SteepleCats to honor women in sportsBy Linda Carman
12:00AM / Wednesday, July 21, 2004
 | | Baseball card featuring Mary Pratt. (Provided Photo) |
NORTH ADAMS – A pioneer in women’s sports, 85-year-old Mary Pratt, who pitched for the Rockford Peaches in the 1940s, will throw out the first pitch at the SteepleCats baseball game Friday as part of the team’s celebration of girls and women in sports.
The Rockford Peaches Illinois team gained wider and more recent fame as the subject of the award-winning 1992 film “A League of Their Own” starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, Lori Petty and David Strathairn. The film, recounting the saga of the 1943-1954 All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, will be shown after Friday’s game at Joe Wolfe Field.
Pratt, who lives in Quincy, remains an energetic advocate for girls and women’s sports. Contacted by telephone Tuesday, she said her stint with the Peaches was a hugely significant part of her life.
“Now we realize we we’re part of history in women’s sports,” she said. “We thought we were just having fun. I’m glad I can be a part of helping girls and women coming along the way. That’s what it’s all about.”
Pratt, whose baseball career overlapped with her teaching career, said, “In those years there was no Title IX [the law guaranteeing parity between men’s and women’s sports]. We had to push for a role in girls and women’s sports. For me, it was a combination of being fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. I was told in college that I would never compete again, but that was just because of the dictates of society.”
Pratt said she has been increasingly conscious that her early pioneering set an example for generations of women to follow.
“More and more I think that,” she said.
In 1982, at a league reunion, Pratt and other league players were told by Patty Berg that what she had done in golf and Billie Jean King had done in tennis, they had done in baseball.
Dot Houston, assistant athletic director at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, said she expects Pratt’s remarks to be inspirational.
“She has inspired me, that’s for sure,” said Houston, who was instrumental in bringing Pratt, whom she has known for some time, to North Adams.
Pratt pitched for the Peaches and the Kenosha, Wis., Comets from 1943 to 1947. She received a bachelor of science degree from Boston University and her master’s of education from the University of Massachusetts. She taught in the Quincy public school system, the Braintree School Department and at Salem State College. She officiated for softball and basketball games and was named an honorary lifetime official. She has made frequent appearances as an advocate of women’s sports, including being interviewed on “Good Morning America.”
Pratt will be honored at a reception Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. at the North Adams Holiday Inn, to which she is expected to bring her scrapbook from her baseball years and assorted memorabilia.
Pratt, while pleased with girls’ and women’s progress in sports, is far from complacent.
“We still have many bridges to cross,” she said. “Change comes slow. Title IX was started for fairness, but there’s still a struggle. Some men feel that Title IX means they’re losing something, but that’s not right.
“We’re getting there,” she added.
Title IX regulations aim to guarantee women equal access to athletic facilities and ensure there are equal numbers of male and female sports.
One local woman instrumental in organizing the girls and women in sports event is Nancy Bullett of North Adams, a physical therapist who remembers her playground team, Greylock, playing teams from other playgrounds — and that these teams included both boys and girls.
Bullett said she then went to high school, where she found no girls’ baseball team. She reconnected with softball in the Albany area, where she attended college, and now plays in North Adams with a women’s league.
Hundreds of women who play in youth and adult leagues and at the college level are scheduled to mass on Joe Wolfe Field in a show of solidarity for women in sports before the Steeplecats play the Keene, N.H., Swamp Bats at 7 p.m. The showing of “A League of Their Own” follows the game.
As a follow-up to Friday’s game, an award-winning documentary about a ground-breaking 1976 protest by women at Yale University will be screened Saturday at 2 p.m. at Images Cinema in Williamstown.
Pratt will speak before the firm and discuss the protest’s impact on women’s sports afterward. The protest triggered tougher federal enforcement of federal laws guaranteeing equal access to all sports facilities by women in federally funded institutions.
Four years ago, Boston-area filmmaker Mary Mazzio interviewed the women and officials involved in the 1976 protest, which made front-page news when members of Yale’s women’s crew walked naked into a Yale athletic administrator’s office and delivered a petition.
The film, “A Hero for Daisy,” includes an interview on the gender and sports issue with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who is a Yale graduate. |
.JPG&width=225&height=300)
