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Carrie Moyer: A Pennsylvania Pitching Pioneer

  • Kutztown Area Historical Society 212 South Whiteoak Street Kutztown, PA, 19530 United States (map)

Carrie Moyer of Macungie became a headline sports story in 1906 when she began to pitch for both local and regional baseball teams. She followed in the footsteps of previous female pitching stars such as Lizzie Arlington (Lizzie Stride) and Maud Nelson (Clementina Brida), both of whom were from Mahanoy City.
     In her seven-year career, she would earn enough money to put herself through college, become the first female to pitch for a college team (Keystone State Normal School, now Kutztown University) in 1906, and would hurl and win against the Western Bloomer Girls, the premier women's baseball team of the era, which was owned and managed by Maud Nelson.
     Following her baseball career, Moyer would work in education, and she'd go on to work as one of two women working as State fingerprint experts in the United States.

This program is presented by John Kovach has spent over 30 years as a professional in the field of history. He has served as an education director, curator, and executive director of three museums. Kovach was the archivist at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, for over 20 years and served as the County Historian for St. Joseph County, Indiana, for 16 years, longer than any other program head before him.
In 2007, he created a major traveling museum exhibition titled: Linedrives and Lipstick: The Story of Girls and Women In Baseball. This exhibit travelled for nearly eight years and was hosted by museums, historical societies and other venues from all across the United States. Since 2021, Kovach has continued to create museum exhibits on this subject through his company, DiamondDreams1866.
He has authored five baseball books, including Women’s Baseball by Arcadia Publishing and Jackie Mitchell: The Girl Who Loved Baseball, Walden House Publishing.
Kovach has been a baseball coach for 50 years, leading teams from youth through collegiate to elite level. For 30 of those years, he has coached numerous girls and women's baseball teams in leagues, tournaments, and international play. He works at the Bartlett, Tennessee Public Library in Adult Services and is currently researching and compiling biographies for pioneering female baseball players from 1880 to 1915 for a new book.

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