By age 9, Doris Sams was winning games of all kinds around the city. She crushed the competition in a checkers tournament at Vestal playground, and later, horseshoes and relay races.
In 1938, at 11 years old, she won the Flenniken School's marbles championship in the Knoxville News Sentinel's annual marbles tournament, and not long after, the paper dubbed Sams "Knoxville's Youngest and Most Versatile Girl Athlete." In today's coverage, that might have simply read "Knoxville's Youngest and Most Versatile Athlete"; Sams was winning against her peers no matter their gender.
Sams enjoyed success in other sports too: volleyball, swimming, tennis, basketball, track, golf and bowling. But her favorite? It was always softball, she told the News Sentinel in 1991. After all, that's the game that truly placed Sams in a league of her own.
'Pitching star' Sams
Sams began pitching for Nelson's Cafe in 1938 at age 11. The next season, she pitched for Nelson's Pepsi Cola Girls. She remained on the Pepsi Cola Girls, a team that celebrated regular wins, through her adolescence. The News Sentinel often touted Sams as a "pitching star."
The pitcher graduated from Knoxville High School in 1945 and in 1946, at 19, joined the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League's Muskegon, Michigan. team, the Muskegon Lassies.
The league − which bore a few different names during its lifetime − formed in 1943 in response to young men being drafted to serve in World War II, and the resulting fear that Major League Baseball was on the brink of a collapse, according to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League's website.
It was also the league celebrated in the 1992 movie and 2022 TV series "A League of Their Own" − and the league that brought Sams into the national spotlight.
'Sammye' sees success in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and beyond
In that first season in Michigan, Sams, nicknamed "Sammye" while in the league, became the "darling of fans" during a game against the Grand Rapid Chicks, the sports editor of the Muskegon Chronicle wrote in a 1946 article for the News Sentinel. Sams was pitching to Doris Tetzlaff, "one of the hardest hitting batters in the league."
Sams won fans' hearts when she "used a windmill windup, going around six times in all before letting the ball go, and it was a perfect strike to end the inning as Tetzlaff stood watching with her mouth wide open." By the end of the season, it wasn't uncommon to hear the crowd roar, "We want Sammye!"
Through it all, Sams, who played as pitcher as well as outfielder, led with good sportsmanship. "Somebody has to win, somebody has to lose. That's the way life is. You win some, you lose some, but nobody wins all the time," she told the News Sentinel in 1992.
In her second season, Sams pitched a perfect no-hit game against the Fort Wayne Daisies. That same year, and again in 1949, Sams was named Player of the Year, according to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League's website. In 1952, she was set a league home run record with a total of 12 home runs.
Her time in the league was a dream. "We loved every blame minute of it," she told the News Sentinel in 1992.
But it wasn't without its challenges. For one, the uniform for women in the league was a dress − leaving players' legs exposed when sliding or diving. "We had always played in knickers and ...
