Last Surviving Rockford Peaches Player Dies At 101

ROCKFORD, IL — Mary Pratt, the last surviving original member of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League's famous Rockford Peaches died earlier this month at age 101. The team inspired the hit 1992 movie "A League Of Their Own."

"Mary was the last known original Peaches player that played on the 1943 team," the league tweeted this week. "Her stories, her energy will be missed for a long time."

Known as "Prattie," Pratt pitched one season for the Peaches before transferring to the Kenosha Comets. During her season in Kenosha, she pitched a no-hitter and won 21 games. She played with the Peaches from 1943-44 and 1946-47.

According to her autobiography on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League website, Pratt was born in Connecticut and moved with her family to Quincy, Massachusetts, during the height of the Great Depression.

She majored in physical education at Boston University and worked as a teacher for 48 years.

Pratt said her participation in sports during her "growing up years" and teaching years was limited, writing, "I competed with an against boys." She wrote that she spent 50 years officiating sporting events including basketball, field hockey and lacrosse.

In June 1943, Pratt said she got the chance to join the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League after flying to Chicago to meet with Ken Sells, the president of the league.

"That evening, Rockford was in the process of playing a league game at the 15th Avenue Stadium. That was my introduction into the All-American and the start of five wonderful summers as a member of the league, 1943-47," Pratt wrote. "It was an honor to play with so many of the girls who signed up for the League in those first years."

Pratt resigned her teaching position to play in the league, but returned to Quincy and resumed her career, retiring in 1986.

In later life, Pratt served on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League board of directors.

Pratt "went on to build a career in physical education that lifted thousands of girls and young women to new heights in sports," her obituary said, and "passed away peacefully in her sleep on Wednesday, May 6."

"It is a sad day in baseball," David Allen Lambert, chief genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, told Wicked Local Quincy. "She brought the days of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League alive to those who were not alive to see these ladies play ball."

Actress Geena Davis, who starred in "A League Of Their Own" alongside Tom Hanks, reacted to Pratt's death this week, tweeting, "An incredible woman who inspired so many. Our heart go out to her family and loved ones."