Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society

When Stone, a second baseman, signed with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League in 1953, nearly two dozen black players were in the majors. The Negro leagues, increasingly raided for their talent, were resorting to gimmicks to revive sagging attendance. see the feminine stars read the bold type at the top of a 1954 poster promoting a game between the Kansas City Monarchs, who had acquired Stone from Indianapolis earlier that year, and the Clowns, who had just signed another woman, Connie Morgan.

Of course, Stone--the subject of the play Tomboy Stone, which had a monthlong run in St. Paul earlier this year--didn't see herself as a gimmick. Before she signed with Indianapolis at age 32 (the Clowns listed her age as 22), Stone had already spent most of her life playing the game, first on the sandlots of St. Paul, her girlhood home, and then on otherwise all male semipro teams in San Francisco and New Orleans. The most memorable moment of her career in the Negro leagues came on Easter Sunday '53 when she got the only hit off Satchel Paige in an exhibition game in Omaha. After her 53-game stint in professional baseball ended in '55, Stone continued to play in men's amateur leagues, until '81, when she was 60.

The bitter irony for Stone, who died last November at age 75, was that baseball didn't love her back. She's not included in any of the exhibits at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Four years ago she said, "I just loved the game. But they weren't ready for me. So many of them thought it was a disgrace.... But my heart was set. And I kept at it."

Jackie Robinson couldn't have said it any better.

--Amy Nutt