Toni Stone, First of Three Women to Play Negro League Baseball

Born in 1921, Toni Stone grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. By the age of ten, Stone was already playing baseball with a Catholic Midget League, the equivalent of today's Little League.

After she graduated from Roosevelt High School, Stone married Aurelios Alberga, a man forty years older than herself. Her married name was Marcenia Lyle Alberga.

But when she played baseball, she used the name Tone Stone. She played for the Girl's Highlex Softball Club in St. Paul and by fifteen, she was playing for a men's semi-professional team, the St. Paul Giants.

Stone moved to San Francisco and played with the San Francisco Sea Lions, a black, semi-pro barnstorming team. She drove in two runs her first time at bat.

But the owner wasn't paying Stone the amount he had originally promised so when the team played in New Orleans, Stone left to join the New Orleans Creoles, part of the Negro League minors. The year was 1949 and Stone's pay was $300 a month.

Four years later, Syd Pollack who owned the Indianapolis Clowns, signed Stone to play second base as it had recently been vacated by Hank Aaron. This signing put her in the official Negro Leagues.

But the Clowns started out as a "gimmick" team, much like the Harlem Globetrotters. Attendance was down at their games once they discontinued their antics on the field and Pollack signed Stone on mostly for the publicity having a woman on the team would generate.

The publicity stunt worked as people crowded the stadium to see the woman playing ball alongside the men.

Although they played alongside each other on the field, the men were not happy to have a woman on the team. She wasn't allowed to dress in the locker room, having to dress in the umpire's locker room instead.

"They didn't mean any harm and in their way they liked me," Stone stated at one time. "Just that I wasn't supposed to be there. They'd tell me to go home and fix my husband some biscuits or any damn thing. Just get the" hell away from here."[1]

Stone played fifty games with the Clowns, maintaining a batting average of .243. Pollack sold Stone's contract to the Kansas City Monarchs, a team that had won several pennants in the "Colored World Series." Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige had both played for the Monarchs.

However, Stone wasn't allowed to play much for the Monarchs. She spent most of the season sitting on the bench waiting to play. It was also 1954 and Negro League Baseball was coming to a close. Stone retired from baseball in 1954.

Her most memorable moment in baseball was the day she faced pitcher Satchel Paige. It was an exhibition game in Omaha on Easter Sunday, 1953. Paige was well-known as an outstanding pitcher, but it was also known that he would ask a hitter how he (or she in Stone's case) wanted the ball.

"Any way you like,'' Stone told him after she had dressed in the umpire's locker room. ''Just don't hit me.'' [2]

Paige threw a fast ball. Stone was the only player to get a hit off Paige that day.

After her retirement, Stone moved to Oakland, California where she worked as a nurse and cared for her sick husband who died in 1987 at the age of 103. Stone died in 1998 at the age of 75.

1990: Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in two separate exhibits: "Women in Baseball" and "Negro League Baseball
1990: St. Paul, Minnesota declared March 6 as Toni Stone Day
1993: Inducted into the Women's Sports Foundation's International Women's Sports Hall of Fame
1993: Inducted into the Sudafed International Women's Sports Hall of Fame

St. Paul also has a field at the Dunning Baseball Complex named after Toni Stone.

Sources:

[1] Negro League Baseball Players Association
[2] New York Times Obituary