Maybelle Blair (born January 16, 1927) was a former player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
Born in Inglewood, California, Blair was an effective right-handed pitcher when she joined the league with the Peoria Redwings in the 1948 season, although she only played one game for the team before moving the following year to a professional softball league in Chicago to play for the Chicago Cardinals. She later played for the Jax Girls softball club in New Orleans.
Blair then attended Compton Junior College in California, followed by the Los Angeles School of Physiotherapy. After graduating, she worked at a treatment center in Los Angeles before embarking on a long 37-year career at Northrop Corporation, where she started as a driver and ended up as the director of road transportation, being one of only three female directors employed by the company at the time.
After retiring, Blair became vice president of the Center for Extended Learning for Seniors (CELS), a provider of educational travel programs for Elderhostel.
Blair also became an active collaborator on various projects for the AAGPBL Players Association since its founding in 1982, serving on the board of directors and chairing the fundraising committee. The association helped bring the league’s history to the public and was largely responsible for the opening of Women in Baseball, a permanent exhibition 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 an individual personality.
In the film, « A League of Their Own, » Maybelle Blair inspired the character of Mae Mordabito, played by singer Madonna alongside actor Tom Hanks.
In 2022, at the age of 95, Blair publicly came out as a lesbian during the promotion of the television series A League of Their Own, stating that before 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, fundamentally, the first time I come out. »
The series will be available on Amazon Prime starting August 12 and will delve deeper into the story of the 1942 women’s baseball epic.
You can learn more by purchasing Gaetan Alibert’s book « A Popular History of Baseball, » which, while profiling Bonnie Baker, also covers this subject. (Page 79)
Photo credit: Outsport
