Helen Callaghan to be first women inducted individually into Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame
She played five seasons in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. All 69 Canadians appearing in the league were inducted as a group in 1998.
Helen Callaghan will be the first woman inducted individually into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday, 16 November.
Callaghan (1923-1992) played for three teams of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: the Minneapolis Millerettes (1944), the Fort Wayne Daisies (1945, 1946, 1948) and the Kenosha Comets (1949). She was a left-handed center fielder.
All 69 Canadian women to play in the league, including Helen's sister Marge, were inducted into the Hall of Fame as a group.
One of five Helen's children, Casey Candaele, born in 1961, has played for three Major League Baseball (MLB) clubs: the Montreal Expos, Houston Astros and Cleveland Indians. A switch-hitting utility player, he appeared in 754 games over nine seasons. He is currently the manager of the Buffalo Bisons, the Triple-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays.
"This is really, really cool, and she would be really flattered, amazed and really appreciative of that," Casey told Sportnet.ca. "The women who played baseball in those times, having to do it in a certain way because of how society viewed it, were pretty ground-breaking. They did an unbelievable job of pushing women's sports forward."
Casey's older brother, Kelly, born in 1954, produced the documentary A League of their Own, which would eventually inspire the 1992 major movie by Penny Marshall, starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna.
Kelly told Sportnet.ca that his mother "was kind of a shy person and not that talkative about her playing days."
He added: "When People magazine came by our house, and we went on the Today Show with Bryant Gumbel (after the movie came out), it started to hit her that she had participated in a really amazing experience and the league was really fascinating to people."
Casey was not aware of his mother's past as a kid. "I just thought everybody's mom was out there throwing BP, hitting groundballs and playing catch. It was like, this is what everybody does." He added: "She was a very, very, very humble woman and never talked in depth about her playing. As a kid, it was just, well, my mom is pretty good at baseball."
