Kelly McIntosh is thoroughly convinced there’s a direct line between the Stratford women’s baseball teams of the 1940s and 1950s and the new U.S.-based Women’s Professional Baseball League that’s set to begin its inaugural season on Aug. 1.

McIntosh, general manager of the Stratford Perth Museum, spoke to Beacon Herald following a behind-the-scenes look at Curveball: The Fast-Pitch Ladies from the Factory Floor, the latest iteration of the stage production that tells the story of the women who, while working at Stratford’s Kroehler furniture factory, formed a very successful baseball team. That same team won both Provincial Women’s Softball Union Intermediate A and the Junior A championships in 1953.

For McIntosh, one of the play’s co-writers, these women helped lead to the very successful career of St. Pauls native Lori Sipple, a 2016 Stratford Sports Wall of Fame inductee who played softball for Canada at the 1996 Olympics, and coached the team in 2008. Siple recently announced her retirement after 37 years as a coach of the University of Nebraska Huskies softball team, including the last 23 as associate head coach, where she was involved with 1,449 wins and six College World Series appearances.

“Lori Siple exists because the Kroehler girls, and all the men at Kroehler who supported them in the ’30s, in the ’40s, in the ’50s. They took their sport so seriously that it grew a sports league that could produce a player like Lori Sipple, who’s gone on to a major leadership role, and that matters because this year is the first year since 1954 that women’s ball has a pro league south of the border,” McIntosh said after the event held at the Stratford Public Library.

Curveball, which runs at the Blyth Festival from July 8 to Aug. 22, is an expanded version of the original Kroehler Girls production that ran at the Here for Now Theatre Company in 2021.

This new version, which doubles the run time to two hours, includes original music from Juno-nominated singer-songwriter Dayna Manning, who, after seeing the 2021 production, approached McIntosh and the rest of the creative team about producing music for the show.

This led to what was dubbed as the Kray-ler Trailers, where Manning, McIntosh and fellow collaborators Andy Pogson and Stacy Smith hosted two March 2025 events to perform the music and scenes from the play to seek feedback.

While the new version of the show was pitched to several theatre companies, including groups in Hamilton and London, the team was approached by Blyth’s artistic director, Gil Garratt, last November about adapting the show into a new version for the 2026 season. The new version of the show has changed significantly since its first run, McIntosh told the full library auditorium.

“All the small characters that Stacey and I would play, or Andy, by just switching her cap or putting on sunglasses, are now fully realized because it’s a company of nine,” McIntosh explained

Pogson, whose aunt Marg Syms played third base on the team for several years, said it was “really exciting” when Garratt asked them to do this.

“It’s fantastic to sort of hear that Gil believed it enough to continue that journey, I think it was really exciting to give it another audience, and it’s a perfect fit for that kind of community,” he said.

There was a significant amount of work that went into the new version, Smith explained.

“We met in January, maybe twice a week, but we were writing on our own as well, and since then we’ve met sometimes almost every day online,” she said.

While the story is a fictionalized version of events that took place in Stratford, the hope is the production could be adapted to run in other places, McIntosh said. She noted that some of the clubs the Kroehler teams play in the show could be changed to match local teams across the country.

“I think there’s a way to take the show and adapt it so that people always feel involved,” she said.

Curveball, directed by co-writer Severn Thompson, runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, with tickets available at blythfestival.com.

By Bill Atwood for www.stratfordbeaconherald.com.

Photo: Ruby Huras, one of the Kroehler Girls.