I told him I was playing baseball and he says do you know how I'd hit the Curt ball and I looked at him went I don't know watch it close he goes no don't miss this I don't miss the fast ball don't try so but uh anyways um so it's been a a fun career I had an interesting uh adult life getting involved with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League I mean I saw the movie went to the bookstore found a book by Lois Brown called girls of Summer talked about at archives in Fort Wayne but no address and I'm a former a history teacher and I thought well an archives to me is a museum so there wasn't any information on where it was so I called the Baseball Hall of Fame to find out cuz Fort Wayne's only about three and a half hours from me and he gave me the president of the players association's phone number and name so I called her and asked her about it and she says what what do you want to see and I said well all of it and she's like we have to be more specific than that because it's all in my basement they had just started procuring art artifacts from the players and they hadn't gotten a museum on board yet to house their stuff and now it's the History Museum in South Bend is our main repository and that that's actually one of my jobs is I work with all the museums through Canada and the United States that have things on you know maybe even just one player a couple of players sometimes it's University libraries so it's it's been a lot of fun and then out of that I work with kids during women's History Month writing reports and as long as I can I get them in touch with a player hopefully a player that might live in their area so they actually could meet and get firsthand information for their report you know unfortunately we're down to under 30 players Al now so it's getting harder and harder to get players to a personal appearance because I do the pr work with major league minor league you know non-affiliated teams when they run a women in baseball night that type of thing and I have one player that lives about 45 minutes away from me and then there's about four other ones on the other side side of Michigan but we had 65 players in Michigan at one time so I had a lot of people to from in the midwest a lot of them stayed in the midwest even if they they stayed where they played uh Betsy jackam who actually is going to turn 103 early next month she was from Cincinnati and she stayed in South Ben and was a high school teacher in South Ben so and that wasn't unusual for a lot of the players from that League yeah that's a lot of Rich history there and you do a lot of tremendous work and in the All American you know Baseball Classic that's where we met in Sarasota talk about that experience and the girls that are involved and everyone talk about that experience it was awesome the the down side was we didn't have very many people there there's got to be a lot more PR work going on because the people that came and saw women's baseball for the first time were thrilled with what they saw I was thrilled because we are no longer a bunch of softball players turning into baseball players with a few girls that grew up playing baseball you now have a majority of these players are baseball players some of them maybe went to baseball for college or I mean softball for college some of them do play baseball in college but a lot of them have gone softball so they could get a scholarship and then they come back to women's baseball but 60 of the best women players in the United States plus we had a few from Canada and Australia Puerto Rico I was so impressed with the left side of the field which is where the most Improvement has happened I believe in women's baseball because like myself when I would play Third Base I was fortunate at the time I still had a pretty strong arm but third base and and going in the hole at shortstop was very difficult for women when I first started playing because of that distance I mean you know we played 65 ft for slow pitch we played 60 foot for fast pitch and you're playing 90 foot for baseball that's that was an extremely difficult throw it wasn't so bad for the pitchers I don't believe the catchers maybe were the the next group that had a little more issue because of throwing down to second but throwing to the corners wasn't usually a problem but they developed very quickly and outfielders they were able to adjust to the the throwing that they needed to do so it was mostly third base and short stop going in the hole but but that's not what you saw down in Sarasota you saw great arms from the left side of the field there were some phenomenal plays double plays I mean it it was very smooth looking I was very pleased with the progress that I had that I had seen I had gone to the World Cup when it was in Vieira Florida a few years earlier and there definitely is a first tier of teams countries and then a second tier of countries because we you know it's being women's baseball's being played in over 30 countries you know we've had this top five or six teams for a long time but they're also very Progressive type of countries I mean Japan has been the cream of the crap since the mid 2000s and Canada the United States and Australia are usually battling it out for the other spots but you're now seeing Taiwan really take a step forward Venezuela has really put it on and the team that I am so pleased with and got a chance to I watched them online was Mexico they have quickly developed I don't know if I know they've got a few American players down there you know of me Mexican heritage and that and the same thing goes is true for like Puerto Rico and Venezuela but these countries are really taking it to heart and really improving it and I was pleasantly surprised with the advancement that Mexico has been able to make in such a short period of time in fact they qualified for the World Cup next summer and they did the qualifying a little bit different this time usually we've had 12 teams that qualify this time what they did is they had a qual qualification round in the Far East and they had one in North America in fact it was up in Canada where they're going to have the finals and they broke it down into six teams there for each Regional I guess you could say and then narrowed it down to the top three so there'll be six teams in the World Cup finals next summer wow and thund Thunder Bay is where they're playing in Canada Direct north of Wisconsin yeah I mean you're absolutely right that the players and the actual content on the field was amazing the girls there really can play some baseball I think that's one of the things that I got out of it was that hey they're not just you know girls that are just starting off playing baseball these girls can really play talk about the level of talent that you saw yeah it it was it was amazing I mean you know quite a few of these girls are playing college ball uh they've been playing on their High School baseball teams some of them have even had the chance to play in some unaffiliated baseball so pro ball but unaffiliated and that's happening more and more I know I can't think of her name right now the young lady that's from Brown University who was the first girl to get a scholarship at a division one school she just got hired by a non-affiliated team that's in Indiana to play so this coming summer but you know I've had the opportunity to to really get to know some of the US players and and the fact that I played in the Great Lakes league and went to tournaments I've known quite a few of the girls that have attempted to play for the US team and some of the girls that were down there in Florida not as many anymore because I'm a little on the older side and I've been you know out of baseball as far as a player from that standpoint for close to 10 years now I did just get back from the Boston Red Sox women's Fantasy Camp though last week and I've been doing that that was my sixth camp with Boston and I've done five camps with the Detroit Tigers but the Boston Camp is all women and we actually we started with four teams and now we're up to six teams uh the Yankees also have a all women's camp and they just finished the other day so but it's amazing to get a chance to play baseball with all these women that have such a passion for the game and understand it and it's it it's pretty cool experience fact my team we ended up losing two nothing in the finals then rid's made three times out of the six years that I've been there so hopefully one of these days yeah you know there's always next year awesome time I mean you know we have maor Leaguers coaching us and fact the the new hitting coach for the San Diego Padres Victor Rodriguez I'm so happy for him that he he was the assistant hitting coach with Cleveland and with Boston for a long time uh he played came up through the Orioles system played with Kell Ripken Victor finally got his shot at being the the head hitting coach out there and he's he's an excellent hitting coach and trot Nixon and I mean there's just a whole slew of these guys from the Boston Red Sox and they they love being around us they because we're like sponges the guys sometimes get a little you know oh I know I know I know not us we're like tell us more we'll we'll soak it in and you you see a lot of improvements there too with some of the gals that never played possibly never played any sports but the camarad in that you know it's a a baseball Sisterhood so Donna Cohen who helped get that she did get it started for us with the Red Sox has been a big proponent of women's sports so yeah one one person I know that's a big proponent of women's sports is Mark Mark corbette from baseball biz on Deck he was the EMC at the dinner so the old American classic dinner how was that event you know I I'm trying to think was I yeah I was there I did go um I have so many events and everything sometimes you forget I mean everything was really well done there Suza who played for the Rockford peaches the last few years of the league really wants to see women's pro ball take place again in fact the ladies from that that League The All-American League that is one of their their goals over the years is to see advancement in women's baseball and hopefully bring a proleague back so the AGB is a subsidiary of our a abl and you know we're we're hoping that that's going to happen uh we think possibly what we need to do is to to stay in a place like what you saw at that tournament and have like maybe a six to8 week League that all plays in the same spot or very close by in either Florida or say Arizona where the spring training sites are because you got plenty of fields and do it in between the seasons where the men are not playing you know you you got a lot of fans in those two states a lot of snowbirds and everything that just love baseball and I think once people discover what these girls are doing it it'll be a lot like the WNBA I mean our game is is different from the men's just like basketball is different from the men where you play mostly below the rim women's baseball we have to do things you know just in all sports we do have to do things a little bit more technically correct you know because we have to rely on our brains up here and work hard at what we're doing because we might not have necessarily the the strength like the men do but we do have women that can hit the ball over 400 feet so it's it's not impossible for I mean I've watched a couple of the US players when we were in Vieira she not only cleared the shorter fence they put up she cleared the regular fence and put it on the top of the batting cage at UA which used to be the Nationals spring training site so she hit that a long way and she hit a couple of them that way just amazing but uh you know they p pay more attention to the hit and runs uh and moving players to get scores in we have to capitalize on those type of ways of getting runs across the plate you know and that not be Earl Weaver and hope for the three-run Homer kind of thing so but you know it's nice when it happens that's for sure yeah and you're a huge supporter of the All American women's baseball class because you actually did the photography and you have a pass and umpire one game I Perry Barber who was the head umpire for that tournament I stayed with her and the other umpire and so she was having a little trouble with making sure she had enough umpires so I I called her and I said hey you know I I umpire softball here in Michigan I said do you want me to bring my infield stuff down just in case one of you gets hurt or sick or something and she's like heck yes so I I worked one game with Perry and it was different you know because softball you you umpire from the outside and come in and in baseball you're on the inside already for the most part except you know when nobody's on you're at first base kind of thing but it I found it to be a fairly easy transition of course I really didn't have to worry about watching for a Bach which you know would take me a little bit of practice to get to do that I was more worried about the running and actually I probably do more running doing Softball having to go from first to third following a player whereas with baseball starting inside I don't have as far distance to run necessarily so but it was it was fun to do that and I actually was one of the photographers down at in Vera Florida for the World Cup a few years ago I was shooting for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball league and so you know Sue was gracious enough to let me be one of the photographers so it was it was fun I I enjoy it I always have enjoyed it at my tiger games and that unfortunately Major League Baseball is changing their tunes about letting you bring a nice camera into their facilities so I'm I'm not going to be able to get the shots that I used to but as you could see some of the pictures that I sent you I got a pretty good eye for what's going to happen out on the on the field you know when you know the sport it's a lot easier to shoot it so yeah and that's unfortunate you know expand a little bit on that so the listening audience understands about the camera the restrictions you have now in Major League Baseball if I'm going to a major league park or a minor league park I have to go into their rules to find out exactly what they have because it's it's not a standard rule per Park pretty much I can bring almost anything I want into a minor league part but with major leagues my unfortunately my tigers are the second or third toughest there are a few parks where I could still bring in my camera with a halfway decent lens but the Tigers and a couple of the other teams if you have an interchangeable lens that means you can take the lens off the camera and put a different lens on uh they don't allow it because they consider you to be a pro it's like well anybody can buy an interchangeable lens camera doesn't make become a pro and now that the screens are up from my seat anyways unless I'm sitting in the first couple of rows I can make the screen disappear and down close to the field but from my seat 30 rows back that screen's always going to be there so it's not like I'm going to be able to sell them they I've never been able to get a straight answer out of anybody either of why I can't bring the camera in that I've been bringing in for 30 years and then some of the major league teams have a restriction on the size of the lens some of it is physical size some of it is actually like millimeters so you know like a 300 mm might be too much for some parks the tigers are they don't want you bringing something in that's over 75 millimeters and it's like that does nothing I take portrait shots uh you know and it's sad because I really enjoy that's part of my enjoyment at the game I'll keep scoring I follow where the Batters hit so it helps me you know figure out where they're going to hit it then I set up for a picture if somebody's on first I set up for a picture of them stealing if it's a guy that's got legs you know if it's Miguel Cabrera not necessarily am I going to be worried about him stealing second base but you know I I follow the game and I understand the game I shot college football for a while while my nephews were playing so I had to learn that game because I never played football but after being with them for about eight years you know I really got into the flow of that game too so and I've shot some amateur golf outings and things like that too and I'm a golf so again you kind of know where you need to be and when to shoot so that you're not disturbing a golfer during their swing that kind of thing but it's a lot of fun I've made a lot of friends down at the tiger games that are photographers they've even helped me pick out you know my next camera kind of thing so it's been kind of cool to get to know some of the photographers that way and there's a lot of women photographers out there too we have quite a few in Detroit and so but it just adds another dimension to the game you know to have a a little bit of fun and so I enjoy it so will that new camera meet the guidelines that there are in place now or it still might be Flags no I had to I bought a smaller camera a Canon M50 which is actually an interchangeable lens camera but a lot of times the people at the gates don't know cuz it looks like a point and shoot kind of thing and so I'm I've been able to get that camera in except for one time because the person working the gate knew and I tried to explain to her I said this is definitely you know it's not a pro camera it it does not have the quality of the other camera that I you know the other cameras that I have but nope it's an interchangeable lens you can't bring it in so I went to a different gate and got in the game but you know and I can't bring a bag in so you know I I can bring an empty bag in if I roll it up and stick it in my pocket so in case there's rain or something like that I have a little rain coat for my my camera but if the weather is really bad I A lot of times I'll leave it home just because I I don't want it to to get wet but yeah it it's taken a little bit of the fun out of it but yeah you know things change I guess yeah hopefully things will change better yeah well a lot of times if I if I knew there was a rookie in the game for our team he's taking his first major league of bat I'm shooting him and then I give him the pictures I got tomy's number 599 and 600 or was it $499 is 5 how many home runs he have I think it's 599 and 600 he hit them both in coer and so I kept taking pictures his family came out I took more pictures I put a thumb drive together took it down to the ballpark the next day had two copies of his home run one for him to sign for me and one to give to him along with the uh thumb drive with all these other pictures on it and so you know it's it's kind of nice you give me an autograph I'm going to give you something back you know and it's my way to sometimes to get to know the rookies a little bit at the games and but that's changing too cuz the guys don't a photograph like they used to and so I don't do very much of that at all usually it was my photographs and a lot of times they would come over to me because they knew it wasn't a standard photograph that I bought somewhere they knew it was different and if they liked it I said I'll be back in a couple of games I'll bring a photograph for you that you can have so wow wow that's that's amazing so nowadays you find that guys just don't sign as much no because they have contracts you know with these big companies for autographs and stuff like that I don't know the names of all of them but you know for these big card shows and stuff like that and if they do autograph a lot of times if it's a ball they won't autograph on The Sweet Spot because that's what their contract says with this autograph company kind of thing so I don't do as much of that anymore but that's okay I got an awful lot of good ones during the 80s and the 90s you know a lot of future Hall of Famers and I've I've had a membership to the Baseball Hall of Fame for a long time I've been fortunate enough to get to know a few people that work there Tim Wilds who was one of the Librarians and at the hall actually is a member of our All-American Girls Professional Baseball League so it was kind of nice to be able to go there and see Tim and then one of the presidents of the Baseball Hall of Fame was from my area and so I got a chance to meet him a couple of times and what's really cool though is to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame with the ladies from the allamerican girls professional baseball league I mean it's like a dream come true to be there with them looking at their stuff and seeing them interact with kids and other adults I mean it's just they're like a magnet for people to go and talk to them and that because they're living history you know and unfortunately we're losing them like our World War II veterans and many of them were veterans both in Canada and the United States and Andor Rosie the riveters so you know they they did they definitely did their part during World War II not only keeping baseball going but also keeping the factories going they're a very interesting group of women because they broke tons of barriers they got they became doctors Pilots you named the profession they became it CEOs of big companies you know heads of departments at universities so they broke a lot of barriers down and so it's been a real joy to get to know these gals yeah that's fantastic in fact people who want to you know know more about the old American Girls Professional Baseball League how do they get involved and how do they follow you well we have a website and it's a it's the the letters all American Girls Professional Baseball League so it's a a gpbl l.org if you just look up you know Google women's baseball women's pro baseball that name will pop up and our website will pop up on there they can actually join not only the agbl but the AGB you can click on them and it'll take you to their website I work on the website I work on the Facebook page I don't do the the old Twitter or that stuff I leave that for the younger ones but I am the person that get when a question gets asked through our website those questions get sent to me and if I know the person I usually write my name down so they can see that it's me answering their question or I'll give them my personal email address so that they can email me so that I can help their a lot of times the one of their daughters be able to get in touch with one of the players or something like that to ask some questions during history month and I also do most of the questions for the Facebook page there's a group of us that that work on both the Facebook and the website but the website questions usually filter back to me so and I we have found a lot of family members that way we've actually found a few players because we didn't know they existed and their family member writes to us do you know anything about so and so she's supposedly played you know in this league sometimes they didn't there was a another League that ran basically basically at the same time in Chicago it was called the national girls baseball league and they had about six teams I believe and they played in Chicago and around Chicago but the difference between the two leagues was we both started out using a softball and incorporating baseball rules where they lengthened the bases a little bit they let them lead off I haven't quite figured out how they picked anybody off first if they were throwing underhand but anyhow the Chicago League stayed with underhand pitch their entire existence so as the all-americans kept changing and their ball went through six different sizes and they went from pitching underhand to sidearm to overhand we started losing some of the players when they started going to Pure baseball because the pitchers couldn't always make that transition from throwing underhand to throwing overhand so the all Americans actually used a lot of outfielders to teach them how to pitch and and most of those players they they played another position cuz you only had about 15 or 16 on a team you know unlike Major League Baseball which is 26 players so you had to double up if you weren't pitching you were playing somewhere else Jee fought who passed away this past year she played for South Ben she only played baseball her dad I think her dad was involved with baseball she was from originally from Pennsylvania she is the only professional pitcher to throw two perfect games plus she threw two or three other no hitters and she was she had such a great arm she played third base on her days off and a few times in the Outfield and she was quite the hitter too on top of it she ended up marrying the manager she took part of a year off because she had a child and then came back and played I mean she pitched one of her no-hitter or one of her Perfect Games the last year she played and she played up through 53 and for other reasons she ended up not playing in 1954 she certainly could have but she decided not to play and I think she kind of regreted spred that a little bit but yeah she played from I think about 1946 or 7 through 53 and racked up a ton of stats in that shorter period of time uh there was only one player that played all 12 years that was Daddy Schroeder who was a shortstop and she played for South Ben Fort Wayne uh she's mostly known for Fort Wayne she she entered her career with C maazou so she won a couple of titles while she was playing and she was like 14 when she first started playing you know she'd start after school got out and she had a twin brother but she was the only one that played all 12 years there were there was one other lady though she would have played all 12 years but she was like 29 years old when the league started in 43 in fact what's interesting about her was she is the link between the all-americans and the Bloomer girls yeah she's the only player to play as a bloomer girl and then play in the all- Americans so she was 29 in 1943 and she told him her real age and so they they cut her because of her age so she was really a good book player so the next she back out lied about her age I mean she literally told this to me so lied about her age went to a different try out where they didn't know her she didn't change her name or anything she just changed her [Music] age