Remembering 2025’s Lossses: Betsy Jochum

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It’s getting close!!! I have my pre-trip car service scheduled. Now all I need is medicine from the ENT doctor on the 28th and I’ll be outta here! That’s still a long way off, though. For today, we have the second baseball player in a row that we said goodbye to in 2025. Betsy Jochum Everybody (EDE [except Daddy Evil ]) has heard of Ted Williams, one of the greatest baseball players in history. Most people know that he lost a few years of his career while serving in World War II. That war did a number on baseball: many players were overseas, severely depleting the ranks of players. In fact, it was at that time that Joe Nuxhall walked into baseball history when, at the age of 15, he became the youngest baseball player in history. (Because of labor laws and players unions, that record WILL stand.) A few of the baseball team owners got the idea to form a women’s professional baseball league while the war was ongoing. If you’ve seen A League of Their Own, you know about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. And that’s where Betsy Jochum made her mark. Betsy Jochum was from Cincinnati, the home of the first professional baseball team. Excelling in athletics in school, Jochum went to business school and worked at a meat packing plant. She played on her employer’s semi-professional women’s team. Enter the war and the concept of women’s baseball. Jochum was one of 60 players to make the inaugural season in 1943, playing for the South Bend Blue Sox. After being traded, she retired in 1948. Jochum went to college and majored in physical education at Illinois State, later earning a Master’s Degree at Indiana University. She was a school P.E. teacher in South Bend, Indiana, retiring in 1983 (40 years after her professional baseball career began). The National Baseball Hall of Fame has a permanent exhibition for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which was unveiled in 1988 and featured nearly all the players in attendance. Later the movie brought additional attention to the league. At 104, Betsy Jochum was the last surviving member of the World War II class of women’s professional baseball players. She lived long enough to see the announcement of a new women’s professional league, which will begin play on August 1, 2026. Betsy Jochum Born February 8, 1921, Cincinnati, Ohio Died May 31, 2025, South Bend, Indiana (natural causes) (age 104) An NBC news tribute to Jochum: