Jackie Mitchell: The 17-Year-Old Who Struck Out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig

On April second, nineteen thirty one, seventeen year old Jackie Mitchell, who is a female, stunned the sporting world when she struck out not one but two Yankees legends in Babe Ruth and Lou Garrick when she played on a minor league team in exhibition game against the Yankees, in a moment that was a great moment for women's sports, but also set them back for years in the sport of baseball. Today, we're going to dive into Jackie Mitchell's journey from learning the game to becoming a professional baseball player. Today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I mean them Reese your guide as you daily learn more about sports history, increasing your sports knowledge as we dive into Jackie Mitchell's baseball journey. Now, Jackie was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but her birthday is actually kind of up in the air. She was born very small and doctors advised her parents that fresh air and exercise would help her grow stronger. So as soon as she could walk, her father, doctor Joseph Mitchell, who was an eye doctor, began to take her to the baseball diamond to get her outside play and As she continued to play, she grew to love this game of baseball. Although many didn't think girls or women should play the game of baseball, it was too rough for them. Her neighbor Charles Arthur Dazzy Vance, who later became one of the greatest strikeout pitchers in the Major League Baseball history, and was starting to teach her how to pitch and teach her his legendary sinker pitch that she would use in the future. Now, Vance became so good in his short amount of time with the Brooklyn Dodgers that he actually became a Hall of Famer. Now, back then they called the sinker as drop ball, and from the age of about six, Fance actually taught her how to throw this pitch. So she had learned it from an early age. And the pitch was one that would drop or sink when it reached a certain point, fooling batters, similar to a curveball, but going down instead of going to the right. And she actually mastered this over time and actually impressed Dazzy by how well she was able to throw the pitch, and Dazzy actually gave a prediction that she would be the greatest female baseball player ever, and at the age of sixteen, she actually played for the England Nets, which was a women's baseball team in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and she attended a special baseball school held in Atlanta, Georgia, where she performed incredibly well, and it was attended by Joe Ingle, the president of the Chattanooga Lookouts, which was a minor league baseball team from her home state. Now who was Joe Ingle? Well. He's often referred to as the Barnum of baseball, referencing p. P. T. Barnum of the sirt of This is the Greatest Show You Ever Seen? That movie with Hugh Jackman based on P. T. Bartman, which is completely fiction. But most of P. T. Barnum did was promote crazy things that may have not been true and just a way to make a buck. And Ingle was known for his promotional stunts. He became president of the Chattanooga Lookouts in nineteen twenty nine, and he quickly gamed a reputation for being a master showman. His stunts included raffling off houses, trading players for livestock, hosting bizarre events that included an elephant hunt in the outfield, and he discovered Jackie Mitchell, who was a good pitcher at the baseball training camp in Atlanta, Georgia, and he signed her and her signature dropball pitch caught Ingle's eye and it led to him signing her to a professional contract. Now, this happened on March twenty eighth, nineteen thirty one, in the middle of the Great Depression and just a few days before April first, when the Lookouts were set to play an exhibition game against New York Yankees on April Fool's Day. So was this just a ploy to get her to play on April Fool's Day? Maybe, But the game was rained out and ended up being played on April second, so no April Fool's Day. But the game was still packed with over four thousand spectators to see the game, mainly for the Yankees, who featured Murderer's Row, which included Babe Ruth and Lou Garrick. Now, because of Jackie, there was more media presence along with the Yankees, so this game was a lot more exciting and there was lots of photo opportunities. We'll include a photo in our socials which shows Jackie with Babe Ruth showing the Stark contrast between these professional baseball players and this teenage girl who was facing them. There's a huge size difference, but that doesn't mean she couldn't pitch. So starting the game, Clyde Barefoot took the Mound, who had previously pitched to the majors, but he gave up a lead off double as well as a single to the first two Yankee batters. Next came up Ruth, and then they substituted in it left hander, which makes sense to face the left handed batter and Jackie Mitchell, but just after two pitches, so it makes it seem kind of odd that Jackie would come in so early. She came in to pitch two Babe Ruth, and the first two pitches are balls, and the next two Rufe swings and misses, so the count is two and two, and then she throws her signature sinker that catches the edge of the outside plate and is called a strike, striking out Babe Ruth. Looking now, Babe is upset and has some words with the umpire, which he says were words not fit for a lady. Next came up Lou Garrick, who took three straight pitches, swung and missed at all of them, giving her her second straight strikeout. Then she faced Tony Lazzeri, who she ended up walking, and after Tony she was pulled from the game, giving her two strikeouts a walk in no era for her first debut, not bad for a seventeen year old pitcher of any kind. But despite her good outing, her team did end up losing fourteen to four the Yankees, who were supposed to win the professional team facing the minor league team. But the question was what happened after? Why have we not heard about Jackie Mitchell before? Because after this game, the commissioner Kinnesaw Mountain Landis vetoed her contract, saying women were not strong enough to be part of the game, and women weren't officially banned until nineteen fifty two, and that lasted till nineteen ninety two, when the White Sox drafted Carrie Schuler, a left handed pitcher as well, in the forty third round, making her the first woman ever to be drafted in Major League baseball and putting an end to the band on women in professional baseball. Now, previously we actually covered a professional bard and stormy and baseball team called the Colorado Silver Bullets, which also happened in the nineteen nineties, and there is now word that in twenty twenty six there will be a sixteen professional women's baseball league. And the question is does all this lead back to Jackie Mitchell? See after this she wasn't just done with baseball, would go and join these barnstorming teams that happened a lot back in the day. We talked about these teams with Satchel Page, who would barnstorm and play all across the world and made more money than other than any other black pitcher of the time. But being barnstorming is tiresome, and she played over one hundred games against men by nineteen thirty three, winning roughly sixty of them, but there is no accounting and these are all exhibition games. She joined even a team called the House of David, which was famous for having giant beards like Zizi Top. She would actually even wear a fake beard while playing too, and she would go on to tour along with previous episode Babe Dickerson, who was who also pitched against the against the Athletics when she was young, where both of them were icons in women in Baseball now. Later she would retire at the age of twenty three and live a rather solitary life not getting back into baseball, especially when the All American Girls Professional League, made famous by the movie League of their Own started it in the World War Two. She was offered a contract when she was just twenty nine years old, but she turned it down as she was done with pitching. In nineteen eighty two, Mitchell throughout the ceremonial first pitch opening day for the Chattanooga Lookouts, and the question always remains, was this legit or was it just staged? There's actually a question, and the answer doesn't really matter. She broke a barrier, and that's what really is the big thing. Someone has to be the first to do it. Just because you're the first doesn't mean you'll be the greatest ever, but you sometimes you don't even get that chance. She was never given the opportunity because they avoided her contract despite her having some success. Was it staged? We will never really know. She could have been great, and everyone just said it was a stunt so Ruth and Garrick wouldn't look like they struck out to a girl. But she's paid the way for women in many ways, and we're seeing now that women are getting a professional league, and maybe that'll lead to something. As soccer has grown for a professional league, women's basketball league has grown. It takes a lot more steps for women in sports than men, but someone has to break down those barriers, and Jackie Mitchell and just wanting to work started the barrier breaking down for women. I want to thank you for listening to Today's Daily Sports History. If you like this, please make sure you like and subscribe wherever you're listening. 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