The Kid from Diamond Street: The Extraordinary Story of Baseball Legend Edith Houghton
Audrey Vernick, illustrated by Steven Salerno
ISBN: 9780544611634
Edith was born to a baseball-loving family, joined a pro-team at age 10, and played in Japan.
Edith was born in 1912, and not many women played baseball, but by the time she was ten, there was a local team starting up called the Philadelphia Bobbies (named because they bobbed their hair short as a team identity). The team was intended for adults, but she impressed them so much that they let her join up, and eventually put her in as starting shortstop. The Bobbies played all over, mostly exhibition games against male teams because there was no women's league and very few other women teams at all. When Edith was 13, the team was invited to play a set of exhibition games in Japan. So Edith traveled across the USA, playing games all the way, to board a steamer in Seattle and head to Japan.
The story is chronological and factual, and focuses pretty much exclusively on Edith's time with the Bobbies and in Japan, but an extended biographical note afterwards glosses the rest of her life and offers other places to find more information about her, and notes her placement in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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