Toni Stone: “A woman can do many things.” 

Growing up, Marcenia Lyle “Toni” Stone was athletic and excelled in many sports. Among basketball, skating, golf, swimming, hockey, and baseball, baseball was the sport that captured her heart. In an interview in 1991, Stone said, “[Baseball] was like a drug, whenever summer would come around [and] the bats would start popping, I’d go crazy.”

Despite her parents’ protests, Stone joined her church’s baseball league in St. Paul, Minnesota at age 10, which had been an all-boys team until Toni came around. At age 15, she played for the Twin City Colored Giants. She moved to California after graduation from high school to take care of her sister, Bunny, where she continued to play for several men’s amateur and semi-professional teams. In 1946, she joined the San Francisco Sea Lions, a team in the Negro West Coast League.

After Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, many players from the Negro Leagues slowly followed his trajectory and signed with teams in the American and National Leagues. By the 1950s, the Negro Leagues were losing popularity. With the Negro National League folding in 1948, just four teams remained. In a last-ditch effort to garner attention for his team, Syd Pollack of the Indianapolis Clowns signed Toni Stone to replace Hank Aaron at second base, who had just been signed by the Milwaukee Brewers.

This signing made Stone the first woman to play in a major American men’s professional league and the first of three women to play in the Negro Leagues (she was followed closely by Connie Morgan and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson). The signing was initially compared to a sideshow because the Clowns had been adding many novelties to their games to try and draw crowds for the past couple of years. Many were skeptical about a woman joining the men’s team. An article in the Jackson Advocate read, “The latest masculine enterprise to fall before the advance of wearers of skirts and panties is the baseball diamond.”

Stone remained undaunted by her male opponents. She told the Jackson Advocate in 1953 that “she does not expect the boys to ‘let up’ on her because she is a woman, in fact, ‘they never do.’” The pitchers threw with the same intensity as they would against any other opponent, and Stone proudly wore the scars from spikes sliding into second base as badges of honor. Her male opponents and teammates still taunted Stone, and there are even reports of her teammates telling her to “go home and fix your husband some biscuits.” During her two years spent in the league, Stone held her own and was proud of the adversity she faced.

Despite the cards stacked against her, Stone excelled in the league. She first posted a batting average of .243, but during the 1953 season, she reached a high of .364. This average put her fourth in the league, right behind Ernie Banks. It is even reported that Stone hit a single off of the legendary Satchel Paige in an Easter exhibition game. In one issue of the Miami Times, Stone received praise ahead of a two-game series against the Monarchs, with the Miami Times even calling her “The Clowns’ biggest attraction,” and comparing her play to Jackie Robinson.

“She gives not an inch of ground as she executes double plays with the finesse of Jackie Robinson. She’s agile, has good baseball instinct, and knows what a Louisville Slugger is for,” the Miami Times article said.

Stone played 50 out of 175 games for the Clowns before Pollack sold her contract to the Kansas City Monarchs. Stone played with the Monarchs for the 1954 season and retired following the end of the season. Though she deeply missed baseball, Stone retired to become a nurse and take care of her husband until his passing in 1987.

Toni Stone was officially recognized for her contributions to baseball when she was honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991, along with other Negro League Players, and inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1993.

In a 1991 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Stone recalls a conversation with one of her teammates, Al Lombardi, from the New Orleans Creoles. She said, “Women have dreams too. When you finish high school, they tell a boy to go out and see the world. What do they tell a girl? They tell her to go next door and marry the boy that their families picked for her. It wasn’t right. A woman can do many things.”