By Kevin Glew

Canadian Baseball Network

Former All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) pitcher and Grande, Prairie, Alta., native Betty Carveth Dunn passed away on January 27 at the age of 93.

A standout hurler from the time she was 12, Carveth Dunn competed for the Twilight Ladies Softball team which won three consecutive Peace River championships during her early teens.

From 1943 to 1945, the right-hander toed the rubber for Edmonton’s top-rated Walk-Rite team and it was while she was with this club that she was scouted and persuaded to to try out for the AAGPBL. She impressed at the tryout and was signed by the Rockford Peaches prior to the 1945 season.

In her sole AAGPBL campaign, she earned $75 a week and was an effective but hard-luck pitcher, posting a 4-11 record and a sparkling 2.28 ERA in 21 combined appearances with the Peaches and the Fort Wayne Daises.

After that season, she came back to Edmonton and became the city’s first female Little League coach, overseeing boys teams for the next decade.

In 1998, she was one of 64 Canadian women who participated in the AAGPBL that were inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ont.

Six years later, she was named ambassador of the first World Cup of Women’s Baseball that was held in Edmonton. She was a special ambassador of that tournament again eight years later.

In 2017, she was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame.

She is survived by three sons, Jerry, Bill and Patrick, her sister, Edna, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. You can leave online condolences here.

R.I.P. Betty Carveth Dunn