Toni rock had balls. She’s also one of the best baseball game game player you’ve never heard of. Since women’s conference refused her eligibility due to the colouring of her skin, rock ended up playing alongside men in the blackamoor league She became the first woman to play professionally in the league against big fish like Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, buck O’Neil, and satchel Leroy Robert Paige At one point in the 1953 season, she batted a whopping .364—fourth highest in the league. Today she’s often referred to as ‘the female Jackie Robinson’.

Author Martha Ackmann has written a new book called Curveball which history Stone’s battle and triumph as a woman of color playing what was once considered a white-man’s game. rock  wanted to play professional baseball game more than anything in the world In over 20 years of barnstorming, semipro and finally blackamoor conference baseball, she proved that she could compete on men’s team and handgrip the doubter and ill-treatment that often trailed her.

Stone followed the same purposeful way that Jackie Robinson traveled several years before in break the color line of major leagues. Keep your head down feather concentrate on the game Let your play prove the bigot wrong.

Writer David Halberstam once observed that behind every great athletics narration is the narration of a commonwealth And if you think about it—Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Billie denim King— he’s right Toni Stone’s narration is the narration of a state as well: a nation stuck in the morass of Jim Crow, blind to the natural endowment of women athletes, and yet open to one remarkable woman determined to live her dream.

To celebrate the release of Curveball, Ackmann will be visiting these locale for a reading, discussion, and book signing:

July 10, 2010
St. Louis, MO:
Left banking concern Books 7:00pm

July 12, 2010
Kansas City, MO:
Negro league baseball game museum
11:00am

July 15, 2010
Chicago, IL:
Women & Children First
7:30pm

If you can’t make it to one of the events, purchase a transcript of
Curveball: The Remarkable narrative of Toni rock the First Woman to Play Professional baseball game in the blackamoor League online.