Marcenia Lyle Stone "Toni"

Toni Stone (July 17, 1921 – November 2, 1996), born as Marcenia Lyle Stone, was an American female professional baseball player who played in predominantly male leagues. In 1953, she became the first woman to play as a regular on an American major-level professional baseball team when she joined the Indianapolis Clowns in the previously all-male Negro leagues. (Two other women, Mamie 'Peanut' Johnson and Connie Morgan, would later play on the team). A baseball player from her early childhood, she also played for the San Francisco Sea Lions, the New Orleans Creoles, and the Kansas City Monarchs before retiring from baseball in 1954. Her father was a barber, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, who also served in the United States Army during World War I. He married hairdresser Willa Maynard. At school, she wore pants instead of skirts and was teased for her preferences. Reportedly, she often skipped school to play baseball. Because it was a church activity, her parents consented to her participation.

By age 16, Stone was playing weekend games with the barnstorming Twin City Colored Giants. She was paid $2–3 a game, so her parents let her play. She eventually dropped out of high school with the hope of making a living playing baseball. she met Captain Aurelious Pescia Alberga, a native of Oakland and a WWI veteran. They married in 1950. While he continued to live in the San Francisco Bay Area as Stone pursued her career on baseball teams around the country, they remained married until he died at the age of 103 in the 1980s.

Baseball career Spending time at Jack's Tavern on Sutter, Stone became friends with one of the owners, Alroyd "Al" Love. Love introduced her to the local American Legion Baseball team, which was part of the national network of amateur baseball teams for teenagers. Stone had unofficially played some ball with an American Legion team in Minnesota. In San Francisco, because of age limits for the American Legion teams, Stone subtracted ten years from her age,

Stone talked her way onto the roster of the San Francisco Sea Lions by spring of 1949. The 1946 failure of the short-lived West Coast Negro Baseball Association, Pollock was a partner in several business ventures with Abe Saperstein, owner of the Harlem Globetrotters, and also one of the co-founders of the West Coast Negro Baseball Association. Similar to the trick basketball team, The Clowns both provided clown-style entertainment at games and played serious ball. Having a woman on the team attracted more spectators, but Stone also played seriously. She played 50 games in her season with the Clowns, batting .243.

Impact of racial segregation and sexism Although there was a baseball league for women, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, it remained unofficially segregated, claiming that only White women met their exacting beauty standards.

Stone was the first female player in the Negro Leagues, and she was not met with open arms. Bunny Downs, manager of the Clowns, had reportedly once told Stone that "she'd better stick to knitting and home cooking," but publicly claimed to be won over after seeing her play. Most of the male ball players shunned her and gave her a hard time because she was a woman. Stone was quite proud of the fact that the male players were out to get her. She would show off the scars on her left wrist and remember the time she had been spiked by a runner trying to take out the woman standing on second base. "He was out," she recalled.

Even though she was part of the team, she was not allowed in the locker room. If she was lucky, she would be allowed to change in the umpire's locker room. Once, Stone was asked to wear a skirt while playing for sex appeal, but she would not do it. Even though she felt like she was "one of the guys," the people around her did not. While playing for the Kansas City Monarchs, she spent most of the game on the bench, next to the men who hated her. "It was hell," she said.

Retirement Stone's contract was sold to the Kansas City Monarchs prior to the 1954 season, and she retired following the season because of lack of playing time.

Toni Stone died on November 2, 1996, of heart failure at a nursing home in Alameda, California. She was 75 years old.

In 1990, she was included in two exhibits at the Baseball Hall of Fame, one on "Women in Baseball" and another on "Negro League Baseball". In 1993, Stone was inducted into the Women's Sports Hall of Fame, as well as the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. In 1990, Stone's hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota, declared March 6 "Toni Stone Day". Saint Paul also has a field named after Toni Stone located at the Dunning Baseball Complex.

In 2020 and 2021, the Society for American Baseball Research nominated Stone for the Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award.

On February 9, 2022, Google honored Stone's legacy and achievements by making her the Google Doodle on their homepage. The image depicts Stone fielding a baseball from her second base position and throwing the ball in the direction of first base, as the opposing team's runner crosses in front of her in the direction of second base. The Doodle was created by San Francisco-based illustrator and animation director, Monique Wray.

Stone was included in MLB The Show 24.

In popular media Misconceptions Various biographic elements of Stone's life were fabricated for the popular media, apparently for marketing purposes. Stone's purported $12,000 annual signing salary with the Clowns, which Pollock claimed was more than Jackie Robinson's first major-league contract, was more likely around $350 to $400 a month. The Clowns' publicists touted her bachelor's degree from Macalester College—Stone also dropped ten years from her age in order to join a team for teenagers in San Francisco, and retained the lower age on her baseball resume.

The Society for American Baseball Research has looked particularly closely at Stone's claim that she got a hit off Satchel Paige, of the St. Louis Browns, on Easter Sunday in 1953. Other sources name other high schools altogether. Other sources say she dropped out of high school.

Among many other claims, researchers cannot verify whether or not she played for the New Orleans Black Pelicans.

Almost twenty years later, Toni Stone, written by Lydia Diamond under commission from the Roundabout Theater Company Within a year of its publication, the play had been staged by several theaters around the country, though the COVID-19 pandemic did inhibit its production.