Fort Wayne has a long history of supporting professional sports teams, a tradition that continues today with the TinCaps, Komets and Mad Ants.

One of the most successful professional teams in Summit City history was the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which today celebrates the 75th anniversary of its first games in 1943.

The Daisieswere one of the AAGPBL's elite teams, making the playoffs every year from 1947 until the league's final season in 1954. The league and another of its top teams, the Rockford Peaches, were dramatized in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.”

From 1951 to 1954, the Daisies had the best regular-season record in the league each year, although they never won a championship.

One of the players from that era of Daisies baseball still lives in Fort Wayne. Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez, who played for Fort Wayne in 1951 and 1954, has lived in the city almost continuously since the league stopped play after the 1954 season. She first was a carhop at Don Hall's Drive-In on Bluffton Road and later got a job at General Electric, where she was an assembler for more than 30 years.

“I didn't want to leave,” said Alvarez, who is not married and did not have children. “I had a ... good-paying job (at GE).”

Alvarez, 84, now lives at Golden Years Homestead. Her memory isn't as sharp as it used to be, but she still has a firm handshake and a quick smile. On the door of her room is a sign shaped like a baseball that has “Lefty” written on it. One of the workers at Golden Years calls her “Superstar,” which brings a smile to her face.

Alvarez was part of the 1954 Daisies team that came within one game of winning the league's final championship before falling to the Kalamazoo Lassies. She played in 23 games that season, hitting .191 with six runs scored and three stolen bases. In 1951, she pitched 13 games for Fort Wayne and the Battle Creek (Michigan) Belles, posting a 3.71 ERA in 34 innings.

The southpaw was born in Havana, Cuba and was pushed to play baseball by her mother, who enjoyed listening to Cuban baseball games on her radio.

“I'm a very lucky person,” Alvarez said at a discussion at the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. “I would not be here (at the Hall of Fame) if it wasn't for my mother.”

Alvarez played for a professional team called the Cuban Stars (Estrellas Cubanas) in 1947 when she was 13. She came to the United States to play professionally when she was 15, learning English by reading a dictionary. After nearly 70 years in the U.S., her English is perfect, although she still has a slight accent.

“Ever since I came here (to the U.S.), I wanted to use good English and be a good American,” she told the General Electric newsletter in 1984.

She hadn't fully learned English yet when Katie Horstman met her in 1951. Horstman played for the Daisies in 1951-54 and was an All-Star in 1953. Alvarez was in the outfield shagging baseballs and returning them to the mound when Horstman tried out for Fort Wayne as a pitcher.

“I couldn't understand (Alvarez), and finally I just stopped and called to the catcher and I said, 'I'm sorry, but I don't understand this girl that's picking up the balls, who is she?'” said Horstman, 83, who now lives in California. “(The catcher) said, 'That's Isabel Alvarez from Cuba.' I go, 'Cuba?' I come from Minstrel, Ohio, 65 miles away and had heard about the Daisies, and she's playing from Cuba.

“That's my story. I'll never forget Lefty as long as I live. Her and Mita Marrero (another Cuban who played for Daisies in 1951) were characters, I'll tell you that.”

According to Alvarez's friend and longtime neighbor Billie Uffelman, who helps care for her at Golden Years, the former Daisy can no longer walk. Uffelman, who says she and Alvarez are “family of the heart,” organized a fundraiser for the pitcher at Parkview Field for June 26 in the hope of buying Alvarez a better wheelchair. Visitors can meet her at the TinCaps game that night against Bowling Green.

dsinn@jg.net