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Inspiration for 'A League Of Their Own' star dies at age 84

Here's some sad baseball news that took awhile to filter down: Dottie Kamenshek, the female baseball player who served as inspiration for Geena Davis' character in "A League Of Their Own," died of natural causes in California last Monday. She was 84.

As you might suspect, Davis' "Dottie Hinson" was actually a composite of many players from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in the '40s and '50s.

But as the Babe Ruth of that league, Kamenshek was honored by the movie's producers through the name of the 1992 movie's lead role. Kamenshek is the league's all-time batting leader with a .292 average, a mark that some say is equivalent to a man hitting a career .400.

She was also once described by Wally Pipp of the New York Yankees as "the fanciest-fielding first baseman I've ever seen, man or woman."