OUT AT THE PLATE: The Dot Wilkinson Story, deep dive into a QUILTBAG legendary life

OUT AT THE PLATE: The Dot Wilkinson Story
LYNN AMES
Chicago Review Press
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: “Dot Wilkinson is the greatest female catcher ever to play softball . A bold, pioneering athlete, she refused to let others define her and instead defined herself. Her story is an inspiration to people everywhere.” — Billie Jean King, Sports Icon and Champion for Equality

It’s not simply that Dot Wilkinson was one of the most decorated women’s softball players, bowlers, and athletes of all time and one of the original players from the three-time-world-champion PBSW Phoenix Ramblers softball team (1933–1965). Nor was it the length of her time here on Earth—over a century—although any of these things by itself would be impressive.

The magic of Dot’s story is in the details. It’s the tale of a childhood spent in poverty, an indomitable, unbreakable spirit, a determination to be the very best to play whatever sport she undertook, the independence to live her personal life on her own terms, and her tremendous success at all of it.

Over more than a decade of countless conversations and interviews, Dot shared all of it with her dear friend, author Lynn Ames. Dot held nothing back. Out at the Plate , told through the lens of Dot and Lynn’s friendship, is the story of a forgotten era in women’s history and sports, and one extraordinary woman’s place at the center of it all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I had a lesbian "grandma" of sorts, older than Dot Wilkinson, but with the same kind of unwillingness to submit to woman=weakness stereotyping. She saw what she wanted and went out of all ladylike bounds to get it. This included the love of her life, a widow with a son, and the family they made.

Dot Wilkinson is my kinda woman. (Or man, if I'm honest.) Reading about her life, its ups-downs-failures and unimaginably exciting successes, made me smile uncontrollably. QUILTBAG folk are fed a steady diet of disaster and crime with us as the victims, expecting that this will keep us quiet and invisible. This is the classic Linebarger tactic, used for generations now on "minorities" of all sorts. It is now modulated by stories of assimilation, of increased access to "The American Dream" of mortgaged house, kids who need college funds, etc etc. The Dot Wilkinsons who decide to do what the hell they want to do when they want to do it do not, oddly enough, get a lot of overcultural attention.

I can't think why this should be.

Dot Wilkinson deserves every bit of attention you have at your command because she actually was what we're told we love the most, should strive to be, here in the USA. She was strong by every metric, she was a maverick. She was routinely successful in her careers (plural). She lived with the love of her life for almost a half-century. Her example of grace and graciousness under pressure is one to emulate. She never turned it into any kind of doormat behavior. She was likable and well-liked at a time when her rejection of "normative womanhood" could easily have made her a pariah. Lynn Ames manages to convey all this without becoming cloying, though her fangirling over Dot is not at all veiled...or misplaced.

The one thing that leads to, on the "missing three-quarters-star" front, is the tendency to overexplain and repeat. By using many primary sources, Author Ames falls into the "it's really cool how much stuff there is" ditch and doesn't climb out. The sources very often concur, and maybe picking one quote then saying "this is one of the half-dozen angles on this story" could've been less wearing on the reader's nerve. My interest in softball, Dot's biggest claim to Fame and spotlights, is significantly less than hers....

Family issues weren't minimized. It was heartbreaking to learn of Dot's first love's early passing from the then-untreatable scourge of metastatic breast cancer. It was more heartbreaking still to read of Dot's mother's callous...let me be fair, surprisingly insensitive...response to Dot's deep grief at her loss. The fact is a sapphic love wouldn't register with most people as "real" in that day and time, so grief of that depth and duration would seem odd. Still, it's your child! Wouldn't that attune you to the reality of the feeling and thus summon up empathy not dismissiveness?

Apparently not. And honestly that bit upset me as much as the loss did. I was, as you can tell from that, fully invested in Dot Wilkinson's life, and was very, very happy I had this chance to learn about this older sister in queerness. I hope you will give it a chance to grab you, too.