Colorado Silver Bullets: Blazing a Trail for Women’s Baseball
Special thanks to the History Colorado Center and Alisa DiGiacomo for her exploration of early Colorado baseball history and Encyclopedia.com for supporting our research of Colorado Silver Bullets history.
Long before Colorado became a state in 1876, baseball was booming in the Rocky Mountain Region. The game made its way West with the Gold Rush, played formally and informally on the Front Range beginning in the early 1860s. Colorado featured early professional and semi-professional franchises including the Brown Stockings, Bears, White Elephants and, later, the Rockies.
The Colorado Silver Bullets are another club that represented a significant chapter in the region’s rich baseball history. While their time on the field was short lived, the Silver Bullets’ impact was an important moment for gender equality.
The Colorado Silver Bullets, who operated from 1994–97, were the first professional women’s baseball team to return to the field after the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGBBL) disbanded in 1954 after a 10-year run. The Silver Bullets played their first game on Mother’s Day, May 8, 1994 and they began barnstorming the country.
The Silver Bullets were founded with the purpose of providing a “nurturing environment for top women athletes to learn and play professional baseball against existing men’s teams within the ranks of Minor League, semi-pro, college and amateur baseball.” According to coloradosilverbullets.org, an unofficial website established to provide information about the team, the organization’s “aspiration was to inspire female athletes to play the game of baseball at all levels, from Little League through professional leagues, and encourage all forms of organized baseball to accept women athletes as players.”
That goal is as relevant today as ever, a mission the Colorado Rockies and Major League Baseball are proud to support with a variety of programs and annual activations.
Managed by Atlanta Braves legend and National Baseball Hall of Famer Phil Niekro, the team was operated by longtime Braves executive Bob Hope and funded, in part, by Coors Beverage Company. Shereen Samonds, a trailblazer who was the only female Double-A general manager at the time and was honored as the 1993 Rawlings Female Executive of the Year, served as general manager.
As Samonds prepared to construct her roster for their inaugural season, she and her staff targeted the nation’s top softball players who were discouraged or not allowed to play baseball. They prepared invitation only-tryouts to assemble the best team possible. The Silver Bullets played a 40–50 game schedule, traveling coast-to-coast to play against other all-women’s teams. They also took on men’s amateur, college and Olympic teams. They rounded out their competitive schedule by playing a slate of international events, representing Colorado and the United States with pride.
Bullets standouts included Lee Anne “Beanie” Ketcham, currently the head softball coach at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., and Julie Croteau, who is now director of communications at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Ketcham and Croteau were the first women to sign with the men’s Class-A and Double-A Winter Baseball League in Hawaii, representing the Maui Stingrays. Croteau is also recognized as the first woman to play men’s NCAA baseball, suiting up for the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Seahawks. Pamela Davis became the first female to pitch for an affiliated men’s professional team when she took the mound for the Double-A Jackson Suns in an exhibition game against the Australian Olympic Club on June 4, 1996.
Wins and losses aside, their impact is profound and their legacy is strong, both on and off the field. In 1995, the Silver Bullets were featured in the National Baseball Hall of Fame as part of their Women in Baseball exhibit. They placed a great emphasis on fundraising and awareness for domestic violence, and created the “Give a Girl a Chance” program with the Southern League (Double-A) that encouraged amateur baseball leagues to allow girls participate on their teams. The Silver Bullets were even recognized by the United States Congress for their inspirational contributions to equal rights and the growth of women’s sports.
While International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month provide an opportunity to share and reflect upon Colorado’s role in the return and development of women’s baseball, the impact of the Silver Bullets deserves to be more widely shared. The Colorado Silver Bullets penned an important chapter in the book of Rocky Mountain baseball, one that truly transcends the game and continues to inspire to this day.
