Marcenia Lyle Stone was born July 17, 1921, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In response to her biography, Curveball: The Outstanding Story of Toni Stone, the First Girl to Play Skilled Baseball within the Negro Leagues, younger Stone was solely involved in sports activities. In reality, she was identified merely as Tomboy rising up. As a young person, she performed for an area semi-professional workforce, the Twin Metropolis Coloured Giants, as a second baseman. She then performed for the Peninsula Baseball League and later the San Francisco Sea Lions, a semi-professional workforce with the West Coast Negro Baseball League, and the New Orleans Creoles within the Negro Southern League. Sooner or later in her life, she dropped the names Marcenia and Tomboy and have become Toni.
After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, enjoying with the Brooklyn Dodgers starting in 1947, extra Black gamers have been signed to the beforehand segregated American and Nationwide Leagues.
Though she was initially signed to extend ticket gross sales, she proved to be way over only a novelty girl participant. One newspaper article mentioned of her enjoying– “she’s agile, has good baseball instinct, and knows what a Louisville slugger is used for.” Sometimes, she played the first two or three innings of the game, before veteran Ray Neil, the league’s leading batter at the time, took over.
General, she performed in 50 video games and had an admirable .243 batting common. At one time, she was thought-about fourth in the league. It was reported that she received a success off the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige and performed with future Corridor of Famers Ernie Banks and Willie Mays.
Stone was extremely proficient within the sport however regardless of this, some gamers criticized her publicly, together with Clown’s participant/supervisor, Buster Haywood. She didn’t let it hassle her. To cite a newspaper interview printed in 1953: “Toni says she does not expect the boys to ‘let up’ on her because she is a woman, in fact, ‘they never do,’ she added.” The Jackson Advocate reported:
Stone performed for the Clowns till 1954 when the workforce traded her to the Kansas City Monarchs. With the Monarchs, she performed in opposition to Connie Morgan, who performed with the Clowns on the time. The Monarchs gained the sport in opposition to the Clowns and the following day, the Night Star mentioned of the viewers: “about 7,000 baseball fans shared the opinion today that the Monarchs’ girl second baseman, Toni Stone, is quite the ball player.” Stone retired from baseball in 1955. In 1993, she was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. She died three years afterward November 2, 1996 on the age of 75.
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