Number 29
They went home and told their wives,
That never once in all their lives,
Had they known a girl like me.
—MAYA ANGELOU1
Syd Pollock wasted no time in cranking out press releases announcing the signing of his new player. “Well, move over, boys,” he wrote from his home office in Tarrytown, New York, “the girls have invaded another realm once regarded as the domain of the muscle and brawn set.” Toni Stone, replacing Henry Aaron, would be Pollock’s premier gate attraction for 1953, and Syd marshaled every detail—including underwear—to announce his new hire. “The latest masculine enterprise to fall before the advance of wearers of skirts and panties is the baseball diamond. The Indianapolis Clowns last week signed the first female baseball player in the history of the Negro American League.” Pollock had promoted women baseball players before. As a young man, he created advertising for a short-lived semi-pro team called Maggie Riley and her Male Devil Dogs. Pollock described Riley as “baseball’s $10,000 Female Wonder Girl.”2 Phrases such as “wonder girl” and later his alliterative tag for Toni, “the gal guardian of second base,” were part of the language of promotion that Pollock learned from his mother’s years of theater management. Up early every morning, he spent a few hours writing copy before walking to the post office, his arms loaded with press releases for promoters, baseball writers, and the Negro Association Press association. After a quick stop at a local bakery for a sugary roll, he was back at work at his roll-top desk, a reporter’s green eyeshade on his head and a cigarette dangling a smoldering ash. “Toni will be the first to admit her diamond foes show her no mercy because of her sex,” Pollock tapped on his old Underwood typewriter. “The pitchers throw just as hard and base runners slide into second with spikes just as high. But she likes the game and keeps coming back for more. She is positive she’ll prove an asset to the popular Clowns in helping the Funmakers to their fourth consecutive … championship this season.”3 All those years helping his mother with theater publicity made Pollock’s press releases pop, although they sounded more like Toni was making movies than making baseball history.*
Back home in Oakland, Toni’s husband had become a supportive spouse. Perhaps recognizing an opportunity for Toni to achieve national celebrity, Aurelious Alberga offered his help when the Clowns contract came through. He used his past experience as a trainer to supervise Toni’s daily workouts with the white St. Ignatius Catholic baseball team in Golden Gate Park. “You have a lot of wandering athletes in San Francisco,” Toni said, and it was easy to find pickup games.4 Alberga also prepared her to make a grand entrance into the world of professional sports. Alberga believed that clothes made the man. He never gave up wearing high-buttoned shoes even when they were well past their stylish heyday.5 It may have been his idea for Toni to travel to spring training camp with a corsage neatly pinned to a stylish spring coat. When it really mattered, however, Toni had her own opinions about dress. Before the season started, Syd Pollock suggested that, instead of a regulation uniform, she wear a short skirt like the women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Toni was unequivocal, angry even. “I wasn’t going to wear no shorts,” she said. “This is professional baseball.”6 Short skirts were foolish if a player was expected to slide. She would have nothing of Pollock’s suggestion, and she told him she would rather quit than demean herself like that. Pollock acquiesced. But a discrete clutch of carnations on her lapel was a concession she was willing to make to please her husband’s sense of style. In the spring of 1953, Pollock, Alberga, and Toni Stone were all adjusting to new limits and new opportunities.
So were McKinley “Bunny” Downs and Albert “Buster” Haywood. Downs, the team’s business manager, and Haywood, the Clowns’ manager, had a lot to say about Toni as they rode the team bus to Norfolk, Virginia, for spring training. Every season, the Clowns bus offered a kind of long-distance taxi service from Pollock’s Tarrytown, New York, home to training camp. “Big Red,” the Clowns’ five-year-old Flxible bus, spent the winter in a Westchester County barn about fifteen miles from Pollock’s home office. In early April, Haywood arrived from his home in Virginia, dusted off the bus, and drove it to Syd’s. There, Pollock’s sons earned extra cash by readying the bus for the long baseball season. The next day, Haywood drove the bus to Bunny’s apartment in Harlem. When residents saw Big Red parked on the street, the sidewalks filled with well-wishers. As one bystander said, “half of Harlem” turned out to say good-bye to the Clowns. After gathering up Downs and a few players who lived nearby, M. H. Wilson, the quiet, dignified bus driver—or “Chauff” as the team called him—began the journey. Chauff steered the bus out of Manhattan, past Newark, into Philadelphia, down to Washington, D.C., and on into Norfolk—picking up other players and their duffle bags along the way.7 The nearly four-hundred-mile trip gave Downs and Haywood plenty of time to air their views on Toni Stone.
The Clowns were fortunate that all three men at the top of the organization got along so well. They were an unlikely trio: Syd, the white Jewish team owner; Bunny, the Negro League second baseman turned pragmatic business manager; and Buster, the diminutive former catcher for the Clowns who valued passion on the field above all. In spite of their differences, each respected the jobs the others had to do. “Bunny [is] Syd’s right hand. I’m his left,” Buster said.8 Their friendships also extended to their families: their wives attended games together, visited in the off-season, and watched over each others’ children. Yet when it came to Toni, the men disagreed, at least initially. Syd believed in her athleticism and thought the risk of signing her was worthwhile. “It would do black baseball no good to draw fans, then disappoint them,” he said. Bunny needed no convincing that she would help with the team’s financial bottom line. Pollock’s team policy called for Bunny to carry cash from each game’s receipts in a money belt. He only had to feel the belt to know if ticket sales were up or down, and he knew better than most that since Jackie Robinson integrated the Dodgers, Negro League receipts had gone down. But Buster Haywood was not sure Toni was the answer. Good baseball was all about hustle, he believed, not gate attractions. Ray Neil, the Clowns’ second baseman, was the team’s premier player. If he played as well in 1953 as he had in previous years, he could win the batting title. Why did Pollock want to put the team and Neil’s statistics in jeopardy by putting a woman at second? Pollock reassured Haywood by having Neil keep his bat in the lineup and moving the infielder to the outfield during the innings Toni played second. But Buster Hay-wood did not buy their strategy. “I didn’t like it,” he said, admitting he didn’t think Toni could handle the challenges on and off the field. “She had the experience,” he said, “but playing with a bunch of men was a different story.”9 Apparently Haywood chose to ignore Toni’s nearly two decades of playing on men’s teams. Most fans did not expect the Clowns to repeat their championship in 1953. The team had lost three of its best pitchers, a fourth was at the Milwaukee Braves’ training camp, and the Clowns’ top base stealer was a holdout.* And one had only to step inside the bus to recognize that new players were needed. Big Red smelled of horse liniment, a sure sign that the Clowns’ legs were aging.10
Toni flew from Oakland to Washington, D.C., before continuing to Norfolk. As she stepped off the plane, she knew immediately that playing in the Negro League would put her in the spotlight far more than semi-pro ball had. Photographers were already waiting and snapped pictures as she exited the airport gate. The armloads of Pollock’s press releases had worked. “Toni Arrives!” black newspapers later declared under a photograph of Toni looking surprised.11 By the time she made it to training camp, the number of photographers had multiplied and was joined by a crush of reporters, film crews, theatrical booking agents, television scouts, and major and minor league representatives—all elbowing each other to get a look at her. Admitting she felt like a “goldfish,” Toni was at once disoriented and excited by the attention. Children especially were taken with her. Lit
tle girls in checked dresses and boys eager to hear her advice gathered around her during practice; some shyly reached out to touch her bat. Other children back in Oakland sent a box of candy to Toni for good luck. Sounding confident, Toni told reporters, “I know what I am doing and what I am in for. I don’t want anyone playing me easy because I’m a woman and I don’t plan to play ‘easy’ against them. I’m out here to play the game and I’m sure I can take the knocks as well as anyone else.”12
Syd Pollock, however, set Toni up for some knocks from the Clowns when he fabricated facts in his press releases, most notably her salary details. “Stone has inked a contract with the Clowns, reportedly earning $12,000 for her first season’s work,” he wrote.13 If Toni were indeed earning twelve thousand dollars, she would have been the highest paid player in the Negro League, earning more than many players in the majors. Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers organization in 1947 for six hundred a month and a thirty-five-hundred-dollar signing bonus.14 In reality, Toni earned much less: three hundred dollars a month and the usual two dollars a day for meal money, which didn’t go far. “I stayed hungry all the time,” she said, and especially missed her mother’s lemon pie.15 Later, if asked, Toni would set anyone straight about what she really earned.* But she was not so forthcoming about her age; the lie she had begun telling in San Francisco continued. Syd either truly believed she was twenty-two years old when he signed her or chose to overlook that she was a decade older. Everyone in baseball knew that a player was in his prime between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Toni would be expected to run and hit like a twenty-two-year-old athlete, not one who was approaching middle age.
The two weeks spent working out at Golden Gate Park had served Toni well.† Those weeks were nearly all the preseason warm-up she would get. Official spring training with the Clowns amounted to only two days of practice before departing for a month of games with semi-pro teams and a few Negro League matchups across the South. The official opening day for the Negro League would take place in Beaumont, Texas, on May 15 against the Monarchs. The scant two days in Norfolk gave Toni barely enough time to try on her navy blue uniform—a team color Pollock had personally chosen because it didn’t show grime and could be worn day after day. The uniform was not new, and it was certainly not designed to fit Toni’s female form, but it was regulation. Toni respected that Pollock made good on his promise. Reporters, eager for every detail, wrote that she wore an “oversize 42 shirt … to accommodate her 36 inch bust.”16 Toni would be number 29, the starting second baseman for the Indianapolis Clowns. She understood the deal Syd and Bunny had struck with Buster: she would rarely play complete games, bowing to Ray Neil after the fourth or fifth inning. Still, she had a spot on the team and she vowed to make the most of it. “I’ve got my own ideas,” she said. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the first woman to play major league baseball. At least I may be the one who opens the doors for others. A lot of things can happen, you know. There’s always got to be a first in everything. Before 1946 nobody thought Negroes would be in the big leagues. But we got ’em in there today. A woman might have a chance also. Maybe it will be me.”17
If Clowns players resented Toni occupying a position on the team, were jealous of the spotlight shining on her, or were angry at her reported salary—they kept their opinions to themselves. Pollock set the tone for the club’s public comments. “This girl is no freak,” he said. “[A]nd although I would not deny that her publicity value is very great to our team and its games, we expect her play to help us a lot.”18 One of the scouts getting a first look at Toni at Norfolk was impressed by more than her ability to bring in crowds, too. “She’s better than a lot of men who show up at Spring training,” he said.19 On Sunday, April 12, the exhibition season started. In Oakland, Toni’s husband sat down to write, bringing Toni up to date on the publicity about her that had been circulating in the Bay Area. “My Dear Sweetheart,” he began. “I forgot to enclose the clippings of Alan Ward [Oakland Tribune sports columnist] that I thought you may want, also Sis told me that a few days before you left she heard a nice talk by Ira Blue [San Francisco radio announcer] over the air about you but forgot to mention it.” Life was quiet around the house, he said, with only their dog to keep him company. “Fuzzy stays close to me and almost asks what became of you.” He wondered how Toni was getting along with her team and closed on a hopeful note. “Hope you get a hit in first game. Love + Kisses Poppy.”20
Toni’s first game would be the beginning of a relentless and grueling schedule. Ahead of Toni were eight months of baseball, from April through the November barnstorming postseason. The team would play nearly every day, including two games on Sundays and occasionally a third in another city. They would travel four hundred miles between games without a stop. “Travel date” was a white term, players said. With Chauff at the wheel, Toni, Bunny, Buster, and the rest of the team boarded Big Red. Syd Pollock stayed at home. Jim Crow laws forbade a white man from riding a bus with Negroes. He would remain in Tarrytown tapping out press releases on his Underwood typewriter.*
Cold rain washed out games in Virginia, and Toni sat on the bench shivering in weather that reporters complained felt more like football season than baseball. Skies cleared as they moved to North Carolina. Syd always made sure the season began and ended in tobacco country where black workers, who were needed to plant and harvest the crop, had money to spend on baseball.21 The crowd in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, was the first to see Toni rip a single and earn her first two RBIs. Two days later, in Windsor, she hit another single, grabbed two more RBIs, and later in another game topped off her North Carolina tour by sneaking behind a runner at second and tagging him in the pickoff.22 But the long bus rides and cold weather may have been to blame when leg cramps forced her to sit out a few contests. She hated the idea of not playing, but found it nearly impossible to run. “Boy, have I had the charley horses,” she said. “Once I hit a two bagger and when I turned first and started for second, my leg knotted up and down I went.”23 By the time the team hit Miami at the end of April for doubleheader play against the Monarchs, Stone was back in the lineup regardless of the strain.* Haywood admitted that Toni had been hobbled by injuries, but said he was sure that her play had not weakened the team’s infield “one iota.”24 Haywood’s comments may have been Pollock talking, but even Buster could not deny that Toni played with passion. As a catcher, he played with such fierceness that he sustained injuries. When he crouched to receive a pitcher’s throw, Haywood always kept his throwing hand next to his mitt. If he needed to throw the ball to second base in a split second, his throwing hand was right where it needed to be. It was a questionable strategy: all five fingers on his throwing hand had been broken. But playing all out was one of the reasons fans loved the Clowns. No one ever would forget the standing ovation the team once received in Chicago after a particularly vigorous infield practice. As Pollock had predicted, curious fans did come out to see Toni’s fervent play. Crowds filled the small ballparks in Virginia and North Carolina. In the season’s first larger venue in Miami, the local black recreation commissioner called Toni and the Clowns “the best drawing card in Negro baseball.”25 It was still uncertain whether Toni and the Clowns would interest fans in the big industrial cities of the North and the Midwest, but the team would soon find out.
The Miami game also gave the Clowns their first look at the Monarchs’ new shortstop, Ernie “Bingo” Banks. The 1953 season was actually a return to the Monarchs for Banks, who had held a spot on the team before serving for two years in the military. The Monarchs manager, Buck O’Neil, loved Banks’s rangy play that allowed him to go to his left or right, but a scouting report observed a weak throwing arm. He “doesn’t gun it,” the report said.26 On the field, Banks was not flashy in other ways as well. “I want to outsmart the other team,” he said. “I don’t yell at umpires or get into fights.”27 When a later manager tried to get him to “holler more,” Banks said, “I holler. I holler a lot, but I don’t have growl in my vo
ice so nobody hears me.”28 Banks’s subdued behavior on the field also translated into patience at the plate. Rather than the wild swings that Negro Leaguers often used—sometime to dramatic effect—Banks was restrained. “He can wait on a pitch until the catcher’s almost ready to throw it back to you,” one opponent said. Toni respected Ernie Banks. “I liked his ways,” she said, and remarked that he seemed like an old man even though he was young.29 Banks had a wisdom and maturity about him, she observed. Toni would see a lot of Banks during the season and vowed to study his play. He was studying her, too, and noticed the way other players occasionally shunned her. “Human beings are the only ones that can make life complicated and unpleasant,” Banks later said. Toni had her priorities straight, it seemed to him: her actions on the field were more about self-respect than flashy play, he said.30
From Florida, Pollock routed the team through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana for more preseason play. They continued to meet up with Banks and took on the Negro League’s Memphis Red Sox later in the tour. In New Orleans, Toni brought fans to their feet when she singled in a run and later started a double play that squelched a Kansas City rally.31 With every game, the crowds grew larger and Toni attracted more press attention. Even teammates who begrudged a woman on the team acknowledged that Toni could hold her own on the field, increase gate receipts, and keep their salaries from shrinking. “She put fans in the stands,” pitcher Rufus “Zippy” McNeal admitted.32 “I think it brought more women to the game,” Toni said. “Curiosity, if nothing else.” She especially enjoyed when fans stayed after the game and asked to meet her or patted her on the back. The personal connection with fans moved Toni, perhaps because she remembered the ways the Rondo girls once scorned her. “I was so glad they’d touch me,” she said.33
Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone The First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League Page 15
