Curveball
The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball In the Negro League
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Documenting multiple challenges at every turn—as a target for racism from society at large and sexism both inside and outside of the Negro League—this is the unique story of the first woman to play professional baseball on a men's team, breaking barriers in sports while believing, "There's got to be a first in everything. Maybe it will be me." Highlighting aggressive and resourceful behaviors, the text explains that as players began to leave the Negro League for major league teams, Toni Stone seized her only opportunity to play professional ball and replaced Henry Aaron on the Indianapolis Clowns, the Negro League's top team. Chronicling her career, this biography follows her experiences playing first with the Indianapolis Clowns, and later with the Kansas City Monarchs. It also details her encounters with the era's top athletes—Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, Buck O'Neil, and Satchel Paige to name a few. As the exploration reveals her remarkable talent, perseverance, and accomplishments, it shows how she posed as a double threat—black and female—to the dominance of white males in sports and society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Toni Stone was 32 when she joined the Indianapolis Clowns, becoming the first woman to play in the Negro Leagues, and laying claim to the second base position recently ceded by Hank Aaron, who had moved on to the majors. Before then, Stone had spent years playing semi-pro and participating in barnstorming tours (the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, made famous by the movie A League of Their Own, didn t allow black women). Stone stayed in the Negro Leagues only two years, posting less than spectacular numbers, and Ackmann has a hard time supporting her claim that her presence wasn t first and foremost a publicity stunt. What makes Curveball stand out are the moving stories of racism faced by the black players, and Stone encountered more of it than most: while traveling, she often had to sleep in brothels while her male teammates, also barred from hotels, slept in boarding houses. Records of Stone s games and life are scant (she died in 1996), and Ackmann has done her research, but in the end, conjecture, filler, and footnotes rob the book of intimacy and excitement.
