Lucille Stone Richards honed her baseball skills during the Great Depression at Ceylon Park in Dorchester. After school, she would trade her dress for a pair of castoff dungarees, put on her father’s old work shirt, and zip down to the park clutching her bat and glove.

For years, she was the only girl on the diamond, recalled her sister, Wilma Uno of Bridgewater. She organized the boys into a team she called the Cherokees in a nod to her affinity for Native American culture — which, along with baseball, stayed with her for the rest of her life.

She was pretty and a great shortstop. Those were the requisite qualifications in 1945 that earned Mrs. Richards a spot in the fledgling All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, later immortalized in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.’’ She tried out for the league along with a couple of other girls who were friends from her Roxbury neighborhood, but only Mrs. Richards was selected to make the train ride to Chicago for spring training.

“It was a special time in my life, although we all didn’t realize the historical significance of what we were doing,’’ Mrs. Richards told her grandson Sterling, who wrote a story about her for his Alabama high school newspaper.

Mrs. Richards, who lived in Holbrook and coached Little League in that town for 25 years, died of cancer May 20 in the Royal Cape Cod Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Buzzards Bay. She was 90.

Generations of Holbrook children knew her as their bus driver. She drove a school bus for two decades, but few students knew that the woman at the wheel had been a professional ballplayer.

“She was someone who cared deeply about kids, was a rabid sports fan, and donated a lot of time to the community,’’ Holbrook native Andrew Card said. “She made sure there was a place for baseball in Holbrook.’’

Card, who was White House chief of staff for President George W. Bush, helped organize a 2003 meeting with the president for players from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Launched by Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley in 1943 in a bid to keep baseball alive during World War II, the league lasted until 1954 and employed about 500 women players during its history.

“I did relish the chance for her to come down to the White House,’’ said Card, who was 10 when he first met Mrs. Richards.

She had played for the Racine Belles and the South Bend Blue Sox while her fiance was fighting with the Marines in the Pacific.

Known then as Lou Stone, she wore the league’s regulation skirt and knee socks that left the women with terrible “strawberries’’ on their legs from sliding into bases. She also took charm school lessons in the evenings with the rest of her team and followed rules dictating that players should always wear lipstick, never cut their hair short, and always wear skirts in public.

In “A League of Their Own,’’ actress Geena Davis portrayed Dottie Hinson, who enjoyed a tearful reunion in the movie with her returning soldier beau. But Mrs. Richards was notified that her fiance was killed at Iwo Jima. The shock left her in a deep depression, according to her family, and she did not return to her team for the next season.

Her sadness lifted when she was introduced to Joe “Buddy’’ Richards, who also loved baseball. They married in 1946, had two daughters and a son, and coached generations of Little League players in Holbrook.

Mr. Richards, who worked for Boston Edison for 35 years, died of cancer in 1999, and their daughters also both died of cancer — Jacqueline in 2011, and Judith in 2000.

Born in Boston, Lucille Stone grew up in Roxbury. Her father, who was known as Tony Stone, emigrated from Russia as a child in 1917, just before the Russian Revolution, and became a sheet metal worker. Her mother, the former Marion Phillips, grew up on Prince Edward Island. During the Depression, the family subsisted some days on factory seconds from the Drake’s Cakes bakery near their home.

Her sister recalled that as a girl, Mrs. Richards got to see the Boston Braves, thanks to a team promotion that offered children free seats in the left field stands, where young fans were known as The Knothole Gang.

Mrs. Richards inherited her love of baseball from her father, who had played semipro baseball, according to her family. When she attended the Jeremiah E. Burke High School, she organized her own teams at the park to make up for the lack of sports opportunities for girls.

“I was into dolls and dresses, but not Lou,’’ said her sister, Wilma. “She was always a tomboy. She loved all sports.’’

Whenever Wilma expressed longings to be more like her big sister, Mrs. Richards stopped her. “She always told me to be my own person,’’ Wilma said.

In addition to her sister, Mrs. Richards leaves her son, Jon of Huntsville, Ala.; seven grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and four great-great-grandchildren.

A private burial will be in Fryeburg, Maine, where Mrs. Richards spent her summers at a cottage that the family called their camp. She decorated it in a Native American theme, coupled with tributes to the Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series championship season.

Mrs. Richards long ago donated her Blue Sox baseball uniform to the Northern Indiana Historical Society in South Bend, an official repository for league artifacts. In 1988, the league was recognized by the National Baseball Hall of Fame with an exhibition in Cooperstown.

“She was the salt of the earth. She was the rock in our family,’’ her son Jon said.

He recalled his mother’s love of driving school bus No. 5 for Holbrook and added that “she would have driven the sports teams for nothing just to watch them play.’’

J.M. Lawrence can be reached at jmlawrence@me.com.