| Year: | 2011 |
| Team: | Women's Basketball/Softball |
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Patricia Brown will always have a special place in the history of Suffolk University athletics, a true pioneer who founded, coached and played for the school’s first women’s basketball team in the early 1950s. There were only eight women on that initial Lady Rams squad, and they practiced and played their home games, similar to the men’s quintet, at the Cambridge YMCA. It all started with Brown approaching Judge Frank Donahue,
treasurer of Suffolk back then, and asking him for funding to begin
a women’s basketball squad. “He okayed it, we got
the money, and the program has been going ever since,” said
Brown during an interview 20 years ago. She added that the
initial team had a lot of fun and was competitive.
On February 12, 1990, in recognition of her innovative efforts, Brown was honored at the dedication of the Suffolk women’s basketball team’s first game in the new school gym, located in the basement of the Ridgeway Building. Brown’s innovative style and legacy will live on forever
at Suffolk. Her educational and professional career with the
University spanned 40 years. She has three degrees from
Suffolk (BA, MBA and JD) and worked as the Law School librarian all
her life before retiring in 1992.
Between 1950-51, Brown made a name for herself in her favorite sport as a member of the 12-team All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). A talented right-handed pitcher and a solid hitter, she played for the Kenosha (Wisconsin) Comets, the Chicago Colleens, and the Battle Creek (Michigan) Belles during her two seasons traveling across the United States and Canada. In a tribute to “Women in Baseball,” Brown and other former AAGPBL players were one of the first group of women inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York on November 5, 1988. Two years later, Brown was honored by the Boston Red Sox organization for her Hall of Fame status with a ceremony that involved her throwing out the first ball of a game at Fenway Park. In June of 2003, Brown published a book: A League of My
Own: Memoir of a Pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional
Baseball League. Among other things, she discusses the
history of the league, why it was started and why it ended.
Brown played on the first ever girls’ basketball and field hockey teams at Winthrop High School, and was inducted into the school’s first annual Athletic Hall of Fame class in March of 1997. Watch Pat Brown's Induction Video Here |
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