Arduous Rock On line casino Rockford Unveils Slots Devoted to Metropolis’s Historic Ladies’s Baseball Crew
By Sean Chaffin
Administration on the Arduous Rock On line casino in Rockford, IL, sought one thing completely different with three underperforming slot machines. The business has all kinds of themes and narratives from popular culture to mythology to basic Vegas and extra. However Arduous Rock officers had been hoping for one thing that resonated extra with locals and commenced working with slot developer IGT on discovering one thing that is perhaps a pleasant match.
That quickly led to a financial institution of three Rockford Peaches slot machines positioned proper in the course of the 175,000-square-foot on line casino. The sport pays homage to the hometown skilled ladies’s baseball group that performed within the All-American Women Skilled Baseball League (AAGPBL) from 1943 to 1954. The league was based throughout World Warfare II to maintain baseball alive whereas many males served within the army.
The ladies’s league was featured within the 1992 movie A League of Their Personal based mostly on the Peaches and that includes Tom Hanks and Geena Davis. The league additionally impressed a 2022 present on Amazon Prime. The Peaches gained 4 league championships and three pennants. Arduous Rock On line casino Rockford President Geno Iafrate was happy to carry a singular slot representing that historical past to the on line casino flooring.
“We wish to do every part we will to help ladies’s baseball and the efforts which are underway to pay tribute to those wonderful ladies and the historical past of the sport and ensure our group acknowledges it,” he stated. “Arduous Rock On line casino Rockford had a possibility to do one thing particular by making a slot machine to pay tribute to the Peaches and to the historical past of the sport.
“These ladies had been phenomenal baseball gamers and I’m simply glad I didn’t need to play in opposition to them—they had been unbelievable. The slot machine brings again all that nostalgia and raises consciousness amongst those that enter the on line casino and possibly haven’t thought of ladies in sports activities.”
One thing Outdated Turns into Information
Seeing the thought come to fruition meant loads of work. The method took greater than six months from idea to completion. The method of manufacturing and approval in a extremely regulated atmosphere is definitely very troublesome and costly, Iafrate stated. It’s frequent to take an current sport platform and reskin it into a brand new theme and that’s successfully what occurred with the brand new Rockford Peaches.
“It’s an previous S2000 slot machine that you simply change the reel strips on, and you modify the highest glass and the stomach glass and also you make it a unique-themed sport,” he stated. “There are fewer and fewer of those machines on the market. It’s so much inexpensive and so much faster than attempting to develop your individual from the bottom up. It’s very nostalgic and widespread and really becoming for the Rockford Peaches.”
The Peaches apparently placed on these rally caps in comparison with the earlier incarnations, and the efficiency of the three slots actually circled. The native angle and enjoyable theme have attracted loads of slot gamers hoping for a house run of their very own within the type of massive payouts.
“The slot machines that was in that location within the on line casino had been among the many worst performing machines on the ground, and I can inform you the brand new Rockford Peaches machines are removed from the worst on the ground,” Iafrate says.
“They’re doing nice! I feel individuals love the truth that we’re paying tribute to the Peaches and to ladies’s baseball. They like taking pictures with the machines, they usually prefer to spend some cash and take a look at their luck. It’s been an ideal draw.”
98-Yr-Outdated Former Participant Attends Slot Unveiling
As a part of the celebration concerned in unveiling the machines, 98-year-old former ladies’s skilled baseball participant Maybelle Blair was a part of the festivities. Blair, who’s a slot participant herself, performed for the Peoria Redwings within the league’s inaugural season and went on to play skilled softball as properly. Whereas she didn’t play for the Peaches, she was happy to see the on line casino preserve the spirit of girls within the sport alive.
“I nonetheless can’t imagine it,” she says. “It’s essentially the most great feeling on the planet that the Arduous Rock On line casino Rockford honored us with these machines. I like it!
“There’s nothing I like higher than enjoying the slots. I can simply preserve hitting that button and I like it. Individuals don’t notice it’s actually essentially the most enjoyable factor on the planet. I overlook about every part once I’m sitting at that slot machine.”
What has the general expertise been like seeing the slot unveiled for somebody who truly performed within the league virtually eight many years in the past?
“Oh my gosh!” Blair says. “You haven’t any concept! I don’t have hardly any hair on my physique however each hair I did have stood straight up once I noticed it. I’ve by no means been so thrilled to see that any person acknowledged that us ladies might play baseball, and it was only a thrill that Arduous Rock On line casino Rockford acknowledged and gave us the chance to have our personal slot machine.”
Blair even gained a strong $300 on the brand new Peaches machine, including: “Batting 300 isn’t dangerous!” Life on the baseball diamond was an exquisite escape from regular life for the ladies who made the reduce to play within the league.
“It was a life we by no means even dreamed of,” Blair says. “In these days, you needed to be a secretary, a schoolteacher, or a nurse. These had been the one alternatives we had till the baseball league opened up because of the conflict. It was essentially the most great factor in my life. You simply couldn’t imagine it.”
The little bit of nostalgia seems to be well-timed. The brand new Ladies’s Skilled Baseball League (WPBL) is planning to launch in the summertime of 2026 with six groups. Co-founded by Justine Siegal, the primary feminine coach in Main League Baseball, and businessman and Toronto Maple Leafs’ proprietor Keith Stein, the 
league already reported 500 gamers registered for tryouts by late June.
The WPBL is about to be the primary skilled ladies’s baseball league within the U.S. because the AAGPBL shut down in 1954. The Arduous Rock’s head of merchandising is even trying to characteristic some co-branded Peaches merchandise within the on line casino’s Rock Store. As the brand new league takes form, Blair loves seeing extra alternatives opening up for feminine gamers.
“There are women’ clinics all around the United States, a combination of women’ softball and hardball gamers studying that when you’re enjoying one sport, you possibly can play the opposite,” she says. “It was simply introduced the Ladies’s Baseball World Cup will probably be hosted in Rockford, Illinois in 2026, solely the second time to be hosted in the US. I’m going to be there so long as I keep on this aspect of the dust. I’m going to be there even when they need to unfold my ashes on the market!”
The previous participant is hoping the on line casino has a resort on website by the point she turns 100. The property plans on internet hosting a celebration for her in 2027.
“It’ll be spectacular,” Iafrate says. “And we’ll do our greatest to provide Maybelle a Arduous Rock Lodge right here for her a hundredth birthday.”
