She Inspired ‘A League of Their Own.’ At 95, She’s Far From Done.

Maybelle Blair walked into a sporting goods store in her early 90s with a mission: to try on a pair of spikes.

The salesman suggested that she meant to ask for sneakers. But Blair, a former pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, insisted on baseball cleats. “He looked at me like I had lost it,” Blair, now 95, recalled in a recent interview.

The cleats finally appeared.

“He put them on my feet. I got up and marched around, and I heard that clicketyclack in my head and I was never so happy,” Blair said.

After taking the cleats for a walk in the store, Blair took them off, put them in their box and told the salesman that she wouldn’t be taking them.

“That was a big thrill of my life, just to put cleats on and march again,” she said.

For Blair, the sound of cleats brought back memories of suiting up as a Peoria Redwing and walking onto the field, her favorite baseball ritual.