Dolly learned how to play baseball—like a lot of her peers—from the boys with whom she grew up in her Chicago neighborhood, running around outside getting dirty and bruised just like all the boys were used to doing. She earned the nickname "Dolly Gopher" as when playing softball with her father, he would say "Dolly, go for this ball.
She both batted and threw right-handed. Go for that ball."
She recalls how the neighborhood boys would "play in a huge lot behind a factory. We used sickles to cut the grass and cardboard boxes for the bases.
Then we put big rocks on them so that they wouldn’t blow away.”.
One day, when she was 15 years old, Dolly"s father came across a newspaper article about tryouts in a women"s baseball league. Her first reaction however was "girls don"t play baseball." lieutenant wasn"t that she believed that girls couldn"t play baseball, she just wasn"t aware of any who did.
Despite this, she came along to the field and was "amazed" at how many women she saw there. She said that she "thought was the only girl in the city who played baseball."
Dolly played second base and third base for the Chicago Colleens (in 1948), the Springfield Sallies (in 1949), the Battle Creek Belles (in 1951), and between 1950 to 1952, the Grand Rapids Chicks.
After making it in the minor leagues, Dolly joined the 1949 barnstorming tour that allocated minor league players to the major league.
She began with the New Orleans tour, then to Florida and up the East Coast. Unfortunately, in 1952, an auto accident resulted in Dolly"s early retirement. Following that, she became a professional bowler.
When the movie was released in 1992, Dolly actually had a role in lieutenant
Regarding the movie that starred Madonna, Dolly says: "Madonna was great. She was in the outfield changing into spikes, I asked her to sign a visor for me and she did.
The entire experience of that movie changed my life for the better."
Dolly is currently in the process of having Doug Williams write a book about her life story.
