Erma Bergmann
In a League of Her Own
By Patricia A. Treacy
 |
|
| Erma Bergmann's autographed baseball card. Courtesy of Erma Bergmann. | |
Erma Bergmann rises from her chair at the head table and strides to the microphone. She is the only woman among 15 inductees entering the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame for 2007. Her black dress sweeps across her ankles. A red rose corsage, matching her bright lipstick, hangs from her lapel. The corsage is a gift from one of her entourage who accompanied her to Springfield, Missouri, to share the enshrinement ceremony.
Nearly 1,600 people are seated in the ballroom of Springfield’s convention center to listen to Bergmann’s acceptance message. Her clear, strong voice describes her career as pitcher in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1946 to 1951.
Bergmann is in good company in the state Hall of Fame. She joins baseball greats Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, Tim McCarver, Satchel Paige, Tony La Russa, and Ozzie Smith, who was her special guest.
Walt Jocketty, general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, Bruce Sutter, relief pitcher in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Jay Randolph, sportscaster, are among this year’s 15 inductees from around the state.
 |
|
At the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in Springfield, MO, in 2007. From left to right, Erma Bergmann, her nephew Victor Bergmann, author Pat Treacy, Bergmann’s brother Otto, and Audrey Kissel Lafser, in front, who played second base and was a lead-off hitter in 1944. Photograph by Gene Donaldson. Courtesy of Erma Bergmann. |
|
“Whoever would think that an old lady like me would be in three Halls of Fame,” 83-year-old Bergmann said the day after her notification. On November 5, 1988, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was officially recognized in the national shrine of baseball, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Bergmann’s 1947 contract was part of the opening Women in Baseball exhibit. “Bergie,” the nickname chosen by her teammates, had hurled a no-hitter on May 22, 1947, for the Muskegon Lassies against the Grand Rapids Chicks.
On March 26, 1996, she was inducted in the St. Louis Amateur Softball Hall of Fame. She played third base at the old St. Louis Softball Park at Shenandoah and Ohio Avenues from 1938 to 1945. “Fans paid 10 cents to watch the games,” Bergmann recalled.
“It was a thrill going back to my roots,” she said, reminiscing about the $30-a-plate softball awards dinner held at the Cedars at St. Raymond’s Marionite Church near downtown St. Louis. “To think that they remembered back where I started.”
 |
|
| Erma, about age 5, and her brother Otto, about 4 years old. Courtesy of Erma Bergmann. | |
This athlete’s journey from the cinder lots of South Broadway to the trifecta Halls of Fame is legendary.
Otto Bergmann, her father, traveled from Schirradorf, Germany, to St. Louis, where three of his eight brothers owned a bakery. It was 1909 and her father was 23 years old. He had served in the German Army in 1908, and wore the United States Army uniform during World War I.
Otto Bergmann was a packinghouse butcher. “He served a two-year apprenticeship in Germany and got room and board and a small glass of beer at bedtime. Can you imagine anybody today working two years without pay to learn a trade?” his daughter asked.
Her mother and father met at the German House, where they danced in costume to Bavarian folk tunes. The couple married when Otto was 37 and Sophie, his bride, was 30. The groom moved into the flat where Sophie and her father lived at 1814a South Broadway in the Soulard area. Shattinger Music Company now claims the address.
“Ronald Reagan always said he was born in a cold water flat over a barber shop. I was born in a cold water flat above a shoe store,” Bergmann remarked.
“I was born in June 1924, and my brother Otto arrived 15 months later. Seven years later, Victor was born, although Otto and I didn’t even know our mother was pregnant. We were walking home from school one day and a storeowner on Broadway said, ‘You’ve got a surprise at home.’ We hurried home, climbed the 27 steps to our flat, and there was a little blonde, curly-haired brother lying in a crib under the German cuckoo clock,” she said. “I washed the steps every Saturday. That’s how I know there were 27,” she added.
The flats were torn down, part of the Kosciusko Project of urban development in the 1950s. In 1958 the Bergmann family moved to Morganford Avenue in the Bevo Mill area, where Erma and her brother Otto still live.
 |
|
| A ballpark still sits at the corner of Shenandoah and Ohio Avenues, where Erma Bergmann played softball from 1938 to 1945. Photograph © 2007, Missouri Historical Society. | |
She describes her South Broadway neighborhood of the 1930s, remembering, “My folks rented from Balzer Hat Company. Mr. Mecklenberg had a cigar store down the street with a wooden Indian out in front. His father sold the cigars before him. Manufacturers Bank was cater-cornered from our flat. The building is still there. There also was a poolroom across the street. You could buy a big bag of vegetables at Soulard Market for 50 cents. Of course, nobody made any money, either. We kids played ball on a cinder lot a couple of blocks away at Second and Carroll Streets. Sometimes we hit bottle caps with a broomstick bat.”
Bergmann scrubbed two wooden, outdoor toilets behind Balzer Hat Store and earned a quarter every Saturday. One year she and her brother Otto chopped and hauled 200 bushels of kindling wood to their customers—on their shoulders. They were paid 10 cents a bushel. The children took the $20 to Sears, Roebuck & Co., and bought a black and yellow bike, which they shared.
Bergmann’s mother, a ragtime pianist, wanted her only daughter to take piano lessons. But she declined, preferring to play outdoors. “But music is my second love after sports,” she admitted.
She attended Lafayette Grade School on Ann Ave., between 7th and 9th Streets, graduating in January 1938, instead of June, at 13 1/2 years old.
“I had the third-highest IQ in grade school. I was an above-average student and I didn’t even open a book,” she recalled. She taught her brother Otto long division, and he, too, was promoted and graduated six months ahead of time.
Bergmann played trombone in McKinley High School’s band. “Every year in the 1940s, the city had a Clean-Up Parade downtown, and school bands marched in the parade. One year Paul Whiteman was the parade marshal, and I remember he wore a mustard-colored suit. That was pretty unusual because musicians wore dark suits then,” she said.
McKinley High School dedicated a locker to Bergmann when the school celebrated its centennial in 2003.
“I’m the only person in my family to graduate from high school,” she said with pride. “I would have liked to have gone to the University of Missouri and majored in physical education, but it was impossible financially in my day.”
So the athlete took up physical education on the cinder lot that became the neighborhood ball field. The bases were flattened cans, and stuffing oozed from the seams of the baseball.
 |
|
This photo was made into a postcard that Erma mailed from Chicago to her mother in St. Louis in 1953, when Erma was playing for the Chicago Queens. Courtesy of Erma Bergmann. |
|
A writer for the St. Louis Star-Times, one of the city’s dailies, watched one of the games and featured Bergmann in a story headlined “Girl Star Who Shines at a Man’s Game.” This was the first of many articles that would appear during her career.
A photo showed the 15-year-old Bergmann as pitcher for the Phantoms, a boys’ baseball team, taking a full windup, her left foot thrown up shoulder high. The caption said she had pitched 10 straight victories. Another photo showed her wielding a bat and described her as one of the team’s leading hitters.
The article read, “Her fast ball, which isn’t by any means what you’d expect from a girl, often goes right on by her catcher.” The catcher was 19-year-old Pete Randick, her first love, who lived in the neighborhood.
Bergmann also played softball for Melber Bakery at St. Louis Park. Although only 15, she was chosen for two all-star teams and traveled to Chicago to play.
A scout from the newly organized All-American Girls Professional Baseball League approached her at the softball park in 1944. She turned down his offer to join the league because the manager of the softball park told her that if she didn’t make the team, she would be barred from playing softball for two years. “He didn’t want to lose me,” she explained. “And I liked the softball park—the seats, the lights, the popcorn, the fans.”
The next year, the scout recruited her again before spring training in Mississippi. Although she wondered where she would sleep and what she would eat, she decided to take the chance. She told her mother, “If this doesn’t turn out to be what he says it is, I’ll be right back on the first bus or train.”
I wondered how Bergmann’s mother reacted to her leaving home at age 21 to live in the world of professional baseball.
 |
|
| Erma and her mother Sophie in front of their house in the Bevo Mill neighborhood of St. Louis on Mother's Day, 1973. Courtesy of Erma Bergmann. | |
“My mother was always for me unconditionally. Whatever I would try to do, she was supportive without any qualms or reserves. When I left to play ball, she said, ‘Knock that ball so far that they can’t find it,’” Bergmann fondly recalled. “My mother didn’t know anything about baseball. My parents never even saw me play until they came to Peoria in 1946 to watch me pitch. In the 9th inning, I hit a home run, and we won the game 2 to 1.”
Al Nicolai, the scout, earned $100 for recruiting Bergmann. She received a bus ticket to Pascagoula, Mississippi, where she tried out. She not only made the team, but also she was rated as one of the top rookies in 1946, according to Max Carey, then-president of the league.
“This was a stepping stone of my life,” she said. “Everything was above what I expected and above what I had. I loved the traveling, I loved the people I met. It was a big thrill. And I ate grits for the first time.”
She tried out for third base, the position she played in softball, but she started in the outfield for the Muskegon Lassies, the team to which she was assigned. She quickly switched to pitching. “I had a strong arm, I just had to get it over the plate. I couldn’t get it over underhand, which was the rule in softball, but I could sidearm. It was called submarine pitching—close to your knee.”
Teams on their way north from spring training played exhibition games in Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, and Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi. Bergmann was beginning to see the world.
 |
|
| The Muskegon Lassies won the pennant in 1947. Erma is standing third from the right. Courtesy of Erma Bergmann. | |
In 1947, her team flew from Miami to Havana, Cuba, for spring training. They stayed at the Seville Biltmore Hotel. MovieTone News filmed her pitching for theater audiences. The Brooklyn Dodgers trained in Havana, too, but the girls’ exhibition games drew big crowds.
“We had uniformed chaperones who were mothers and nurses away from home,” she recalled. “They rubbed down your legs, and put hydrogen peroxide on strawberries (reddened skin) from sliding into a base. Sometimes they sat in the hotel lobby to be sure everyone was in by midnight, the curfew.”
Bergmann was paid $75 a week in 1946 plus $3.50 meal money per day, a dramatic increase from her $18 a week stenographer’s salary. “We were paid the same as men’s AAA minor league players,” she said. One of her purchased trophies was a black 1951 Chevrolet convertible with a white top.
“One year we played in Knoxville and stayed at Lookout Mountain Hotel that overlooked seven states. We saw how paper is made from tree pulp. We went to St. Augustine, Florida, and rode in a glass-bottom boat. We went to Brown Lake in Muskegon and rode in a $10,000 motor-driven sailboat that had a chef. I learned how to make scalloped potatoes.”
Penny Marshall, the actress and director, traveled to Cooperstown, New York, to research the movie A League of Their Own when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League held their reunion there in 1988. She asked Bergmann if playing ball had any affect on her later life. The athlete replied, “It most certainly did. It was an education and a great experience. I learned how to get along with people and how to stand on my own two feet. My uncle, a Marianist brother, said playing ball brought out my personality.”
She played eight years amateur and nine years professional ball. In her professional career, she pitched 1,046 innings with a 2.56 earned run average. She pitched a no-hitter in 1947, had a 1.74 ERA that year, and helped the Muskegon Lassies win the pennant.
When the boys came marching home after World War II, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League gradually dissolved. Bergmann moved to Chicago and played in the Chicago Girls Professional League from 1952 to 1954. She pitched a 23-inning game and hit five singles. Both accomplishments tied league records.
Bergmann walked off the field for the last time in 1954. She returned to St. Louis and became a policewoman. She retired in 1981 after 25 years of exemplary service in the St. Louis Police Department. That would be a whole other story about her career in a man’s world.
 |
|
| After women's professional baseball disappeared, Bergmann became a policewoman. She retired in 1981 after 25 years of service with the St. Louis Police Department. Courtesy of Erma Bergmann. | |
Lady pitchers, catchers, and fielders drifted into obscurity until 1992 when the movie A League of Their Own was released. The movie kindled a renewed interest in these trailblazers who have their own places in American history.
Since then, Bergmann and her teammates have become the darlings of the media. They have been honored by the St. Louis Cardinals and appear at the Cardinals Winter Warm-Up, the fundraising event held at the Millennium Hotel every January. They give presentations on their careers and sign autographs. In 2005, when the Baseball in America exhibit opened at the Missouri Historical Society, Bergmann and two other players were there.
“They showed the movie A League of Their Own in the auditorium for about 250 people, and when the film ended, the curtain rose slowly and the three of us received a standing ovation. We answered questions and signed autographs. Some fans waited in line for two hours for autographs,” she said.
Bergmann receives fan mail daily and makes it a point to answer all letters. Jacob Thayer of Houston writes, “I have found out about the AAGPBL (All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) recently and was quite impressed. Thank you for all you have done for baseball!” Another letter says, “I am a 65-year-old retired Navy veteran whose hobby is collecting autographs of famous baseball players. Having a signed photo by you would be something that I would greatly appreciate. The letter is signed, Your Fan, Robert Kane of Middletown, Pa.
Mark McKee of Wichita wrote to ask, “Who do you think was the best player in the league and what was the strength of your game?”
While she contemplates the answer to the letter, she also thinks about her future plans. “I’ve been to Cooperstown three times, but I want to go back one more time to see the recently installed bronze statue of a girl ball player that’s by the library. I heard it cost $60,000.”
In the meantime, Bergmann basks in the glory of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. St. Louis Police Chief Joe Mokwa, Heidi Glaus of Channel 5, who interviewed Erma, and Ozzie Smith, Hall of Famer and former shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals, were among those who recommended her.
The honor is a fitting tribute to a woman who came by her success in an unorthodox way.
“I had a lot of drive and ambition,” she said. “Money was never my god. I wanted to rise above how I grew up. And, like Frank Sinatra, I did it my way—with sports and police work.”