She is recognized as the first woman to regularly play men's National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) baseball, as well as the first woman to coach men's NCAA Division I baseball and one of the first women to play in a Major League Baseball-sanctioned league.
[3] Croteau watched her first baseball game at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.
[2][3] In 1988, Croteau and her parents filed a sex discrimination lawsuit against the high school for the ability to play on the boys' team, but lost.
[5] The court ruled that she had "received a fair tryout and that the decision to cut her was made in good faith and for reasons unrelated to gender".
[3] In making her debut, she is credited as becoming the second [9] woman to play in a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) college baseball game.
[2] She would later quit the team her junior year due to sexual harassment[3][12] and sexism from teammates and the athletic department.
[13] After playing as an undergraduate, Croteau attended graduate school at Smith College[14] and continued her career by coaching men's NCAA baseball at Western New England University (Division III) as an assistant in 1993[12] and then at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (Umass; Division I), also as an assistant,[15] from 1995 to 1996.
[18] When she played for Colorado, Croteau stood at 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm) and weighed 130 pounds (59 kg).
[5] In the 1992 Columbia Pictures film A League of Their Own, Croteau served as a baseball double for actress Anne Ramsay,[15] who portrayed first basewoman Helen Haley.