LEGACY: From St. Paul playgrounds to big leagues, Toni Stone always loved baseball

A book about Toni Stone hits bookstores on August 6, using some of the information from our archives. We offer this look back in our Legacy series at a story from February 1988, “From St. Paul playgrounds to big leagues, Stone always loved baseball,” written by Diane DuBay

 

“Those were beautiful days,” said Toni Stone of her growing-up years in St. Paul in the 1930s and ‘40s. Her life revolved around baseball. She ate Wheaties. Babe Ruth was her hero. “He was everybody’s hero,” Stone said.

From the playgrounds of St. Paul, Stone went on to become a baseball hero herself, albeit a largely unsung one. In 1953, she became the first woman in professional baseball, playing second base for the Indianapolis Clowns, the top-ranked team in the Negro American Baseball League.

The 67-year-old Stone played recreational baseball in Oakland, where she now lives, until five years ago, when she retired.

As a young woman, Stone left St. Paul for California to visit her sister, who was in the service. Unable to locate her, Stone went to Traveler’s Aid for help, where a staff member made an appointment to discuss her situation that afternoon. But in the hours before the scheduled appointment, Stone recalled, she went out and found a job and a place to stay.

It wasn’t long before she was doing what she had done best in St. Paul—playing ball. She played for American Legion teams in California, including the San Francisco Sea Lions who won the state Legion championship, and later a Negro American League minor team before being called up to play for the Clowns. 

She began her professional career with aplomb, driving in two runs in her first time at bat.

Stone remembers with affection the St. Paul playgrounds and baseball fields where she began her baseball career. Dunning Field behind Central High School was a favorite place, her “second home”—a place where neighborhood chums called her “Tomboy,” as if it were her given name. So she picked out a new name for herself—one that sounded like “Tomboy”: Toni. (Her given name is Marcinia Lyle.)

Stone learned to play baseball at Welcome playground near Western and St. Anthony Boulevard. Later, Father Charles Keefe, a priest at St. Peter Claver who was an avid baseball fan, got her a uniform and helped get her onto a team, she said. 

There were days of forcing her sister to eat Wheaties with her, so that she’d have enough boxtops to be admitted to a Wheaties baseball club. In her teens she raced home from mass at St. Peter Claver so she wouldn’t be late for Sunday ball games. By then she was playing hardball with a local team, the St. Paul Giants.

Stone’s parents didn’t want her to play baseball at all, “but there was nothing they could do about it,” she said.

Her father, a barber who had run away from home in his youth to attend Tuskegee Institute, didn’t understand her dream. Her mother, who went to school to become a beautician while the Stone children were very young, was equally concerned. Neither Stone’s brother nor her two sisters were interested in baseball or athletics.

There were other obstacles. Toni didn’t do well in school, wanting to read only books that she picked out herself, she said. Her family found special tutoring help for her through the parish and her public school teachers helped, too.

Still, her fondest memories are for the people who nurtured her love of athletics—the teacher who took her ice-skating at the Hippodrome, the teacher who introduced her to baseball, and former St. Louis Cardinals manager Gabby Street, who was so impressed with her ability he bought her a pair of cleats himself and let her attend his baseball skills school.

Stone says she has photos and memories from her life as a ball-player, and that some of her experiences weren’t easy. Long bus trips with the all-male teams were hard, Stone said, and her husband didn’t want her to play. “He would have stopped me if he could have.”

She didn’t earn as much money as news articles reported, she said, and what she did earn, “Uncle Sam was always after.”

“I lost it financially,” she said. “It was crazy.”

There were highlights, too, like being asked to toss out the first ball at a San Francisco Giants game in the 1960s.

When asked how she felt at the time about being the first woman in professional baseball, Stone said she really didn’t think much about it. “I just wanted to play ball,” she said.

Find “Swinging Into History,” by Karen L. Swanson