Maybelle Blair is clear-eyed about the fact that she does not have too many birthdays left. (“I’m just thrilled to be on this side of the dirt,” she quips.) But she sees that simply as a reason to get to work.
The 93-year-old got to play only one season in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League—the women’s league that started during World War II and was immortalized in the film A League of Their Own—but it shaped the rest of her life. So she has just one request for her 94th birthday on January 16: support for a project she has been dedicated to for years, a fund to build a center that will not only honor the women who played baseball in the ‘40s and ‘50s but also encourage and create new opportunities for girls to play the sport now.