The girls in softball T-shirts waited for a chance to have smartphone photos snapped with Dolly Konwinski.

Some of them hadn't ever seen the 1992 film "A League of Their Own" or realized there was a time when it was unusual for women to play sports, but their parents brought them to the Guilderland Public Library on Thursday, understanding that the valuable history represented by Konwinski, who played third base in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, was something their girls needed to understand.

If you have a daughter who plays sports, you owe it to her to park her in front of "A League of Their Own" (where Konwinski can be seen in the Hall of Fame scenes and on the ballfield at the end) or email Konwinski to order a copy of her book "Summertime Dreams: Yes! Girls Can Play Baseball." It's important for girls to know that they didn't get out on that softball field solely on their own merits, but women like Konwinski got serious thigh burn sliding into second wearing a skirt so they'd one day have the privilege. In the 1940s, Konwinski was considered a "tomboy." Now, no one thinks to call a girl with a ponytail and baseball cap a "tomboy" because they're just, well, a girl.

In 1947, Konwinski (then Niemiec) tried out for the AAGPBL in her hometown of Chicago, where Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley decided in 1943 that the game needed a boost as minor-league men's teams were disbanding because so many young men went off to war, and so he started an all-female league that lasted until 1954.

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Copies of "Summertime Dreams: Yes! Girls Can Play Baseball," a book by Dolly Konwinski with author Douglas Williams, can be purchased by emailing her at

During the tryout, where Konwinski was ultimately signed into the AAGPBL's minor leagues in 1947, she says her jaw dropped walking into a gym filled with girls throwing baseballs. She'd always been the one in the neighborhood who boys came calling for after supper, urging her down to their makeshift ballfields with cardboard bases. Her father taught her the game, and when he read in the paper they were holding tryouts, he insisted she give it a shot, even though she didn't think she was good enough.

She was good enough, though she says she was much better in the infield than in the batter's box. When she was called up to the majors, she was making $65 a week (more than her father made at the time) and ended her career with the Grand Rapids Chicks in 1952, when an auto accident left her too injured to be competitive.

And when it was all over, she and the other women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, like the late Dottie Kamenshek (one of the inspirations for Geena Davis' character Dottie Hinson in the film), went back to ordinary life, which for Konwinski included coaching her own kids in Little League. Then filmmaker Penny Marshall made "A League of Their Own," and Konwinski has been on a speaking circuit ever since. In the late 1940s, she just wanted to play ball like the boys.

On Thursday, people were coming up to the 83-year-old who splits her year between Michigan and Florida to thank her for her role in opening the door for female athletes. "It keeps the memory alive," Konwinski says. "It keeps me alive."

And those memories are important. Before Konwinski spoke to the modest crowd on Thursday, Guilderland Public Library executive director Tim Wiles, who worked at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown for 20 years and is an expert on women's baseball, showed a short video called "Kalamazoo Klouters," which was narrated by legendary Yankees' play-by-play announcer Mel Allen.

Sure it was another era, but the commentary was jarring even to adults — "After all, girls run slower than men, except when they're running after men!" and with footage of a pitcher getting instruction on the curveball from a male manager, the curve was said to be "a commodity she could show him a thing or two about!"

A group of Guilderland High School teachers in the audience began making plans to show the short movie to their classes in the fall. Mark Lodico, a U.S. history and economics teacher, says his students don't really grasp how different it was for athletic women only 65 years ago, but they do still see inequities, pointing out the disparity in salaries between female and male players and coaches and discussing how women athletes usually don't reach stardom unless they're tennis players or part of the four-year Olympic cycle. Most of the audience on Thursday was surprised to learn that there's a USA Baseball Women's National Team.

And that's another reason our girls need to catch a piece of history. If they don't see how far we've come, they'll never wake up to how far we still need to go. • 518-454-5089 • @Jennifer_Gish •