"She uses an odd, side-armed delivery, and puts both speed and curve on the ball. Her greatest asset, however, is control. She can place the ball where she pleases, and her knack at guessing the weakness of a batter is uncanny .... She doesn't hope to enter the big show this season, but she believes that with careful training she may soon be the first woman to pitch in the big leagues." The Chattanooga News, March 31, 1931
"The Yankees will meet a club here that has a girl pitcher named Jackie Mitchell, who has a swell change of pace and swings a mean lipstick. I suppose that in the next town the Yankees enter they will find a squad that has a female impersonator in left field, a sword swallower at short, and a trained seal behind the plate. Times in the South are not only tough but silly." The New York Daily News, April 2, 1931
"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." Babe Ruth
"Cynics may contend that on the diamond as elsewhere it is place aux dames. Perhaps Miss Jackie hasn't quite enough on the ball yet to bewilder Ruth and Gehrig in a serious game. But there are no such sluggers in the Southern Association, and she may win laurels this season which cannot be ascribed to mere gallantry. The prospect grows gloomier for misogynists." The New York Times, April 4, 1931
A few days after the exhibition game, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided Jackie Mitchell's contract, claiming that baseball was "too strenuous" for a woman. Major League Baseball formally banned the signing of women to contracts on June 21, 1952.
The interest of John Kelly, in The American Game: etc.
Not in the issue of exclusion of women.
Not in the issue of whether Ruth and Gehrig
actually tried to or not to strike out
(i.e. were they paid off?),
Kelly is not interested in this
except so far as to point out
on pages 18-20 how it was odd
how she was brought in to the game
an exhibition match between the Chattanooga
Lookouts and the Yankees as the Yankees
traveled up from florida
where they had kept their butts clean.
I mean would you take money
to strike out intentionally?
how much?
But Kelly is not interested in this
but in the switch. Clyde Barfoot started
pitching for the Lookouts. He faced
two batters and was moved to the outfield.
Mitchell was then brought
in to face Ruth and Gehrig
who both k'd and then she walked
Tony Lazzari and then
Mitchell sat and Barfoot
resumed on the hill for the Lookouts.
"Her job was done", according to Kelly.
"So, what was her job?"
Kelly begins his book with three
baseball trivia questions.
Mitchell is the answer third,
and all involve Ruth & Gehrig striking out
in non-regular season games.
The answer to the second
is Eiji Saewamura, a 17 year-old
at the time just out of Japan's
High School Baseball tourney.
The answer to the first
is Carl Hubbell in the
second "all-start classic" in 1934.
Hubbell was 31.
According to Kelly
the three incidents work in concert
to strengthen the notion of U.S. national baseball
as the world's only authentic baseball.
After the Saewamura strikes out Ruth & Gehrig
the commish (Landis) bans players under his
control from 'barnstorming' or playing in winter leagues.
This works in concert with the nullification
of Jackie Mitchell's contract
and is enhanced by Hubbell's performance.
The all-start game starts to mean something.
The best players in the world play one another.
Kelly's argument is that Landis
acting in the best interests of baseball
never wanted to see u.s. major league players and teams
beaten by women, japanese,
negro, cuban, etc players and teams.
"A vision of the best interests of every game
is always instituted."
the price of major league baseball
goes up in the market
while the world series
continues to have less and less
to do with the actual world.
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