| Harold Greiner | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 | |||
| All-American Girls Professional Baseball League | |||
| Manager | |||
| Born:July 7, 1907 Fort Wayne, Indiana | |||
| Died: July 17, 1993 (aged 86) Fort Wayne, Indiana | |||
| |||
| Career statistics | |||
| Managing record | 52-57 | ||
| W-L% | .477 | ||
| Games behind | 23 | ||
| Place | 5th | ||
| Teams | |||
| |||
| Career highlights and awards | |||
| |||
Harold Greiner (July 7, 1907 – July 17, 1993) was a restaurant entrepreneur, baseball manager and softball coach. [1] [2]
Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two opposing teams who take turns batting and fielding. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball which a player on the batting team tries to hit with a bat. The objectives of the offensive team are to hit the ball into the field of play, and to run the bases—having its runners advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners' advance around the bases. A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate. The team that scores the most runs by the end of the game is the winner.
In baseball, the field manager is the equivalent of a head coach who is responsible for overseeing and making final decisions on all aspects of on-field team strategy, lineup selection, training and instruction. Managers are typically assisted by a staff of assistant coaches whose responsibilities are specialized. Field managers are typically not involved in off-field personnel decisions or long-term club planning, responsibilities that are instead held by a team's general manager.
Softball is a variant of baseball played with a larger ball on a field that has base lengths of 60 feet, a pitcher's mound that ranges from 35-43 feet away from home plate, and a homerun fence that is 220 feet away from home plate.. It was invented in 1887 in Chicago, Illinois, United States as an indoor game. The game moves at a faster pace than traditional baseball. There is less time for the base runner to get to first while the opponent fields the ball; yet, the fielder has less time to field the ball while the opponent is running down to first base. The name softball was given to the game in 1926, because the ball used to be soft, however in modern day usage, the balls are hard.
Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Greiner was the owner of Bob Inn Restaurant and Bakery. He also coached softball for ten years and sponsored a women's team that won state fastpitch softball titles in 1944 and 1945. [1]
Fort Wayne is a city in the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Allen County, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is 18 miles (29 km) west of the Ohio border and 50 miles (80 km) south of the Michigan border. With a population of 253,691 in the 2010 census, it is the second-most populous city in Indiana after Indianapolis, and the 75th-most populous city in the United States. It is the principal city of the Fort Wayne metropolitan area, consisting of Allen, Wells, and Whitley counties, a combined population of 419,453 as of 2011. Fort Wayne is the cultural and economic center of northeastern Indiana. The city is within a 300-mile radius of major population centers, including Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, Lexington, and Milwaukee. In addition to the three core counties, the combined statistical area (CSA) includes Adams, DeKalb, Huntington, Noble, and Steuben counties, with an estimated population of 615,077.
In sports, a coach is a person involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a sports team or of individual sportspeople. A coach may also be a teacher.
Fastpitch softball, also known as fastpitch or fastball, is a form of softball played commonly by women and men, though coed fast-pitch leagues also exist. The International Softball Federation (ISF) is the international governing body of softball. The ISF recognizes three pitching styles: fast pitch, "modified" fast pitch, and slow pitch. Fast pitch is considered the most competitive form of softball. It is the form of softball that was played at the Olympic Games in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. The fast pitch style is also used in college softball and international competition.
In addition, Greiner scouted for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and contributed bring the Fort Wayne Daisies to his hometown in 1945. [3] He later became part of the AAGPBL board of directors and then managed the Daisies during the 1949 season. [4] Some of the players recruited by Greiner for the league include Maxine Kline, June Peppas and Kathryn Vonderau, among others. [5]
In professional sports, scouts are experienced talent evaluators who travel extensively for the purposes of watching athletes play their chosen sports and determining whether their set of skills and talents represent what is needed by the scout's organization. Some scouts are interested primarily in the selection of prospects, younger players who may require further development by the acquiring team but who are judged to be worthy of that effort and expense for the potential future payoff that it could bring, while others concentrate on players who are already polished professionals whose rights may be available soon, either through free agency or trading, and who are seen as filling a team's specific need at a certain position. Advance scouts watch the teams that their teams are going to play in order to help determine strategy.
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was a professional women's baseball league founded by Philip K. Wrigley which existed from 1943 to 1954. The AAGPBL is the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the United States. Over 600 women played in the league, which consisted of eventually 10 teams located in the American Midwest. In 1948, league attendance peaked at over 900,000 spectators. The most successful team, the Rockford Peaches, won a league-best four championships. The 1992 motion picture A League of Their Own is a mostly fictionalized account of the early days of the league and its stars.
The Fort Wayne Daisies were a women's professional baseball team that played from 1945 through 1954 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
Greiner appears in the documentary A League of Their Own, aired on PBS in 1987, [6] which inspired a film with the same title released in 1992. [7] Both the documentary and the film brought a rejuvenated interest to the extinct baseball circuit. Then, the AAGPBL received their long overdue recognition in 1988, when the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum dedicated a permanent display in Cooperstown, New York to honor the entire league rather than individual baseball personalities. [8]
A League of Their Own is a 1992 American sports comedy-drama film that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Directed by Penny Marshall, the film stars Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna, Rosie O'Donnell, and Lori Petty. The screenplay was written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel from a story by Kelly Candaele and Kim Wilson.
Cooperstown is a village in and county seat of Otsego County, New York, United States. Most of the village lies within the town of Otsego, but some of the eastern part is in the town of Middlefield. It is located in the Central New York Region of New York.
