Dorothy Kamenshek, better known as “Dottie,” who helped inspire the lead character played by Geena Davis in the 1992 movie “A League of their Own,” has died at age 84, the Riverside County (Calif.) coroner told The Associated Press on Friday.
Kamenskek, who died Monday, was a star of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, playing for the Rockford Peaches from 1943 to 1953. She won back-to-back batting titles in 1946 and ’47 and was the league’s all-time batting leader with a .292 lifetime average. She also was selected to seven all-star teams.
“She was the greatest ballplayer in our league,” Pepper Paire Davis, who was a catcher and a 10-year veteran in the league, told the Los Angeles Times.
Former New York Yankee first baseman Wally Pipp called Kamenshek “the fanciest-fielding first baseman I’ve ever seen, man or woman.”
