Toni Stone, the Google Doodle for February 9, 2022
He was so good that he’d ask batters where they wanted it, just so they’d have a chance. He’d ask, “You want it high? You want it low? You want it right in the middle? Just say.” People still couldn’t get a hit against him. So I get up there and he says, “Hey T., how do you like it?” And I said, “It doesn’t matter, just don’t hurt me.” When he wound up — he had these big old feet — all you could see was his shoe. I stood there shaking, but I got a hit. Right out over second base. Happiest moment in my life.
~Toni Stone, describing her most memorable baseball moment when she played against Satchel Paige (from her Baseball Reference page)
I got a text from my wife this morning telling me to check out the Google Doodle for the day. When I saw the picture, I immediate thought it was going to be Toni Stone. I clicked on the pic, and sure enough, it was.
Toni Stone was a pioneer, whose contributions to the sporting world are mostly unknown. She was the first female professional baseball player in the Negro Leagues, and very nearly the first female to have played in MLB. When MLB decided to officially include verified Negro League statistics into the record books, the set the cut off year as 1948. Stone began her career in 1949.
Stone started her career in San Francisco, spent most of it in New Orleans, and then signed to play with the Indianapolis Clowns for the 1953 season. One year earlier, and she would’ve had a young teammate by the name of Hank Aaron, and played on a championship team. Had the Clowns not traded her to the Monarchs before the 1954 season, she would have been teammates with Connie Morgan and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, the only other females to have played professionally. And she would have been managed by the legendary Oscar Charleston (his final season of professional baseball before his untimely death in the fall of that year)… and won another championship.
Baseball has come a long way since those days. I believe the integration of baseball helped to pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement. I’m not the only one that believes that either, Martin Luther King, Jr. said something along those lines as well — “Jackie Robinson made my success possible. Without him, I would never have been able to do what I did.”
In more recent history, the first female GM (Kim Ng of the Miami Marlins), the first full-time female coach (Alyssa Nakken of the San Francisco Giants), and the first female manager for an MLB affiliate (Rachel Balkovec of the Yankees’ Low-A Tampa Tarpons) have come to the fore. Maybe it won’t be too long before we see the first female MLB player. Whoever she is, I hope she knows about Toni Stone.
