Female Phenomenom - Fact or Fiction? by Cindy Regnier

 

Have you ever heard of the girl pitcher who struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig back-to-back? I’m not really much of a baseball fan (I know, rather un-American -right?), but I am intrigued by the story of a lady named Jackie Mitchell. Wow – what a feat. But did it really happen? Let’s check it out.

Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell weighed only three-and-a-half pounds at birth, but as soon as she could walk, she went to the baseball field with her dad who taught her the basics of the game. But guess what? She just happened to have grown up living next door to a minor league ballplayer by the name of Dazzy Vance.

Dazzy Vance

Dazzy (who would later play for the Brooklyn Dodgers) taught 5-year-old Jackie how to throw what he called a "drop pitch." This pitch would come in at one level . . . but dropped, right before it reached the plate.

At 16, Jackie played for a women's team in Chattanooga. It was here that Jackie attracted the attention of Joe Engel, the president and owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts. He offered her a contract to play for the entire 1931 season.17-year-old Jackie signed the contract and became an official member of the Chattanooga Lookouts, a Class AA minor league team. In doing so she became only the second woman in history to sign an Organized Baseball contract. The first was Lizzie Arlington, who signed to play with the Reading Coal Heavers in 1898.

 

Meanwhile, the New York Yankees had finished spring training in Florida and were on their way to New York. As in previous years, they would stop in Chattanooga to play the Lookouts in an exhibition game. Jackie was not the starting pitcher. She watched as pitcher Clyde Barfoot threw to the first two Yankee batters who hit a double then a single. Two on base, Babe Ruth was up next. Who knows what prompted the team manager to head to the mound at that moment and pulled Barhoff in favor of Jackie. But he did and the crowd of 4,000-plus roared their approval. 

Jackie, Ruth & Gehrig

Jackie's first pitch to Ruth was a ball, but then Mitchell threw two pitches that Ruth swung at and missed. She followed that with a called third strike. Ruth threw his bat in disgust and stormed back to the dugout. The crowd of 4,000 went wild. But Jackie's work was not over. The next batter was Lou Gehrig, the Yankees' clean-up hitter. On just three pitches, she struck him out, too.

And this is where the mystery comes in. Jackie did indeed strike out the two famous Yankee batters, but controversy remains as to whether the strikeouts were legitimate or planned as a publicity stunt. Joe Engel was well-known for his publicity stunts at the time such as trading a shortstop for a turkey and holding an elephant hunt in the outfield where fans searched for paper-mache animals.

 Teammates who knew Ruth and Gehrig insist neither of the men would have deliberately struck out and leave the runners stranded and that the Yankee manager was too competitive to ever stage strikeouts. Besides, Jackie was a southpaw pitcher who had a good sinker/curveball-style pitch. Then Jackie walked the next batter and was taken out of the game, but only after making baseball history and earning a spot in the MLB hall of fame.

Regardless whether real or staged, Jackie’s position with the Lookouts ended soon after. Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided Mitchell’s contract on the grounds that baseball was too strenuous for women.

Mitchell, for her part, held to her belief that she’d genuinely whiffed the two Yankees. She said the only instruction the Yankees received was to try to avoid lining the ball straight back at the mound, for fear of hurting her. Shortly before her death in 1987 she was quoted as saying, “Better hitters than them couldn’t hit me. Why should they’ve been any different?”

So, what do you think? Were Jackie’s famous strike outs real or staged? The Lookouts got their publicity, but the male egos of Ruth and Gehrig suffered considerably, according to the sportswriters of the time. Whatever the case, Jackie Mitchell lives on as part of American baseball history.

Scribbling in notebooks has been a habit of Cindy Regnier since she was old enough to hold a pencil. Born and raised in Kansas, she writes stories of historical Kansas, especially the Flint Hills area where she spent much of her childhood. Her experiences with the Flint Hills setting, her natural love for history, farming and animals, along with her interest in genealogical research give her the background and passion to write heart-fluttering historical romance.