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Betsy Jochum, an original member of the All-American Girls Profe sional Baseball League that inspired the hit movie died at her South Bend, Indiana home on May 31. She was 104 years old. Jochums death was confirmed by Carol Sheldon, vice president of the leagues player a sociation. Betsy Jochum throwing a baseball. Betsy Jochum in the 1946 South Bend Blue Sox yearbook wikimedia We lost one of our superstars, the last original 1943 player, . Explore More Jochum first signed with the South Bend Blue Sox ahead of the 1943 season, where she ultimately spent six years with the team as an outfielder. The Blue Sox were rivals of the Rockford Peaches, the team that was primarily based upon. During a 2012 interview , Jochum described being selected to play in the league as amazing. I was actually going to get paid for playing a game, she said then. Girls didnt do that back then. Former South Bend Blue Sox player Betsy Jochum, 97, autographs a shirt for Devin Hazard, 16, of Granger, during the South Bend Cubs-West Michigan Whitecaps baseball game on Wednesday, Jeff Mcneil Jersey June 27, 2018, at Four Winds Field in South Bend. ROBERT FRANKLIN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images The Baseball Hall of Fame has since commemorated the league by dedicating a permanent display in the Cooperstown, New York museum in 1988. Jochums Blue Sox uniform currently sits on display at the Smithsonians National Museum of American History. We were lucky, the ones that started out, in 2010 with Grand Valley State University in Michigan. We started out with a softball, and as we kept playing, the balls got small and the bases got longer and the pitchers moved back, underhand, sidearm to overhand, so we were kind of eased into it, the older players. Former South Bend Blue Sox player Betsy Jochum holds one of her player cards from her pro baseball career, on June 7, 2018, in South Bend. ROBERT FRANKLIN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Jochum started her path into profe sional baseball by playing softball at a young age, as well as winning a national baseball throwing contest when she was a teenager with a heave of 276 feet. The kids in the neighborhood would play on a vacant corner lot, choosing up sides and playing `scrub,' she told author Jim Sargent in an interview . If we had enough people, we played softball. Sometimes we played with a baseball, or any old ball, until we knocked the cover off. Then we would put friction tape on it and keep on playing `till that flew off. Whatever equipment was available was good enough for us! Francisco Lindor Jersey