Stadiums of fans once cheered the crack of her bat. The memory brings a wistful smile to this former player for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

"I had a lady once tell me, 'If you hit a home run, I'll give you a chickendinner,' " says Esther "Schmattze" Gamberdella Morrison, former Springfield Sallies triple-threat, now of Wimer.

Five-foot tall, 19-year-old Gamberdella obliged with a homer that long-ago summer day, says the now 75-year-old veteran ball player.

"And do you know she brought me a home-cooked chicken dinner? Oh! It was so good," Gamberdella says, bobbing her head at the memory.

From 1948 to 1950, Gamberdella was part of that rare sisterhood of ball players immortalized in Penny Marshall's 1992 film "A League of Their Own" starring Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell, Madonna and Tom Hanks. The film was based on real events and "was true to form in a lot of ways," including some of the postgame hijinks, says Gamberdella.

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"You saw how those girls used to sneak out of their rooms at night?" she says, smiling. "Some of the girls really did that. Oh, yes, they did. They'd come do bed check. They thought they were all in bed, but they were all dressed up and ready to go."

In 1943, chewing gum mogul Philip K. Wrigley inherited the Chicago Cubs franchise from his father. But as most young men — including many of the National Baseball League's male ball players — headed off to World War II battlefields, Wrigley conceived, financed and helped organize the AAGPBL (All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) as a way to fill the void and keep the baseball fields open during wartime.

But while Wrigley and crew recruited women who could play well, they also insisted the female players be attended by chaperones and abide by a strict code of ladylike conduct. Skirts could be no more than 6 inches above the knee. Etiquette classes were mandatory.

"We had to dress like perfect ladies," says Gamberdella. "Because that's what Wrigley wanted."

Born in a "rowdy" Chicago neighborhood, "Schmattze" grew up playing ball with the boys and shining shoes for local kingpins.

"Al Capone and those guys would come and ask us to shine their shoes," she says. "We'd do it, too. We didn't know who they were. We were just kids, and they always paid us."

Her nickname was given to her by a neighborhood girlfriend.

"It means 'little rag' in Jewish or Polish," she says, waving her hands. "They called me that because I blew all over the place like a little rag. We were always playing with the fellas in the neighborhood. One time I caught a fly ball and I hit the back fence with my whole body. I cut my face and was bleeding, but I caught the ball."

Gamberdella was recruited into the league after following some other neighborhood girls into a building at the Franklin Park playground.

A man asked her if she could play ball, she says.

"I told him 'sure I can'," Gamberdella says.

Asked what position she played, she listed pitcher, catcher and outfielder. He tossed her a mitt.

The rest has become history. Baseball history.

Gamberdella signed onto the league under her stepfather's last name of Morrison because she thought her Italian name might be too tough to spell or pronounce.

Recounting the highlights of her days playing for the Sallies recently drew a lot of interest in the restaurant where she is a regular. Recounting her stories, she had a yellowed stash of newspaper and magazine clippings carefully spread out on the table in front of her.

"Hey! I didn't know you played on one of those 'League of Their Own' teams," says the waitress at Karen's Kitchen in Rogue River. "We're going to have to call you "Schmattze" from now on!"

Gamberdella's Midwestern team of young women athletes traveled to Georgia, Tennessee and "all the way to New York," she says.

The league peaked in 1948 at 10 teams and attracted 910,000 paying fans during that season alone.

"We had full stands," says Gamberdella.

But the AAGPBL started to dwindle by the early 1950s due to the return of the male players and the onset of televised play. It ultimately disbanded in the mid-'50s.

Gamberdella says the fans were still filling the stands when an undiagnosed case of severe anemia forced her to quit the game in 1950.

"Every time I bent down for a ground ball, my nose would bleed. So I had to quit. I sure missed it," she says.

But Gamberdella refuses to dwell on the negative. The high-spirited woman has survived many trials, including rickets, the loss of her father at age 3 and the year she spent in the hospital recovering from severe injuries to her brain and body suffered in a 1988 car accident at her home in Wimer.

"But a lot of people have it worse than me," she says.

Gamberdella, who never married, has given away most of her souvenirs — including her baseball cards and a signed poster of the Hollywood movie. Gamberdella had the "League" poster signed while attending a 1993 reunion in South Bend, Ind., she says.

"But I gave it away to a friend in Chicago," she says. "Oh well. I'm just as glad she has it. And I gave the cards away to the kids in the neighborhood."

Gamberdella remains in contact with as many of her old team members as she can. Many have died, she says.

"We had some fantastic players," she says. "Dottie Collins. They just wrote a book about her."

Gamberdella and the other AAGPBL Girls of Summer were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1988.

To read more about the league, visit www.aagpbl.org online.

Reach reporter Sanne Specht at 776-4497 or at sspecht@mailtribune.com