Maud had a modest and quiet personality, yet also a serious and focussed mind, which she brought to her forty year career. She played baseball as a pitcher, batter and third baseman. The five foot three inch tall Italian girl’s family emigrated from a Tyrollean village when Maud was very young. Born Clementina Brida on November 17, 1881 little seems to be known about how she gained the name Maud Nelson. In 1897 at the age of fifteen Maud was the starting pitcher for the Boston Bloomer Girls. From 1899 till 1902 she played for the Chicago Bloomer Girls, during which time it was noted that the “pitching skills of Maud Nelson attracted attention, and some men found to their chagrin that they couldn’t get a hit off her” (Berlage 35). At age 30 she became the founder of the Western Bloomer Girls. Her first husband passed away in 1917, at which point she began touring with the Boston Bloomer Girls again. In 1922 she met and married Constante Dellacqua. She ran various teams over the years that barnstormed and challenged men’s town, semi-pro, and minor league teams.
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