Irene K. Kotowicz Ike"(December 10, 1919 – January 24, 2002) was an American pitcher and outfielder who played from through in the

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was a professional women's baseball league founded by Philip K. Wrigley which existed from 1943 to 1954. The AAGPBL is the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the Uni ...

. Listed at , 128 lb., she batted and threw right-handed. Irene Kotowicz was one of those pitchers who posted a solid earned run average but only had one winning season in four years, partly because she was never on a champion team and suffered from a low run support. Born in Chicago, Kotowicz grew up playing ball with her neighborhood kids on the street at an early age, but did not start playing organized ball until she joined the Rockola Chicks of the rival National Girls Baseball League (NGBL).''The Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League'' Kotowicz entered the AAGPBL in 1945 with the Rockford Peaches, playing for them one year before joining the Fort Wayne Daisies (1946–1947 tart/small>) and the Kenosha Comets (1947 nd/small>). A below average hitter and fourth outfielder, she gradually made the transition to sidearm pitching in 1947. She had a combined 8–10 record and a 2.61 ERA in 23 games for Fort Wayne and Kenosha.All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book The league set a new rule for a strictly overhand pitching in 1948. Kotowicz was able to make the change, and went 18–17 with a 2.71 ERA for her hometown Chicago Colleens, an awful team who finished last with a 47–76 record, 29½ games out of the first place spot in the Eastern Division. Nevertheless, Kotowicz led all pitchers in

innings pitched In baseball, innings pitched (IP) are the number of innings a pitcher has completed, measured by the number of batters and baserunners that are put out while the pitcher is on the pitching mound in a game. Three outs made is equal to one innin ...

(298) and finished third in

strikeout In baseball or softball, a strikeout (or strike-out) occurs when a batter accumulates three strikes during a time at bat. It usually means that the batter is out. A strikeout is a statistic recorded for both pitchers and batters, and is deno ...

s (197), being surpassed only by

Racine Belles The Racine Belles were one of the original teams of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League playing from through out of Racine, Wisconsin. The Belles won the league's first championship. The team played its home games at Horlick Fi ...

' Joanne Winter (248) and Rockford's Lois Florreich (231). In addition, she tied with Rockford's Margaret Holgerson for the most

games pitched In baseball statistics, games pitched (denoted by Games G in tables of only pitching statistics) is the number of games in which a player appears as a pitcher; a player who is announced as the pitcher must face at least one batter, although except ...

(37), while tying for seventh in wins. Kotowicz also pitched for Racine the next two years, going 8–15 with a 2.32 ERA in 1949, and 0–5 with a 4.67 ERA in 1950. The Belles advanced to the postseason in 1949. In the first round, she allowed one run in an 11-inning, 2–1 win against the Peoria Redwings to give Racine a sweep of the series. Then, she lost a dueling pitching with Holgerson, 1–0, which gave the Peaches a ticket to the final series. She gave up just two earned runs in 20 innings of work for a 0.90 ERA. Following her baseball career, she was a buyer of men's clothing for Sears Roebuck in Chicago for 33 years. In her spare time, she enjoyed playing basketball and bowling. In November 1988, Kotowicz, along with her former teammates and opponents, was recognized when the

Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by private interests. It serves as the central point of the history of baseball in the United States and displays baseball-re ...

Cooperstown, New York Cooperstown is a village in and county seat of Otsego County, New York, United States. Most of the village lies within the town of Otsego, but some of the eastern part is in the town of Middlefield. Located at the foot of Otsego Lake in the C ...

dedicated a permanent display to the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. Irene Kotowicz was a longtime resident of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, where she died in 2002 at the age of 82.

Career statistics

Pitching Batting Fielding

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kotowicz, Irene All-American Girls Professional Baseball League players Rockford Peaches players Fort Wayne Daisies players Kenosha Comets players Chicago Colleens players Racine Belles (1943–1950) players People from Elk Grove Village, Illinois 1919 births 2002 deaths Baseball players from Chicago 20th-century American people