When we talk about St. Paul’s baseball greats, we usually think of Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, Joe Mauer and Jack Morris. All four grew up in the capital and went on to legendary major league careers.
A fifth legend, however, is often overlooked. Toni Stone, the Rondo neighborhood kid who broke racial and gender barriers, once stepped into Hank Aaron’s shoes and proved time and time again that she could play the game.
A second baseman in the black leagues in the 1950s, she is considered the first woman to play professional men’s baseball. More than two decades after his death, his efforts are slowly being recognized. This weekend, Major League Baseball and the Minnesota Twins will honor Stone’s memory with a baseball clinic and girls’ scrimmages at the Toni Stone Invitational.
“So many Minnesota natives don’t know Toni Stone and, you know, it’s not their fault,” said Chelsey Falzone, the Twins’ youth engagement manager who, like Stone, grew up in Minnesota. loving baseball. “I think we need to tell more of his story. It has not been told too much. And his story is really, really amazing.”
“Their attitudes have changed”
Stone was born Marcenia Lyle Stone in 1921 in West Virginia, but soon moved to St. Paul, where her parents ran a hair and beauty salon downtown. They lived in the Rondo neighborhood, where Stone found a love of baseball.
Her first break came when her priest at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church convinced Stone’s parents to let her play on the parish boys’ team. Later, Stone was hanging out at the old St. Paul Saints ballpark, where she kept showing up so much that the manager eventually gave her some baseball gear and invited her to play baseball camp. summer for boys.
“So from there, she then started playing for, oh, all these teams in St. Paul: the men’s packing league, the St. Paul High Lex team, the Catholic boys league, and then a traveling team with grown men called the Twin City Colored Giants,” said Martha Acmanauthor of “Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone”.
Toni Stone is part of the “Black and Brown Baseball” exhibit at the Minnesota African American Museum. Stone grew up in St. Paul and graduated from Roosevelt High in Minneapolis. She was one of the first women to play Negro League baseball. She played for the St. Paul Giants and for the Indianapolis Clowns. She once got a hit from legendary pitcher Satchel Paige.
Photo MPR | Tom Crann
Ackmann, who writes books about women who have shaped and changed America, said she was immediately drawn to Stone’s journey.
“Her story is one that told us something about not just who she was, but who we are as Americans,” Ackmann said. “And Toni’s story certainly says a lot about Jim Crow America, sexism in the United States, and what happens when you grow up with a dream that people don’t think you should have.”
Stone eventually moved to San Francisco where she joined the San Francisco Sea Lions and later the New Orleans Creoles, African-American minor league teams.
Eventually, Syd Pollock, the owner of the Indianapolis Clowns, a black league team, chose her to replace future Hall of Fame slugger Hank Aaron after the Boston Braves bought Aaron’s contract.
“She knew she was a great baseball player, but she also knew she was being used as an attraction. Now Pollock said, and I think rightly said, ‘If she wasn’t a good player, the fans would come to see her once. And that would be it. But if she had the talent, they would keep coming to see her,” Ackmann said.
“And baseball historians say that in the 1952-53 seasons, Toni Stone carried the Negro leagues on his back, you know, to make it still a financially viable business,” Ackmann added.
Stone went on to sign with the Kansas City Monarchs and played with or against many baseball greats including Willie Mays, Ernie Banks and Satchel Paige.
She faced a lot of sexism from her teammates, fans and the media. A 1954 article on female athletes in Jet Magazine described Stone as “character, effeminate off-diamond.” Ackmann said Stone was often taunted by fans, who told her to go home to cook dinner for her husband.
Ackmann said it was tough being a woman trying to earn a spot on a men’s team.
“They thought she was going to, you know, dilute the strength of the team,” Ackmann said. “But when they saw that she was helping them and that she could play, she was very quick. She was good. On the second base pivot with a double play. She could hit pretty well. Then their attitudes changed.
“The best day of my life”
Stone retired after the 1954 season, but remained active in baseball in the San Francisco Bay Area throughout her life.
Ackmann and others who have studied Stone’s groundbreaking efforts in baseball say they are incredible, especially given the era.
“So his fight, first of all, as a black person. It must have been a struggle. Because again, even here in Minnesota, we had separate baseball. So here’s that difficulty, and now you’re adding to it, here’s that woman intervening. And she wants to play,” said Frank White, author of “They Played for the Love of the Game: Untold Stories of Black Baseball in Minnesota.”
White helped ensure that the main field near St. Paul Central High School was named after Stone. Two plaques outside the entrance describe its history.
“You can take this story and realize it was this woman at a different time in life or the world. And she kept chasing her dream,” said White, who coordinates the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities youth baseball program for the Twins. “No matter what challenges she faced. She chased that dream and I think it’s a good story for all of us.”
The sign outside Toni Stone Field in St. Paul, named after Stone, the first woman to play professional baseball. Stone grew up nearby in the Rondo neighborhood.
Pierre Cox | MPRNews
In his later years, Stone began to receive some recognition. St. Paul declared Toni Stone Day in 1990 and she was invited to speak at local schools about growing up with a baseball dream. During one of those chats, she recalled when Jackie Robinson broke through the Major League Baseball color barrier by signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
“It was the best day of my life,” she told the class.
Stone died in 1996 before Ackmann’s book was published, before the St. Paul lot was named after her, and before an off-Broadway play about her life was shot. distinctions du New York Times and began to travel the country.
“The recognition this weekend is personal to me because I played baseball with the boys until college and then in college I switched to fastpitch softball… I love them all so much. two,” Falzone said of the Twins.
“We want the children to play ball. And for little girls who were like me, who fell in love with baseball for one reason or another, we want them to know that they belong on a baseball diamond, if that’s where they want to. be.”
Editor’s note: Inscription because the Toni Stone Invitational of the Twins is open until Thursday evening.
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