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In 1953, just six years after Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, three Black women — Toni Stone, Connie Morgan and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson — were breaking records of their own as players on the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro American League team.

Toni had been smashing runs years before she joined “the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball.” At age 10, she played baseball for a commercial; at 16, she stole the show on the local boys’ team. By 1953, she’d played a variety of positions for a smattering of semi-pro Negro League teams. When the owner of the Indianapolis Clowns heard tell of her prowess on the field, he signed her to play second base.

At bat and on the field, she was a star. At the end of her first season, she was the fourth-best batter in the entire league. People liked to tell the story of a time she knocked a single off a fastball from legendary pitcher Satchel Paige.1

But the owner of the Clowns benched her way too often; of the 175 games the team played in 1953, Toni only played in 50. Other players tried to sabotage her stats, and even supposed fans jeered her from the stands (”Go home and fix your husband some biscuits!” was a common taunt). On the road, hotel managers often assumed she was a sex worker hired to entertain the players, and she often joked she felt more at home at the local brothel, surrounded by welcoming women, than she did in the hotel, fighting for her teammates to take her seriously.

Mamie “Peanut” Johnson joined the Clowns a few months after Toni. She’d tried to get a spot on one of the AAGPBL teams, but the owners told her they wouldn’t put a Black woman on the field. Years later, she looked back on the rejection a little differently:

I’m so glad to this day that they turned me down. To know that I was good enough to be with these gentlemen made me the proudest lady in the world. Now I can say that I’ve done something that no other woman has ever done.

When Mamie tried out as a pitcher for the Negro Leagues, some teammates joked her petite size made her look like a “peanut” on the mound. But her skill spoke for itself, and after Toni paved the way, teammates had warmed to the idea of a lady on the field; “After you prove yourself as to what you came there for, then you don't have any problem out of them, either,” Mamie said. When the Clowns signed her to the team, she became the first female pitcher in professional baseball.

In 1955, the Indianapolis Clowns traded Toni to the Kansas City Monarchs. Connie Morgan had played for women’s teams before, but Toni’s major league debut inspired her. She wrote to the Clowns owner directly, asking him to try her out for Toni’s spot at second base.

The audition made headlines. The Clowns manager called Connie “one of the most sensational” players he’d ever seen play the sport. The Clowns signed her on the spot, and she played for throughout 1955 — the Clowns’ championship season.

As teammates got used to girls in the dugout, so did baseball fans around the country. “The girls take a back seat to no one on the field,” one reporter wrote in 1955.

But at the end of that same year, all three women had left the sport. Toni and Mamie worked as nurses; Connie became an accountant.

More on ⚾️:

• These Black Women Baseball Players Kept The Negro Leagues Alive When Jackie Robinson Left, Essence

• They also played: Black women in baseball, Baseball Hall of Fame

• For a Black Man, the Negro Leagues Could Be a Trial of Resilience. Imagine Being a Woman, Sports Illustrated

• Toni Stone: First Woman to Play Big-League Baseball, Library of Congress

• Black Women Playing Baseball: An Introduction, Society for American Baseball Research

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