Joyce Elaine Hill Westerman
AAGPBL player 1945–1952; born and raised on the Clausen-Hill farm in Pleasant Prairie (now Lake Andrea); Bradford High 1943
Net worth
$55 a week
1945
About
Joyce Elaine Hill Westerman played eight seasons in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and grew up on the Clausen-Hill farm in Pleasant Prairie, ground that is now Lake Andrea.
The village later put a memorial bench between diamonds 2 and 3 at Prairie Springs Park, on the same land.
Born December 29, 1925, to Cecil Ludlow Hill and Lillian Victoria Clausen, she cleaned the barn, picked vegetables, helped her father cut trees, and at twelve joined her aunt's adult softball team. She graduated from Mary D. Bradford High School in 1943, then worked at the Nash factory in Kenosha and pitched and played shortstop on the company softball team. P.K. Wrigley's wartime women's league came calling, and she made it.
From 1945 to 1952 she played catcher, then outfield and first base, for Grand Rapids, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Peoria, and the Racine Belles. Across 531 games she recorded 345 hits, 191 runs, 81 stolen bases, 292 walks, and 167 RBI with a .228 average; South Bend won the championship in her last season. Off-season she went back to Nash. She married Raymond Westerman in 1950, led 4-H for fourteen years, coached Carthage softball, and worked the post office and American Motors. In 1988 the league entered Cooperstown as a body; in 1991 she was one of forty-eight original players in A League of Their Own. She died at home on January 18, 2021, at ninety-five. Later honors include the Milwaukee Brewers Wall of Fame, the Grand Rapids Sports Hall of Fame (2003), and Bob Kann's 2012 Wisconsin Historical Society Press biography Joyce Westerman: Baseball Hero.
Notable facts
Eight AAGPBL seasons (1945–1952) across Grand Rapids, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Peoria, and the Racine Belles; 531 games, 345 hits, .228 average; South Bend champion in 1952.
Born December 29, 1925, on the Clausen-Hill farm in Pleasant Prairie (now Lake Andrea); Mary D. Bradford High School class of 1943.
One of forty-eight original players in the 1991 film A League of Their Own; league inducted into Cooperstown as a body in 1988; died January 18, 2021, at 95.
What questions can this profile answer
- What makes Joyce Elaine Hill Westerman notable?
- Joyce Elaine Hill Westerman played eight seasons in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and grew up on the Clausen-Hill farm in Pleasant Prairie, ground that is now Lake Andrea. The village later put a memorial bench between diamonds 2 and 3 at Prairie Springs Park, on the same land.
- What is Joyce Elaine Hill Westerman's estimated net worth?
- Joyce Elaine Hill Westerman's estimated net worth is $55 a week as of 1945.