Professional Baseball Player. An outfielder for the Fort Wayne Daisies, she is remembered as one of the superstars during the final years of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Raised in Downstate Illinois, she was part of a noted athletic family; after playing in a Chicago men's softball league in her teens Joanne signed with the Ft. Wayne Daisies in 1951 where she and her sisters Betty and Jean helped the team to four playoff appearances, though a league title eluded them. Joanne made the first of her three All-Star appearances and collected the first of three straight league batting crowns in 1952, then in 1954 established league records with a .429 batting average and 29 home runs while capturing Player of the Year honors. Her .359 lifetime batting average is the circuit's best; after the AAGPBL folded in 1954 she spent some years with a barnstorming girls' team and played in some men's leagues. After residing in Ft. Wayne for 30 years she returned home where she died of Lou Gehrig's Disease, ironically the same affliction which had earlier claimed Betty. Joanne was part of the 1988 mass induction of the AAGPBL and its players into Cooperstown's Baseball Hall of Fame; the league's story is told in the 1992 film "A League of Their Own".
Professional Baseball Player. An outfielder for the Fort Wayne Daisies, she is remembered as one of the superstars during the final years of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Raised in Downstate Illinois, she was part of a noted athletic family; after playing in a Chicago men's softball league in her teens Joanne signed with the Ft. Wayne Daisies in 1951 where she and her sisters Betty and Jean helped the team to four playoff appearances, though a league title eluded them. Joanne made the first of her three All-Star appearances and collected the first of three straight league batting crowns in 1952, then in 1954 established league records with a .429 batting average and 29 home runs while capturing Player of the Year honors. Her .359 lifetime batting average is the circuit's best; after the AAGPBL folded in 1954 she spent some years with a barnstorming girls' team and played in some men's leagues. After residing in Ft. Wayne for 30 years she returned home where she died of Lou Gehrig's Disease, ironically the same affliction which had earlier claimed Betty. Joanne was part of the 1988 mass induction of the AAGPBL and its players into Cooperstown's Baseball Hall of Fame; the league's story is told in the 1992 film "A League of Their Own".
Bio by: Bob Hufford
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