Maybelle Blair
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| Maybelle Blair | |
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| Born: January 16, 1927 Inglewood, California, U.S. | |
Bats: Right Throws: Right | |
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| Career highlights and awards | |
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Maybelle Blair (born January 16, 1927) is a former All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player. Listed at 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm) and 150 pounds (68 kg), she batted and threw right-handed.[1][2]
Born in Inglewood, California,[2] Blair was a pitcher and joined the league with the Peoria Redwings in its 1948 season, although she appeared in only one game for the team, and then moved the next year to a professional softball league in Chicago to play for the Chicago Cardinals.[2] Later, she played for the Jax Girls softball club of New Orleans.[3] Afterwards, Blair attended Compton Junior College in California and then Los Angeles School of Physiotherapy.[1] Following her graduation, she worked at a treatment center in Los Angeles before began a long 37-year career at Northrop Corporation, where she started as a chauffeur and ended up as the manager of highway transportation, being one of the three female managers the company employed in that period.[4][3][5]
Following her retirement, Blair became vice president of Center for Extended Learning for Seniors (CELS); an educational travel tours program provider for Elderhostel.[1] Blair also became a collaborator in different projects of the AAGPBL Players Association since its foundation in 1982, serving on the board of directors and the Chair of the Fundraising Committee.[1] The association helped to bring the league story to the public eye and was largely responsible for the opening of Women in Baseball, a permanent display based at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which was unveiled in 1988 to honor the entire All-American Girls Professional Baseball League rather than any individual personality.[6] In addition, Blair was a founding member of the International Women's Baseball Center (IWBC), a nonprofit building an educational center and museum in Rockford, Illinois, the home of the Rockford Peaches.
In 2022, Blair publicly came out as a lesbian while promoting the TV series A League of Their Own, saying that prior to her time in the AAGPBL, “I thought I was the only one in the world… I hid for 75, 85 years and this is actually, basically, the first time I’ve ever come out.”[7] In 2023 she received the first Amazin’ Mets Foundation Legacy Award.[8] A biography of Maybelle was published by Rowman Littlefield in March 2025.