Dottie Key
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Dottie Ferguson Key
Died: May 8, 2003 in Rockford, Ill.
Debut: 1945 | Pos: 2B/CF
Dottie Ferguson Key who had a 10-year career in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, died on May 8, 2003 at the age of 80.
She died at the home of her daughter who said that her mother had been battling cancer, according to wire reports.
Key's career was said to have been the basis for the character Mae (All the Way) Mordabito that Madonna played in the 1992 movie, "A League of Their Own." She had also been part of a Ken Burns project on the women's baseball league.
Key was a top softball player in Winnipeg and had been recruited by a scout for the AAGPBL. She joined Rockford in 1945. One of her jersey's is included in the Women in Baseball exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
She played second base and centerfield and was a member of Rockford when the team won league championships in 1945, 1948-1950.
"I'd rather play ball than eat or sleep," Key was reported to have said when she was boarding a bus heading to a reunion in 1986.
Prior to playing softball, she had captured the title of North American women's speed-skating champion in 1939. World War II, however, kept her from making an Olympic appearance for Canada.
According to Helen "Sis" Waddell Wyatt, a Peaches' teammate, Key hit an inside-the-park home run at Beyer Stadium during a playoff game.
"She always told how she ran around the bases and then ran around the stands, collecting dollar bills from the fans," said Wyatt, as quoted in the Rockford Register Sun's obituary. "She would always laugh about that."
Dottie Ferguson married Donald L. Key, a member of Canada's Olympic track and field team in 1949. Wyatt said Ferguson had agreed to the marriage on the condition that she could continue playing baseball.
Key was inducted into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.
Source: Rockford Register Sun obituary, Canadian Press Service.