Major League Baseball

First pro female scout Houghton dies

Published Feb. 11, 2013 12:00 a.m. ET

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Baseball prodigy and MLB's first professional female scout Edith Houghton died Saturday, Feb. 2 in Sarasota, Fla., according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. She was 100 years old.

After playing baseball in the 1920s and then serving with the Navy during World War II, Houghton was hired in 1946 by Philadelphia Phillies owner Bob Carpenter as a scout.

Houghton began playing professional baseball in 1923 at the age of 10 for the all-female team the Philadlephia Bobbies. Just two years later, Houghton traveled with the Bobbies to Japan to play against men's teams.

"For a young woman in 1925 to be playing baseball and going to Japan — well, that was pretty exciting," she told an Inquirer reporter in 2001.

Houghton's baseball cap and other gear are on display in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

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