Marla Collins

Marla Collins served as a ball girl for the Chicago Cubs from 1982 to 1986. A life-long Cubs fan with some amateur playing experience, she was working as a beer vendor for the rival Chicago White Sox when she was approached by the Cubs to take on the visible on-field role, shortly after the Chicago Tribune had bought the team from William Wrigley in 1981. The new ownership wanted to modernize the team's image, taking a page out of the zany promotions from former White Sox owner Bill Veeck.

Collins' duties included supplying new baseballs to the home plate umpire and corralling the occasional foul ball before it made its way back onto the field of play. She was given to wear a Cubs jersey with her name (and rather skimpy and tight-fitting shorts) and soon became an object of curiosity, as she was the only woman performing such duties around Major League Baseball, and the only woman on the field during Cubs home games at Wrigley Field. She proved to be competent at fielding, and her presence was unavoidable on Cubs broadcasts, which reached a national audience on cable "superstation" WGN. Announcer Harry Caray took a liking to her, interviewing her on a few occasions, and she served as a sort of team ambassador, taking part in the team's winter caravan and so on.

In 1986, she announced that she was engaged to be married and that she would leave her employ after that season. She was doing other gigs on the side to make ends meet - the Cubs only paid her $100 per game - and felt she was getting too old for the job in any case (she was now 27). In a fateful decision, she accepted an offer from Playboy Magazine, based in Chicago, to pause for a feature on her in an upcoming issue, to be released in October 1986. She was offered a rather handy sum for the privilege, plus a bonus based on sales of that issue. The feature included some pictures from her work, but also others where she posed in various states of undress, as would be expected from that particular publication. Playboy, sensing a potential bonanza, brought out the issue ahead of schedule, in July of 1986, and, unsurprisingly there was a scandal. She was let go by the Cubs on July 22nd, but whatever income she lost from not working the remaining games on the team's schedule were made up in spurts by the publicity the whole affair gathered. She later said that she did not regret anything and had thought about her decision to pose before making it. She then lived a completely normal life away from the media glare.

Further Reading

• Dan VanDeMortel: "Belle of the Ballclub: Marla Collins' Unusual Path from Cubs Ballgirl to Playboy Model", The National Pastime, SABR, 51, 2023, pp. 110-115.