"[Satchel Paige] 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." -- baseball trailblazer Toni Stone (born Marcenia Lyle Stone today in 1921), the first woman to play full-time in a professional men's baseball league. Stone played second base for the Negro League's Indianapolis Clowns, where she succeeded legend Hank Aaron when he joined the Boston / Milwaukee Braves. She went on to play with the San Francisco Sea Lions, the New Orleans Creoles and the famed Kansas City Monarchs.
This anecdote provides some insight into the struggles that Stone faced and overcame playing on men's teams:
"Most of the male ball players shunned her and gave her a hard time because she was a woman. Stone was quite proud of the fact the the male players were out to get her. She would show off the scars on her left wrist and remember the time she had been spiked by a runner trying to take out the woman standing on second base. 'He was out,' she recalled."
Not surprisingly, she was the main attraction at games, which also must have irked her teammates. Toni just wanted to play baseball.
(photo: Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Inc.)
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