Few box scores remain.
Very few written records to account for her splendid achievements on the
field. No SLG, OBP, RISP, WHIP, CqStG, WARP, or VORP to measure her success.
Statistics do not tell the
whole story of any ballplayer's life. In the case of Toni Stone,
arguably the greatest woman ever to play professional baseball in any
league, a complete story could never be woven out of stats and game summaries, because there
was a time not so very long ago when games played by some groups of individuals were not considered
worthy of a printed record.
Where baseball numbers are lacking,
memory, imagery, and conversation take their place. Fortunately for our
sake, various interviews with the late Toni Stone survive. Anecdotes, eyewitness accounts,
news clippings, numbers, reminiscences, and multiple stories combine to form a rich
and elegant narrative that commemorates one deeply impressive human life.
Martha Ackmann, Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni
Stone. What an important and
beautiful story this is; what a lovely, near-perfect book (though many
examples of vile human behavior fill its pages). This is an engaging
read for any lover of baseball, male or female. Readers from various walks of life are likely to
find in Toni Stone something of a soul mate, particularly as she passionately seeks ways of accessing the game she loves.
Baseball takes
place on the field, off the field, and in the mind. So it was for
Toni Stone, and so it is that Ackmann deftly balances these three components in
telling the ballplayer’s story, giving equal attention to her heroine’s
physical achievements, personal challenges and adversities, and
the equally compelling longings of a unique
soul.
It's an understatement to say that
young “Tomboy” Stone faced formidable odds in defying the double prejudice that
characterized a nation's pastime, even as the
industry enjoyed significant progress in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Intensity,
determination, grit, and love drove Tomboy at every step of the
way. It is no mistake that a teacher - Martha
Ackmann, Professor of Gender Studies at Mount Holyoke College and Emily
Dickinson scholar - celebrates the
life of a heroine who did not perform well in school. The young girl was never fired up by physics, grammar, or
geometry; her intellectual curiosity lay elsewhere.
The yearning to play baseball is
not just a physical desire. It’s
an intellectual passion, and curiosity is at the root of all learning: "She felt more comfortable
listening to old men discussing balls and strikes than she did hearing girls
her own age chattering" (18). Those men had "an easy way about them."
Toni’s able body took her mind to places
where she yearned to be, to venues in which she knew she deep down she could
thrive both physically and mentally: "Tomboy pushed down the
kickstand of her Silver King and walked through the open gates of the
still-empty Lexington Park. She wanted to get a closer look at what
was going on” (22). What boy or girl or tomboy among
us, what lover of baseball, hasn't felt the pull of the game in this way? What fan hasn’t pushed down the
kickstand and wandered closer to the field?
She craved baseball conversation
at an early age, because talk meant
instruction. "Baseball was like a drug" for her.
"Whenever summer would come around [and] the bats would start popping I'd
go crazy” (1), she once said, describing a sensation many of us can understand.
Toni Stone was fortunate to learn
the game in a formal way during a critical period in her youth, thanks to consistent
playing time on several squads: a
Catholic boys' league in Minnesota, a team of Meat Packers in Saint Paul,
a year or so of girls' softball in high school, and American Legion ball. Gabby Street's baseball
school for white boys was her unlikely but significant launching point.
Young Toni (nee “Marcenia”) never
would have broken into the world of baseball had it not been for a succession
of mentors and advocates, including a Roman Catholic priest, a handful of compassionate
teachers who believed in her talent, a former major-league manager, team owner
Syd Pollack, and her parents, who gradually accepted the fact
that Marcenia’s dreams took her to a place far different from what they’d
envisioned for their daughter.
Those who succeed in baseball cannot do it alone; it takes the egos and pocketbooks of others, as well as basic human kindness, a constellation of believers and mixed motives, to drive the process
forward.
Facing almost insurmountable odds
both on and off the field, Toni Stone played baseball legitimately from 1932
until 1954. Barnstorming the country from North Dakota to Louisiana, Minneapolis to California with busloads full of men, she proved
herself worthy of professional contracts with the San Francisco Sea Lions,
New Orleans Creoles, Indianapolis Clowns, and Kansas City
Monarchs. Playing in 78 games at the height of her career in
1949, while surviving and even thriving in a world peopled almost exclusively
by men, Toni maintained a remarkable .326 average.
Throughout the years, she held her
own and maintained her dignity in a male world, and for the most part her teammates felt comfortable having her around. Seeking baseball opportunities just as they did, she faced adversity and bitter
racism at many steps along the way.
“Nothing serious,” a county sheriff was heard saying in a breakdown lane
outside St. Augustine. “Just a bus
burning up with niggers on it.” (178). Deep into the woods Toni would
disappear on road trips, alone, while her male teammates paused together at the side of the
road to relieve themselves in the middle of the night. Surviving in a gritty world full of
discomfort and uncertainty, she endured the further humiliation of being promoted
as something of a circus attraction that promised larger crowds and higher revenues at the ballpark.
One of the lowest points in her
career came in the form of a cruel remark from an unlikely source – Buck O’Neill,
whose surprisingly hurtful behavior inflicted an unexpected and lasting form of pain (189). Buck’s demeaning wisecrack and subsequent aloofness came at a time when Toni’s performance on the field had already taken a turn for the
worse, as various forces including middle age
conspired to drive her out of the game.
How ironic that Toni came to be distanced
and discarded from the baseball world, even as the industry took significant
steps forward. In 1954 she was not selected by fans to play in the East-West Negro League All-Star game, and this devastating news virtually "broke her spirit" (187). As a few of her fellow players began to transition into the big leagues,
Toni felt a peculiar sense of alienation from the game she had always loved. The inevitable dissolution of the
Negro Leagues and the opening of baseball’s gates to more players of color
ironically meant fewer opportunities for women. Gender proved to be a tricky and complicated issue, as influential figures including sportswriters began to
craft shrill arguments in an effort to keep women out of professional baseball.
For some twenty years Toni Stone
had proved that she could hold her own with the men and boys, but they no longer thought to let her in. “I just got real angry.” Other gifted
female players had already fallen by the wayside, unable to persevere during those years when Toni gutted it out and proved herself worthy. “I could of just died,” she lamented as her career
drew to an end in 1954.
The story of Toni Stone is on balance an
uplifting tale, but it's a very sad story too. "She had to find a way to let go of baseball and not
let it ache so much" (194). "Not playing baseball hurt so damn much,"
Toni explained years later, "I almost had a heart attack." Parting with the game is a
difficult experience for most ballplayers, and hanging up the cleats was especially difficult for Toni. Together with
her glove, the well-worn shoes had truly become her
salvation (15).
The climax of Martha
Ackmann’s story comes not with a walk-off double, game-winning home run, or
dazzling play at second. The climax doesn’t happen on any field. Long after her retirement from the game, after a lonely
hiatus that felt like death, all the stories of Stone's career finally
"exploded like a grenade," and the words began to flow.
Toni’s triumphant visit to
the offices of the The Oakland Tribune
marked her rebirth into
the world of the game. Pondering the book she would never have time to write herself, yet
eager to tell her story, Toni came loaded with clippings, jerseys, memorabilia
and with "words cascading out of her mouth of a torrent" (207).
The game of baseball ultimately
becomes story for all of us - for player and fan alike, for every historian,
biographer, and lonely dreamer. Whether
it be an elegant narrative crafted by a scholar or a coarse anecdote
shared at a bar or up in the grandstands, a tale spun out on
the front porch or at the corner deli, story is what baseball ultimately
becomes. Story levels the
playing field when all is said and done.
Those who have not played
the game can honor it with words. Our stories often celebrate the more
elusive human elements that can't be measured in stats and charts. Curveball succeeds admirably in voicing the truth of one life. Like all good baseball narratives, it’s part love story. Toni Stone's career
played out in a way that resembled the experience of Gabby Street, the skeptical
coach who gave her that first lucky break: "[he] thought he was
finished with baseball forever . . . but his love for the game would not let him
go. 'I've got baseball in my blood, I guess, I can't leave it alone'"
(25).
Martha Ackmann has filled an empty
space in history with an elegant story about a truly inspiring woman. It’s
our responsibility and our joy to know stories such as these. Tomboy Stone was much more than a “girl
sensation.” She was a heroine, a
complicated individual, a gifted and accomplished player who made a significant
contribution to the game we love, a human being worth knowing.
Highly recommended:
Martha Ackmann, Curveball:
The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, The First Woman to Play Professional
Baseball in the Negro League. Lawrence Hill Books, 2010.
