Who is the only Milwaukee pitcher to win four games of a pro baseball championship series? Warren Spahn? Pete Vuckovich? Connie Wisniewski?

Connie Wisniewski? She’s the right answer—the star right-hander who led the Milwaukee Chicks to the 1944 title of the All-American Girls’ Professional Ball League and an athlete who left her male counterparts in the dust. The most games Spahn won in a single series was one. Vuke didn’t get any while a Brewer.

Even Wisniewski’s searing fastball couldn’t save her team from its ultimate jam: It played its season in anonymity and red ink, then moved immediately to Grand Rapids. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of perhaps the most successful, least loved team in Milwaukee history.

Chewing gum mogul Philip Wrigley started the league—the same one depicted in A League of Their Own—in 1943 because World War II had siphoned off more than half of the existing major-leaguers. Buoyed by good attendance in towns like Kenosha and Rockford, he added teams the next year in Milwaukee and Minneapolis. …show more content…
The Milwaukee Journal dubbed the team the “Schnits,” German for “little beer.” After another drawing board session, the team came up with the Chicks nickname, inspired by its Hall of Fame manager, Max Carey, and a popular kids’ book, Mother Carey’s Chickens. Undaunted, The Journal insisted on calling the team Schnits. “I thought Chicks was a nice name,” says Wisniewski. “It was a lot better than being a