Bill Allington

William B. Allington

Bill Allington made his professional baseball debut in 1926. That year he hit .293 for the Waynesboro Villagers of the Blue Ridge League and .331 for the Wichita Izzies of the Western League. That began a long association with the Western. In 1927 Allington hit .270 for the Blue Ridge's Hagerstown Hubs and .314 with the Wichita Larks in the Western. That year he hit for a cycle for Wichita and added a second homer as well - he would only hit one other home run for the club that year. He tied for fourth in the WL with 19 triples. In 1928 Allington remained with the Larks and smacked the ball for a .337 average, a .611 slugging percentage and 34 home runs. He was fourth in the league in homers, third with 339 total bases and 5th with 167 runs and 47 doubles. 1929 saw Bill play in the highest level of the minors at the time, AA, with the Seattle Rainiers, hitting .312 in 76 games in the Pacific Coast League. He also played for the Memphis Chicks and hit .302/~.439/.519 in the Southern Association.

In 1930 Bill hit .235 for Seattle and .305 back in the Western with the Omaha Packers. The next year Allington clipped in a .276 mark for the Packers and Pueblo Braves. He bounced back from two off-years in 1932 with a .374 average for Pueblo, winning the Western League batting title. He also led in steals (36), triples (23), total bases (335) and runs (167) and was 5th with 49 doubles but was left off of the All-Star team despite leading the league in five key offensive statistics. Bill hit 9 homers and drove in 92. His .984 fielding percentage was the second-best of any starting outfielder in the WL that year.

Allington went back to the SA with the Knoxville Smokies in 1933 and hit .352/~.464/.509. He was around sixth in average and among the leaders in walks (73), OBP and doubles (42). Returning to Knoxville for his 9th and last minor league season, Bill hit .321. He retired as a player. He still remained a feature on the California Winter League circuit, hitting .273 and slugging .494 in 7 years there from 1932-1940.

In the 1940s and 1950s Bill managed the Rockford Peaches and Fort Wayne Daisies of the AAGPBL. He managed his clubs to titles in 1945, 1948 and 1949 and won more games than any other manager in league history. In the 1954 playoffs he got into a fistfight with Grand Rapids Chicks manager Woody English over Fort Wayne's usage of catcher Ruth Richard, who had spent the entire regular season with Allington's old Rockford team. The Chicks won but forfeited the next two games in protest, letting Allington's team play in the last games in AAGPBL history, which they lost 3 games to 2 to the Kalamazoo Lassies; Richard did not play in that series.

Sources: The Western League by W.C. Madden and Patrick Stewart, , The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book by W.C. Madden, The California Winter League by William McNeil and Pat Doyle's old-time professional baseball player database