Story at a glance
- Toni Stone, the first female professional baseball player in the U.S., has been honored in Google’s latest Doodle.
- Stone, who is Black, overcame racial and gender discrimination to play professionally in a men’s major baseball league, where she was often taunted by fans and male teammates.
- Stone’s legacy is enduring, and her “adopted” hometown of St. Paul, Minn., celebrates Toni Stone Day each year on March 6, while the next generation of athletes play on Toni Stone Field.
Wednesday’s Google Doodle honors Toni Stone, the first of three female professional baseball players in the U.S., on the anniversary of her induction into the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame.
Born Marcenia Lyle Stone in 1921 in Bluefield, W.Va., Stone, who is Black, broke through pronounced gender and racial barriers to become the first woman in history to play professionally in a men’s major baseball league.
At the age of 10, after moving with her family to St. Paul, Minn., Stone frequented the city’s public playgrounds and baseball fields, showing “remarkable athleticism,” Google wrote in a news release. At just 15 years old, Stone was brought onto the roster of the all-male semi-pro Twin Cities Colored Giants, eventually moving to the short-lived San Francisco Sea Lions, where she made her professional debut.
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“Toni was a trailblazer, a Black woman doing things she’s not expected to do, whether the world likes it or not, speaks to me,” Monique Wray, the San Francisco artist behind the Doodle, said in a statement.
Stone’s .280 batting average earned her a spot on the bench with the Negro League All-Star team while simultaneously playing second base for the minor league New Orleans Creoles. Later, in 1953, Stone filled a vacancy left by future Hall of Famer Hank Aaron on the Indianapolis Clowns, which at that time was one of the league’s best teams.
During her debut season with the Clowns, Stone endured taunts and derogatory remarks from spectators and other athletes, all of whom were disapproving of a woman sharing the field with men.
“Toni played with men, a lot of whom did not want her there. But almost every photo I see of her, she has a massive smile,” Wray said. “She lived her life through adversity and did what she wanted to do.”
Although there was at the time a baseball league for women — the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — it did not accept Black women.
Stone retired from professional baseball in 1954, finishing with a batting average of .243. In 1990, her “adopted” hometown of St. Paul, where the next generation of baseball players round the bases under the lights of Toni Stone Field, declared March 6 to be “Toni Stone Day.”
Later, in 1993, Stone was inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame.
In remembering Stone, who died in 1996, Stone’s family members in a statement to Google said they remembered her saying: “I am a woman, a Black woman, and I want and will play men’s baseball. I’m not even getting paid the same amount of money these guys are making. But I do it because I love the game, and I do it to show other women that they can do it too. Remember, a woman has her dream too.”
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