Female baseball legend recalls her playing days
GARDNERVILLE, Nev. - She collected a hit off of the legendary Satchel Paige.
She's traveled to Japan with Joe DiMaggio and dined with Penny Marshall.
Ohio State University calls her one of the finest and most versatile athletes to ever play for the Buckeyes.
At $800 a season, she was the highest paid rookie to ever come through the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, memorialized in the 1992 film "A League of Their Own."
She's had trading cards and bobbleheads made in her likeness and spoken to crowds of thousands about her playing days.
Last week, Alice "Lefty" Hohlmayer took some time while visiting her niece in Gardnerville to sit down with some of her niece's childhood baseball teammates.
Hohlmayer, 84 of San Diego, played for six years in the AAGPBL -- the first three with the Kenosha Comets and the final three split between the
Muskegon/Kalamazoo Lassies and the Peoria Redwings.
She thumbs through her photo album, casually naming the faces that flip past. Mickey Mantle, Johnny Bench, Brooks Robinson, Duke Snider, Buck O'Neil, Frank Robinson, Ernie Banks.
The album is 2 inches thick and in each photograph, some diamond hero of old either has his arm around Hohlmayer's shoulder or has his lips on her cheek.
That's because to each one of them, and to many more across the country, she is just as much of a legend.
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League emerged in the spring of 1943 after World War II had forced most minor league teams into obscurity and taken many quality players away from the major league clubs.
The league was three seasons into its existence before Hohlmayer even heard of it. While at Ohio State, she played nearly every club sport the Buckeyes offered -- soccer, field hockey, badminton, archery, volleyball, basketball and softball.
It was at a national softball tournament in Cleveland in 1945 that Hohlmayer's athletic career took an unexpected turn.
Former Cleveland Indians second baseman Bill Wambsganss was at the tournament, scouting for the AAGPBL and he took note of Hohlmayer's abilities.
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