Ep. 002 - Jackie Mitchell Strikes Out Babe Ruth

Correction Alert!

Some eagle-eared fans who tuned in last week correctly pointed out that we omitted some information about former Marlins Manager, Kim Ng, from our episode. We have more context on her short-lived but game-changing time with the MLB below. 

Keep listening, commenting, and subscribing and we’ll keep dishing out the baseball history you deserve! 

From the Script of Sn 1, Ep 2. Of Paint the Corners; Jackie Strikes Out the Babe

“Ahead of the 2021 season, Kim Ng became the general manager of the Miami Marlins, making history as the first woman to run a ball club in MLB. She’s also thought to be the first female general manager in any of the male-dominated American sports leagues. In 2023 Ng became the first woman GM to lead an MLB team into the playoffs. Ng ultimately declined to return for the 2024 season due to alleged staffing changes within the Marlins’ operations team. Kim Ng is currently an advisor for Athletes Unlimited Pro Softball. 

In 2020, Alyssa Nakken joined the San Francisco Giants as the league’s first woman to be a full-time coach. She didn’t stop there. She coached first base during an exhibition game, making it the first time since Jackie Mitchell for a woman to walk onto the field during live action of a professional game. Her jersey from the game was sent to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. After many years with the San Francisco Giants, Nakken accepted a position with the Cleveland Guardians as an assistant director for player development on November 23rd 2024.“

Written by Wyatt Schroeder
Narration by JohnPaul Beattie
Produced by Anna Ready

Act I 

[Crack of the bat] A single. And just like that, the New York Yankees had a one-run lead. The manager of the Chattanooga Lookouts strolled to the mound. It was only the first inning and already the manager was yanking the starting pitcher. 

The crowd at Engel Stadium shifted to the front of their seats. 4,000 fans anxiously cheered as Jackie marched to the mound. All of 5 feet and 5 inches. Jackie was diminutive compared to the colossus that walked up to the plate. Babe Ruth. He tipped his cap to Jackie as he took his batting stance. Though he stood 6 foot 2, Babe Ruth was larger than life. 

Jackie spat in the glove and then reared back for the first pitch. Missed the plate. Ball one. It was the first professional pitch of Jackie’s career. Babe swung wildly at the second pitch. Strike one. The next pitch was another sinker. Babe Ruth couldn’t locate it. Strike two. Ruth stepped out of the batter's box and rubbed his hands together. Jackie threw the next pitch side-arm, the arm almost parallel to the ground. The ball danced in the air and found the outside corner of the plate. Babe Ruth, arguably the greatest hitter of all time, watched it fly by. Strike three. 

Jackie Mitchell had just struck out the Great Bambino. The Sultan of Swat. Babe Ruth was struck out by a 17-year-old female pitcher. 

There’s video of the moment. Babe Ruth, after watching strike three fly under his nose, tosses his bat down in disgust and interrogates the umpire with his eyes. He sulks off to the dugout. It’s only a few seconds long, but it speaks volumes. 

But Jackie wasn’t done. Next up was Lou Gehrig, a legendary baseball player. This was 1931; in that season Gehrig would lead the major leagues in home runs, tied with his teammate Babe Ruth. 

But on that April day in Chattanooga, Gehrig couldn’t put the bat on the ball. Jackie’s “drop pitch”, as she called it, darted and dipped for strike one, strike two, strike three. Lou Gehrig had struck out. 

Jackie Mitchell was only the second woman to play a professional game of baseball. And she had struck out two of the greatest players of all-time. 

Or had she? 

Act II

The morning newspapers all agreed that yes, Jackie had struck out Ruth and Gehrig. But most were confident that there was a fix, that Ruth and Gehrig had acted with chivalry in allowing themselves to be struck out. The sexism ran rampant and argued that Jackie didn’t deserve any applause for her accomplishment. It was only entertainment. 

Jackie Mitchell was the last woman to play in a white professional baseball game. All the way back in 1931. It’s been 90 years since that day and Jackie is still waiting to receive the credit she deserves. 

To be honest, I hadn’t heard of Jackie Mitchell. She’s the last woman to compete on a major league-affiliated team; why isn’t her story told? Once you unearth Jackie’s name, the news articles flood your search engine, but you need to hear her name first. For a lot of listeners, the image of women’s professional baseball likely comes from the movie, A League of Their Own. That movie told the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which ran from 1945 to 1954. Jackie’s story comes 15 years before that league formed during the second great war. The women ballplayers weren’t allowed to integrate with the all-male Major Leagues, so the Rockford Peaches and the Racine Belles formed their own female-only league. Jackie, for one day, played in a professional uniform historically reserved for a man. And played against the archetype of bravado and masculinity, Babe and the Bronx Bombers. 

After striking out Babe and Gehrig, Jackie faced one more batter. Tony Lazzeri came up to the plate. In a post-game interview, Lazzeri said that he was up there to hit. He wasn’t giving any special treatment. Jackie walked him and was promptly pulled from the game. Her whole outing, her whole professional career, lasted three batters. 

It was a monumental feat. Jackie had faced one of the best teams of all-time and shown her mettle. And yet, sexism prevailed on the newspaper pages the next day. Let me read some of the headlines for you:

“Yanks Gallantly Allow Girl Pitcher to Vanquish Them”

“Gehrig Also Victim of Feminine Curves”

“Even Though Babe and Lou Wiff, Yanks Think Little of Girl hurler.”

“Jackie OK as Drawing Card, but Future is Kitchen.”

“As a pitcher, this gal would make a peach of a cook”

I count 12 headlines, compiled by Baseball Prospectus, that use terms like “gallantry” and “chivalry” to describe Ruth’s and Gehrig’s actions at Engel Stadium. It seems that, yes, the world is willing to concede that two strikeouts happened. But only if we admit that there’s no chance that Jackie could have done it on her own merit. The newspapers wanted you to believe that a woman can only achieve something special, if gallant men allowed it.  

The United Press, who distributed articles to newspapers across the country, couldn’t keep their story straight. One account claimed that Babe Ruth, acting as Sir Lancelot, did not do his standard moaning and groaning to the umpire after being struck out. (The video evidence says otherwise.) Another account stated that Ruth complained “with a flourish.” The Nebraska State Journal laughed at the discrepancies and said it was another banner day for eyewitness testimony. 

Let’s say right here: there is no way for us to know what happened in Ruth’s and Gehrig’s heads that day. They never spoke of the controversy with any clarity. 

But we do know beyond a shadow of a doubt what happened on the field that day. A 17-year-old struck out two of the baseball greats and did it under the pressure of being a woman in a man’s game. You can hear glass breaking. And yet the newspapers of the time wanted to create a mystery that wasn’t there. It was a challenge to the male order, so a tall tale was created that robbed Jackie of any pride. Historians continue to make the same mistake: instead of talking about this historical achievement for Jackie and for women in sports, it’s reduced to a strange conversation about the likelihood that Jackie could have struck out the Babe. She did it. It happened. 

We have video and we have Jackie’s unflinching faith. As she said in 1982, “I had a drop pitch. When I was throwing it right, you couldn’t touch it.”

But how did this match up even happen? How did the New York Yankees end up facing off against Jackie Mitchell in Chattanooga? 

She was born in 1913 as Virne Beatrice Mitchell, but the family raised her as Jackie. Her mother sold hosiery, while her father worked as an optician. Trained in the matters of the eye, Doctor Mitchell saw something in his daughter. As soon as Jackie could walk, he took her to the nearby baseball diamond in Memphis, Tennessee and taught her the basics of the game. It nurtured a love for the sport and encouraged her to develop her skill. 

On their quiet street in Memphis at the turn of the century, Jackie had an advocate and a mentor just a few doors down. It’s as if the baseball gods, in a flight of fancy, willed Jackie into history. Down the street lived Dazzy Vance. Jackie couldn’t have known the trajectory her neighbor was on. Dazzy would join the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1922 and launch a dazzling career. He would win more than 20 games in three different seasons. He would strike out over 2,000 batters in his career. He would win the Most Valuable Player award in 1924. And would be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But to the five-year old Jackie, he was as pleasant and unassuming as the milkman. Dazzy coached Jackie on baseball and taught her his prized pitch. He called it a “drop pitch.” If you’re a batter, eyeing the pitcher in front of you, anticipation is everything. The ability to predict what the ball will do while it's in flight is the crux of every baseball game. If you can’t anticipate the movement of the ball, then you might as well sit down and save yourself the effort. If you could deceive batters each time you took the mound, then you would have a proud career. Dazzy’s “drop pitch” earned him a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame. 

Jackie practiced and practiced. Dazzy predicted, even at 5 years old, that she would make a great ball player. 

When Jackie’s family moved from Memphis to Chattanooga, she played for the local women’s baseball team. Her talent had grown. She was a star on the team. According to her dad, she “has one of the most deceptive pitching deliveries, hits fair, and fields way above the average that a boy of her age can field.”

Jackie’s career was gaining steam, living out Dazzy’s prediction. She headed to a pitcher’s training camp in Atlanta. There she came to the attention of Joe Engel, a traveling scout for the Washington Senators and co-owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, a minor league team for the Senators. 

When Joe first saw Jackie Mitchell, it lit up his imagination. Joe had a keen eye for talent and was responsible for stacking the Washington Senators roster that won the 1924 World Series. But he was also a businessman that would do anything to fill the seats at Engel Stadium in Chattanooga. I mean literally anything. Engel was well on his way to earning his nickname as the “Barnum of the Bush Leagues.” In Jackie, he saw a talented pitcher with a stone’s constitution. Her drop pitch was making a menace of the Atlanta training camp. Her calm gave Engel an idea. 

To understand Joe Engel, I found myself combining characters in my head. He’s equal parts P.T. Barnum’s circus act, Bill Veck’s entertaining baseball mind, and Matt Damon’s character from We Bought a Zoo. I mean, I’ve never seen We Bought a Zoo, but he’s what I imagine Matt Damon’s character is in We Bought a Zoo. Not sure what I’m talking about? Let me share some anecdotes to paint the picture.

As team president of the Chattanooga Lookouts, Engel once traded a shortstop in exchange for a 25-pound turkey. He cooked the turkey and served it to reporters, only to complain that he got the worse of the deal because the turkey’s meat was so tough.

He once bought 50 (or maybe it was a 100) canaries in cages and hung them in the stands to drown out the sound of his fans booing their own team. 

To make the comparison with Barnum complete, Engel once brought an entire circus to Engel Stadium for opening day of the season. He was a maestro, a gutsy entertainer, a bona fide circus ringleader. 

To Joe, seeing the female phenom on the mound might have triggered the same part of his brain that once auctioned off a fully furnished house at the ballpark. I don’t believe he was making a statement about equality or women’s liberation. Yes, he recognized talent and knew that Jackie could handle the moment, but he wanted to sell tickets. Signing a woman was a compelling taboo. I don’t want to give Joe too much credit for signing Jackie Mitchell to a professional contract. I also don’t want to give him too little credit. He did it. He signed Jackie and had her take the field. A feat that hasn’t been repeated in the intervening 90 years. 

Jackie Mitchell signed a formal contract to join the Chattanooga Lookouts on March 28th, 1931. It was broadcast live. Each print report made sure to comment on what she was wearing that day. Nervous reporters were assured that Jackie’s mother would accompany her on road trips. Jackie said that she hoped the money would help her afford college. As she told the United Press, “This chance is an answer to a dream. I have to make good.”

The drama was set. Engel recruited the New York Yankees to stop over at Chattanooga for a game, on their way back to New York. This type of game was typical of the era. It was common for teams, either before or after the major league season, to travel the country and play in front of small-town America. They called it “barnstorming.” A way to delight fans and pick up a few bucks before the howling fans of Yankee Stadium needed you back in the dugout. And so the Yankees stormed into Tennessee to face Jackie. 

The newspaper writers tripped over themselves to play up their sexism as they marketed the game. One paper promised, “the curves won’t be all on the ball.” Another reported that Jackie, “has a swell change of pace and swings a mean lipstick.” 

I’m sure Joe Engel didn’t mind dancing around the ethics of the situation. As he once commented, “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something.” Jackie, for her part, seemed to play into the moment. The teenager donned her baggy Lookouts uniform and posed for the camera, while she powdered her nose. There are a few photos of her chumming with Babe and Gehrig before the game. In each photo, she’s smiling and joy comes off the page. This is her chance. 

Babe Ruth, for his part, fanned the flames of gender exclusion. In an article published the day before the game, Babe said, “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.”

Three strikes and Babe Ruth is out. Three more strikes and Lou Gehrig is out. Jackie Mitchell struck out two of the greatest baseball players of all time.  

The Yankees ended up winning the game 14 to 4. It seems only Jackie could keep the Yanks’ bats silent.

Anticipation. It should be less surprising that Jackie struck out these two hitters. They had never seen her pitch. Familiarity and clear expectation are the hitter’s best weapons. If they can’t anticipate what the ball will do, then it’s no wonder that Ruth sat back down on the bench. Jackie had the element of surprise. 

Here’s what I picture: There was a little boy in the stands that day, who has listened to his father tell him that women have no place on a baseball diamond. He has this well-worn expectation gifted to him. He sits there cheering as his hero Babe Ruth walks to the plate. He’s read in the papers that Ruth is the home run king. And yet, this woman strolls to the mound, a local girl. And after three strikes, his hero is out. If his father handles the situation differently, if he admits that he was wrong, that women should play, then this boy grows up with an expanded mindset. He challenges the societal norm and expects more of his favorite sport. 

Instead, the boy reads the newspapers the next day at the same kitchen table as his father. The game was called a hoax. Engel was beginning to be infamous for his pranks and hijinks and that draped a shroud on the whole event. The Smithsonian did some interesting reporting on the continuing legacy of this game. In the article, three baseball historians can’t agree on what happened 90 years ago. 

To John Thorn, the official historian of major league baseball, “the whole thing was a jest, a Barnum-esque prank. [It’s] a good story for children’s books, but it belongs in the pantheon with the Easter Bunny.”

To Debra Shattuck, a prominent historian of women’s role in baseball, Jackie was good, but “I really doubt she could hold her own at that level.”

Tim Wiles, the research director of the Baseball Hall of Fame, disagrees. “Much of batting has to do with timing and familiarity with a pitcher, and everything about Jackie Mitchell was unfamiliar to Ruth and Gehrig.” 

In response to the game, the Commissioner of Baseball, Kennesaw Mountain Landis voided Jackie’s contract with professional baseball. He said that baseball was “too strenuous for women.” 

Landis’ proclamation effectively created a ban on women playing professional baseball. That de facto ban was made official in 1952 when the Harrisburg Senators tried to sign Eleanor Engle to a contract. (She wasn’t related to Joe Engel.) Eleanor suited up for a game but never got to play, because the manager refused to put her on the field. A few women would later play in the Negro Leagues. Jackie’s last pitch would be the last by a woman on a major-league affiliated diamond. No women could play in the major or minor leagues, a written baseball law. 

Act III 

Jackie didn’t make it to the major leagues. She didn’t get to face Babe in Yankee Stadium. That didn’t stop her from continuing to throw and show her talent. Jackie went on to play for the Chattanooga Junior Lookouts, another squad run by Joe Engel, and then for a few other teams. Only a handful of months after her famous 1931 game, Jackie’s father said that she had already traveled 3,000 miles and pitched in 32 games that summer. A major league pitcher is lucky to start 30 games in a full year. Jackie was busy.

By the spring of 1932, Jackie signed a contract with the House of David, a team that was famous for its eccentric barnstorming. The team was filled with members of the House of David commune and strict Judaic society. They paid Jackie $1,000 a month to join the traveling, vaudeville act. 95% of the country earned less than $10,000 a year then, so this put Jackie in the upper tax bracket. 

Something changed in Jackie. She was touring the country with the House of David, playing the game that she had loved since she was a toddler. She had shown the talent and perseverance to play with the best of them. And yet in 1937, she was tired. She was tired of the antics, tired of the barnstorming circus, and weary of tabloid baseball. 

The House of David did afford her one last honor: she pitched against major league talent one last time. In a barnstorming match-up, she pitched against members of the St. Louis Cardinals and again came out on top. She pitched a scoreless inning against a Cardinals team that included eight future members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Three up. Three down. This team included Leo Dourcher and Rogers Hornsby. And Jackie rose to the occasion. 

As she told reporters, “I believe I could qualify and might be signed by a major league team and might someday get to play in a World Series if Judge Landis hadn’t ruled against my playing in major league ball.”

The House of David won the game 8 to 6. Jackie triumphed each time she dug into the rubber against the best in the country. 

Jackie retired from baseball in 1937 and went back to her home in Chattanooga to work for her dad’s optical business. She came out of retirement once in 1982. She marched back to the top of the mound at Engel Stadium to throw out the honorary first pitch for the season.  

Jackie died in 1987. 

She had to dodge questions about the authenticity of her abilities each time she came near a microphone. She never lost her tenacity. When asked a few years before her death about matching up with Babe and Lou, Jackie said, “Why, hell, they were trying – damn right. Hell, better hitters than them couldn’t hit me. Why should they’ve been any different?”

EPILOGUE:

That’s it. That’s the story of Jackie. It really makes me wonder what would have happened if all the reporters had filled the column inches with praise of Jackie’s ability. Would that have encouraged more women to pick up a baseball?  

If you’re driving through Chattanooga drive over to 3rd Street. You’ll still see Engel Stadium standing there, against all the odds. It’s hosted some famous faces over the last century – Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Mitchell. Today, it’s owned by the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and supported by the Engel Foundation. You have likely seen Engel Stadium. In the movie, 42, which dramatizes the life of Jackie Robinson, the film used the field for most of the baseball action. Go and pay Engel Stadium a visit and who knows, maybe you’ll see a brainstorming team driving through town. 

I hope one day we’ll get to tell you more about Lizzie Arlington, Peanut Johnson, Effa Manley, and the other women in baseball history. But you don’t have to look back in time to be inspired. Today, in the image of Jackie Mitchell, women continue to break the glass ceiling separating the genders in baseball.

Ahead of the 2021 season, Kim Ng became the general manager of the Miami Marlins, making history as the first woman to run a ball club in MLB. She’s also thought to be the first female general manager in any of the male-dominated American sports leagues. 

In 2020, Alyssa Nakken joined the San Francisco Giants as the league’s first woman to be a full-time coach. She didn’t stop there. She coached first base during an exhibition game, making it the first time since Jackie Mitchell  for a woman to walk onto the field during live action of a professional game. 

Ng and Nakken aren’t alone. There are women filling out roles throughout baseball organizations. The list is growing. In 2016, there were 106 women who worked in baseball operation roles around the league. By 2020, that number has grown to 225, with 17 women in director roles. Here’s the thing: there are currently almost 5,000 jobs in baseball operations. Women represent less than 5% of all hires. Women are breaking glass as they rise up the baseball ranks, but there’s still one position that’s not filled by a woman: being a ballplayer. 

In the 1970s, it took a lawsuit for women to be allowed to play in the Little Leagues. In the 1980s, women broke into men’s college baseball. In the 90s, Ila Borders joined the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League. It’s only a matter of time before someone puts on a major league uniform. When that moment happens, I’ll raise my glass to all the women that paved the way. I’ll raise my glass to Jackie. 

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you at the ballpark.