- Here's someone who was told, "You're a girl, you can't play baseball."

But she loved the game.

She was a fine, again, a fine athlete.

She could run, swim, ice skate with the best in town in Warren, and she wanted to be around the ball players and carry the equipment.

- [Pamela] But the woman from Warren did more than just carry equipment.

She grabbed a glove and went pro.

Former Harvard librarian, Jay Hurd, has spent a decade researching the achievements of the female first base player who broke into the men's game.

She was born Mary Elizabeth Murphy in 1894.

- But she became known as Lizzie, and she had another nickname, Spike.

And that came around one time when she was playing on a men's team versus another men's team and they were poking some fun at her, and they said, "All right, Spike, let's see what you can do.

Let's see what you can do."

And she showed them what she could do.

- What Lizzie "Spike" Murphy could do was play ball in the big leagues.

She came to be called the Queen of Baseball.

As early as 1910, the Warren town directory lists Murphy as a baseball player.

She was playing with men and impressing them.

Newspapers across the country took note.

How did she actually start playing baseball?

- Well, through her brother.

They would gather at whatever the local sandlot was here in Warren, Rhode Island.

And she started playing with them.

And finally she was old enough when they said, and they needed a player, "Lizzie, can you cover first base?"

They noticed her ability and soon she was being called up to play on the mill teams.

- [Pamela] Murphy was raised in a big family next to one of Warren's red brick mills.

Her home was where Tom's market now stands.

- She would love to clean the rugs.

It was part of how she stayed in shape.

She would get her baseball bat, put the rugs over a clothes line, and just beat (laughs) beat the dust out of the rugs.

- So it was her destiny to be a ball player.

- Oh, through and through.

- [Pamela] Scouted while playing on the mill team, Murphy was recruited by a semi-pro ball club, the Providence Independence.

Then she joined Carr's Boston All Stars, who barnstormed the north east and Canada.

Hurd says she played 100 games a summer for some 20 years.

- Her fielding was excellent.

She was not a power hitter and she often went 0-2, 0-3.

But she hit well enough to be kept on the team.

And her defense was outstanding.

She wasn't short, maybe short compared to some of the other ball players on the team.

She had red hair, which she kept up under her cap.

- [Pamela] Murphy knew she was a novelty, yet she had the confidence to promote her status on an all male team.

She wore her name on the front of her uniform and sold picture postcards and autographs to fans after the game.

- Well, one of the things, I think, really sums it up about her is that she avoided frivolity.

She was a very serious person.

She was committed to playing baseball and that's what she wanted to do.

Yes, she had her doubts early on as to what she was supposed to do with her life.

- Those doubts likely surfaced because women in the early 1900s, and to this very day, don't play on men's baseball teams.

But Hurd says Murphy decided she just couldn't sit on the bench.

Did the guys accept her?

- Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

One of the funny things about the guys accepting, she says that she, yes, there was a lot of cursing, but she knew all the words.

So she was okay with it.

She may not have used the words herself, but she was one of the men, of the guys on the team, she was a teammate.

So once she proved that she could play, they stood up for her.

- [Pamela] In fact, they backed her when she made a strike for equal rights.

The guys were getting paid five bucks a game.

And even though Murphy was a big draw, she was not paid.

So one day, she refused to play for a huge crowd expected in Newport.

- And it was a big game.

When it came time to getting on the bus, she told the manager, "No pay, no Newport."

You know, no pay, no play, basically.

And he said, "Well, all right, she deserves the money.

So here's $5 for your game and you can split the receipts with us."

So she got on the bus and there she was, the first professional baseball holdout.

- [Pamela] And her story was about to get bigger than the green monster.

- Programs!

(indistinct) $5!

- In 1922, right here at Fenway, Lizzie Murphy made history.

The first woman to ever play with major leaguers.

Murphy stepped up to the plate against the Boston Red Sox for the American League All Stars exhibition game at Friendly Fenway.

At the oldest ballpark in the country, 100 years ago this season, she played two innings.

And what was the score?

How did it end up?

- Well, her team won.

- Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Did the Boston Red Sox know that they were beaten by a girl?

- Oh yes.

Yeah.

- Why is it her story hasn't been told a lot and people don't know her?

- Well, I'll be honest about this and say, because she's a woman.

And that was one thing that people could not abide.

They couldn't, they believed women cannot play baseball.

And she debunked that myth.

- [Pamela] Hurd continues sorting through the lore and legend of Murphy.

There is a small archive at Warren's George Hale Free Library.

It is known Murphy got hits off this slim bat, one of the few pieces of the pioneer's memorabilia in the trophy case of Warren's Sports Hall of Fame inside Town Hall.

But the career end for the trailblazer came when Murphy retired from baseball at age 40.

Two years later, she married mill supervisor, Walter Larivee.

After he died a few years later, she went to work on oyster boats along Warren's docks.

Murphy never spoke much about her past.

- The speculation always had been that she was just angry and bitter about her life.

I tend to believe, again, using the knowledge that she wasn't one to go out and party, that she missed the game.

There is a mention in an interview that she was very proud of what she had done, once someone told her that she had been the first woman to play at Fenway, or, she was very proud of that, but she wasn't one to boast.

- [Pamela] And for all her claim to fame, there is little mention of Lizzie Murphy at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Even her grave site in Warren makes no mention of her illustrious career.

Her tombstone is simply marked "Elizabeth Larivee."

She died at age 70 in 1964, but Hurd says her legacy stands tall in the field of sports history.

- This is a woman who, even before women were allowed to vote, stood up, just was not afraid to say, "I love baseball."

And she went and played it.