Betty Wagoner

Betty Ann Wagoner (July 15, 1930 – May 9, 2006) was an American baseball player.

She was a right fielder and pitcher who played from 1948 through 1954 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

Listed at 5ft 2in, 110 lb., she batted and threw left-handed.

An All-Star and a member of two championship teams, Betty Wagoner played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the final seven years of its existence.

For most of her career Wagoner hit for batting average, moving along baserunners as an occasional slugger and often appeared among the league's top twenty hitters.

A smart and alert runner, she moved aggressively in the right situations to take the extra base.

Armed with a strong, accurate throwing arm, she had good range at right field, catching almost everything that came her way and always knew what to do with the ball.

Eventually, she played at center field or first base, serving also as an occasional starting pitcher.

She posted an 8–20 record in 32 pitching appearances, while her .271 batting average ranks her eleventh in the AAGPBL all-time list.

A native of Lebanon, Missouri, Wagoner was a 1948 graduate of Bolivar High School.

She started to play softball in Phillipsburg on the boy's softball team in grade school and later joined the girls' softball team at Bolivar, playing also for the YWCA team of Springfield during two summers.

Wagoner read about the AAGPBL in Life magazine when she was 12 years old.

"I told my parents that someday I'd like to play in that league (if I was good enough),", she recalled in an interview.

After graduating at 17, she attended a tryout at Chicago.

She passed the test and was rewarded with a contract to play in the circuit.

Wagoner entered the league with the Lassies, playing for them only four days before joining South Bend for the rest of her career.

In her rookie season, she hit a combined .278 (69-for-284) in 84 games for both teams.

South Bend, with Marty McManus at the helm, ended in third place with a 57–69 record and lost to Grand Rapids in the first round of the playoffs, three to two games.

In Game 1, Jean Faut pitched 20 innings to beat Alice Haylett and Grand Rapids, 3–2, in which has been reported as being the longest game in AAGPBL post-season history.

Grand Rapids won Game 2 in 11 innings, 3–2, to tie the series, but Lillian Faralla hurled a four-hit, 2–1 victory in Game 3.

In another extra-inning duel, Haylett took revenge in Game 4, defeating Faut and South Bend in 15 innings by a 1–0 score, while in decisive Game 5 Mildred Earp silenced the South Bend hitters in a one-hit, 1–0 shutout, and Grand Rapids advanced to the finals.

Also, the pitching distance, set at 43 feet before 1948 and increased to 50 feet in 1949, was augmented to 55 feet in 1950.

Betty Foss of Fort Wayne topped the league with a .346 average, while Rockford's Eleanor Callow and Racine's Sophie Kurys tied with seven home runs, and Grand Rapids' Pepper Paire finished with 70 runs batted in.

Wagoner enjoyed a solid season, hitting .296 with 61 runs and 39 RBI in 106 games,.

She also recorded career-best numbers in at-bats (388) and hits (115), and was selected for the All-Star Team.

South Bend finished in fifth place with a 55–55 mark and dropped out of the playoffs.

In 1949 Wagoner became the right fielder of South Bend.

She appeared in a career-high 113 games and hit .230 (87-for-379), scoring 58 runs while driving in 26 more.

Throughout the regular season, South Bend, now managed by Dave Bancroft, waged an up-and-down battle with Rockford for first place.

Although South Bend had a four-game lead in August, both clubs tied with identical records of 75–36 at the end of the year.

In the playoffs, Rockford eliminated South Bend in four straight games.

By edict of league president Max Carey, the playoff victory also made Rockford the regular season champion team.

By 1950 the advantage began to shift toward the batter.

That year, most pitchers were still adjusting to the new 10-inch ball introduced the previous season.

In 1951 Karl Winsch took over as manager of South Bend.

By the time the season rolled around, his wife Jean Faut was a successful and established pitcher.

She led the league in strikeouts (135), tied for seventh in wins (15), and ranked third in earned run average (1.33) and in shutouts (seven).

Wagoner, who was proficient at hitting line drives, played 110 games and hit a .272 average (102-for-375), driving in 41 runs and scoring 77 times to set career numbers in both categories.

Faut reached her peak of the season on July 21, when she hurled a perfect game against the visiting Rockford Peaches at Playland Park.

Ahead 2–0, she struck out five of the last nine hitters, including pitching ace Helen Nicol to end the game.