If Stan Musual was 'The Man' for Major League Baseball, Paire-Davis was 'The Woman' among her contemporaries.
Lavonne "Pepper" Paire-Davis visits Yankee Stadium in June 2010.
By DAVID WHITLEY
If you fret over baseball’s issues now, be glad it’s not 1943. Players were given a handbook reassuring them that the sport would not interfere with their ability to bear children.
Then they saw their new uniforms and were none too pleased.
“The choices were either play in skirts,” Lavonne Paire-Davis said, “or go home.”
They learned to slide in skirts and had the scabs to prove it. Nobody was tougher than Paire-Davis, better known as “Pepper.”
In a weird bit of timing, she died Saturday. Stan Musial passed away two weekends earlier. If he was revered as “The Man” of baseball, the 88-year-old Pepper should be remembered as “The Woman.”
She inspired the most important character in “A League of Their Own.” Geena Davis played Dottie Hinson, the catcher who held the Rockford Peaches together.
Pepper was a consultant for the movie about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley started the league because he feared World War II might stop men's baseball.
The movie was a smash, with the most immortal line being Tom Hanks’ “There’s no crying in baseball.” Pepper wouldn’t want anyone crying for her today, but she deserves a tip of the nearest cap.
“I’ve spent most of my time these past years talking to girls baseball teams and trying to inspire them to reach the stars, that anything it possible,” she once said. “Just look at me.”
She was a tomboy, which is what athletic girls were called not that long ago. A Wrigley scout spotted her playing for a softball team in Los Angeles and invited her to try out for the new league.
Pepper said the movie was about 80 percent fact and 20 percent Hollywood. Hanks’ character, Jimmy Dugan, was a churlish alcoholic who passed out during games. Her most famous manager, Jimmie Foxx, enjoyed his booze but was unfailingly a gentleman.
“He did sit on the bench and go to sleep while I ran the ballclub,” Pepper said.
A woman manager?
This wasn’t just before Title IX, it was when the only socially acceptable status was barefoot or pregnant. Women’s softball was relatively popular, but Wrigley didn’t like its image.
“Short-haired, mannishly dressed toughies,” he once said.
Wrigley felt the public would only accept his league if the women looked like they walked out of a Helena Rubenstein Salon. He actually hired Rubenstein’s company to give players beauty tips.
In the movie, fan apathy almost kills the league. Then Hinson catches a foul pop and does a split right in front of a photographer for Life magazine. The shot makes the cover, players start hot-dogging it, fans are won over, Madonna plays a mean center field and everybody lives happily ever after.
In real life, the girls played a serious game. They just did it wearing Rubenstein-approved skirts.
“We made believers out of them by playing great, hard-nosed baseball,” Pepper said. “Then they fell in love with us and we became part of their towns.”
The AAGPBL drew about 200,000 in its first season. That jumped to 900,000 in 1948 but dropped as the fighting men returned. The league folded in 1954 after the Korean War.
Pepper had gone back to Los Angeles, with only a scrapbook and memories. She worked as a waitress, so a few customers may have heard her stories and marveled at how far tomboys had come.
Millions more discovered Pepper when the movie came out in 1992. At 67, a star was born. She started making personal appearances and promoting women’s baseball.
“Beat the heck out of slinging hash,” she said.
She had three children, proving baseball doesn’t interfere with child bearing. Not even baseball that consisted of eight games a week, bus rides, sliding in skirts and running the game when the manager passes out in the dugout.
“The physical grind was pretty tough,” Pepper said a few years ago. “I am suffering now and really paying the bodily price.”
She lived alone with her cats and needed a wheelchair to get around. About 500 women played in the AAGBL. Like World War II vets, their numbers are quickly dwindling. The women feel they helped the war effort in their unique way.
“Doing the job for your country and getting paid for it on top of that!” Pepper said. “The satisfaction of making your fans happy and giving your all for your teammates.”
Sounds so corny Hollywood should make a movie. It’s just kind of sad that you could go on eBay Monday and get an autographed baseball card of Pepper for $15.99.
Kim Kardashian had one going for $499.99. An autographed Roger Clemens card could set you back $1,000. An autographed photo of Madonna straddling a chair was listed at $2,799.99.
Nothing against them, but Pepper was truly in a league of her own.