How to use this Page

Since it’s Women’s History Month and baseball season is right around the corner (!), we asked our favorite sports expert, author Crystal Hubbard, whether she thought women should be allowed to play professional baseball. Here’s what she had to say:

Pitcher Jackie Mitchell signed a contract to play for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a Southern Association minor league team, in 1931. This deal differed from most because Mitchell wasn’t like the other boys. She wasn’t a boy at all. She was a woman, one of the very few to play professional baseball on all-male teams. Although Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an April 2, 1931 exhibition game against the New York Yankees soon after signing with the Lookouts, baseball commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis canceled Mitchell’s contract, claiming that baseball was too strenuous for women. Commissioner Ford Frick, on June 21, 1952, officially banned women from professional baseball.

Marcenia “Toni Stone” Lyle, Ila Borders, and most recently, Eri Yoshida of Japan, are among the very few truly accomplished female baseball players who found spots on the rosters of professional male teams. In 1993, Carey Schueler—the daughter of then White Sox general manager Ron Schueler—was drafted by the White Sox, becoming at 18 years old the first woman ever drafted by a Major League team.

Schueler, a left-handed pitcher, never took the field for a game.

While banning women from almost any other field would lead to a lawsuit, the No Girls Allowed code of Major League Baseball remains. Is it because women are too delicate for the physical challenges of MLB, or because they don’t have the physical ability or talent? Some women, perhaps. But not all, as evidenced by Mitchell, Lyle, Borders, Yoshida, and a fresh generation of skilled female Little Leaguers.

The same physical limitations used to justify banning women from professional baseball can also be applied to most male players—they aren’t strong enough, they aren’t fast enough, they aren’t good enough. Some female athletes are strong enough. And fast enough and good enough. Yet they still don’t have the same opportunities their male contemporaries enjoy. Male athletes who play baseball well have the chance to earn scholarships to college and perhaps even play professionally. Female athletes deserve the same.

No capable athlete should be banned from the Major Leagues because of her gender. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. It’s long past time we redefined that saying.

Crystal Hubbard is a sports buff and full-time writer. Her books include Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl’s Baseball Dream, Game, Set, Match, Champion Arthur Ashe, and The Last Black King of the Kentucky Derby.

Everyone knows Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., but there are many other African Americans who have contributed to the rich fabric of our country but whose names have fallen through the cracks of history.

We’ve asked some of our authors who chose to write biographies of these talented leaders why we should remember them. We’ll feature their answers throughout Black History Month.

Today, Crystal Hubbard shares why she wrote about Toni Stone (a.k.a. Marcenia Lyle) in Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl’s Baseball Dream:

“I wrote about Marcenia Lyle, the first woman to have become a full-time roster member of an all-male professional baseball team, because she is an example of what it truly means to make a dream come true.

“Marcenia Lyle loved baseball, and she played as a child. She wanted to do what so many boys could grow up to do, which was to play ball professionally.

“In the early 1930s, career options were limited for African-American women. Most typically became teachers, nurses, maids and housewives. But Marcenia held on to her dream of playing baseball. Even when it was hard to get people to believe in her, she worked harder to prove that she could be a good baseball player. She made her dream come true, and her drive and determination inspired me to follow my heart, to work hard, and to bring my dreams to life.”

Further reading:

Black History Month: Why Remember Robert Smalls?

Crystal Hubbard, illustrated by Randy DuBurke,
Catching the Moon: The Story of A Young Girl’s Baseball Dream
Lee & Low Books, 2005.

Ages 6 to 10

Could there be anything better than the sting of the ball in your palm, the taste of dust sliding into home base, the thrill of tagging someone out? Not for Marcenia Lyle. She loves baseball more than anything in the world. She dreams at night of playing professional ball, and lives for afternoon games on the playground, despite initial objections from the boy players and constant disapproval from her parents.  They want her to focus on school, and on traditional jobs for girls: teacher, nurse, or maid.

Then one day, Gabby Street comes to visit. Mr. Street is the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. He wants kids for his baseball camp! Marcenia has never run so fast, thrown so hard, or hit so far as she does that day. But despite proving herself the best player out there, Mr. Street says no. Girls don’t play baseball.  If she’s ever going to achieve her dream, she has to find a way to convince both Mr. Street and her father that girls should be able to play baseball, too.

Set in the 1930s, Catching the Moon tells the true story of Marcenia Lyle, the African-American girl who grew up to become the first woman on an all-male professional baseball team. Named one of Bank Street College’s Children’s Books of the Year, Catching the Moon is an inspiring tale of grit, heart, hope, and most of all, determination to dream.  Randy DuBurke’s luminous ink and acrylic images vibrate with Marcenia’s energy on the field, while the soft blues and browns of his color palette channel her sadness when it appears she has no options left. An afterward explains how Marcenia Lyle, under the name Toni Stone, became the first female member of an all-male baseball team, and even went on to fill in Hank Aaron’s place in the Major Leagues. Crystal Hubbard captures both the irrepressible obsession of the baseball fan and the challenges of being young and dreaming big, even if it means defying adult expectations.  Children will cheer for Marcenia as she succeeds despite the odds, in turn encouraged to follow their own dreams of greatness.

Sara Hudson
April 2011