Dorothy Seymour Mills

Dorothy Jane Mills (; July 5, 1928 – November 17, 2019), known as Dorothy Seymour Mills, was an American baseball researcher, author, and novelist who authored and co-authored over thirty books, fiction and non-fiction, over her life.

Seymour Mills is best known as the co-author the Baseball trilogy with her first husband Harold Seymour: Baseball: The Early Years, Baseball: The Golden Age, and Baseball: The People's Game. The Baseball series is recognized as the first in-depth scholarly analysis of the sport's history and continues to be referenced in modern research. Uncredited during her husband's lifetime, Seymour Mills finally received co-authorship credits in 2011.

Biography Seymour Mills was born Dorothy Jane Zander in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Henry and Katherine Zander. Her father was a printer, and her mother was a homemaker. Mills attended Fenn College (later renamed Cleveland State University), where she majored in English and worked on the campus literary magazine. She met her future husband Harold Seymour while attending Fenn College, where he was a professor. They married in 1949 after which she transferred to Case Western Reserve University where she completed her studies.

The couple lived in New York and Massachusetts where Harold taught in colleges. Seymour Mills taught in elementary schools. She also worked for a Boston publishing company and wrote numerous children's books. After her husband gave up teaching, the couple moved around, for a time living in Ireland even, before settling in New Hampshire.

After a few years, she remarried to Roy Mills, a former Royal Canadian Air Force officer and settled down with him in Naples, Florida. During her second marriage, she began writing novels under the name "Dorothy Jane Mills". Seymour Mills was widowed again after Mills died in 2011.

Authorship credit controversy

When Harold Seymour was approached by Oxford University Press to write a book about baseball history, he ended up relying heavily on his wife who later said he could not type and hated research.

Legacy The Seymour Medal, awarded annually by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) since 1996, was named in honor of Dorothy and Harold Seymour. In 2017, SABR created the Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award in her name to recognize "any person with a sustained involvement in women's baseball or any woman with a longtime involvement in baseball in any fashion." The most recent person to win this award is Jean Hastings Ardell, an author of two books about women in baseball who passed in 2022.

Along with her husband, Seymour Mills received SABR's inaugural Henry Chadwick Award in 2010. Initially, the award was only given to her husband. However, after female members of the organization protested, SABR quickly altered their decision and awarded the pair jointly.

Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award (women in baseball) winners

2025: Jean Hastings Ardell 2024: Barbara Gregorich 2023: Maybelle Blair 2022: Justine Siegal 2021: Claire Smith 2020: Effa Manley 2019: Rachel Robinson 2018: Perry Barber

Books Baseball trilogy Baseball: The Early Years (1960), Oxford University Press, with Harold Seymour Baseball: The Golden Age (1971), Oxford University Press, with Harold Seymour Baseball: The People's Game (1990), Oxford University Press, , with Harold Seymour

Non-fiction A Woman's Work: Writing Baseball History with Harold Seymour, McFarland & Company, Chasing Baseball: Our Obsession with its History, Numbers, People and Places (2010), McFarland & Company, , with Richard C. Crepeau

Novels Drawing Card: A Baseball Novel (2012), McFarland & Company, First Mystery: The Kiss (2017), BluewaterPress, Second Mystery: The Wet Bathing Suit (2017), BluewaterPress, Third Mystery: The Phone Call (2017), BluewaterPress,