Verge: Remembering Canadian AAGPBL ace Helen Nicol Fox

Helen Nicol Fox (Ardley, Alta.) was one of the most successful pitchers in All-American Girls Professional Baseball League history.

March 7, 2024

By Melissa Verge

Canadian Baseball Network

There was grit in Helen Nicol Fox’s soul.

There had to be. It takes grit to not only defy the gender norms of your time, but slide across the dirt in a skirt, with no protection between your bare legs and the rocky ground of the baseball diamond.

The uniforms worn by the players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) weren’t meant to be practical. The one piece short-skirted flared tunic she and the other women wore were chosen by anxious management of the league. They feared the players would be seen as “butch” or “lesbian” otherwise, baseball historian Tom Hawthorn said. While being sexist and regressive today, for Fox who played in the league from 1943 to 1952, the league offered independence for her and her teammates, he said.

It was the mid 1900’s when women were expected to be homemakers and listen to their husbands or fathers, when the women suited up as professional baseball players, finding their freedom on the baseball field.

“For some of them it was their first train trip, first time out of a province, maybe first time out of the country for many,” Hawthorn said. “So it was quite an adventure I think for a lot of them.”

Although it was the war that gave women like Fox the opportunity to play professional ball when the men were away, it was her talent that kept her there. Armed with a mean fastball and a strong bat, the Canadian from Ardley, Alta. belonged on the baseball field. Just as much as there was grit, there was baseball in her soul.

The pitcher stood out for not only her skills on the mound, but her adaptability. The AAGPBL was underhand for the first couple of years, before switching to a side arm delivery, and then overhand. As it morphed into a sport that more closely resembled baseball, Fox also changed, adapting her delivery to fit the new rules.

There were only a handful of pitchers that managed to survive all of those rule changes, Hawthorn said, and she was one of them. That showed just how much control she must’ve had on the mound and what a great baseball mind she possessed.

“Even when she was no longer dominating as an underhand pitcher, she would’ve had to call on savvy, just her baseball wiles, her intellect, in being able to still pitch at that high level in the league and still get batters out,” he said.

In her first season with the Kenosha Comets in the AAGPBL, she had a 1.81 ERA in 47 games with 220 strikeouts and was named league pitcher of the year. That success continued throughout the 10 seasons she played in the league, split between the Comets and the Rockford Peaches. She held career league pitching records for games at 313, innings pitched at 2,382, and strikeouts at 1,076.

She had always had that talent on the diamond, even as a young girl. Growing up in Alberta, she was recruited as a 13-year-old softball player to play for the Senior Women’s Team (age 18 and over.) She was essentially a girl playing against women, Hawthorn said.

“She was quite a remarkable athlete,” he said of Fox, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 101. “She was obviously so great at softball that she became a pro- baseball player.”

Fox joined other talented Canadian women in the league, including Glady Davis from Toronto, and Helen Callaghan from Vancouver (who’s son Casey Candaele currently works in the Blue Jays’ farm system for the Buffalo Bisons.)

Although people may think the AAGPBL was the first instance of women playing baseball in Canada, it started hundreds of years earlier. As soon as men were playing baseball, women were also there, said baseball historian Bill Humber. In 1748 there’s a famous count of the Prince of Wales playing baseball with his children, which would imply that both girls and boys were involved in the sport, Humber said. In 1798, Jane Austin referenced women’s involvement in the sport in her book, Northanger Abbey.

Women were first found playing baseball in Canada in the 1870’s. In 1876, there was a comment in the Guelph Evening Mercury that said a female baseball club had been formed in the village of Dutton in the county of Elgin, which would’ve been somewhere down by Lake Erie, Humber said, where 20 women were practicing.

Today, although there’s been a lot of progress from the days of women having to show up with bare legs to play baseball in the AAGPBL, there’s still much work to be done. Baseball is arguably where hockey and basketball were for women 20 to 25 years ago, Humber said. The infrastructure which is necessary for women to find the time to play, the place to play, coaching, management, the whole structure of the game, those issues are there, he said, but “it has a future, it’s growing.”

And from the start, dating back to before the 1800’s, when men took their spot on the diamond, women like Fox did too, Hawthorn said.

“I think it’s important to keep in mind that [women playing baseball] has been part of the history of baseball and mostly been overlooked over the years,” Hawthorn said. “And women wanted to play this game every bit as much as men did.”