All-American Girls Professional League · Chicago, Illinois · 1944

Carey Is Named Pilot Of Girls' Ball Teams

May 1944: Max Carey, one of the National League's top base stealers and a future Hall of Famer, signs on to manage in the All-American Girls' Professional League, now grown to six teams reaching Milwaukee and Minneapolis. He drew the Milwaukee Chicks, won the championship that first year and ended up running the whole league.

On May 11, 1944, the Evening Star carried news that the year-old girls’ league had landed a genuinely famous name: “Max Carey, who is best remembered by baseball fans as one of the National League’s top base stealers, is to manage one of the teams in the All-American Girls’ Professional League.”

Note the growth spurt tucked into the fine print. The league that had opened in 1943 with four teams now planned six: “League franchises will be operated in Racine, Kenosha, Wis.; Rockford, Ill.; South Bend, Ind.; Milwaukee and Minneapolis.” And note the name again. What the papers had called a softball league at its birth is now the “All-American Girls’ Professional League,” no ball of any kind specified. The league itself couldn’t stop fidgeting with the name.

Carey “completed the league’s managerial staff,” joining Marty McManus, Claude Jonnard, Bert Niehoff, Jack Kloza and Johnny Gottselig, all old professionals. Carey drew the new Milwaukee Chicks and managed them to the league championship that very season. He was just getting started. Within a year he was president of the whole league, a job he held into 1950, and under his watch the underhand game began its long march toward genuine overhand baseball. When we get to 1948 later this month, you’ll find him judging talent by the flick of a wrist.

The Hall of Fame took Carey in 1961 for what he did as a Pittsburgh Pirate, 738 stolen bases and all. The girls’ league got the same man at full attention, and it shows in everything that came after.