Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone The First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League
Page 27
52. Ibid., 70.
53. Ibid., 4.
54. Jackie Robinson as told to Alfred Duckett, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson (New York: Harper Collins, 1972), xvii.
55. Eig, 161. The rhyme is attributed to sportswriter Wendell Smith.
56. Toni Stone interview with Miki Turner, August 1992. Turner interview notes shared with author July 10, 2009.
57. Ibid.; “Baseball Pioneer Tells Students to Follow Dreams,” Saint Paul Pioneer Press, March 7, 1990.
58. George Nathan, Maryville Daily Forum, June 24, 1953.
59. “Girls of Summer,” San Francisco Exploratorium exhibit.
60. Ron Thomas, “She Made It a League of Her Own,” Emerge, May 1996.
61. Letter from Eddie Harris to Clifford Allen, postmarked January 31, 1949. Eddie Harris Collection. African-American Museum and Library, Oakland, California.
62. Alan Ward, “On Second Thought,” Oakland Tribune, May 25, 1953.
Chapter 5: Finding the Heart of the Game
1. Afrohistory.about.com.
2. Almanac.com/weatherhistory.
3. Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 111.
4. Fairclough, 84.
5. Ibid., xvii.
6. Ted Lewis, “Negro Leagues Had Local Flavor,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 4, 1994.
7. Mike Mulhern, “Barnstorming Days Put Clark in Contact with Game’s Best,” Baton Rouge State-Times, August 4, 1987.
8. Louisiana Weekly, May 15, 1948.
9. www.attheplate.com.
10. Marty Mule, “Walter Wright Savors Black Pels’ Glory Days,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 5, 1983.
11. Louisiana Weekly, April 17, 1948.
12. Ibid., February 19, 1949.
13. Ibid., May 10, 1950.
14. S. Derby Gisclair. Baseball in New Orleans (Portsmouth, NH: Arcadia Publishing, 2004), 36, 75, 89.
15. Bob Hayes, “To This Ms., Diamond Is Made of Dirt,” San Francisco Examiner, May 4, 1976.
16. Lenny Yochim interview with the author, October 4, 2008.
17. Willie Mays with Lou Sahadi, Say, Hey: The Autobiography of Willie Mays (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 70.
18. Rick Swaine, The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole: The Jackie Robinson Generation in the Major Leagues, 1947–1959 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 114.
19. D. L. Cummings, “The Genuine Article Sam Lacy, 93, and Going Strong in Black Journalism,” New York Daily News, February 2, 1997.
20. Bruce Adelson, Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 78, 89, 94.
21. Jeffrey Flanagan, “A Stop in Kansas City,” Kansas City Star, April 15, 1997.
22. http://explorepahistory.com/odocument.php?docId=224; Ted Lewis, “Negro Leagues Had Local Flavor,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 4, 1994; Wilmer Fields, My Life in the Negro Leagues: An Autobiography of Wilmer Fields (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1992), 3.
23. Lewis.
24. Louisiana Weekly, June 5, 1948.
25. Hayes.
26. Adelson, 92, 70.
27. Chuck Harmon, quoted in Adelson, 80.
28. Herald Gordon interview with the author, July 22, 2008.
29. Russell Stockard interview with the author, October 16, 2008.
30. Louisiana Weekly, May 7, 1949.
31. Jim Reisler, Black Writers/Black Baseball: An Anthology of Articles from Black Sportswriters Who Covered the Negro Leagues (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2007), 7.
32. Reisler, 148–149.
33. Herald Gordon interview with the author, July 22, 2008.
34. Leslie Heaphy, The Negro Leagues, 1869–1960 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company), 127.
35. Heaphy, 128.
36. Willie Mays with Lou Sahadi, Say Hey: The Autobiography of Willie Mays (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 36.
37. Wilmer Fields, My Life in the Negro Leagues: An Autobiography of Wilmer Fields (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1992), 18.
38. Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), xvii.
39. Russell Stockard interview with the author, October 16, 2008. Stockard succeeded Jim Hall at the Louisiana Weekly.
40. Paul Dickson, Fiftieth Anniversary Hall of Fame Yearbook, 1989, 38. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., Cooperstown, NY.
41. Louisiana Weekly, December 18, 1948.
42. Ibid., March 5, 1949.
43. Ibid., February 9, 1952.
44. Ibid., June 17, 1950.
45. Lucille Bland interviews with the author, October 1, 2008, and October 7, 2008.
46. Ibid.; Louisiana Weekly, July 17, 1948, June 17, 1950.
47. Fields, 14.
48. Herald Gordon interview with the author, July 22, 2008.
49. Ibid.
50. New York Times, June 30, 1949.
51. Herald Gordon interview with the author, July 22, 2008; Louisiana Weekly, April 9, 1949.
52. Hayes.
53. Louisiana Weekly, January 22, 1949.
54. Ibid., April 9, 1949.
55. Adelson, 7–8.
56. Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), introductory epigraph.
57. Ibid.
58. Louisiana Weekly, March 29, 1948.
59. Elec Njaker, Louisiana Weekly, April 2, 1949, 10.
60. Louisiana Weekly, March 5, 1949, and May 10, 1952.
61. Louisiana Weekly, March 5, 1949.
62. Louisiana Weekly, February 19, 1949, February 26, 1949, March 5, 1949, March 12, 1949; Time, February 21, 1949, March 14, 1949; Arthur Hardy, Mardi Gras in New Orleans (Metairie, LA: Alan Hardy Enterprises, 2001).
63. Ted Lewis, “Negro Leagues Had Local Flavor,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 4, 1994.
64. John Holway, Black Diamonds: Life in the Negro Leagues from the Men Who Loved It (Westport, CT: Meckler Publishing, 1989), 139–140; Raymond Mohl, “Clowning Around: The Miami Ethiopian Clowns and Cultural Conflict in Black Baseball,” Tequesta: The Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida no. LXII, 2002, 40–68.
65. Hayes.
66. Louisiana Weekly, July 23, 1949.
67. Chicago Defender, July 9, 1949.
68. “Lady Ball Player,” Ebony, July 1953, 48–53.
69. Toni Stone interview with Jean Hastings Ardell, April 1992. Ardell’s interview notes shared with author June 22, 2009.
70. The Black List: Volume One (HBO documentary, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Elvis Mitchell, Michael Slap Sloane, producers), 2008; Thom Loverro, The Encyclopedia of Negro League Baseball (New York: Checkmark Books, 2003), 83.
71. Louisiana Weekly, July 23, 1949.
72. Ibid., May 20, 1950.
73. Greenville (Mississippi) Democrat-Times, April 6, 1950.
74. Maria Bartlow-Reed interview with the author, March 10, 2008.
75. Ibid.
76. Chicago Defender, May 27, 1950.
77. “Monte Irvin ‘Hard Luck Giant,’” Louisiana Weekly, September 6, 1952.
78. “Lady Ball Player,” Ebony, July 1953, 52.
79. [Council Bluffs, Iowa] Daily Nonpareil, July 10, 1950; Benton Harbor News-Palladium, August 25, 1950.
80. Toni Stone interview with Jean Hastings Ardell, April 1992. Ardell’s interview notes shared with author June 22, 2009.
81. [Council Bluffs, Iowa] Daily Nonpareil, July 12, 1950.
82. Kelley Brent, The Negro Leagues Revisited: Conversations with 66 More Baseball Heroes (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2000), 161.
83. Miki Turner, “And Still She Rose,” Oakland Tribune, August 28, 1992. Stone indicated that she believed the incident with the older woman who praised her took place in 1952, but newspaper rec
ords from the Delta Democrat-Times of April 9, 1950, suggest it was more likely to have taken place in 1950.
84. Toni Stone interview with Miki Turner, August 1992. Turner shared interview notes with author July 10, 2009.
85. [Council Bluffs, Iowa] Daily Nonpareil, July 23, 1950.
86. Mark J. Moore, “Negro League’s First Female Player Recalls Life, Career in Pro Baseball,” n.p., n.d. Lester personal archive.
87. “Lady Ball Player,” Ebony, July 1953, 53.
88. Erin Egan, “Toni Stone Was One of the Only Women Ever to Play Pro Baseball with Men,” Sports Illustrated for Kids, April 1994, 26.
89. Toni Stone interview with Jean Hastings Ardell, April 1992. Ardell’s interview notes shared with author June 22, 2009.
Chapter 6: On Deck
1. James Baldwin, “The Devil Finds Work,” The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948–1985 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 576.
2. Mike Weaver, “Female Player Was a Minority of One,” San Jose Mercury News, August 11, 1991.
3. Toni Stone interview with Bill Kruissink, March 27, 1996. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., Cooperstown, NY.
4. Jim Brown interview with the author, August 16, 2008.
5. Chicago Defender, May 27, 1950.
6. Maria Bartlow-Reed interview with the author, March 10, 2008.
7. Nan Alamilla Boyd, “Oral History of Reba Hudson,” Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
8. Vern L. Bullough, ed., Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context (New York: Routledge, 2002), 377.
9. Toni Stone interview with Bill Kruissink, March 27, 1996. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., Cooperstown, NY.
10. Unpublished letter from Aurelious Alberga to Toni Stone, April 13, 1953. Bartow-Reed private archive.
11. Doug Grow, “Baseball Pioneer Never Listened to Naysayers,” Minneapolis–Saint Paul StarTribune, January 31, 1997.
12. Toni Stone interview with Kyle McNary, September 1993. McNary private archive.
13. Louisiana Weekly, January 20, 1951.
14. Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 206.
15. Aurelious P. Alberga, Oral History Project: Afro-Americans in San Francisco Prior to World War II, Cosponsored by the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco African-American Historical and Cultural Society. Interviewer Albert S. Broussard, December 7, 1976, 14.
16. Maria Bartlow-Reed interview with the author, March 10, 2008.
17. Jim Hall, “Time Out,” Louisiana Weekly, May 26, 1951.
18. Jean Hastings Ardell, Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 113.
19. George Rugg e-mail to author, November 13, 2009, citing November 14, 1951, AAGPBL Board of Directors minutes. Harold Daily Notebooks vol. 9, f 108v. Department of Special Collections. Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame.
20. Mame Redman interview with the author, September 27, 2009.
21. Leslie Heaphy and Mel Anthony May, Encyclopedia of Women in Baseball (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 28, 31; Kevin Czerwinski, “Media Tarnishes Engle’s Historic Moment,” www.mlb.com.
22. “A Stop in Kansas City,” Kansas City Star, April 15, 1997. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., Cooperstown, NY.
23. Louisiana Weekly, May 19, 1951.
24. Letter from Tom Baird to Lee MacPhail, January 17, 1949, Negro Leagues Ashland Collection, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., Cooperstown, NY.
25. Louisiana Weekly, July 1, 1950.
26. Leslie Heaphy e-mail to author, November 12, 2009.
27. Austin Wilson, “Black Pioneer Hangs to Threads of Hope,” Vicksburg (Mississippi) Sunday Post, August 7, 1977.
28. Jim Banks, The Pittsburgh Crawfords (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2001), 84.
29. Larry Moffi, The Conscience of the Game: Baseball’s Commissioners from Landis to Selig (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books, 2006), 127–128.
30. Alan J. Pollock with James A. Riley, editor, Barnstorming to Heaven: Syd Pollock and His Great Black Teams (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 225.
31. Hank Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler, I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story (New York: Harper Torch, 1991), 12.
32. Pollock, 228.
33. Charlie Vascellaro, Hank Aaron: A Biography (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2005), 10.
34. Pollock, 228.
35. Aaron, 47.
36. Ibid., 46.
37. Ibid., 39.
38. Louisiana Weekly, February 23, 1952.
39. Pollock, 233.
40. Hall, Jim, “Time Out,” Louisiana Weekly, May 26, 1951.
41. Pollock, 240.
42. Sam Lacy, “First Women in Pro Baseball,” Afro Magazine, 1953. n.p.
43. Melvin Carter Sr. interview with the author, May 20, 2008.
44. John Cotton interview with the author, August 10, 2008.
45. Mike Hudson, “She Was a Relentless Spirit,” Roanoke (Virginia) Times and World-News, May 4, 1997.
Chapter 7: Number 29
1. Maya Angelou, “They Went Home,” in Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (New York, Random House, 1971), 4.
2. Alan Pollock with James A. Riley, ed., Barnstorming to Heaven: Syd Pollock and His Great Black Teams (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 46.
3. Los Angeles Weekly, February 28, 1953.
4. Toni Stone interview with Bill Kruissink, March 27, 1996. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., Cooperstown, NY.
5. Maria Bartlow-Reed interview with the author, March 10, 2008.
6. Toni Stone interview with Bill Kruissink.
7. Pollock, 138.
8. Ibid., 153–154.
9. D. L. Stanley, “Women in Negro Baseball League,” Atlanta Inquirer, April 28, 2001.
10. Pollock, 222.
11. Pittsburgh Courier, April 25, 1953.
12. “Lady Ball Player,” Ebony, July 1953, 51.
13. Chicago Defender, February 21, 1953.
14. Mark Ribowsky, Josh Gibson: The Power and the Darkness (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 283.
15. Toni Stone interview with Bill Kruissink; Baltimore Afro-American, July 17, 1954.
16. “The Gal on Second Base,” Our World, Vol. 8, No. 7, July 1953.
17. “Lady Ball Player,” 50.
18. Ibid., 48.
19. Ibid., 51.
20. Letter from Aurelious Alberga to Toni Stone, April 13, 1953. Bartlow-Reed private archive.
21. Pollock, 53.
22. Pollock, 244; Chicago Defender, April 18, 1953.
23. Kansas City Call, May 29, 1953; Greenville (Mississippi) Delta Democrat Times, May 4, 1953.
24. Norfolk (Virginia) Journal and Guide, May 18, 1953.
25. Pollock, 110, 114; Chicago Defender, April 15, 1953.
26. Ernie Banks file, the Ashland Collection, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., Cooperstown, NY.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Toni Stone interview with Larry Lester, January 3, 1991. Lester private archive.
30. Ernie Banks interview with the author, September 4, 2009.
31. Kansas City Call, May 22, 1953.
32. Pollock, 244.
33. Toni Stone interview with Bill Kruissink.
34. Pollock, 137.
35. Ibid., 305.
36. Ibid., 141–142.
37. Ibid., 137.
38. Indianapolis Clowns file, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., Cooperstown, NY.