Meet Toni Stone: The First Woman to Play Baseball Professionally

Brut America

Toni Stone broke gender barriers when she became the first woman player in a men’s professional baseball league. She would have just turned 98  — now, her story is being celebrated in an off-Broadway show.

Transcript

00:00History has not remembered her the way it should.

00:02She's not written into the history books at all, at all, at all.

00:15I want to tell you something about

00:20reaching and me.

00:24Because you may have heard,

00:26I am the first woman to ever play professional ball.

00:40I was sort of aghast that I wouldn't have heard of her.

00:43It didn't make any sense that we would know who Toni Stone is.

00:47She should be right up there with all of the incredible athletes

00:51whose names roll off of our tongue.

00:53It's not right.

00:54I wanted to help introduce her to the world.

01:09She was a black woman in the Jim Crow South,

01:13but she was also the only woman in a team full of men

01:18playing in an arena in which sometimes they were playing

01:21against white teams who sort of just hated them already.

01:40Toni Stone wouldn't have been allowed to play in the Negro Leagues.

01:44When she and two of her contemporaries,

01:46she was the first black woman.

01:48There were two others after her.

01:49They tried to audition for that league and they were not allowed to.

01:55So here's the thing, right?

01:57There's no crying in baseball.

01:59Toni was like, okay, then that's fine.

02:02I'm going to go play with the men.

02:13In the play, we have men play women

02:16and we have men play white people, white men.

02:19It was a difficult decision to make

02:21because I also didn't want to be not employing,

02:25you know, five or six women.

02:27Here's the thing.

02:28I really love the image of us seeing visually

02:33what that was for Toni to be the only woman.

02:36And so then at the end of the play, Toni Stone says,

02:46And in that breath is life.

02:49And I just think that that says everything

02:51and it says everything about baseball,

02:53but it says so much more about life.

02:55I think that when we see ourselves represented on stage,

02:59whether we are women, whether we're people of color,

03:02whether we're anyone who identifies as other,

03:05it's affirming.

03:07It's hugely and strangely affirming to see yourself represented.

03:11Here we are.

03:12We're here and we're all different shapes and sizes

03:15and sexual orientations and we won't be not seen.

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