Born: 17 July 1921, United States
Died: 2 November 1996
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Marcenia Lyle Stone
The following is republished from the Minnesota Historical Society’s MNopedia, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. It was written by Wendy Jones.
Marcenia Lyle (Toni “Tomboy”) Stone broke both gender and racial barriers by becoming the first female professional baseball player in the Negro Major League. During her career, she played with a variety of men’s teams before making history when she joined the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro Major League Team.
Toni Stone was born Marcenia Lyle Stone on July 17, 1921, in Bluefield, West Virginia. When she was ten years old, her family moved to St. Paul. Her parents, Boykin and Willa Maynard Stone, raised Marcenia in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood.
Stone grew up playing baseball with the neighborhood boys, despite her parents’ objections, and earned the nickname “Tomboy.” Encouraged by her priest, she was the first girl to hold a spot on the St. Peter Claver Catholic Church boys’ baseball team in the Catholic boys’ league.
Stone got her first real break when she joined the Twin City Colored Giants “barnstorming” team at age sixteen. She travelled around the Midwest and Canada with the team until she moved to California following the onset of World War II to be near her sister. She worked odd jobs and settled into the Fillmore neighborhood of San Francisco—sometimes called “the Harlem of the West.” While living there, Stone adopted a new professional name, “Toni Stone.” She met her future husband, Aurelious Pescia Alberga, at a nightclub, and the couple was married in 1950.
At Alberga’s suggestion, Stone applied to play American Legion baseball. To get around the Legion’s age restriction, which required players to be no older than seventeen, she shaved ten years off her actual age and maintained the ruse throughout her career. She played a short stint with the San Francisco Sea Lions of the West Coast Negro League before joining the New Orleans Creoles, a Negro Minor League team, in 1949.
Toni Stone made sports history in 1953 when she signed a seasonal contract with the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro American League. She was hired to fill the second-base position vacated by Hank Aaron when he joined the Milwaukee Braves.
As one of the first women to play in the Negro Major League, Stone endured substantial harassment from opponents, critics, and fellow teammates. With the rise of integrated baseball, Negro League baseball began to wane. Though Stone’s skills improved the team, its managers hired her as a strategy to sell tickets. When the team’s owner suggested that she wear a skirt, however, Stone refused. Serious about her sport, she insisted on wearing the official uniform.
In an attempt to make the Indianapolis Clowns more marketable, publicists for the team fabricated a biography for Stone. They claimed that she had attended Macalester College when in fact she had never graduated from high school. They reported her seasonal salary at $12,000 when, by her own admission, she was paid about $400 per month. There is some evidence that the team’s management inflated her statistics to sustain the public’s interest. It is widely accepted, however, that she achieved a batting average of .364—the fourth highest in the league for 1953. Regardless of the hype, Stone proved herself to be a true athlete.
She spent just one season with the Indianapolis Clowns. Her favorite memory with the team was getting a hit off legendary pitcher Satchel Paige during an exhibition game. The following season, Stone played with the Kansas City Monarchs. Feeling exploited, and dissatisfied with how little time she was allowed to spend on the field, she quit and returned to California. She continued to coach and play semi-professional ball well into her sixties.
Stone’s contributions to baseball were largely forgotten until later in her life. She is remembered in the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. The city of St. Paul declared March 6, 1990, as “Toni Stone Day,” and later named a neighborhood ball park “Toni Stone Field.” She was honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991 and was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. In 1997, the Great American History Theatre in St. Paul commemorated her story in a world premiere production, Tomboy Stone.
Toni Stone died on November 2, 1996, in Alameda, California.
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Marcenia Lyle Stone was born July 17, 1921, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to her biography, Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro Leagues, young Stone was only interested in sports. In fact, she was known simply as Tomboy growing up. As a teenager, she played for a local semi-professional team, the Twin City Colored Giants, as a second baseman. She then played for the Peninsula Baseball League and later the San Francisco Sea Lions, a semi-professional team with the West Coast Negro Baseball League, and the New Orleans Creoles in the Negro Southern League. At some point in her life, she dropped the names Marcenia and Tomboy and became Toni.
After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, playing with the Brooklyn Dodgers beginning in 1947, more Black players were signed to the previously segregated American and National Leagues.
In order to keep fans interested, Negro leagues drafted women players including Stone, Connie Morgan, and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson. Stone’s break came when Syd Pollock, owner of the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League, signed her in 1953. She took the spot of Hank Aaron, who had signed with the Milwaukee Braves. According to a New York Times obituary (published in the November 10, 1996 issue), Pollock encouraged her to wear a skirt during the games, but she refused.
Although she was originally signed to increase ticket sales, she proved to be far more than just a novelty woman player. One newspaper article said of her playing– “she’s agile, has good baseball instinct, and knows what a Louisville slugger is used for.” Typically, she played the first two or three innings of the game, before veteran Ray Neil, the league’s leading batter at the time, took over.
Overall, she played in 50 games and had an admirable .243 batting average. At one time, she was considered fourth in the league. It was reported that she got a hit off the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige and played with future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks and Willie Mays.
Stone was incredibly talented in the sport but despite this, some players criticized her publicly, including Clown’s player/manager, Buster Haywood. She didn’t let it bother her. To quote a newspaper interview published in 1953: “Toni says she does not expect the boys to ‘let up’ on her because she is a woman, in fact, ‘they never do,’ she added.” The Jackson Advocate reported:
“Toni Stone is capable of holding her own against the strongest male opponents and readily admits that none of her opposition takes it any easier on her because of her sex. She’s been playing with and against male baseball teams since the age of fifteen.”
“Which Club has the Toni?” Jackson Advocate (Jackson, MS), May 2, 1953, p. 2.
Stone played for the Clowns until 1954 when the team traded her to the Kansas City Monarchs. With the Monarchs, she played against Connie Morgan, who played with the Clowns at the time. The Monarchs won the game against the Clowns and the next day, the Evening Star said of the audience: “about 7,000 baseball fans shared the opinion today that the Monarchs’ girl second baseman, Toni Stone, is quite the ball player.” Stone retired from baseball in 1955. In 1993, she was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. She died three years later on November 2, 1996 at the age of 75.