She inspired “A Very Special Team.” At 95, she just came out

In her early nineties, Maybelle Blair walked into a sporting goods store with a mission: to try on a pair of studs.

The salesman suggested that perhaps he had wanted to order some sneakers. But Blair, a former pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, insisted on baseball cleats. “She looked at me like she was crazy,” Ella Blair, 95, recalled in a recent interview.

The studs finally appeared.

“He put them on my feet. I got up and walked around the place. I heard that click-clack in my head and I’ve never been happier,” Blair said. After using the studs to go around the store, she took them off, put them in the box, and told the clerk that she wasn’t going to take them.

“It was a great emotion in my life, just to put on my studs and go back to marching,” he said.

For Blair, the sound of cleats evoked memories of donning a Peoria Redwing team uniform and walking onto the field, her favorite baseball ritual. “I felt very proud of myself because it dawned on me: I was able to play the game that I loved and appreciated,” she said. “I would put on my studs and march down the aisle to the field, click-clack, click-clack. It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard in my life.”

Blair was one of more than 600 women to join the baseball league, created in 1943 in response to World War II. As they were recruiting the young men, fear spread that the war would be the end of professional baseball and its stadiums. So the women took their place.

The league ended in 1954 and was resurrected in the 1992 movie “A Very Special Team.” Amazon Prime will premiere its own version in August in a new television series under the same title.

Blair only played in the league in the 1948 season, but it was one of many barriers he broke down in his life. She then had a 37-year career at Northrop Corp. (now known as Northrop Grumman), where she became the company’s third female manager. Blair has been instrumental in promoting the history of the league and women in baseball and she is one of the founding trustees of the International Center for Women’s Baseball in Rockford, Illinois.

In June, Blair broke down another barrier. During a press tour for the new series, Blair revealed a secret that she had kept for a long time.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for these girls to realize that they are not alone and that they should not hide,” he said, publicly announcing that he was gay. “I hid for 75, 85 years, and really, essentially, this is the first time I’ve come out in my life.”

The announcement was received with cheers. Blair mentioned that she was inspired to see young women playing baseball at an event recently organized by Baseball For All, a group that promotes inclusion in sports. The time she spent working with the producers on the Amazon series, which takes a more comprehensive look at the league’s history, including issues of sexuality and race, also gave her pause.

“I got to see their struggles, their little eyes and their love for the game,” Blair said of the young baseball players. “I said to myself, ‘You know, Maybelle? At 95, maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe your family isn’t going to disown you. You must do it'”.

“I was sitting on that stage, I opened my mouth and it came out,” she continued. “I was relieved.”

Blair was one of about 20 former players that producer Will Graham and actress Abbi Jacobson spoke with in developing the series. Graham commented that Blair had been open with them about her sexuality during the creation of the series, but she did not expect her to come out in a public forum. He called her an “extraordinary human being.”

“We tend to believe that life for queer people before the Stonewall riot was pretty bleak and of course it was hard and still is in many ways. But she found a joy and she found herself and I think queer people always do that whenever and wherever they are.” Graham commented. “I am very grateful that he is a part of my life.”

On the baseball field, he found the place where he was happiest. Blair, who grew up in Texas and California, said she was “a baseball fan from the cradle.” “If it hadn’t been, my father would have gotten rid of me,” she commented with a laugh. “Playing baseball was the only entertainment we had besides breaking horses.”

Blair was playing softball in Redondo Beach, California, when a spotter arrived. Her mother resisted the idea at first, but when she found out that Blair was going to earn $55 a week, she put Blair on a train to Chicago.

When Blair came to the league, she learned that “there were more people like me and they gave me and those girls more freedom,” she said of the league’s strangely inclusive environment. The female baseball players used to meet up in Chicago on a day off and go to a gay bar, Blair recalled.

However, outside of the baseball league, Blair did not find the same comforts. Blair mentioned that he had a high security clearance while working on Northrop’s B-2 bomber. That responsibility also came with scrutiny. “They were going to ask your neighbors about you,” he recalled. “It was stressful. Whenever I went somewhere, I was afraid that someone would find out that he was gay, and if that had happened, I would have been fired on the spot.”

Finally, Blair retired. These days, she dedicates her life to bringing women and girls into baseball, essentially through the International Center for Women’s Baseball. The educational center is still in the fundraising stages, but “until that shovel reaches the ground, I have to keep going,” he said.

Blair hopes to live to at least 100 years old and plans to pass on some of the lessons he has learned from baseball to the next generation.

“These girls deserve it; They need help,” Blair said. “Some of these girls don’t have anywhere they can play baseball. We will make a very special league again”.

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