(Photo) Rockford, Illinois: Home of the Peaches

Work took me to Rockford yesterday. Illinois' Forest City has been a hard-luck town of late, but it has a couple of things going for it. The Rock River, where downstream Ronald Reagan worked as a lifeguard for seven years, flows through Rockford. And the Rockford Tea Party is one of America's most effective grass-roots group of conservatives.

And Rockford was the home of the Peaches, one of the entries in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, who of course were rediscovered after the release of the movie A League of Their Own. Characters were inventented. The Tom Hanks role was based on Jimmie Foxx, who managed the Fort Wayne Daisies, not the Peaches.

Yet the Peaches were the New York Yankees of the AAGPBL, winning the most championships and they were one of only two teams to play in every season of the league's existence.

This photograph was taken on Riverside Drive in Rockford.

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• Ronald Reagan Trail: Lowell Park and 78 lives saved
• From Rockford: An inside look at the Tea Party Express