Author Martha Ackmann talks about Negro League baseball player Toni Stone – the “female Jackie Robinson” and “the best baseball player you’ve never heard of.”
Newswise — As Americans settle in front of their televisions this week to enjoy the annual baseball classic, the World Series, a researcher and author at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., is touting "the best baseball player you've never heard of."
That baseball player was a woman, and she is the subject of Martha Ackmann's latest book, Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League.
Curveball chronicles the life of Toni Stone, a second baseman for the championship Indianapolis Clowns and the legendary Kansas City Monarchs. When Henry Aaron moved from the Negro Leagues to the majors, Stone replaced him as the Clowns’ star attraction. During her nearly 20-year career in baseball, she played on barnstorming and semi-pro teams against Hall of Famers, including Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, and Ernie Banks. Baseball historians have called Stone the “female Jackie Robinson” and “the best baseball player you’ve never heard of.”
“I especially enjoyed talking with so many of Toni’s former teammates,” Ackmann said of her research for the book. “I’ll never forget some of the long afternoons I spent in former players’ garages and basements talking baseball. Ernie Banks was particularly helpful to me, and we talked about the respect he had for what he called ‘Toni’s struggle.’ He admired Stone for her skill and her courage.”
Ackmann said the book is as much about Jim Crow America as it is about baseball and “shows how far passion, pride, and determination can take one person in pursuit of a dream.” Her research for Curveball took her from San Francisco to New Orleans and from Saint Paul to Washington, D.C. Although Ackmann herself is a diehard Red Sox fan, she feels confident that Stone - a longtime resident of San Francisco – would be rooting for her hometown Giants in this year's World Series match-up.
A senior lecturer in gender studies at Mount Holyoke, Ackmann won the Robert W. Peterson Award for Curveball as the year’s most outstanding book to increase public awareness of Negro League baseball. She received the award from the Society for American Baseball Research at the organization’s recent conference in Birmingham, Alabama. Her previous book, The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight, won the Amelia Earhart Medal for aviation writing and was recognized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics with its 2004 Media Prize. A longtime scholar of Emily Dickinson and current president of the Emily Dickinson International Society, Ackmann is already at work on a new book about the poet.
Ackmann is available to speak with media about the life of Toni Stone.
Related links:
Curveballhttp://www.amazon.com/Curveball-Remarkable-Professional-Baseball-League/dp/1556527969
Ackmann's MHC Faculty Profilehttp://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/facultyprofiles/martha_ackmann.html
Peterson Awardhttp://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/channels/22/stories/5682372
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