Jackie Mitchell
(and Friends)
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On April 3, 1931, the sports pages had a most unusual headline:
FEMALE PITCHER FANS BABE RUTH AND LOU GEHRIG
Sluggers Swing Wildly
At Offerings of
Girl Hurler
This was when the day before a young slip of a girl, Virne Beatrice Mitchell - Jackie to her friends - took the professional mound and faced the two most powerful batters in major league baseball. And she struck them out.
Of course, curmudgeons murmur that it was all simply a stunt. How the hey could a 17 year-old girl strike out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? C'nest pas possible as Leo "The Lip" Durocher might have said.1
Footnote
Leo's parents were French Canadian immigrants and the name would have originally been pronounced duh-roh-SHAY. According to one popular informational reference, Leo only spoke French until he started school. Leo, though, was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, on July 27, 1905, and so was a native-born US Citizen with all the rights and privileges thereof.
Léo le Lèvre
Rien ne se résout jamais par la dispute.
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And ignore those who say Babe was "past his prime". He had 46 home runs in 1931, for crying out loud, and a batting average of .373, for heaven's sake! Lou Gehrig also had 46 homers and his batting average was .341! And the next year Lou became the first player of the modern era to hit four home runs in one game.
But how could a girl even get the opportunity to pitch to the top batters from New York's "Murderers' Row"? That does seem im-pos-ee-blay.
Well, not really. In 1931, there was no prohibition against women playing in professional baseball - not even on "men's" teams. And as Perchik told the rabbi, if it's not forbidden, it must be all right.
But most of all in this era of multiple 24-7 sports contests dominating the news, it's easily forgotten how baseball controlled the American Collective Consciousness in the first half of the 20th Century. It was literally America's Pastime. But although you could listen to games on the radio, to see a game you had to go to the ballpark.
But with only 16 major league teams and 2464 games a year, seeing major league players wasn't easy. So the teams developed ways to spread out the action.
Although it's rare today, it was common for a local team to hold exhibition games with major league players. And on April 2, 1931, after the New York Yankees had finished up their training camp in St. Petersburg, Florida, they stopped by Chattanooga to play the city's minor league team, the Lookouts of the Southern Association.
At that time - and the Lookouts are still going strong today - the owner of the Lookouts was Joe Engel. Joe had been a major league pitcher from 1912 to 1920, and although he hadn't been a stellar player, he loved the game. After he retired back home to Chattanooga, he had become an astute scout of baseball talent particularly for the Washington Senators. Then in conjunction with Clark Griffith, also a former major league pitcher (and a good one) and the owner of the Senators, Joe took over the ownership of the Lookouts.
Joe's methods for drumming up enthusiasm for the team was, well, unorthodox. Once he had an armored car drive in and dump piles of coins on the field so a randomly selected fan could scoop up as much as he could grab. He also raffled off a house - a real house complete with a car in the garage. Then there was the time Joe brought a circus into the ballpark and once he had canaries in cages placed around the park - to distract the other team he said. He even staged a re-enactment of Custer's' Last Stand - and this time Custer won.
And Joe signed up Jackie to pitch.
Jackie was also from Chattanooga2 and in fact had been playing for the girls3 team, the Chattanooga Engelettes. Girls playing real baseball was still fairly common in the 1930's and Jackie had been encouraged by her parents to participate in both basketball and baseball. Jackie also had the advantage that one of her neighbors was a retired major league and later Hall of Fame pitcher, Charles Arthur "Dazzy" Vance. Dazzy taught young Jackie the special pitches including the "drop ball"4 - and she became the Engelettes' star pitcher.
Footnote
Jackie is usually cited as being 17 years old when she pitched to Babe and Lou but some articles state she was 18. The difficulty is that her date of birth is listed as August 29, but the year varies with the sources from 1912 to 1914. The marker in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Chattanooga lists the year as 1912, even though the scholarly consensus seems to be that the correct year is 1913.
Footnote
Curmudgeonly grammarians may say that the word girls should have an apostrophe and the usage should be properly rendered as girls' team. Many automatic algorithmic analyses also claim an apostrophe must be added.
However, with due respect to curmudgeonly grammarians and automatic algorithms, if the words are written as girl's team that would mean the baseball team was owned by a group of young women. This is obviously incorrect.
Instead in the correct and logical usage as girls teams the word girls is in fact used as an adjective modifying the word team.
The use of nouns as adjectives and vice versa is perfectly proper English. And adjectives - to quote an authoritative grammar source - modify nouns regarding "what kind", "which one", and "whose is it". And what kind of team the Engelettes were, it was one composed of girls. So the word is a modifier, not possessive, and should have no apostrophe.
Footnote
One authoritative source refers to the drop ball as a slider. A slider is - again according to an authoritative source - "a breaking pitch that is thrown faster and generally with less overall movement than a curveball." In general a breaking ball is any pitch that changes direction as it approaches the plate with the intention of fooling the batter.
But other descriptions of Jackie's signature pitch was a fast pitch that drops suddenly as it gets close to the batter. In essence, Jackie's drop ball was a curveball with pizzazz.
And yes, the Engelettes were owned by Joe who liked to name things after himself (the Lookouts played in Engel Stadium). And when the Yankees came to Chattanooga, Joe thought that having a 17-year-old girl in a lineup to pitch against the two most famous players in baseball made perfect sense.
The stories of the game agree well on the specifics. The Lookouts' opening pitcher was not Jackie, but Clyde Barfoot, then 39 years old and a veteran from the major leagues. But with Clyde as the hurler, the first Yankee batter, Earle Combs, doubled to center field. Then the next batter, Lyn Lary5, singled. So with Babe batting third and Lou as clean-up, the Lookouts' manager, Bert Niehoff, pulled Clyde and sent in Jackie.
Footnote
One news story reported the Yankee batter's name was "Lynn". However, there was no Lynn in the Yankee roster and the name was clearly a mistake for Lyn Lary.
Babe Ruth
Lou Gehrig
Babe came on the field swinging three bats. After making his pick, he stepped up to the plate.
He swung at Jackie's first pitch - "healthily" we read - and he fanned it by a foot. Strike one. The next pitch was a ball. Then Babe again swung and missed. It was now 1 and 2.
Babe then let the next pitch go by. But the umpire called a strike. The Great Babe Ruth had struck out. All the stories mention how he threw down the bat in disgust.
With Lou, Jackie's first pitch was inside and it "dusted" Lou back for a ball. The next throw went wide outside. For Lou it was now 2 and 0.
But Lou's next three swings - "healthy and determined" according to the story - were all strikes. The Mighty Lou Gehrig, too, had struck out.
However, the next Yankee was Tony Lazzeri - another member of Murderer's Row. He fouled off back from Jackie's first pitch, but the next four pitches were balls. So Tony walked to first.
At that point, the reports say Jackie looked worried and went over to talk to Bert. Bert then sent Clyde back in. This of course was against the rules. If pitchers are removed from a game they aren't allowed to return.6 But this was, after all, an exhibition game and so the rules were somewhat lackadaisically enforced.
Footnote
Before some of the more recent rule changes had been mandated, it was possible that a manager might go through all of his pitchers in a single game if their pitching was consistently rotten and the manager kept yanking them. However, this never actually happened.
The most pitchers used in a 9-inning game is when the Colorado Rockies sent in 10 pitchers when playing against the San Diego Padres on September 7, 2007. Only a couple of weeks later on September 30, 2007. the St. Louis Cardinals also sent in 10 pitchers in 9-innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Both teams with the mulitplex pitchers won: The Rockies, 10-4 and St. Louis, 6-5.
For a game with extra innings, the Seattle Mariners had 11 pitchers in 16 innings when playing the Texas Rangers on September 25, 1992. Seattle won 4-3. Then on September 10, 2010, the Rangers themselves sent in 11 pitchers in 13 innings against the New York Yankees. Here the Rangers won, 6-5.
Unfortunately the re-invigorated Clyde did no better than Jackie - actually worse. Although the next Yankee batter flied out, the next three batters all scored. In the end the Yankees - surprise! surprise! - won the game, 14-4.
But that was the extent of Jackie's professional career. The usual explanation for Jackie's brief tenure is that the Baseball Commissioner with the funny name, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, said baseball was "too strenuous" for the ladies and voided Jackie's contract. Whether the story is true or not Jackie left the Lookouts. Somewhat inexplicably, Major League Baseball waited over twenty years to officially ban women which it did in 1952, a rule which was finally rescinded in 1992.
Of course, Jackie kept playing baseball and even became a "barnstormer", that is a player who specializes in exhibition games and demonstrations. She even appeared with the famed team of the "House of David" which was a religious community whose members all sported long hair and beards. Naturally Jackie had to fake it as did Babe Ruth who also snuck in some games with the House of David.
Jackie retired from baseball at the early age of 23. She did not participate in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that was formed in 1943. Perhaps she thought that age 30 was a bit late to restart a career in competitive sports.
But DID Jackie Mitchell really strike out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? Or did they just go along with a gag?
There are those who claim that Babe and Lou let Jackie strike them out. Jackie, they said, did not have anywhere near major league pitching skills that would have been required to best Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Even Joe Engel laughed and said Babe and Lou carried Jackie that day. They weren't really trying.
Jackie, though, had her own opinion. "Why, hell, they were trying - damn right! Hell, better hitters than them couldn't hit me. Why should they've been any different?"
One thing about Jackie Mitchell. You just couldn't get her to say what was on her mind.
References and Further Reading
The Girl Who Struck Out Babe Ruth, Jean Patrick, Carolrhoda Books, 2000.
Jackie Mitchell - Baseball Player, Kaye Sharbono, Modern Curriculum Press.
"Female Pitcher Fans Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig - Sluggers Swing Wildly At Offerings of Girl Hurler." South Bend [Indiana] News-Times, April 3, 1931.
"A 17-year-old Girl Struck Out Ruth and Gehrig - It Took Her Only Seven Pitches", Eric Chesterton, MLB, May 19, 2020.
"The Mystery of Jackie Mitchell and Babe Ruth", Leslie Heaphy, Society of American Baseball Research, January 17, 2019.
"Jackie Mitchell and the Bloomer Girls, Baseball's Unsung Heroines", Women's History, National Women's History Museum.
"'Bloomer Girls' Baseball Teams", Sandy Levins, Wednesday's Women.
"Dames in the Dirt: Women's Baseball Before 1945", Anne Aronson, July 23, 2012.
"Slider (SL)", MLB.
"Most Pitchers Used in a Nine-Inning Major League Baseball Match [sic]", Guiness World Records.
"What is the Greatest Number of Pitchers That Has Been Used in One Game?", Answer Bag.
"Seattle Mariners vs. Texas Rangers Box Score , September 25, 1992, Baseball Reference.
"New York Yankees vs. Texas Rangers Box Score , Septebmer 10, 2020, Baseball Reference.
"Babe Ruth", Baseball Reference.
"Lou Gehrig", Baseball Reference.
"Joe Engel", Warren Corbett, Society for American Baseball Research.
"Jackie Mitchell", Find-a-Grave, December 3, 2003, Find-a-Grave Memorial ID: 8151311.