Sophie Kurys, the ‘Flint Flash,’ was born on this day in 1925. She would steal 1114 bases in her 8-year career with the Racine Belles. In 1946 she was named Player of the Year for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League when, in 113 games, she not only had 112 hits, scored 117 runs, and hit .286, she also stole 201 bases out of 203 attempts (a record that remains unsurpassed – the MLB record is 130). And she did it all in a skirt on gravel infields. As Sophie herself told the press, “They wanted us to look like Marilyn Monroe and play like Joe DiMaggio.”
In the picture below, she slides into home as catcher Ruth “Tex’ Lessings (Grand Rapids Chicks) tries to tag her out.
