Shirley Burkovich - Baseball

Shirley Burkovich played in the All-American Professional Baseball League from 1949 to 1951, beginning her baseball career when she was only sixteen years old and still in high school. She spent her first year with the Muskegon Lassies, and the 1950 season with the Springfield Sallies and Chicago Colleens, a pair of teams that played throughout the east, introducing new audiences to the league. For her final season, Burkovich played on the Rockford Peaches. By the end of the 1951 season she could see that the league was slowly dying, so she left the sport she loved for a full time job with Pacific Bell. Many years later, Shirley had a small cameo role in the classic film, "A League of Their Own."

https://presidentlincoln.illinois.gov/oral-history/collections/burkovich-shirley/interview-detail/