ATHLETE UNITED STATESI had a drop pitch and when I was throwing it right, you couldn’t touch it.
—JACKIE MITCHELL
Jackie scuffed the pitcher’s mound with her cleats and glanced up at the batter standing beside home plate. Babe Ruth tipped his cap to her.
Can I do it? thought Jackie. Can I strike out the Home Run King? The Sultan of Swat? The number one home run hitter in the major leagues?
The crowds in the stands were laughing, as if this match-up between baseball’s biggest hero and an unknown seventeen-year-old rookie—a girl, of all things—was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Jackie heard a few jeers, but she didn’t let them rattle her. She rubbed the ball between her fingers and thought about all the years she’d been practicing. Jackie had been playing baseball for as long as she could remember. She thought about all the people she’d struck out with her left-handed pitch—plenty of them men.
Babe was smirking now, as if to say, “C’mon little girl, let’s see what you’ve got.”
I’ll show you what I’ve got, thought Jackie, rocking back for her windup. The ball sailed forward. Babe swung at it, but it dipped just before reaching the plate. A sinker.
“Steee-rike one!”
Babe had missed. His eyes popped open in surprise. Jackie could almost hear the crowd’s disbelief. A strike? Thrown by a girl? Babe gripped the bat tighter. He wasn’t smirking anymore.
Before the big game, Babe Ruth told reporters: “I don’t know what’s going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball. Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball every day.”
Jackie’s next two pitches were balls. After the second one, the crowd laughed again, figuring the first strike was just a fluke. Babe laughed along with them. But Jackie didn’t let it rattle her. For her fourth pitch, she threw another sinker. Babe swung at it and . . .
“Steee-rike two!”
Now Babe was mad. He glared at Jackie. She knew he’d expect another sinker, so instead she threw the ball straight over the plate. Babe didn’t swing this time, convinced it was another ball.
“Steee-rike three!”
The crowd went wild. Four thousand people were clapping and yelling and chanting, “Jackie! Jackie!” She’d done it! Jackie Mitchell had struck out the superstar of baseball. Babe kicked at the plate, called the umpire a few choice names, then threw his bat down in disgust, and stomped back to the dugout. Jackie just smiled, enjoying her moment in the sun.
It seems Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell was always destined to be the underdog. When she was born around 1914, she weighed just three and a half pounds. But her size and sex didn’t hold her back. As soon as Jackie could walk, her father took her to the ballpark and began teaching her to play baseball. Even as a toddler, little Jackie was good at it, really good.
Although the press at the time heralded Jackie as the first-ever woman to play in the minor leagues, that’s inaccurate. In 1898 Lizzie Arlington played one game for a minor league team in Reading, Pennsylvania.
The Mitchell family lived next door to a minor-league baseball player named Dazzy Vance (a future Hall of Fame pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers). Dazzy took an interest in young Jackie. He could see her passion for the game and her talent on the field. When Jackie was around five years old, Dazzy taught her his favorite pitch, the sinker, a curveball that drops just before home plate. It’s a tough pitch to hit and a tough pitch to throw, but Jackie mastered it quickly. By age seven she was a star in the sandlots of her hometown, Memphis.
When Jackie was growing up, women had been playing baseball for decades. But they didn’t play on men’s teams. Bloomer Girls, all-female teams, barnstormed across America playing against local, semi-pro, and minor-league men’s teams. These female players did well against the men, often beating them, but there were no women on any minor or major league baseball teams. Jackie hoped to change that.
After the famous game against the Yankees, Jackie got tons of fan mail. Some of it was simply addressed to “The Girl Who Struck Out Babe Ruth.”
At age sixteen, she played on a women’s team in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a year later she was invited to an elite baseball camp in Atlanta run by former major league pitcher Kid Elberfeld. Jackie was the only girl at the camp. Like Dazzy, Kid saw Jackie’s potential and helped with her training. Soon word got out: Jackie could pitch. Joe Engel, a former pro pitcher, heard about the girl wonder and came scouting. He offered her a contract to play on the minor-league team he owned: the Chattanooga Lookouts. Jackie was thrilled, and when she signed the contract she became the second woman in history to join a minor league baseball team.
Just a few days after signing the contract, Jackie’s new team was scheduled to play an exhibition game against the major league New York Yankees. It was the off-season, and these exhibition games were a common way for major league players to stay in shape and for smaller towns to get a chance to watch their heroes play. No one expected much from the Lookouts.
The manager didn’t choose Jackie as their starting pitcher, however. Jackie watched from the dugout as their first pitcher gave up a double and then a single, putting the Yankees ahead 1–0. Third up to bat was Babe Ruth. The undisputed superstar of baseball in the 1920s and ’30s, Babe held the record for hits and home runs.
The manager waved Jackie to the mound. It was her turn to pitch. To everyone’s surprise, in five pitches Jackie struck out the Sultan of Swat. Some fans thought it must be a publicity stunt, but if so, Babe was one heck of an actor. He cursed the umpire and threw a fit before leaving the field.
After being cut from the Lookouts, Jackie barnstormed with the House of David, a team famous for their long hair and beards. Jackie sometimes wore a fake beard during their games.
Next up was Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, major league’s second strongest batter after Babe. Could she do it again, or was Babe a one-time fluke? the crowd wondered. Jackie pitched three times, Lou swung three times, and he missed three times. She’d done it again: Jackie had struck out the strongest duo in baseball. The four thousand fans in the stands rose to their feet and gave Jackie a standing ovation that lasted several minutes.
After such a stunning debut, Jackie expected a long career in baseball. But that wasn’t to be. The game against the Yankees attracted attention around the world. There were photos in dozens of newspapers and magazines, and a newsreel of Jackie’s strikeouts played in theaters across the country. Just a few days after the game, the baseball commissioner canceled Jackie’s contract with the Lookouts. He declared women unfit to play baseball because the game was “too strenuous” for them. More likely, he didn’t want any more girls embarrassing his male stars.
Decades after her baseball glory, Jackie finally has her own baseball card!
Despite her voided contract, Jackie managed to pitch in the minor leagues for a few more years, playing for small, unknown teams and keeping her name out of the headlines. But she missed pitching to the best of the best, and she knew her dreams of pitching in the World Series would never be. Jackie retired from baseball in 1937 at age twenty-three. Major League Baseball formally banned women from playing in 1952, and as of 2012 there are still no women players.
In 1982, more than fifty years after her historic game, Jackie was invited to throw the Opening Day first pitch for the Chattanooga Lookouts. She died five years later. What kind of mark would Jackie have made if not for pro baseball’s sexism? Would she have pitched in the World Series? Would her name be as recognized as Babe Ruth’s? We’ll never know. But we do know that Jackie’s story has inspired generations of female athletes. There are girls today playing against boys in Little League and dreaming of pitching like “The Girl Who Struck Out Babe Ruth.”
AGE 13