Tag Archives: Baseball

Toni storms the field

The World Series will go on without my Yankees, but here’s one more baseball story for you. Meet Toni Stone, the first woman to play professional ball in the Negro Leagues.

            Marcenia Lyle Stone was born in West Virginia in 1921, but at age 10, she moved with her family to St. Paul, Minnesota. Her interest in sports was noted early, earning her the nickname “Tomboy.” Eventually, she chose “Toni” as her professional name.

            Her mother was unhappy with Toni’s athletic interests. She bought her a pair of ice skates, hoping to dissuade her from less feminine pursuits. Toni wanted nothing to do with those skates! Neither did she want to play softball — it was baseball, and baseball only, for her.

            “Baseball was like a drug,” Toni said. “Whenever summer would come around and the bats would start popping, I’d go crazy.”*

            Toni’s parents considered that “drug” sinful, and she dutifully confessed to the family’s Catholic priest. Surprisingly, he didn’t extract penance from her — instead, he signed her up for the church’s baseball team, the first girl to play.

The coach couldn’t say no

            Looking for more coaching, Toni showed up to watch the action at a baseball school run by Gabby Street, manager of the minor league St. Paul Saints. At first, the coach wasn’t thrilled.

            “Every time I chased her away, she would go around the corner and come back to plague me again,” Street said. “I just couldn’t get rid of her until I gave her a chance.”**

            Not only was Toni the first woman in Street’s program, she was the first Black player he had accepted. Until she came along, he had scrupulously maintained an all-white program.

            By the time she was 16, Toni was playing weekend games with the barnstorming Twin City Colored Giants, where again she was a first. Eventually, she dropped out of high school and moved to San Francisco to live with her sister, hoping to make a living playing baseball.

            There, a local pub owner got Toni settled with an American Legion baseball team. But there was a catch — Legion ball limited players to ages 18 and under. No problem! Toni just erased 10 years from her actual age and presented herself as a 17-year-old teenager. She played with the team for two years, until 1945.

            Legion ball led Toni to the San Francisco Sea Lions, a barnstorming team that was part baseball and part vaudeville. But when she learned she was being paid less than the male players, she decamped to the New Orleans Creoles.

Replacing “The Hammer”

            Now, let’s add on another layer of discrimination. In 1950, Toni married Aurelious Pescia Alberga, who ordered her to abandon baseball. She gave in for one year, but the pull of the game was too strong. “He would have stopped me if he could have, but he couldn’t,” Stone said.***

            Toni caught the eye of the Indianapolis Clowns, who were hurting from the departure of Hank Aaron, who had been signed by the Atlanta Braves. The Clowns were looking for someone who could not only bring in crowds but was also good at the game. So, in 1953, Toni became the first woman to play in the Negro Leagues, as a second baseman.

            No matter that it was a publicity stunt, Toni won the nation over. “She belts home runs as easily as most girls catch stitches in their knitting, and the sports boys are goggle-eyed,”  reported syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen.†

Leaving the bench

            Not surprisingly, the Clowns restricted the team to one female player, and Toni left the team when two other women were signed. She joined the Kansas City Monarchs, the team Jackie Robinson left to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking through the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

            But being the first woman on men’s teams wasn’t easy, and most likely never fun. She was shunned by her teammates, who taunted her and worse. Runners tried to spike her as they slid into second. She came to expect nothing less. “They never let up,” she said.††

            In 1955, after spending most of her time on the Monarchs’ bench, Toni quit playing ball. In 1993, she was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. She died on November 2, 1996 at the age of 75, but not before making her mark on the game she loved.

                                                _________________________

* Ashwanta Jackson, “This woman shattered the gender barrier in pro baseball,” timeline.com (June 7, 2018).

** “Woman Player Says She Can ‘Take Care of Self’ in Game,” Ebony (June/July 1953), p. 48.

*** “This woman.”

† “This woman.”

†† “Girl Star in Game at League Park Wednesday Night,” Jackson (MS) Advocate (May 2, 1953), p. 2. 

And yer OUT!

The World Series is on deck and that reminds me of a baseball player I’ve been meaning to write about. Jackie Mitchell — the girl who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

            Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell was only the second female to play professional baseball.* Born in 1913, she learned the game from her father, which as you can imagine was unusual for the time.

            But a neighbor, Charles “Dazzy” Vance, also coached the budding player. He was a Major League pitcher who had lead the league in strikeouts for seven seasons.

            When Jackie was 16, she joined the Englettes, a woman’s team in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The lefty-throwing Jackie’s skill as a pitcher — and her sinking curveball — caught the eye of Joe Engel, also owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, a AA minor-league team. On March 25, 1931, Engle signed Jackie to the team.

It’s game day

            On April 2, 1931, the Lookouts played an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, who were traveling north from spring training. The stands were filled with 4,000 spectators. 

            Seventeen-year-old Jackie took the mound in the first inning as a relief pitcher. The starting pitcher had given up a single and a double. Ruth and Gehrig were next in the lineup. 

            Mitchell was throwing her trademark sinker. Her first pitch to Ruth was called a ball, and Ruth swung at and missed the next two pitches. Dramatically, he asked the umpire to inspect the ball, and the umpire threw out a new one. The fourth pitch was called a strike — Ruth had struck out.

            At that, The Bambino charged the ump, while teammates hiked onto the field to lead him back to the bench. He stomped off the field and threw his bat against the dugout.

            Next up was Gehrig. Jackie threw three pitches; Gehrig swung at and missed all three. The crowd was on its feet with a standing ovation. She walked the next batter and was pulled from the game. The final score was 14-4 Yankees. But who really cared about the score!

            “Girl Pitcher Fans Ruth and Gehrig” blared the headline in the next day’s New York Times.

What’s the score?

            To this day, people debate the question: Did Jackie really did strike out Ruth and Gehrig? Engel was widely known as a stunt promoter. In the middle of the Great Depression, his team managed to attract large crowds despite the hard times.

            It was absolutely not a stunt, counters one sports historian. Being a lefty against the two left-handed sluggers gave Jackie an advantage.

            “Think about a pitcher coming in they’ve never seen before,” said Leslie Heaphy, an associate professor of sports history at Kent State. “She’s a lefty with a very deceptive pitch.”**

            About Gehrig, many people say he just wasn’t as skilled a hitter as Ruth. And people doubt the King of Swat would have agreed to a stunt that made him look bad. But Ruth tipped his hat to Jackie when he stepped up to bat. And the runner on first didn’t try to steal a base against her.

            Whatever the case, male sportswriters had a field day.

            “The very fact that such a thing should come to pass, even in burlesque, is cause for every male in the land to quake in his boots!” cried Alabama writer Ralph W. Callahan.***

You’re benched

            Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis intervened and voided Jackie’s contract. She joined the barnstorming circuit — traveling teams that were equal parts sports and vaudeville — but in 1937, Jackie retired from the game.

            Jackie was angry that she was scorned as a sideshow act. (“She swings a mean lipstick!” smirked the New York Times). Even when she had the chance to play again — when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League started up in 1943 during World War II — she refused. And in 1952, Major League Baseball banned women from the game. Jackie threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Chattanooga Lookouts game in 1982, but that was it. She died in 1987.

            These stories of female firsts can be inspiring, but all too often they end like Jackie’s, a sad story of thwarted ambition. She was truly a woman scorned. That’s why Title IX is so important for female athletes. They just want the chance to play.

                                                _________________________

* Lizzie Arlington was the first woman to play on a men’s team. She pitched for the Reading (PA) Coal Heavers fifteen years earlier in 1898.

** Leslie Heaphy, “Overlooked No More: Jackie Mitchell, Who Fanned Two of Baseball’s Greats,” The New York Times (Nov. 7, 2017). Healey is also co-author of The Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016)

*** “Morning Musings,” The Anniston (Alabama) Star (March 29, 1931), p. 12.