As the Major League Baseball's season gets going, it's not only players who will step onto the field but four umpires, one for each base.

So this is a good time to remember Hudson native Amanda "Mandy" Clement, the first woman to be a paid baseball umpire.

Clement's accomplishments are detailed in a book, "Umpire in a Skirt: The Amanda Clement Story," written by Marilyn Kratz of Yankton and illustrated by Hector Curriel of Sioux Falls.

The book has just been released by the South Dakota Historical Society Press.

Kratz first learned about Clement from the late Don Allan, a former Yankton College professor who became a personal friend. Clement had lived with Allan's family in Kratz first wrote a short article on Clement, who was born March 20, 1888, then decided to expand it into a book.

"A lot of newspaper articles were written about her at the time, the 19-teens and 20s," Kratz says.

"I talked to the people at the Cooperstown (N.Y.) Baseball Hall of Fame, she is inducted into that. Her nephew had donated her scrapbook of all her newspaper clippings, and they sent to me photocopies of her entire scrapbook."

While the Sports Illustrated website says Clement's first game as umpire happened in Hudson, Kratz says it actually took place in Hawarden, Iowa.

A demonstration game was scheduled first, but the umpire didn't show up. Clement's brother, Hank, approached his sister, who was sitting in the stands with her mother, and asked her to fill in. When the regular game started, the umpire still was missing. The players decided to ask Clement to continue.

"She had complete command of the rules of the games and was a good umpire," Kratz says.

Clement's love for the game had started in. her childhood.

"She always loved baseball," Kratz says. "As a young girl she would follow her brother and cousin to the baseball park. She wished she could play, and sometimes they would let her be umpire. Sometimes she played first base, but mostly she was umpire."

Before that first game, Clement needed to get her mother's approval. Her mother was aghast but finally relented.

Clement's mother also disapproved of her daughter being paid, but it was the $15 and $25 per game Clement earned as an umpire that paid for her education, first at Yankton College, then the University of Nebraska.

Clement, who was 5-foot-10, played some sports herself. Although records for women weren't kept carefully, Sports Illustrated says she supposedly won tennis championships in Iowa and South Dakota.

She also is reported to have set unofficial world marks in the shot put, sprints and hurdles at Nebraska, and to have established a women's world record in 1912 when she threw a baseball 275 feet.

Clement always dressed demurely when she umpired games.

"She wore a navy blue skirt and a white blouse and tucked extra baseballs into her waistband," Clement says. "She had 'UMPS' stenciled across her blouse."

She continued as an umpire for six years, although she never took part in a pro game. A Congregationalist, Clement also would refuse to umpire on Sundays.

A nephew recalled in 1982 that she would play baseball with him when he was a teenager and she was about 40.

"We used to run inside, pretending to get a drink of water, and instead put some sponge in our gloves because she threw so hard," E.F. "Clem" Clement said.

Amanda Clement lived in Wyoming for a time where she taught college football players ballet. When Clement returned to Hudson to take care of her ailing mother, she made sure that town officials built a swimming pool for the children.

She became a coach, organizing men's and women's baseball teams in colleges and YWCAs.

Clement died in 1971.