Thomas Stadium hosting all-female baseball
Published 10:31 pm Wednesday, May 19, 2010
NEW CARLISLE, Ind. – Thomas Memorial Stadium has seen some great baseball moments, as well as some all time great baseball names such as Satchel Paige and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe.
In the early 1990s, the facility was also under consideration to be a movie site for the shooting of “A League of Their Own.”
On Sunday at 1 p.m., the next installment on the historical resume of Thomas Stadium will be notched as the some two dozen female baseball players from across the Midwest will comprise the Patriot Stars and American Stars in the first-ever, women’s baseball games to be played there.
Players from at least four different states (Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio) will comprise the rosters. Several players that day will also give the event an international flavor in natives of Japan (Akisa Fukuzawa), Russia (Irina Kovach) and Canada (Natalie Griffiths).
Local players competing in these games are Katie Hewitt (Stevensville), Kari Williams (Elkhart, Ind.), Kovach (New Carlsile) and Griffiths (South Bend).
A number of the U.S. players are also candidates to USA Baseball’s National Women’s Team, which will be selected later this summer for the Women’s Baseball World Cup in Venezuela.
Several former players (including Lillian Luckey of Niles) from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League will also be on hand to meet fans that day.
The event is free and open to the public.
For more information regarding these historic games, please contact John Kovach at (574) 309-3360 or Knucksie1@aol.com.