Audrey Wagner

Genevieve "Audrey" Wagner (December 27, 1927 – August 31, 1984) was an outfielder who played from through in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Listed at , 145 lb., she batted and threw right-handed.

Brief profile Audrey Wagner was one of the sixty original founding members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. A two-time member of the All-Star Team, she ranks eight in the all-time list with 29 career home runs while her 55 triples rank second all-time to Eleanor Callow (60). Wagner earned Player of the Year honors in 1948, and also led several offensive categories over her seven-year career in the league. She later became an All Star outfielder in each of her four seasons in the competing National Girls Baseball League of Chicago. Following her baseball career, she graduated as Doctor of Medicine.

Early life Wagner was born and grew up in Bensenville, Illinois, and began to play sandlot ball with the boys of her neighborhood when she was a little girl. At age 15, she attended Bensenville Community High School, where she heard about Philip K. Wrigley and his remarkable experiment in creating a women's professional baseball league during World War II. Wrigley, who was in charge both of the Wrigley Company and the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball club, decided to found the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League as a promotional sideline to maintain interest in baseball. By then, the military draft was depleting Major League rosters of first-line players and attendance declined at ballparks around the country. The league started its first season in 1943 with the teams Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles, Rockford Peaches and South Bend Blue Sox, and each team was made up of fifteen girls. Wagner was allocated to the Kenosha Comets, where she played her entire career in the circuit.

Wagner dropped to .189 with 26 RBI in 1944, but still managing to score 30 runs in 90 games. It was the only time in her AAGPBL career in which she failed to hit a home run. The Comets again placed third (62–54) and made the playoffs after win the first half. They took a 3–2 lead over the expansion Milwaukee Chicks in the Championship Series, but Nicol lost an 11-inning pitching duel with Connie Wisniewski in Game 7.

Wagner's hitting stayed about the same in 1948, which was good enough to win the batting title win a .312 average and by leading all-hitters with 130 hits, all career-highs. Besides this, Wagner led all outfielders with a perfect 1.000 fielding average. She also posted career-numbers in games played (117), runs (70), RBI (56), on-base percentage (.393), walks (56) and triples (14, one behind Eleanor Callow), and was the only girl to hit over .300 in that season, ending 23 points ahead of runner-up Connie Wisniewski. In addition, Wagner tied for fourth in homers (4) and tied for eight in RBI, while hitting a hefty .446 of slugging. She earned the Player of the Year Award and again made the All-Star Team. The other two All-Star outfielders were Racine's Edythe Perlick, who averaged .243 with two home runs and 51 RBI, and Grand Rapids' Wisniewski, who hit .289 with seven homers and 66 RBI. Meanwhile, the Comets advanced to the playoffs but were beaten by Rockford in the first round.

In 1949 Wagner slipped to .233 with 28 runs and 40 RBI in 97 games, but she hit three homers to tie Thelma Eisen and Inez Voyce for the league lead, giving her three home run titles. For the second consecutive year the Comets gained a playoff berth and were defeated in the start, this time by the expansion Muskegon Lassies.

From 1950 through 1953 Wagner continued to be a solid hitter and outfielder. She helped her team to clinch the Championship Title in 1950 and made the All-Star Team in each of her four seasons in the NGBL. Her most productive season came in 1952, when she led the circuit in doubles, triples, home runs and total bases, ending second in the batting crown race with a .364 average.

Audrey Wagner died in a small plane accident near Rock Springs, Wyoming, at the age of 56. She is part of the AAGPBL permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, New York opened in 1988, which is dedicated to the entire league rather than any individual player. She was inducted posthumously in the Elmhurst's Bluejay Backer Hall of Fame (Class of 1950) in 2003 and in the Fenton High School Alumni Wall of Fame (Class of 1945) in 2005.