Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone The First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League

by Martha Ackmann

  The route Pollock constructed—through Louisiana and the Deep South—was intentional. Not only did Syd suspect that fans who remembered Toni from her Creoles days would turn out to see her, but he also did his best to avoid stops through the Appalachian states. The Clowns hated mountain travel. “Don’t book us through the Smokies this year,” players begged Pollock. “Don’t want to ride those cliffs.”34 As good a driver as Chauff was, the tight curves and sheer drops were dangerous for a large bus traveling late at night on narrow two-lane roads. Chauff was supposed to sleep during games so that he would be ready for a twelve-hour drive after the last out. But Wilson loved dominoes more than sleep, and he often sat high up in the stands during a game, flipping dominoes when he should have been napping.35 To help Chauff navigate the roads and keep him company at night, a player volunteered to ride “milk can.” A metal milk keg was wedged into the top of the stairwell across from the driver. As copilot, “Milk can” was responsible for calling out every road sign, curve, or potential danger to the driver. Players took shifts sitting milk can, although the team clown, King Tut, who knew nearly every road on the tour, was the mainstay.* No one made jokes about the dangers of travel, even though in all their years on the road the Clowns had only one serious accident. Once, on a rural stretch of Indiana road during the 1947 season, the main fuel tank ran dry. Chauff pulled over to switch on the auxiliary tank. The players set up flares to warn oncoming motorists. The next day’s pitcher was asleep in his assigned spot—the long seat at the rear of the bus. When Bunny looked up to check on Chauff, he saw what looked like a car full of drunks, wildly careening down the road toward them. “Man’s gonna hit us!” Bunny yelled. The car swerved and hit the rear of the bus, sending the pitcher crashing to the floor, where his knees slammed into a metal support post. The bus didn’t fare any better: the crankcase, the motor block, and the storage compartment door were all severely damaged. Pollock was tied up in lawsuits for years.36 Given all the miles they traveled, some veteran players and perhaps even Chauff himself believed it was only a matter of time until a serious accident happened again.

  The same day fans were cheering for Toni in New Orleans, national weather forecasters based in Louisiana warned of vicious storms that were lining up in Texas and heading east. The team was heading in that direction, bound for Texas after the game. Later that day, an F5 tornado—the most destructive in Texas history—ripped into Waco, killing 114 and injuring nearly 600. The storm struck the downtown area near the ballpark, flattening buildings but leaving light standards around the field untouched. Over 200 businesses and 150 homes were destroyed, including the town’s large Dr. Pepper bottling plant. The tornado reminded Toni and the Clowns that long jumps in bad weather posed another threat to traveling ball teams. Unlike major league clubs, which traveled by trains or airplanes and whose salaries were not dependent on playing every game, Negro League squads pushed, sometimes carelessly, in order to make it to the next town. “Shuckin’ corn, hoeing taters, picking cotton, ain’t no tougher than this business,” Buster said.37 In its many years as a traveling squad, the Indianapolis Clowns ran up more miles than any other team. They boasted that they had never missed a booking. “Join the Clowns. See the world!” was the team’s ironic motto. Pollock kept track of the miles as well as the dangers and used both as promotional copy in the team’s program book. “The Clowns have traveled 2,110,000 miles. Once played in a town with a population of 476 and had 1,372 fans at the game. Largest crowd 41,127 in Detroit. Smallest 35 in Lubbock, TX during a tornado. Have had the same bus driver for 17 years, worn out three buses and 19 sets of tires.”38 While fans reading the book might have found the statistics amusing, there were others, including Toni, who recognized the dangers. When the Clowns reached Texas a few days after leaving New Orleans, the state was still reeling from the tornado. Seeing the devastation in Waco, no one felt comforted to learn that storm forecasters predicted the summer of 1953 would be a bad one.*

  On Friday, May 15, the Clowns kicked off the official start of the Negro American League season in Beaumont. They lost to the Monarchs 4–2, squeezing out only four hits. Toni walked twice and handled every fielding opportunity “without a miss” according to published accounts.39 Ernie Banks received one of the Monarchs’ two errors when he overthrew first base and forced an unearned run.40 But the game in Texas was only a warm-up for what everyone considered the true opening of the season, the home opener against the Monarchs in Kansas City. From Waco, the Monarchs and the Clowns pushed on to Oklahoma, then Kansas, and finally into Missouri for the big game. Toni thought Opening Day festivities for the New Orleans Creoles had been exuberant. She could not imagine what might unfold in Kansas City. The Monarchs’ businessmen watched closely, too. No one knew for certain if crowds would be smaller than last year or if there would be renewed interest in black baseball in this first test of the Midwestern market. The Monarchs hoped that the seventeen-thousand-seat stadium would attract fourteen thousand fans, an improvement over the previous year’s twelve thousand. Everyone watched the gate that Sunday morning.

  The first indication of what was in store for Toni and the future of Negro League baseball was the hurried young waitress serving breakfast to Chicago Defender sports columnist Russ Cowans. She couldn’t wait for him to gulp down his coffee, pay the bill, and be gone. She had to get to the game. Fans started lining up outside the stadium at 11:00 A.M. for a game that didn’t begin until 2:30. By noon, traffic was snarled and “Sold Out” signs began appearing on makeshift parking lots filled with out-of-state cars. Then the parade began. A police escort wailed its siren as seven hundred people—majorettes, marching bands, politicians, and businesspeople—began the slow route to the stadium. Some of the dignitaries admitted they were sleepy. A celebratory banquet had gone late the night before, saluting old-timers and welcoming Toni and other members of the Monarchs and the Clowns to the 1953 season.

  As she always did, Toni basked in the attention. She admitted that sometimes she played the part of a big shot. “I’d get a $20 bill and get it all in ones and have one five that I’d wrap around and it made me look like I had big money,” she laughed.41 Everyone seemed caught up in the spectacle. “The fervor of interest is hard to describe,” one diner said, recalling years past when stars like Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson came to town. Newspapers sensed the same excitement and thought Toni Stone might be a new catalyst. Cowans called her “the greatest star attraction to hit the loop since Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige.” This year would be different, baseball promoters thought. Even the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager, in town to scout major league prospects, agreed. “I believe some Negro League teams quit too soon,” he said.

  As the parade entered left center field, the drum major at the head of the line could see that the fans filled the park and overflowed to a grassy slope outside the field. Hundreds more stood on ramps around the stadium or outside, hoping to get in. Families brought picnic baskets and cool thermos jugs for the long afternoon. Syd Pollock had come in from New York for the game and served as catcher for the ceremonial first pitch. But once the teams got down to playing, the game did not go well for the Clowns. The Monarchs scored one run in the first, another in the second, and exploded for five in the third. The Clowns’ pitchers, Percy Smith and Ted Richardson, had difficulty locating their pitches, and by the game’s end the team had managed only three runs on eight hits. Toni Stone did not fare well either. In her first at bat, she fouled off two, then swung wide and missed a curve for a strikeout; her second time up, she hit a grounder to first base for an easy out. She had no chances in the field. The final score was 8–3. It was the Clowns’ sixth straight loss to the Monarchs in league play.

  The following day two stories dominated black sports news. Over twenty thousand fans had attended the Opening Day in Kansas City, a figure larger than promoters had hoped for and significantly greater than in recent years. And Toni Stone was the main attraction. Even though she did not make any sparkling plays in the f
ield or pound the ball, simply the fact that she played competent baseball against professional male athletes was newsworthy. “The only girl playing in league baseball had an appeal,” Kansas City Call sports editor John L. Johnson wrote. “And the fact that she elects to play the difficult second base position instead of choosing a nice soft berth in right or left field, arouses the interest of the curious.” Toni Stone earned “the plaudits of the crowd,” another writer noted, “in every park in which she has appeared so far this season.” Another was struck by her serious devotion to the game and called her a veteran player. Even white columnists commented on her play. Dorothy Kilgallen observed, “Metropolitan baseball scouts are more than a little interested in a twenty-one-year-old Negro lass—name of Marcenia Lyle (Toni) Stone, who played second base for the Indianapolis Clowns. She belts home runs as easily as most girls catch stitches in their knitting, and the sports boys are goggle-eyed.” Nearly every account of the game acknowledged that Negro baseball appeared healthier and more alive than in recent years and gave Toni credit for enlivening fan interest. “Who says the Negro American League is dead?” the Pittsburgh Courier asked. “You can’t make fans in this city [Kansas City] believe it.”42

  The next week, over ten thousand fans came out to see the Clowns and Black Barons series in Birmingham—the largest crowd Rickwood Field had seen in five years. Later, in St. Louis, fourteen thousand fans attended the game. When Clowns second baseman Ray Neil received an offer to play AA minor league ball with the Beaumont Texas League, he turned them down. The pay and perhaps the crowds were better in the Negro League. At the end of May, Syd Pollock had an announcement to make. A Japanese league had offered to purchase Toni Stone’s contract for twenty-five thousand dollars, but Pollock said “his girl infielder was not for sale at any price.” Pollock said he would consider negotiating a tour of Japan for the Clowns after the season was over and would guarantee Toni’s appearance.43 Cities where the Clowns had not scheduled games in years, such as Louisville, contacted Pollock to arrange an appearance. On a swing through Tennessee, the Clowns played the Memphis Red Sox. During infield practice, Toni bare-handed a line drive and the ball sliced open her palm, requiring four stitches. The injury forced her to sit out five games, although the day after the accident she appeared in full uniform, ready to play, and argued in the dugout with Buster Hay-wood. She wanted at least to take infield practice, but Haywood refused, saying her hand needed time to heal. Toni obeyed her manager’s order although she did not like it. All too often, Haywood recognized, Clown players stayed in the game with injuries that jeopardized their health.44

  As the crowds continued to turn out to see Toni play, it was inevitable that critics would also emerge. The only surprise was who fired the first shot. Wendell Smith, the Pittsburgh Courier’s influential columnist, had fought for the integration of baseball and traveled with Jackie Robinson during his first season with the Dodgers. In a June 20, 1953, column, Smith publicly ridiculed Toni Stone. “Maybe the guy was tired of baby-sitting or couldn’t find the can opener, but whatever the reason, he was justified when he cried out: ‘A woman’s place is in the home!’ That undisputable statement rings true, we think, in the case of a baseball player by the name of Toni Stone.” Acknowledging that Toni had revived the league, Smith went on to belittle the league. “It is indeed unfortunate that Negro baseball has collapsed to the extent it must tie itself to a woman’s apron strings in order to survive,” he wrote. Smith cited Stone’s statistics, including seventeen at bats, but not the complete two months’ season thus far. Many statisticsfor Negro Leaguers were based on league games only, even though the Clowns played the Monarchs, Red Sox, and Black Barons many other times during the season. Smith judged that Stone had a .217 average for her seventeen visits to the plate. “That’s not much of an average to write home about but you’ll have to admit, it’s not bad for a dame.” Twenty-two other Negro League players had batting averages below Toni Stone, according to Smith. “Any guy who can’t out-hit a fraulein shouldn’t be permitted to play in the Little League which is an organization for tykes and midgets,” he wrote. Smith wondered whether a .217 average was inflated to begin with, speculating that scorers perhaps patronizing her would say, “She’s a cute little thing, let’s call it a hit.”45

  “I ask for no favors,” Toni had said earlier in the season. “I’m playing a man’s game and I want no special considerations. I’ll get my share of the hits.”46 If she read Wendell Smith’s comments, the insults would have been nothing new. “There are people who try to make it hard,” she later said. “There are people who call you names.”47 Over the years, Toni had found a way to inoculate herself against people like Smith. “I’ve heard so much cursing in my life and have been called so many bad names,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”48 Profanity she could take, but ridicule cut deeper. Smith’s disparagement was only beginning. The centerpiece of his column was a lengthy fictitious dialogue between Toni and her husband, presenting Alberga as a henpecked subordinate and Toni as a makeup-wearing, man-crazy, wardrobe-conscious, department-store bargain hunter. No one who actually knew her would ever have recognized the “Toni Stone” that Wendell Smith mocked.

  Husband: How did the pitcher on the other team look today?

  Mrs. Stone: I’m telling you that guy’s just about as handsome as they come. When that big, strong beast looked down at me when I was batting, I got so excited I didn’t know what to do. I won’t ever get a hit off him. I get so weak when he looks at me. I can’t generate enough strength to bunt. What curves he has! …

  Husband: Some bills came today and one of them is for $350.

  Mrs. Stone: I know … I went downtown yesterday and purchased a new glove … a silver mink glove. It’s really something. I’m the envy of every woman in the stands on Ladies Day.49

  The contrast could not have been greater between Wendell Smith’s assessment and a sports column that appeared at the same time. Fay Young, the Chicago Defender’s sports columnist, wrote about female tennis star Althea Gibson. In 1950, Gibson broke the color barrier of the U.S. Nationals and went on to challenge racial restrictions at the French Open and Wimbledon. While both women were trailblazers facing significant odds, Gibson was not breaking into a male domain and into a team sport that depended on—at least—the begrudging support of others. Wendell Smith viewed Toni as an interloper, not a pioneer. Even when Syd Pollock—perhaps opportunistically—began turning out press releases that placed Toni’s play in a larger social context, many baseball observers remained unswayed. “Continuing to make headlines is the Clowns’ 22 year old second baseman,” Pollock wrote, “the first girl fielder to be signed and break down the prejudice against women players” in the Negro League.50 Dr. J. B. Martin, league president, also began using Toni as an example of the league’s commitment to equity. The Negro League “does not even bar a person because of sex if that person can play baseball,” he wrote in a syndicated column. “The Indianapolis Clowns are featuring a woman at second base this season.”51 Yet Martin never backed up his comments with action that took Toni seriously, by advocating, for example, that she be allowed to play as many innings as her statistics warranted rather than being pulled midway through the game.

  Despite Wendell Smith’s ridicule (or perhaps because of it), fans continued setting ballpark records to see Toni Stone. At Briggs Field in Detroit over Father’s Day, the Clowns and the Monarchs split a pair with attendance that matched the 1940s heyday of the Negro Leagues. Over twenty-six thousand watched Toni “hold up her share of play at second base.”52 Later that month, at a doubleheader in Toledo, Toni pulled a ligament in her shoulder lunging for a line drive in another game against Kansas City. The injury was bad enough to send her to the hospital, and after she struck out in pain several nights later in Chicago, Haywood sent her to an emergency room again. Gordon “Hoppy” Hopkins, the Clowns’ utility infielder, said Toni’s arm was in a sling. But posters were up all over town announcing her appearance, so Bun
ny told her to put on her uniform and play. “And she did,” Hopkins said.53 Perhaps worried about further injuries to his star female player, Syd Pollock in July signed Doris Jackson as an “understudy to Toni Stone,” according to reports in the Washington Post.54 Jackson, a sixteen-year-old from Philadelphia, had attracted attention playing at a local recreation center.55 “I hope you do not permit the other gal you say they are breaking in to worry you for one minute,” Toni’s husband wrote. “After all they have built you up and it is you the fans are looking to see play.”56 But Toni rebounded. Jackson apparently left the Clowns; her name was not in any lineup for the remainder of the season.

  In fact, Toni went on a tear, hitting her stride and feeling healthier than she had all season. In Muskegon, Michigan, she got the Clowns’ only hit in a Kansas City shutout, but the single did not go over well with her teammates. “When I came back to the dugout, not one player shook my hand or acknowledged what I had done,” she said.57 Several days later, while playing against a white national semi-pro championship team, she slashed a line drive single in the first inning and a double to left in the third. One of Toni’s teammates may have thought the only way to stop Toni from overshadowing the men on the team was to injure her. According to Hoppy Hopkins, third baseman Willie Brown took too long getting a grounder over to Toni at second, and his throw positioned her for a spike. Bunny Downs didn’t like what he saw; Brown’s play looked like sabotage. After the game, when players were showered, dressed, and in their seats on the bus, Bunny stood and faced them. “Ain’t no need to naming names,” he said. “We all know what happened. This lady’s putting money in our pockets. We don’t want her hurt turning double plays. You men all expendable. She ain’t. ’Nuff said.”58 While Downs’s warning may have curbed some of the sabotage Toni experienced on the field, it was not the end of the harassment she received from her teammates.