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Rachel Gansner, who started an all-girls fall baseball league in 2024 in Warren Park on the North Side, died Saturday after a long battle with stomach cancer. She was 45.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting the league was an intense passion project of hers because she grew up loving the sport as a huge Cubs fan but wasn\u2019t able to play baseball as a kid because it wasn\u2019t an option for her,\u201d said her husband, Jeremy Gansner.<\/p>\n
She started the all-girls league at Warren Park \u2014 located at Western Avenue and Pratt Boulevard \u2014 with about 25 players ranging in age from 6 to 9 that were spread among four teams: the Blue Sox, Comets, Peaches and Belles. <\/p>\n
\u201cBaseball is so hard. But when they finally had a hit or made a play or drove in a run, it wasn\u2019t just happiness, it was pride in themselves to see they were able to do it. And they kept getting better and better,\u201d said Jeremy Gansner.<\/p>\n
\u201cRachel allowed them to feel that it\u2019s OK to fail, especially when your teammates are on the same page and support you and lift you up. And they became ballplayers. She really gave them the empowerment and tools to do that, and it\u2019s beautiful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Last year, the league expanded to form two age divisions \u2014 one for girls 6-9 and another for girls 10-12.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Gansner\u2019s daughter, Eloise \u2014 known as Weezy \u2014 was in the league. Mrs. Gansner coached her team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWeezy blossomed into somebody who was confident and strong,\u201d said Jeremy Gansner. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be tough for her this year I think because one of her favorite things was having her mom as a coach. But her mom set her up for success.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Gansner\u2019s 12-year-old son, George, helped out by serving as occasional umpire.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Gansner kept score and did play-by-play announcing, occasionally handing the mic to kids who wanted to try their hand at announcers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe league is continuing this year,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s our hope and goal. I am going to work to make sure it continues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs. Gansner started playing baseball in a women\u2019s league in Chicago after college. She played second base and loved it immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe felt that it\u2019s a world where girls are pushed to softball, but it\u2019s not the same. It\u2019s the only sport where the male and female versions are different,\u201d Jeremy Gansner said.<\/p>\n
When she started the all-girls league, Mrs. Gansner dropped pamphlets at North Side park district field houses, grocery stores, laundromats and coffee shops.<\/p>\n
The infield of the baseball diamond they were going to use at Warren Park had become overgrown with weeds due to lack of use, and she spent many hours on her hands and knees over the course of several weeks, with the help of other volunteers, pulling them.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe didn\u2019t want the girls to feel second rate with a weedy field,\u201d said Michael Phelps, who serves on the Warren Park Youth Baseball board. <\/p>\n
Mrs. Gansner, who served as president of the board, also coached her son\u2019s team. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe got us all to care and go along with her vision. She had that sort of force of character,\u201d said Steve Hendershot, a friend and volunteer coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daughter, Jade, plays baseball and she started on one of the co-ed teams at Warren Park that was mostly boys, but when she started in the all-girls league, all the sudden, she found her voice, her friends and got much better at baseball rapidly,\u201d Hendershot said.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Gansner also founded a non-profit called Let\u2019s Play Too that focused on opening up the sport to girls.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Gansner was born Dec. 15, 1980, to Judith Caplan, an education consultant, and Richard Caplan, an architect. She grew up in Lincoln Park playing softball and attended Francis W. Parker School. She later graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges and earned a master\u2019s in education from DePaul University.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a friend, a deep, tight friend, and she loved parties in our backyard when the weather turned nice and it became home base for barbecues and fires in the fire pit and staying up late with lights and music and with the kids running around enjoying neighborhood,\u201d her husband said. <\/p>\n
Mrs. Gansner, who lived in Edgewater, was a die-hard Cubs. She was at first a tad concerned about marrying a guy from Cleveland \u2014 whose hometown team faced the Cubs in the World Series in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we agreed this relationship would work early on because never ever would these two horrible teams meet in the World Series,\u201d Jeremy Gansner joked about their thought process at the time.<\/p>\n
The Warren Park Youth Baseball Board plans to name a field after Mrs. Gansner, and the name of the all-girls league that she created will also bear her name beginning next season.<\/p>\n
Funeral services have been held. A kickball game to take place at Warren Park is being planned to celebrate Mrs. Gansner\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n