Council Bluffs' Major League Pitcher
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A young Council Bluffs high school girl liked playing softball. What's more, she was good at it... very good. But there was only so far she could take her talent; professional baseball was strictly a man's game.
As it turned out, Ann Kmezich happened to have been born at just the right time. By the 1940's baseball had become big business. A business that depended upon talented and athletic young men, exactly the type whose numbers were increasingly in short supply as World War II got underway.
The minor league teams had already been disbanded and major league ball parks were becoming concerned that should large numbers of players be drafted, professional baseball might likewise come to a halt. An empty ballpark makes no money, so Phillip Wrigley, the chewing gum mogul that inherited the Chicago Cubs franchise from his father, proposed an alternate revenue solution: a woman's professional league. Wrigley's vision was that these women be "the girl next door" type that just happened to play baseball. The All-American Girl's Baseball league formed in 1943.
A nationwide search was launched to find woman that could keep the sport alive. It didn't take them long to find Council Bluffs' Ann Kmezich.
After graduation from Abraham Lincoln High School Ann continued to play softball with a Des Moines team. She caught the eye of an All American Girls Baseball League recruiter when her team made it to a tournament for amateur softball in Grand Rapids in 1948. She turned him down. They wanted her in the outfield, but she was a pitcher at heart. And if she did get to pitch, they used overhand and she was well into perfecting her underhand whip style. The recruiter persisted, following her to Des Moines with more offers, but Ann held her ground. Professional ball sounded enticing, but not if it meant compromising her style.
She got her break to step into pro ball with the rival National Girl's Baseball League. Their style more closely meshed with what she was doing, and she joined the Chicago Queens in 1948.
The girl who honed her skills playing informal pick-up baseball games in vacant lots around Council Bluffs, pitching mostly mostly to male players, hit her stride. Ann proved to be a heavy-hitting fireball pitcher with a 93 m.p.h. fast ball, putting fear into opposing batters and capturing the admiration of the fans, who selected her as top pitcher to the All-Star game three years in a row. Ann could be counted upon at bat as well. A long ball hitter, she batted fourth in cleanup position bringing the others home and netting home runs herself. The Queens relied heavily on her skills to earn three consecutive national championships from 1950 to 1952. The Queens played six nights a week, and though Ann was doing double duty the club refused to give her appropriate compensation.
In 1952 Ann Kmezich accepted a better offer from the Phoenix Queens, who paid her expenses to relocate to Arizona. The Phoenix team did barnstorming tours three weeks at a time, traveling overnight and playing a game the next day. The pace was thrilling, but it took a toll, and the young pitcher was concerned it might be wearing on her health. At the same time the Chicago Queens were having second thoughts about letting Ann leave. She arrived home one day to find an airmail, special delivery request to return to the windy city... at double the salary.
The event turned out to be more significant than she at first realized. The man sent to meet her plane eventually became her husband. As other forms of recreation and entertainment gained popularity after the war attendance began to fall. The introduction of televised major league games proved the final straw and the AAGBL and NGBL came to an end in the mid 1950's. Following her pro ball career Ann and her husband remained in Chicago. After his death she returned to Council Bluffs, stared a candy store, and kept busy talking to groups of young people, encouraging a positive attitude and of course carrying the message to young women that they can indeed excel in sports if they put their hearts and their minds into it.
(Photos courtesy of the Historical Society of Pottawattamie County. Story by Dr. Ricbard Warner).
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