Faye Katherine Dancer (April 24, 1925 – May 22, 2002) was a center fielder who played from 1944 through 1950 for three teams of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

While attending Santa Monica High School, the young Dancer played softball for a girls' team called the Dr Peppers, which was sponsored by the historic soft drink company.

She also attended University High School in West Los Angeles, where she broke an all-city basketball record after shooting 42 baskets in just one minute.

Her career was shortened by a serious back injury, but the impression Dancer left on the league and her teammates was one of dedication, hustle and fun.

[4] Dancer tried a return with the Redwings in 1950, but a herniated disk from a sliding injury and a chipped vertebra forced her permanent retirement after just 49 games.

Following her baseball career, she labored for a power generator company in Santa Monica for 35 years and also opened an electronics business with her fellow player and longtime friend Pepper Paire.

She joined more than 75 other former AAGPBL players for the opening of the exhibit, where her baseball glove and spikes are on permanent display, as well as her most famous photo that depicts her hustle and all-out play in 1948, while sliding into third base to avoid a tag.

The void the league filled during wartime was inspiration for the aforementioned film, which brought a rejuvenated interest to the history of women's baseball.

A tough and free spirit lady, she was known as the AAGPBL joker and an inveterate rule breaker, kicking against league structures on her private life.

Dancer smoked and drank, and after her fiancé Johnny was killed in action during World War II, she never really considered marrying anybody else, despite having a significant number of boyfriends.

Before the 1945 season, Dancer and Paire stopped in Arizona to watch Jim Thorpe, an American sports legend and a U.S. Olympic champion of the 1912 Stockholm Games.