Yolande Teillet Schick

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was the brainchild of Philip K. Wrigley, owner of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs. Wrigley was worried that the conscription of men in the Second World War might cause the suspension of MLB play. As an owner, he wanted baseball to continue as a business. His solution was the AAGPBL. Top female players were scouted for the league, which began operations in 1943. Fourteen Canadians were part of the original 60 players signed to contracts that year. Of the 600 women signed to the league between 1943 and 1954, 68 were Canadian. Most came from the Prairie provinces, where there were competitive softball circuits for women.

Historical Context: Indigenous Women and Softball

By the Second World War, increasing numbers of women were participating in individual and team sports in Canada. Few Indigenous women, however, were involved in sports at the time. The exception was softball, which was especially popular among Indigenous women who lived on reserves or in Métis settlements.

The “Caledonia Indians,” for example, were semi-finalists in the 1931 Provincial Women’s Softball Union championships in Ontario. Most of the team’s players lived on the Six Nations reserve along the Grand River. Another Six Nations team, the Ohsweken Mohawks (formed in 1945), won the Intermediate “B” Provincial Women’s Softball Union Championships in 1960 and 1961 and the Intermediate “AA” championship in 1970.

Yolande Teillet: Early Life and Family

Yolande Teillet was born in September 1927 in St. Vital, Manitoba, to Camille Teillet and Sara Riel. Her grandfather was Joseph Riel, the younger brother of Métis leader Louis Riel. Her brother Roger J. Teillet served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War as a navigator aboard a Halifax bomber. He was later elected to the Manitoba legislature and federal government and served as Minister of Veterans Affairs in the 1960s.

Yolande Teillet: Softball Career

Women’s softball and baseball were an important part of social life in Prairie communities. Interest and participation grew during the Second World War, when many men were serving overseas. Competitive softball circuits provided opportunities for talented young women who wanted to play at a higher level. Yolande Teillet was one such athlete. Known as “YoYo” to her teammates, she played catcher and outfield with the St. Vital Tigerettes as a teenager. The Tigerettes was a women’s senior-league softball team from established in the early 1940s in Winnipeg. Between 1946 and 1955, the team won the Manitoba championship five times.

Teillet was playing for the Tigerettes when she was scouted at age 17 to play in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She was one of the first Métis players in the league and one of 13 from Manitoba over the league’s 12 seasons (1943–54). Teillet was recruited in 1945 to play catcher for the Fort Wayne Daisies. That season, she played 10 games and scored two runs. The team finished second (62–47) to the league champion Rockford Peaches, who were later immortalized in the 1992 Hollywood movie A League of Their Own. Teillet then played catcher and outfield for the Grand Rapids Chicks in 1946–47 before moving to the Kenosha Comets in 1947. With her professional career over, she returned to Manitoba to play once again for the Tigerettes.

She later married William Schick, with whom she had nine children and 21 grandchildren. Yolande Schick (née Teillet) died 26 January 2006 in Winnipeg.

Honours and Awards

Yolande Schick (née Teillet) was inducted into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame, Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Significance

As a player in the AAGPBL, Yolande Schick (née Teillet) was one of a small group of professional female ballplayers in the mid-20th century. Although the AAGPBL lasted only 12 seasons, it drew large crowds and was the forerunner of professional women’s leagues today. (See The History of Canadian Women in Sport.) “YoYo” was also part of a larger group of Indigenous women playing competitive softball in Canada at the time. Although they were not household names, women like Ruth Hill (née Van Every) and Phyllis “Yogi” Bomberry impressed scouts from top softball teams in the country. Both Van Every and Bomberry played for the Ohsweken Mohawks when they were recruited by Toronto Carpetland, the Canadian senior women’s champion, in the 1960s. Bomberry won several team championships and individual awards, including all-star catcher and most valuable player, at the 1969 Canada Games.