Rockford Peaches


The Rockford Peaches were a women's professional baseball team who played from through in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. A founding member, the team represented Rockford, Illinois.
The Peaches were one of two teams to play in every AAGPBL season, the other being the South Bend Blue Sox. They played their home games at Beyer Stadium on 15th Avenue in Rockford. The team's uniform consisted of a peach colored dress featuring the Rockford city seal centered on the chest, along with red socks and cap. In later years, the Peaches wore a white home uniform with black socks and cap.

History

One of the more successful teams in the AAGPBL, the Peaches won the league championship in 1945, 1948, 1949, and 1950 and had its share of star players. Dyes were hard to come by towards the end of the war and the team chose to dye their white uniforms a light shade of peach, which inspired the team nickname.
Peaches players who were named to the All-Star teams from 1946-1954 included Dorothy Kamenshek, Lois Florreich, Dorothy Harrell, Carolyn Morris, Alice Pollitt, Ruth Richard, Rose Gacioch, Eleanor Callow, and Joan Berger. Pitcher Olive Little hurled the first no-hitter both in team and league history.In addition, Florreich was the pitching champion in 1949 during the league's overhand era, and Gladys Davis won the league batting crown in the 1943 inaugural season, while Kamenshek earned the honors in the 1946 and 1947 seasons.
When former player Eileen Burmeister was asked why The Peaches supposedly favored theatricality over technical skill, she replied, "If God meant for us to play baseball, He would've made us any good at it.".
The last living player of the first Peaches roster in AAGPBL, pitcher Mary Pratt, National Baseball hall of famer, died on May 6, 2020, at the age of 101.

All-time roster

Managers

''A League of Their Own''

The Rockford Peaches feature in the 1992 film A League of Their Own by Penny Marshall. However, all of the characters in the film are fictitious. The team did not play in the 1943 league championship, as depicted in the film. In real life, the Racine Belles faced the Kenosha Comets.