Nancy Mudge

Nancy Mudge
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Second base
Born: October 3, 1929 (1929-10-03) (age 82) Bridgeport, Madison County, New York
Bats: Right	Throws: Right
Teams
Chicago Colleens (1950) Springfield Sallies (1950) Kalamazoo Lassies (1951-1952, 1954) Battle Creek Belles (1952) Muskegon Belles (1953)
Career highlights and awards
AAGPBL Championship Title (1954) 1954 AAGPBL All-Star Team Women in Baseball – AAGPBL Permanent Display at Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (1988)

Nancy Mudge [Cato] (born October 3, 1929) is a former second basewoman who played from 1950 through 1954 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5' 2", 120 lb., Mudge batted and threw right handed. She was nicknamed ″Smudgie″.

Born in Bridgeport, New York, Nancy Mudge played during five seasons in the AAGPBL, three of them with the Kalamazoo Lassies. Mudge was a solid, smooth-fielding at second base that paced the league in fielding percentage between 1953 and 1954. A light hitter, she had the ability to get on base, by any means, way above than the pure ability to get the hit. She reached first base by walks, by a bunt single or being hit by the pitcher, though she was a .183 career hitter but posted a solid .311 on-base percentage. A smart and aggressive baserunner, she knew when to take the extra base. An AAGPBL scout tried to sign Mudge after seeing her playing field hockey in Indiana, thinking that she had athletic abilities, endurance and fitness necessary to play baseball. Mudge refused, because she wanted to graduate college first. However, she later had a tryout with the Fort Wayne Daisies.^[1]

AAGPBL career

In 1950, between her junior and senior years in college, Mudge was given a contract to play with the Chicago Colleens, and was sent to the Springfield Sallies during the midseason. She hit a combined .308 average with 24 runs batted in in their first 40 games. Unfortunately, she tore a cartilage in her knee that required surgery and rehabilitation for the rest of the summer.^[2][3]

After graduating from college, Mudge returned to baseball action and was assigned to the Kalamazoo Lassies in 1951. She played for them two and a half years before joining the Battle Creek Belles during the 1952 midseason. After that, she spent 1953 with the relocated Muskegon Belles, when the franchise moved for a while to see if that city would support a girls baseball team, but the experiment failed and Mudge returned to Kalamazoo in 1954.

In 1954 Mudge hit .232 in 98 games, including career-numbers in runs scored (74) and hits (82), while driving in 22 runs. She also made the league's All-Star Team, forming part of a Lassies All-Star slick infield that included June Peppas at first base, Dorothy Schroeder at shortstop, and Fern Shollenberger at third base. Meanwhile, the called Home Run Twins, Chris Ballingall (17) and Carol Habben (15), powered the offense with 32 home runs; Peppas and Schroeder enjoyed big numbers, and Kalamazoo advanced to the Championship Series. As a result, the Lassies defeated the Daisies in a best-of-five games series, during what turned out to be the AAGPBL final season.^[4]

Mudge returned home after the league disbanded. She married and changed her name to Nancy Mudge Cato. She is currently living in Elk River, Minnesota.^[5]

Mudge was one of 25 players who made the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League clubs hailed from New York City and State, including Muriel Bevis, Gloria Cordes, Mildred Deegan, Betty Trezza and Margaret Wigiser.

Since 1980, June Peppas and a group of friends began assembling a list of names and addresses of former All-American Girls Professional Baseball League players. Her work turned into a newsletter and resulted in the league’s first-ever reunion in Chicago, Illinois in 1982. Starting from that reunion, a Players Association was formed five years later and a significant number of former AAGPBL players continued to enjoy reunions, which became annual events in 1998. For many years, Nancy Mudge Cato has been an active participant in the events organized by the association.

The AAGPBL folded in 1954, but there is now a permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, New York since November 5, 1988 that honors those who were part of this unique experience. June and Nancy, along with the rest of the league's girls, is now enshrined in the Hall.

The AAGPBL Players Association helped to bring the league story to the public eye. The association was largely responsible for the opening of the aforementioned exhibition. Of the approximately 560 women who had played in the league, most had lost touch with the others; at least not until the first reunion held in Chicago.

In July 1988, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) held their annual National Convention in Minneapolis with 340 people in attendance. Andy MacPhail was the keynote speaker, and Minor league baseball home run legend Joe Hauser was a special guest, while Nancy was part of a players panel along Hauser, Julio Bécquer and Howie Schultz.^[6]

Nancy was also honored by the Colorado Silver Bullets all-female baseball team in their 1994 inaugural season, in which she threw out the first ball pitch of a game celebrated in Saint Paul, Minnesota.^[7]

Career statistics

Batting

GP	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	TB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG
350	1094	186	200	25	3	8	55	97	255	BB	SO	.183	.311	.233

Fielding

GP	PO	A	E	TC	DP	FA
326	826	623	109	1558	111	.935

^[8]

Sources

1. ^ All-American Girls Professional Baseball League official website – Nancy Mudge entry
2. ^ The Diamond Angle Interview
3. ^ AAGPBL Player Page
4. ^ Encyclopedia of women and baseball – Leslie A. Heaphy, Mel Anthony May. Publisher: McFarland & Company, 2006. Format: Paperback, 438pp. Language: English. ISBN 0786421002
5. ^ AAGPBL– Stars-Collector.net
6. ^ Society of American Baseball Research – Publisher: Turner Publishing Company, 2000. Format: Hardcover, 120pp. Language: English. ISBN 1563115948
7. ^ Colorado Silver Bullets Webpage
8. ^ All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book – W. C. Madden. Publisher: McFarland & Company, 2000. Format: Paperback, 294pp. Language: English. ISBN 0786437472

Persondata
Name	Mudge, Nancy
Alternative names	Cato, Nancy
Short description
Date of birth	October 3, 1929
Place of birth	Bridgeport, Madison County, New York
Date of death
Place of death