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Professional baseball player Maybelle Blair hit a grand slam when she came out… at 95!

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This profile is part of Queerty’s 2022 Out For Good series, recognizing public figures who’ve had the courage to come out and make a difference in the past year, in celebration of National Coming Out Day on October 11.

Name: Maybelle “Mae” Blair, 95

Bio: Born in 1927 (the same year Babe Ruth hit his record-breaking 60th home run), Blair enjoyed a long career in both baseball and softball, pitching for the Peoria Redwings baseball team in the late 1940s and then for several teams in the National Women’s Softball League in the early and mid 1950s.

After retiring from sports, Blair continued to play an active role in promoting women’s baseball and supporting young female athletes. Over the years, she served as the co-chair on many AAGPBL Players Association reunions, as well as on the Board of Directors and was Chair of the Fundraising Committee.

She has also been actively working for many years to fundraise for an official center for the International Women’s Baseball Center to be built in Rockford, Illinois, serving as a place to celebrate the groundbreaking players depicted in Penny Marshall’s 1992 film A League of Their Own.

Coming out: Blair came out as a lesbian publicly for the first time while promoting the new Amazon series A League of Their Own at the Tribeca Festival over the summer.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for these young girl ball players to come [to] realize that they’re not alone, and you don’t have to hide,” she said. “I hid for 75, 85 years and this is actually basically the first time I’ve ever come out.”

She added, “It was hard during my period, because we’d be either fired from our jobs or we would be discharged from service. It was just things that we just couldn’t do. We couldn’t live our lives.”

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times shortly afterwards, Blair said the response to her coming out was overwhelmingly positive, especially from her family.

“I was so afraid that maybe they wouldn’t want me to be included in that,” she said. “But the phone rang and they said, ‘Oh, Aunt Maybelle, don’t worry. We love you for what you are and that’s how we love you. Don’t worry about a thing. It’s OK with us.’”

She added, “My whole family came out and supported me. Thank goodness. Because I was worried. At my age, I didn’t know what they would think or if they would disown me, but it had to come out because I had to help, if I could, all these young girls, so they wouldn’t have to go through what I had to go through.”

Watch the trailer for Amazon’s new A League of Their Own series below…

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