Toni Stone had balls. She’s also one of the best baseball players you’ve never heard of. Since women’s leagues refused her eligibility due to the color of her skin, Stone ended up playing alongside men in the Negro League. She became the first woman to play professionally in the league against big-shots like Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, Buck O’Neil, and Satchel Paige. At one point in the 1953 season, she batted a whopping .364—fourth highest in the league. Today she’s often referred to as ‘the female Jackie Robinson’.

Author Martha Ackmann has written a new book called Curveball which chronicles Stone’s struggles and victories as a woman of color playing what was once considered a white-man’s game. Stone (1921-1996) wanted to play professional baseball more than anything in the world. In over twenty years of barnstorming, semi-pro and finally Negro League baseball, she proved that she could compete on men’s teams and handle the skeptics and abuse that often trailed her.

Stone followed the same purposeful path that Jackie Robinson traveled several years before in breaking the color line of major leagues. Keep your head down. Concentrate on the game. Let your play prove the bigots wrong.

Writer David Halberstam once observed that behind every great sports story is the story of a nation. And if you think about it—Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King— he’s right. Toni Stone’s story is the story of a nation as well: a nation stuck in the quagmire of Jim Crow, blind to the talents of women athletes, and yet open to one remarkable woman determined to live her dream.

To celebrate the release of Curveball, Ackmann will be visiting these venues for a reading, discussion, and book signing:

July 10, 2010
St. Louis, MO:
Left Bank Books (399 N. EUCLID AVE. SAINT LOUIS, MO 63108) 7:00pm

July 12, 2010
Kansas City, MO:
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (1616 E. 18th St, Kansas City, MO, 64108)
11:00am

July 15, 2010
Chicago, IL:
Women & Children First (5233 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60640)
7:30pm

If you can’t make it to one of the events, purchase a copy of
Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League online.

View Original Post at prettytough.com

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• Baseball, Sports, Media, Books, SportsPLUS, Inspiration, Sexism