Sophie Kurys was born in Flint, Michigan, on May 14, 1925. Sophie, one of five children, grew up in a working class family living on the city's north side. Her father was Ukrainian, her mother was Polish, and both were hard workers. She was an attractive brunette with grayish-green eyes and a strong work ethic. She liked all kinds of sports, including basketball, volleyball, baseball, track, bowling, and, years later, golf. She loved baseball, but she excelled at any competitive activity.

She attended All-Saints Catholic School, Emerson Junior High, and Flint Northern High School. In 1939, at age fourteen, Sophie won the Mott Pentathlon with a score of 4,693 out of a possible 5,000 points, a record that would stand for decades. That same year she was also MVP of the Michigan State Basketball Tournament at Lansing and played shortstop and third base on the state's championship fast-pitch softball team.

Times were tough in the Thirties, and Flint, one of Michigan's major centers of automobile manufacturing, was hard-hit by the Great Depression. Sophie worked part-time for the National Youth Administration. Later, she clerked in a business office and worked for a dry cleaning establishment. Sophie left school in the eleventh grade and started working full time in order to help her family financially.

By late 1942, with World War II causing a manpower drain and the Office of War Information saying that Major League Baseball might have to be canceled for the duration, the All-American League was created in Chicago by Chicago Cubs' owner Philip K. Wrigley and his top associates. The idea was to field teams of young, attractive, and athletic girls who could play fast-pitch softball and, later, baseball. The All-American League would be a patriotic alternative to men's baseball as well as a morale booster on the home front. The league's girls faced a nearly impossible task. They were expected to look and dress like women, but to play ball like men. Most who competed in the All-American League achieved considerable success. They proved women could play the national pastime with skill and femininity.

In April 1943, scout John Gottselig, came to Flint, and Sophie tried out. Gottselig picked only three of the girls who tried out, and Kurys, who was a shortstop, was one of them. Sophie was given a contract to go to Chicago and join hundreds of other girls for a final tryout to land a spot on one of the teams in The All-American League. Sophie's sister and her brother, who was in the Army, both advised her to sign. Her parents had mixed views. Her father, Anthony Kurys, was not wild on the idea but her mother was a strong supporter, knowing how much she loved to play. With her mother's backing she signed.

The league's first spring camp was held in Chicago, at Wrigley Field. The girls stayed at the Belmont Hotel, which was about three blocks from Wrigley Field. In addition to being dressed in feminine attire such as a skirt and sweater or a dress when off the diamond, the girls were supposed to walk the hotel stairs as part of training. The league selected from the participants the group that they thought would be good enough ballplayers to make the league.

Kurys, who turned eighteen one day later, was selected to play for the Racine Belles and signed a contract for $50 a week on May 13, 1943.

Due to the tryouts, the All-American League started late in 1943. The 108-game schedule would run from June 1 to August 29. Later, schedules would begin around May 20-22.

Led by John Gottselig, a star left wing with the Chicago Blackhawks for seventeen seasons and a solid baseball manager, the Belles fielded a very good team. The scrappy Sophie played mainly second base. But she began in the outfield because Claire Schillace, a regular outfielder from Chicago and one of the league's first four recruits, was a teacher who played only on weekends until the school year ended. When the regular at second base suffered an injury, Kurys took over the position, and later she won the starting job.

That first season, Sophie, known as the "Flint Flash," stole forty-four bases. The next season she played in 116 games and stole a league-leading 166 bases (out of 172 tries).

At first the league was composed of four teams in mid-sized industrial cities near Chicago: the Racine Belles, the Rockford Peaches, the South Bend (Indiana) Blue Sox, and the Kenosha (Wisconsin) Comets. The league's early playoffs (matching the first-half season winner versus the second-half winner) was called the "Scholarship Series" because part of the game receipts were used to send a girl from the winning host city to college.

In 1946, she was the league's Player of the Year for a number of amazing feats. In 113 games, she had 112 hits, scored a league-leading 117 runs, and batted .286, the second-highest average in the league that year, with a phenomenal .973 fielding record at second base. She also stole 201 bases (out of 203 tries). That's a record unequaled anywhere in professional baseball.

Sophie's feats didn't go unnoticed in the wider world of baseball. The 1947 yearbook, Major League Baseball Facts, Figures, and Official Rules, featured Stan Musial on its front cover, and Sophie Kurys on the back cover.

What was amazing was that she set that stealing record in a skirt. That's not an insignificant detail. The uniforms for the women who played in the AAGBL were skirts because the management wanted to show the world that these were extremely feminine women. "No tomboys" was the official line. That meant that when a runner like Kurys slid into second, she did it with bare legs.

Sliding across the hard-packed dirt of the infield resulted in huge bruises and multiple "strawberries," broken skin that often bled through the players' uniforms. Kurys chaperone made a donut affair so the wound wouldn't leak onto her clothes, because if it did, it would be torture to try to get the clothes off. She had strawberries on top of strawberries.

Despite that, Kurys stole a league record 1,114 bases in the eight seasons she played for the AAGBL. (Only Rickey Henderson, who has stolen 1279 bases in 20 seasons of play, has a higher career total.)

As a base runner, Sophie was fast, aggressive, and watchful of the pitcher's motion. An Olympic-quality athlete, she had great baseball instincts and in the end, she was the best base runner and one of the best run-producers in the league's history.

The 1946 season didn't end with Sophie breaking five AAGBL records (walks, steals, runs, fielding, and scoring five runs in one game), for the league leading Racine Belles faced a best-of-five playoff series against the South Bend Blue Sox. If they won that they would play a best-of-seven Shaughnessy Series which was comparable to the World Series of Baseball. Racine took the series against the Blue Sox, three games to one.

In the Shaughnessy Series, Racine faced the Rockford Peaches. The Belles won two games at home, then lost two of the three in Rockford. The Belles were ahead 3 - 2 in the series when they headed home to play the sixth game at Horlick Field. It wasn't until the seventh game of the 1991 World Series between the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves, that a baseball final contest came close to matching the sixth game of the 1946 Shaughnessy Series for sheer drama.

There was a pitchers' duel between Rockford's Carolyn Morris and Racine's Joanne Winter. Joanne had pitched her best season ever and for the season had pitched a consecutive sixty-three scoreless innings. However, in this game she struggled with control and Rockford was able to get on base in almost every inning. Racine's defense was able to keep these runners from crossing the plate. Meanwhile Morris was pitching with control and Racine was unable to get anything going against her. The game went scoreless through 13 innings.

Finally in the bottom on the fourteenth inning, Kurys, who had already stolen four bases that night, led off with a single. Kurys soon stole her fifth base of the night. As she watched her teammate Betty Trezza at the plate, Sophie broke for third base. At that instant Trezza slapped a short single through the infield between first and second base. Kurys was already at third by this time and broke for home. She went into homeplate with a hook slide a fraction of a second before the catcher tagged her, scoring the only run in the game and bring the victory home to the Belles. The fans swarmed the field and carried her off on their shoulders.

Sophie was elected Player of the Year that year. She went on to play AAGBL baseball for another four seasons and was elected to the All-Star teams for four straight seasons, 1946-49. In 1950 she stole 120 bases and hit a year high seven home runs. When the Racine franchise folded, she went to Chicago to play professional softball for three years. After an additional year in Arizona, she retired from the diamond, at the age of thirty-three.

During the off-season Sophie worked for a Racine manufacturer of electrical automotive and airplane parts. The owner eventually offered her a partnership and she accepted, contributing to the company by being a team player. She worked in manufacturing, quality control, as bookkeeper, a payroll clerk and in the shipping department. In 1972 she left the business and retired to Arizona where she is a living legend and an inspiration to all young girls trying to make it in what is still a man's world.

Photos courtesy of The Northern Indiana Historical Society