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Bert Dudley, that’s Bert, short for Alberta, was born over by Northview in Boise. She drove a hay derrick in summer to buy her cotton school dresses, and she waitressed at Murray’s Drive-in, raised two children – and she played softball. After all that, I lost my mitt. I can’t believe I lost it! It just fell out of the car one night, I guess. I paid $3 for it in 1937, can you believe that? But when I started, we couldn’t even afford that. I learned to catch a softball with my bare hands. That mitt was little and flat as a pancake after awhile. My grandkids used to tease me about how I could catch anything with it. The way they make mitts now-a-days, anybody can catch. I went to Cole School. I started playing commercial leagues when I was 12, but it was my 7th and 8th grade teacher, Wayne Barber, who taught us how to play. He was the best teacher and coach I ever had and he liked to coach women. He was a war hero and taught us patriotism, too. He also taught us to bunt, steal, slide, how and when to run – all the finesse things that separate average players and good players. When we were playing the city gave our men’s and women’s softball leagues a full block at River and 10th. We had three practice fields and a main field with bleachers, lights, a speaker system, and an announcer. But we women had to fight for everything we got back then, you know. Our sponsor was Bohemian Brewery. We were allowed to wear their red and green colors–it was a Basque business–but not their name, because it was alcohol. They couldn’t even get any advertising for sponsoring us. We had some great times. The folks from the CCC camps and the Veteran’s homes used to come out and watch us play. Then the war came and they dismantled the teams. After the war I played roving center – the best position on the field–for the Dixie Chicks. The Statesman was our sponsor then. We wore shorts. That means that those of us who slid at all had our legs scraped up–which mine were–most of the summer. We had this pitcher, Fran Ford, who was a physical therapist. She could do it all. I couldn’t even hit off her. In 1949 our team climbed on a bus to go to the American Softball Association world series in Portland, Oregon. We came in third, but we had a grand time. There was a picture of my daughter in the Oregonian. They called her the "baby chick." That week, I could do no wrong. I think I batted about .700. When it was over, they voted Fran and me All-American. My uncle sent me the write-up from Portland. A few weeks later The Statesman had this teeny-tiny article. As far as I know it’s the only time Boise has had two All-Americans. If we’d been men, they’d have had headlines. I played slow pitch for the church later on, which is the most disgusting game ever devised. But I kept playing. And now I have three things I was famous for. I played ball until I was 58 years old. I won All-American. And I could run over alfalfa stubble barefooted. Never have found that mitt, though. Copyrighted by Jerry Cowley. All rights are reserved.
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