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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.
Out of the field
The AAGPBL folded in 1954, but there is now a permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York since November 5, 1988 that honors those who were part of this unique experience. Briggs, along with the rest of the league's girls, are now enshrined in the Hall. In 1990 Briggs became the first woman inducted into East Greenwich's Athletic Hall of Fame and was elected to the first AAGPBL Players Association Board of Directors. In 1991, she received the first annual Game of Legends Award for her 38 years of contributing to women's softball in Rhode Island. On November 20, 2021, Briggs was inducted into the Rhode Island Slow Pitch Hall of Fame.
A League of Their Own is a 1992 film about the first season of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. While the film does not use real names, the film includes fake newsreel footage and pseudo-documentarypresent day scenes at the beginning and end of the fictitious story. A League of Their Own itself was inspired by the 1987 documentary of the same title, written and produced by Kelly Candaele, one of the five sons of Helen Callaghan, who in 1945 won the AAGPBL batting championship with a .299 average.
Briggs died on September 4, 2023, at the age of 92.
The Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: A Biographical Dictionary – W. C. Madden. Publisher: McFarland & Company, 2005. Format: Softcover, 295pp. ISBN0-7864-2263-7
Sources
Biographical Dictionary of American Sports – David L. Porter. Publisher: Greenwood Press, 2000. Format: Hardcover, 2064pp. Language: English. ISBN978-0-313-29884-4 W. C. Madden
Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball – Leslie A. Heaphy, Laura Wulf, Mel Anthony May. Publisher: McFarland & Company, 2006. Format: Hardcover, 438pp. Language: English. ISBN0-7864-2100-2
Girls of Summer: The Real Story of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League – Lois Browne. Publisher: HarperCollins, 1992. Format: Hardcover, 212 pp. Language: English. ISBN0-00-215838-8
Women in Baseball: The Forgotten History – Gai Ingham Berlage, Charley Gerard. Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994. Format: Hardcover, 224pp. Language: English. ISBN978-0-275-94735-4
