Parichy Stadium, located at the corner of Harrison Street and Harlem Avenue, was the home field of Forest Park’s Bloomer Girl softball team. They competed against elite women’s teams in the Chicagoland area like the Blue Birds, the Chicks, the Queens and the Music Maids in the first half of the 20th century.
Dorothy “Boots” Klupping, from Maywood, and her fellow classmate from Proviso High School, Shirley Jameson, both would later become softball stars in the league.
Klupping would be on the 1936 Parichy-Ford Roofers team before joining the Montgomery Vee-Eights and the Downdraft Furnace Girls/Hydrox Beverage Girls team, then returning to her roots and playing again in Forest Park in 1941. She was a member of one of their championship-winning teams.
Klupping, in a 1940 interview with Herb Graffs, said of the other team after visiting their dressing room, “them tramps ain’t got a chance. They can’t hit me.”
