Just over one hundred years ago, women did not play baseball, and they certainly did not umpire the games. But one young woman in South Dakota changed all that in the summer of 1904. Quickly becoming a national sensation for her umpiring, she even met a president. That summer Amanda Clement became the first paid female baseball umpire in the United States. She might have worn a skirt, but players respected her, and fans paid to see her umpire. She called games fairly, never backed down from rude players, and helped to show that girls can do anything that boys can do. This is her story.

Growing up in a rural area of South Dakota provided author Marilyn Kratz with many happy memories of those days. In this collection of writings, she shares glimpses of daily life and ordinary events in that simpler era of the 1940s and 1950s that many readers will also appreciate.