More than 70 years ago, a group of women in Stratford, Ont., were living double lives.
During the day, they built furniture at the Kroehler Furniture Factory. When they clocked out at night, they made their way to the baseball diamond, becoming one of the most celebrated fastball teams in southwestern Ontario.
They were called the Kroehler Girls.
“There’s a beautiful photo – a panoramic, horizontal shot of Kroehler field in black and white – where the stands are just packed with thousands of people [watching the team],” Stratford Perth Museum managing director Kelly McIntosh told CBC’s Day 6.
That photo, along with others McIntosh found in the museum’s archives, inspired her to co-write a play about the team, which was staged briefly in Stratford in 2021.
Now, she and her creative team are taking it to the next level by adapting the play into a two-act musical titled Curveball: The Fast-Pitch Ladies from the Factory Floor, which opens at the Blyth festival Friday.
“Being born and raised in Stratford, almost everyone has a connection to these teams somehow,” said Stratford singer-songwriter Dayna Manning, who wrote 13 songs for the show.
“Almost daily, if I’m walking out and about in downtown Stratford, someone comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, we’re coming to see your play. My great aunt or my mom’s best friend was a Kroehler Girl.’ There’s just so many people who have a connection to this story.”
Manning said she grew up seeing her mom’s friend, a former Kroehler girl, play ball.
“It’s interesting because I didn’t know them as ‘Kroehler Girls.’ I knew them as people who were at the Kroehler factory,” she said. “But I knew the legacy that the Kroehler ball teams left in the town. There was a real love for baseball in Stratford that was leftover from these teams.”
“I, myself, even played baseball when I was a kid,” she said, adding that she’s continued to be a baseball fan into adulthood.
While Curveball isn’t a fully true story about the team, McIntosh said many of the characters are based on real people.
“It’s a careful path to walk when you’re going to start telling a story about people when you didn’t walk that walk, or you weren’t really there,” she said.
Days of research within the Stratford Perth Museum’s archives went into writing Curveball, McIntosh said, as well as conversations with real Kroehler Girls and their family members.
“We invited the community to come and bring their stories, bring their artifacts, and really try to get close to authenticity with the show,” she said.
One of the former Kroehler Girls’ daughters brought a lamp that her mother had won in a match.
“It was one of those vintage lamps with a paper lamp shade, and on its base is a brass woman holding a bat and this big brass baseball,” McIntosh explained. “We’re all a family now.”
Manning said she hopes people leave the musical feeling connected to the story, whether they know any Kroehler Girls or not.
“I just hope they get to understand another time and the hard work that these women did to pave the way for future female athletes,” she said.
Curveball: The Fast-Pitch Ladies from the Factory Floor runs until Aug. 22.
