Thelma Eisen

Thelma "Tiby" Eisen (May 11, 1922 – May 11, 2014) was an outfielder who played from 1944 through 1952 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

Listed at 5' 4", 130 lb., she batted and threw right-handed.

Thelma Eisen was among the top players in the early years of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

A durable player, Eisen averaged 107 games appearances in each of her nine seasons in the league.

She attended Belmont High School and graduated from high school in 1941, and attended Santa Monica College part time.

Eisen then went out to work to become one of the first Harvey Girls.

An outstanding all-around athlete, at 18 she played in a short-lived professional football league for women in California as a fullback, but when Los Angeles city council banned tackle football for women, the team she played moved to Guadalajara, Jalisco.

She later applied for work at the Bank of America in Los Angeles, which sponsored a softball team where she played.

By then, she was noted by Bill Allington, a former ballplayer and advanced scout for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League operated between 1943 and 1954 and started with four teams: the Racine Belles and the Kenosha Comets, both from Wisconsin; the Rockford Peaches from Illinois, and the South Bend Blue Sox from Indiana.

Originally, the game was a combination of baseball and softball.

Differences were only in the distances between the bases, the distance from the pitching mound to home plate, the size of the ball, and pitching styles through the 12 years of existence of the circuit.

By 1944 the AAGPBL added two teams, the Milwaukee Chicks and the Minneapolis Millerettes.

Eisen attended a tryout arranged by Allington, who would join the circuit for the upcoming season as manager of the Rockford team.

She was one of six girls from Los Angeles who traveled to Peru, Indiana for the tryout.

The girls passed the test and were rewarded with a contract to play in the league.

Eisen joined the Chicks, along with Alma Ziegler, while Faye Dancer, Annabelle Lee, Lavonne Paire and Dorothy Wiltse were allocated to the Millerettes.

In 1944 Eisen played outfield for the new team based in Milwaukee.

The Chicks, managed by Max Carey, included in their roster remarkable players as Josephine Kabick, Merle Keagle and Connie Wisniewski, among others.

Eisen batted a modest .204 average in 107 games, driving in 41 runs while scoring 55 times, but stole 91 bases and provided stellar defense at outfield.

The Chicks had the best overall record (70-45), after leading the league in runs scored (492), batting average (.207), stolen bases (739), and tying for first in home runs (12).

The best offensive support came from Keagle, who hit .264 with 47 runs batted in, while topping the AAGPBL hitters in home runs (7) and total bases (145).

The one-two pitching staff was led by Kabick, who posted a 26–19 record for a .578 winning percentage and led all pitchers in wins and innings pitched (366), while Wisniewski went 23-10 (.697) with a 2.23 earned run average.

The Chicks then went on to win the Championship Title, beating the Kenosha Comets in the postseason.

During the seven-game series Wisniewski went 4–1 with a 0.40 ERA in five complete games, including two shutouts, two one-run games and one two-run game, winning three of four matchups with Kenosha's Helen Nicol, who finished with a 17–11 mark (.607) and had led the league with a minuscule 0.93 ERA.

Eisen hit .250 in the Series, including the only home run for her team.

An All-Star in 1946, she made the playoffs in seven out of nine possible seasons, including the champion team in 1944.

Noted for her enthusiastic and great knowledge of the game, she excelled defensively at all three outfield positions, mainly at center field.

Regarded as a disciplined hitter and a daring base runner, she posted a career .295 on-base percentage and utilized her stunning speed to snatch 674 stolen bases in 966 career-games.

A fast and fine defensive outfielder, she often took away extra base hits from opponents, offering a variety of excellent catches over a substantial period of time.

Additionally, she moved from one place to another constantly, playing with four different teams and cities, as the league switched players as needed to help teams to be competitive.

By 1946 Eisen joined the expansion Peoria Redwings, stealing 128 bases for them while tying for the most triples (9) along with Racine's Eleanor Dapkus and Rockford's Rose Gacioch.

She ranked ninth in average (.256), tenth in total bases (120), and finished second in stolen bases behind Racine's Sophie Kurys, who set a league single-season record with 201 steals in 203 attempts.

Eisen garnered All-Star status in the process as the third outfielder behind South Bend's Elizabeth Mahon and Grand Rapids' Merle Keagle.

In addition, she piloted the Redwings briefly to become the first female manager in AAGPBL history.

It was a neglected chapter of sports history at least until the early 1980s, when a group of former AAGPBL members led by June Peppas organized a retired players association and lobbied to have the circuit recognized in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, New York.

After that, filmmaker Penny Marshall premiered her 1992 film A League of Their Own, a fictional history centered in the first season of the AAGPBL.

Starring Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna, Lori Petty and Rosie O'Donnell, this film brought a rejuvenated interest to the extinct league.

Born in Los Angeles, Thelma Eisen was one of four children into the family of David Eisen, an Austrian immigrant, and Dorothy (Shechter) Eisen, from New York City.

She grew up in an orthodox Jewish home playing softball and was already participating in the semi-professional level by age 14, starting with the Katzenjammer Kids, named so for their manager George Katzman obviously inspired by the popular comic strip of same name.