Chattanooga Baseball — Jackie Mitchell

Chattanooga Baseball — Jackie Mitchell. . Born in Chattanooga in 1913, Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell made national headlines and baseball history during an exhibition game against the New York Yankees at Engel Stadium on April 2, 1931., Joe Engel, in what many characterize as one of his Great Depression-era publicity stunts, signed the seventeen-year-old pitcher to a contract with her hometown Lookouts prior to the 1931 season. Often dismissed, then and now, as merely a girl, a blonde, a burlesque , a rain-out delayed April Fool's joke , Mitchell in fact was a prodigy southpaw with a crafty side-arm sinkerball who had been coached years earlier by future Hall-of-Fame pitcher Arthur “Dazzy” Vance., A sports writer for the New York Daily News nevertheless informed readers on the morning of the exhibition, "The Yankees will meet a club here that has a girl pitcher named Jackie Mitchell, who has a swell change of pace and swings a mean lipstick. I suppose that in the next town the Yankees enter they will find a squad that has a female impersonator in left field, a sword swallower at short, and a trained seal behind the plate. Times in the South are not only tough but silly.” With several thousand spectators in the stands, Mitchell watched from the bullpen as the Lookouts' starting pitcher gave up hits to the first two Yankees batters. With Babe Ruth due up and Lou Gehrig on deck, Jackie Mitchell was summoned to the mound and proceeded to strike out both baseball legends in just six or seven pitches., Within days the embarrassed commissioner of major league baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, voided Mitchell's contract with the Lookouts, effectively barring women from professional play., Reflecting the sexism of the early twentieth century United States, men such as Landis and Ruth paternalistically reasoned that baseball was too strenuous for women's “delicate” bodies., Debate continues to this day whether Jackie Mitchell's remarkable feat was attributable to skill or subterfuge. For her part, Mitchell insisted until her death in 1987 that the strikeouts were no ruse: "Why, hell yes, [Ruth and Gehrig] were trying, damn right,” she told a reporter in 1986. “Hell, better hitters than them couldn't hit me. Why should they've been any different?” , Captions: , Left: Chattanooga News, April 2, 1931 , Top right: source: Chattanooga News, March 31, 1931 , Bottom left: Jackie Mitchell and Babe Ruth shaking hands with Lou Gehrig and Joe Engel looking on. source: Chattanooga News, April 3, 1931 , This series is funded by a UC Foundation community engagement grant and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga , and prepared by faculty and students of the UTC Department of History.