Lillian Jackson (August 4, 1919 – October 30, 2003), nicknamed "Bird Dog", was an American

outfielder An outfielder is a person playing in one of the three defensive positions in baseball or softball, farthest from the batter. These defenders are the left fielder, the center fielder, and the right fielder. As an outfielder, their duty is to catch ...

who played 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 , 125 lb, she batted and threw right-handed. Lillian Jackson was one of the original founding members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in its 1943 inaugural season. Born in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

, Jackson was not involved in sport as a child. She began playing

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and

softball Softball is a Variations of baseball, variation of baseball, the difference being that it is played with a larger ball, on a smaller field, and with only underhand pitches (where the ball is released while the hand is primarily below the ball) ...

at age 18, while attending Isaac Litton High School. She later took classes at Nashville Business College and played on their softball team, where she was spotted by a AAGPBL

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who invited her to the final tryouts of the league at Wrigley Field. Once the final cut was made, Jackson and another 59 of the 280 girls who tried out were chosen to become the first women to ever play professional baseball. She was relocated to the Rockford Peaches. Jackson saw little action during her rookie year. She was traded to the expansion Minneapolis Millerettes before the 1944 season. One of her teammates, Faye Dancer, gained notoriety by her practical jokes on and off the ball field, especially on the chaperones. One day, Dancer said Jackson ran the bases and the outfield like a ״Bird Dog״, and it stuck throughout her career.Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball That season Jackson posted a .201

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, a pretty good performance considering it was a dominant pitching league and no batters surpassed .300 on the year. She also scored 23 runs and stole 24 bases in just 58 games. The Minneapolis franchise folded before the 1945 season and was replaced by the Fort Wayne Daisies. In her final game for the Daisies, Jackson chased a foul ball into the left field bleachers and caught the ball for the final out of the game, falling in the bleachers and splitting her upper lip. Fort Wayne won the game, but she paid the price with four stitches to close the lip. In 1946, Jackson moved to

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to play in the rival National Girls Baseball League during five seasons before giving up the game. She stayed in Chicago and went to work for Sunbeam Corporation, where she became a manager before retiring after 31 years of service.The Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League suspended operations after the 1954 season. Then in 1980, former pitcher June Peppas launched a newsletter project to get in touch with friends, teammates and opponents, that resulted in the league's first-ever reunion in Chicago in 1982. Starting from that reunion, the AAGPBL Players Association was formed five years later and many former players of the defunct league continued to enjoy reunions. Jackson volunteered to help and was elected to the Board of Directors. The association was largely responsible for the opening of ''Women in Baseball'', a permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, which was unveiled in 1988 to honor the entire All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. It was not really a well known fact until

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Penny Marshall premiered her 1992 film '' A League of Their Own'', which was a

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying character (arts), individuals, events, or setting (narrative), places that are imagination, imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent ...

alized account of activities in the AAGPBL during its first season. Starring Geena Davis, Tom Hanks,

Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone ( ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. Referred to as the "Queen of Pop", she has been recognized for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, ...

, Lori Petty and

Rosie O'Donnell Roseann O'Donnell (born March 21, 1962) is an American talk show host, comedian, and actress. She began her comedy career as a teenager and received her breakthrough on the television series ''Star Search'' in 1984. After a series of television ...

, this film brought many of the real AAGPBL former players a rebirth of celebrity.IMDb.com – ''A League of Their Own'' (1992 film)
/ref> Jackson provided advice and assistance to Marshall and the production team before and during the filming process. Lillian Jackson was a longtime resident of Green Valley, Arizona, where she lived with her dear friend and companion Ruth Heiden. She was a much-loved neighbor, and a character: the life of any party. On observing a gorgeous Arizona sunset, she might opine in her Tennessee accent, "When the mountains turn pink - it's tiiime for a drink!" She died in 2003 in Tucson following a brief illness at the age of 84.

Career statistics

Batting Fielding

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, Lillian All-American Girls Professional Baseball League players Rockford Peaches players Minneapolis Millerettes players Fort Wayne Daisies players Baseball players from Nashville, Tennessee People from Green Valley, Arizona Sportspeople from Pima County, Arizona 1919 births 2003 deaths 20th-century American sportswomen 21st-century American women