Irene Hickson (August 14, 1915 – November 24, 1995) was an American catcher who played from through in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at , 116 lb., she batted and threw right-handed. At age 27, Irene Hickson became one of the oldest players signed by the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League for its inaugural season. Although averaging .171 lifetime, she was known as an opportune hitter with runners in scoring position during the late innings. Most importantly, Hickson was a solid fielding catcher with a strong throwing arm, and had a reputation as a good handler of pitchers. On the playing field, she collected 2,388 putouts and 561 assists in 621 games, committing only 130 errors in 3,079 chances for a .958 career fielding average. A member of two champion teams, she won the batting title in the 1943 championship series and in 1946 set an all-time record with five walks received in a single game. Early life Hickson was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. An all-around athlete, in the mid 1930s she pitched and caught for semi-professional softball teams in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. She was credited with hitting 25 home runs in 1939 and also formed part of several State Championship teams. Besides this, in 1938 Hickson became the only girl boxer to fight in Chattanooga. She also competed and won every field and track event ever held at the Warner Park Zoo, including 50-yard dash, relay race, throwing, long jump. and horseshoes. Being a woman and coming from a low-income family, she found a part-time job as a spinning doffer at a yarn processing company. But her ambition was to play ball as long and as well as her idol Ty Cobb and be a catcher like Mickey Owen of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Hickson later played for a men's team in Chattanooga, where baseball scout Jimmy Hamilton was impressed with her talent. AAGPBL career In 1943 Hamilton invited Hickson to an All-American Girls Professional Baseball League tryout. After making the league at tryouts held in Wrigley Field that May, Hickson was allocated to the Racine Belles, a team managed by Johnny Gottselig. She played for them until Racine lost the franchise after the 1950 season. She was dubbed Choo-choo, a wordplay presumably inspired in the popular song Chattanooga Choo Choo, which include her birthplace, and because of the way she ran the bases,