Jackie Mitchell: The Girl Who Maybe Struck out “Murderers’ Row” 

Whoever said diamonds are a girl’s best friend might have been onto something. It was certainly true for Jackie Mitchell, who loved nothing more than spending time on a baseball diamond.

Mitchell learned to pitch from her Memphis neighbor, Arthur “Dazzy” Vance, who still is the only pitcher to lead the National League in strikeouts for seven consecutive seasons. Just years later, Mitchell struck out the heart of an infamous New York Yankees lineup that became known as “Murderers’ Row” – or did she?

When Mitchell was a teenager, she and her family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she played for a baseball school affiliated with the local Double-A team, the Lookouts. On April 2, 1931, 17-year-old Mitchell pitched in relief in an exhibition game against the Yankees after her team’s starting pitcher, Clyde Barfoot, gave up hits to the first two batters.

Her first opponent was Babe Ruth, who “assumed an easy batting stance,” according to one of the hundreds of reporters who anxiously gathered to watch the game. Mitchell’s first pitch was her trademark dropping sinker, which she delivered with a sidearm approach. Ruth watched it pass for a ball. On the next two pitches, Ruth “swung and missed the ball by a foot,” and even asked the umpire to inspect the baseball. A fourth pitch caught the outside corner and was called for strike three. Chucking his bat down with fury, the “Great Bambino” walked back to the dugout, inviting the next batter, Lou Gehrig, to challenge Mitchell.

Gehrig—nicknamed “The Iron Horse” due to his durability and expertise in hitting—swung and missed at three straight pitches. Although she walked the next batter and the Yankees went on to win the game, Mitchell’s outing attracted media attention, though not necessarily because of to her pitching skills.

Despite having accomplished an enormous feat, much of the press focused on the fact that Jackie was a woman. One article wrote, “the curves won’t be all on the ball,” and another newspaper reported she “has a swell change of pace and swings a mean lipstick.” Even Babe Ruth was quoted saying that women “will never make good” in baseball because “they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball every day.”

The former commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, allegedly agreed. There were reports that Landis voided Mitchell's contract, one of the first professional baseball contracts given to a woman, claiming that the game was too strenuous for her. This would begin a ban of women players that would last until 1993. Given the physical disadvantage that women were thought to have at the time, many onlookers were skeptical of the validity of Mitchell’s strikeouts of Ruth and Gehrig and began to speculate.

The president of the Chattanooga Lookouts, Joe Engel, was known for his comedic stunts. The exhibition game against the Yankees was originally scheduled for April 1, 1931, but was delayed because of rain, leading many to suspect that Mitchell’s outing was supposed to be an April Fools’ Day prank carried out by Engel. John Thorn, the official historian for Major League Baseball, also believes Ruth and Gehrig were in on Engel’s plan and acted out the stunt. After all, professional baseball was severely struggling amid the Great Depression, and teams were willing to do anything to make money. Despite claiming they “had no intention of striking out” against Mitchell, Yankee third baseman Ben Chapman suspected Ruth and Gehrig agreed between themselves to strikeout. “It was a good promotion, a good show,” he said. “It really packed the house.”

Conversely, one New York pitcher claimed their manager Joe McCarthy was so competitive that “he wouldn’t have instructed the Yankees to strikeout.” Tim Wiles, former National Baseball Hall of Fame research director, also believes the strikeouts were real. He says, “much of batting has to do with timing and familiarity with a pitcher, and everything about Jackie Mitchell was unfamiliar to Ruth and Gehrig.” That said, Mitchell was arguably favored in the matchups, as she was a left-handed, sidearm pitcher facing left-handed batters who had never faced her before. Wiles also entertains the possibility that rumors of the strikeouts being staged arose to protect male egos. “Even hitters as great as Ruth and Gehrig would be reluctant to admit they’d really been struck out by a 17-year-old girl,” Wiles said.

Regardless of whether Jackie Mitchell actually struck out Murderers’ Row, there is no denying she paved the way for women in professional baseball. Thorn points to Eri Yoshida, a knuckleballer, who in 2010 trained with the Red Sox at their minor league camp as a modern-day Mitchell. According to Thorn, women who throw knuckleballs or other off-speed pitches represent the future of female pitchers in baseball.

At the end of the day, Jackie “loved baseball," says John Kovach, author of Jackie Mitchell: The Girl Who Loved Baseball. He wrote, “I think until the day she died she believed she struck Ruth and Gehrig out."