Curveball (22 page)

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 field 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.”
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.”
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“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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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?

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
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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 Bunny told her to put on her uniform and play. “And she did,” Hopkins said.
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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.
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Jackson, a sixteen-year-old from Philadelphia, had attracted attention playing at a local recreation center.
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“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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.

At midseason, Kansas City was on top in the standings and Indianapolis was in the cellar. The Clowns’ Ray Neil, however, led the league in hitting with a .416 average; Ernie Banks was close behind. Toni Stone had raised her average to .302, according to the Howe News Bureau.
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A few weeks later, Neil and Banks were still in the number one and two spots, but Toni had risen to fourth in the league with a .364 average.
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Toni’s impressive hitting interested others besides Syd Pollock. A man approached Pollock and told him to talk to Louisville Slugger. “They’ll make a special bat—put her name on it.” Toni was thrilled, but Buster vetoed the idea. “The bats we’ve got are good enough for her,” she heard him say.
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By mid-July, the Clowns had returned to the East Coast for their second loop around the country, this time with games scheduled in bigger ballparks: Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., Connie Mack in Philadelphia, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, and back to Griffith. Only New York and Boston remained unscheduled, and Pollock was working on possible games at the Polo Grounds or Yankee Stadium. After touring the urban centers, the team moved on to play in smaller cities before turning west: Reading, Wilmington, Newport News, Richmond, Chattanooga, Nashville, Columbus, Toledo, and finally St. Louis. The long season and the difficult travel schedule took their toll on everyone. Clowns pitcher Percy Smith dropped out with a knee injury after sliding into second; outfielder Verdes Drake broke his arm in the D.C. game; Speed Merchant, the team’s other star outfielder, wrenched his knee in Memphis and got benched; pitcher Ted Richardson fractured his ankle and was out for two weeks. “We had no doctors,” Toni said. “They’d just throw out that soreness in their arms [or] just slide over the swap positions when they got hurt.”
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Teams relied on home remedies such as “coal oil”—kerosene with a teaspoon of sugar—for colds and flu, and goose grease—drippings from a cooked goose—as a treatment for aching arms or legs. When a player suffered a deep spike wound and there weren’t any bandages or ointments around, someone would find soot from a coal stove and smear the gash with the black paste, then place a spider web over the dressing to seal it.
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All the Negro League teams had athletes too hurt to play. The Black Barons were so decimated by injuries that they hired two former players from the defunct Philadelphia Stars. Ernie Banks, after being scouted by major league scouts at nearly every Monarchs game, was no longer in the lineup, sidelined for two weeks with injuries.
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During the Negro League midseason meetings in Chicago, league executives and club owners, including Syd Pollock, heatedly discussed Toni Stone. Pollock complained that pitchers threw Toni too many curveballs, knucklers, changeups, and screwballs. “She’s a woman but she’s capable,” Pollock’s son remembered his father arguing. “Just have your pitchers throw her fastballs only.” Birmingham Black Barons owner William “Soo” Bridgeforth and Tom Baird, owner of the Monarchs, accused Pollock of trying to compromise the integrity of the game. Pollock countered that if Toni were injured, fans would not return. “Then you can’t afford your teams. The league dies, and all these great pitchers got no place to pitch.” The club owners and club president Dr. Martin felt pressured. They voted, unofficially, to throw “hard but straight” to Toni. When Pollock also asked the group to forbid pitchers from aiming at her head, intentionally hitting her, and brushing Stone back, they agreed as well, unofficially. No one, it seems, asked Toni her opinion of the proposition or of the league’s vote. Had she known that Pollock asked pitchers to play her differently, she would have been incensed. Toni always wanted her experience in baseball to be professional. That meant treatment that was equal and fair. She also would not stand for being patronized. “Don’t worry,” she had told reporters at spring training. “I can take care of myself.”
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Ironically, when Pollock and his son watched Clowns games during the rest of the 1953 season, they didn’t think pitchers threw to Toni Stone any differently. Toni got “the same rotation or pitches as anyone else,” Pollock’s son said, and “we saw her hit the dirt more than once later that season.”
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