Beatrice Arbour

Beatrice Arbour
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Shortstop
Born: (1920-12-02) December 2, 1920
Somerset, Massachusetts
Bats: Right Throws: Right
Teams
Career highlights and awards
  • Women in Baseball – AAGPBL Permanent Display at Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (since 1988)
  • Somerset High School Athletic Hall of Fame Induction (2011)

Beatrice Arbour [Parrott] (born December 2, 1920) is a former All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player. Listed a 5' 6", 128 lb., she batted and threw right handed.[1]

Born in Somerset, Massachusetts,[1] Arbour attended Somerset High School when there were no sports for girls.[2] By then, she had some experience with the American Legion Baseball boys' team in her hometown.[3] In 1937, a group of girls, including Arbour, went before the Student Council and requested a girls' basketball league be formed. As a result, the first girls league was started with 50 of them participating on five intramural teams. She then was recognized as the Most Athletic female of the Class of 1938.[2]

In addition to her athletics accomplishments at school, Arbour played for the St. Patrick's Parish softball team, which competed against teams from as far away as New York.[3]

In 1947, she joined the AAGPBL as a shortstop for the Racine Belles,[1] one of the teams depicted in the 1992 film A League of Their Own. While playing for Racine, Arbour had a number of different jobs during the off-season to pay her bills, including an internship in an apple orchard.[3]

After baseball, Arbour married with Donald M. Parrott and they raised three boys, Michael, Donald and William, and a girl, Susan.[4] Arbour also drove a school bus during 19 years. In her retirement, she enjoyed flower gardening along with her spouse. She was widowed in 2010.[4][5]

Arbour is part of the AAGPBL permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York opened in 1988, which is dedicated to the entire league rather than any individual figure.[6]

In 2011, Bea Arbour gained induction into the Somerset High School Athletic Hall of Fame.[2] A year later, her granddaughter Jenny Parrott honored her by publishing a book about her life entitled Famed Girl Athlete Now a Milkman: the Biography of Beatrice Arbour Parrott. [7]

Sources

  1. 1 2 3 All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Official Website
  2. 1 2 3 Somerset Hall of Fame: Players, coaches, teams set for induction. The Herald News. Posted on March 28, 2011. Retrieved on March 27, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 Heaphy, Leslie A.; May, Mel Anthony (2006). Encyclopedia of women and baseball. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2100-8
  4. 1 2 Obituaries in January 2010. The Herald News. Retrieved on March 27, 2017.
  5. ↑ Madden, W. C. The Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: A Biographical Dictionary (2005). ISBN 9780786422630
  6. ↑ Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Official Website
  7. ↑ Roots Web - Finding our roots together. Ancestry.com. Retrieved on March 27, 2017.
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