[1] One of the tallest players in the league's history, Earlene Risinger was an All-Star pitcher who helped the Grand Rapids Chicks win a championship title in 1953.
[2] Earlene Risinger was born and raised in Hess, a tiny village of Oklahoma with less than thirty people, located in the southwest part of the state just above the Texas border.
Her father worked in a gas station, and when his salary did not stretch far enough, his skill hunting jack rabbits put food on the family table.
By the time she was six, Earlene was a regular on Sunday afternoons down at the cow pasture playing ball with her father, her uncles, and her cousins.
Instead, she was forced to work for more than two years in local cotton fields earning 50 cents an hour, thinking this might her future as there were no factories or anything like that anywhere nearby.
He forwarded her card to the league's office in Chicago, and pretty soon she received a letter asking her to attend a tryout at Oklahoma City.
Encouraged by the men of her family, with whom she had been playing baseball and perfecting her pitches for years, the reluctant girl attended the training camp and passed the test.
[5] Delighted with the opportunity to play, Risinger borrowed money from a bank and started on a train for Rockford, Illinois, the home of the Peaches.
The Sallies, along with the expansion Chicago Colleens, folded at the end of the season because of poor attendance and a lack of local support.
[2][3][6] At Grand Rapids, Risinger improved with the guidance of her manager Johnny Rawlings, who taught her the finer points of pitching.
In 1949 she went 15–12 with a 2.35 ERA, leading her team in wins while bolstering a strong pitching staff along with Mildred Earp (14-10, 1.83), Lorraine Fisher (13-11, 2.18) and Alice Haylett (9-10, 1.88).
She also finished fourth in strikeouts (116), being surpassed only by Rockford's Lois Florreich (210), Grand Rapids' teammate Earp (143), and Jean Faut of the South Bend Blue Sox (120).
For the other side, South Bend's Jean Faut led all pitchers in ERA (1.12) and complete games (29), and was one of three 20-win leaders (21) along with Fort Wayne's Maxine Kline (23) and Rockford's Lois Florreich (20).
Fort Wayne's Betty Foss led all hitters for the second year in a row (.368) while Rockford's Rose Gacioch was the only pitcher to win 20 games for the season.
Grand Rapids finished in fourth place (50-60) and made the playoffs, but was swept by South Bend in the first round best-of-three series.
Risinger started Game 2 and took the loss, as the Blue Sox made the most of three walks and two errors by scoring her three unearned runs.
[7] In the best-of-three final series, the Grand Rapids Chicks, with Woody English at the helm, faced the Kalamazoo Lassies, managed by Mitch Skupien.
In the first series, Grand Rapids won Game 1, after pitcher Eleanor Moore singled home the winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning for an 8–7 victory.
First base-pitcher June Peppas starred for Kalamazoo, winning her two starts while hitting 6-for-15 with two home runs and three RBI, during what turned out to be the AAGPBL final season.