Women's baseball icon talks effort to expand, celebrate game for girls

It was Women's Day at Dodger Stadium on Sunday, and one of baseball's most important women threw out a ceremonial first pitch and made an appearance in the team's broadcast booth.

Maybelle Blair, a former professional baseball player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and a lifelong women's baseball advocate, joined Dodgers announcers Joe Davis and Orel Hershiser to discuss her playing days and women in baseball.

Blair, 95, was one of the inspirations for the baseball classic movie and its TV adaptation, “A League of Their Own.”

During the broadcast, she said baseball is "the biggest part of my life."

"I grew up loving baseball and I'll die loving baseball," said Blair, who became a Dodgers fan at an early age as a native of Inglewood, Calif.

Adding that she's "so thrilled that baseball is coming back for girls," Blair urged fans to donate toward the development of the International Women's Baseball Center in Rockford, Ill., home of the Rockford Peaches team featured in the film and TV series. The goal is to raise $1 million, with the hope of establishing a museum and hosting a Little League World Series-type event for girls, she said.

"It would be such a wonderful thing for women's baseball ... we need our own Hall of Fame," she said.