Wilma Briggs obit

Wilma Briggs, pro baseball player from Rhode Island, dies at 92

 

She was not on the list.

EAST GREENWICH, R.I. (WPRI) — Wilma Briggs, a Rhode Island native who became a star in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, has died.

The players association said Briggs passed away on Monday. She was 92.

Briggs grew up on a farm in East Greenwich and would go on to play baseball from 1948-1954. She led the league with nine home runs during the 1953 season, then hit another 25 in her last season.

The league grew in popularity during World War II after many MLB players were deployed, but fell apart just as Briggs, then 23, was at the top of her game.

Briggs ranks second all-time for home runs with 43, behind Eleanor Callow’s 55. She was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2013.

Listed at 5' 4", 138 lb., she batted left-handed and threw right-handed. She led the league in home runs during the 1953 season, ranks second in the all-time home runs list (43) behind Eleanor Callow (55) and over Dorothy Schroeder (42) and Jean Geissinger (41), and was one of only 14 players to collect 300 or more career runs batted in, yet she was never selected to the All-Star team. Briggs was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2013.

Briggs entered the league in 1948 with the Fort Wayne Daisies, playing for them six years before joining the South Bend Blue Sox in 1954. She started at right field for the Daisies during her rookie season and stayed there until the left fielder broke an ankle while sliding into second base. She was then moved to left field for the rest of her career, with the exception of two weeks at first base in the 1952 season.

During her first two professional baseball seasons, Briggs hit two home runs, but increased her output to a league-leading nine in 1953. She ranked second with 25 homers in 1954, in the AAGPBL's last ever season. Briggs hit the only home run at Indiana's Playland Park during the 1949 season, a walk-off in the ninth inning, to defeat the Blue Sox. In 1951 she was voted the best defensive outfielder with a .987 fielding average. Briggs helped Fort Wayne win pennants in both 1952 and 1953, and spent her final season in 1954 with South Bend.