Connie Wisniewski, a Detroit native who starred for the Grand Rapids Chicks baseball club from 1944 to 1952, has been referred to as the Babe Ruth of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) popularized by the movie A League of Their Own.
She was the league’s dominant pitcher for the first four years of her career, leading the Chicks to an AAGPBL championship in 1944 and being selected as the league’s first Player of the Year in 1945. Later in her eight-year career as the field was adjusted and the pitching mound moved back to make the game look more like baseball with sidearm and overhand pitching, she converted to the outfield and continued being selected as a league all-star.
The Chicks, part of the Grand Rapids Sports Hall of Fame as a Team induction, originated as a franchise in 1944 in Milwaukee, Wis., won the championship that first year but failing financial backing moved to Grand Rapids where they played from 1945 to 1954 winning two more league titles before the league disbanded after the ’54 season.
? Wisniewski, who batted lefthanded and threw righthanded and was one of the league’s tallest players at 5-foot-8, was popularly referred to in newspaper articles as the “Polish Rifle” and “Iron Woman” because of her heritage and durability in pitching.
She is considered the best underhand pitcher of the AAGPBL averaging 26 wins in each of her first four seasons, including two with more than 30 wins. Before switching to the outfield, she was 107-48 pitching, which is the league’s all-time best winning percentage (.690). She also set the record for innings pitched in a single season at 391. As Player of the Year in 1945 she was 32-11 with a 0.81 ERA. She is also known for winning all four games and pitching five of the seven-game championship series in 1944, and more than once winning two games in a double-header.
She started playing outfield in 1948 and led the league in homeruns, was second in runs-batted-in and third in batting average. She ranks fifth all-time in the league history as a hitter with a .290 batting average.
Wisniewski was one of the highest paid players in the league at one point making $250 per week when most salaries ranged from $55 to $125, and she admitted to Grand Rapids Press reporter Greg Johnson in a 1988 interview that she had chauffeur rides to games added to her contract for a while.
She started her athletic career in softball at age 11 in Detroit, graduated from the High School of Commerce, starred for the Detroit Keller Girls and the Hudson Motors as a windmill softball pitcher whose fastball was estimated at 90 miles per hour, and was 22 when she tried out for the newly created AAGPBL.
After her playing days Wisniewski worked for General Motors, and even briefly opened a restaurant called Chicks Dugout. She retired to Florida and died in 1995 of stomach cancer. She was 73. She is a featured part in photos of the AAGPBL permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY.