KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Google honored Negro Leagues player Toni Stone as the Google Doodle of Feb. 9.
Stone broke barriers as a woman in baseball.
She overcame “both gender and racial discrimination to become the first woman in history to play professional baseball as a regular in a men’s major baseball league,” according to a Google Arts & Culture release.
In 1931, she moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where her career began.
While she started playing just on the city’s public fields, she was brought on to the Twin Cities Colored Giants roster by the time she was 15 — which at the time was an all-male semi-pro team.
Stone then went on to play for the San Francisco Sea Lions, New Orleans Creoles, Indianapolis Clowns and the Kansas City Monarchs.
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick tweeted that he was “thrilled to partner with Google and Google Doodles on this very cool tribute to Toni Stone & the Negro Leagues.”
The @NLBMuseumKC is thrilled to partner with @Google and @GoogleDoodles on this very cool tribute to Toni Stone & the Negro Leagues! #IndyClowns @april_matthis @Royals @MLB @MLBPA @fox4kc @kmbc @KCTV5 @KSHB41 @KCStar @vgregorian @JPosnanski pic.twitter.com/gc4Ut2dwCE
— Bob Kendrick (@nlbmprez) February 9, 2022
The doodle artist Monique Wray told the MLB she believes race played a role in Stone not being widely known, but it is not too late to make a change.
“[Stone] being a Black woman, you know that that obviously has something to do with her not getting that sort of shine that she deserved for the significance of who she was and what she did. But it’s good that now, at least, we’re doing that work and making that push," Wray told MLB writer Sarah Wexler.
Some of Stone's career highlights include her .280 batting average, playing second base for one of the most prestigious teams at the time (Indianapolis Clowns) and hitting a single off of Satchel Paige before retiring in 1954.
In 1993, she was inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame.
And on Feb. 9, 2021, she was inducted into the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame, which is why her doodle was showcased Wednesday.
Stone passed away in 1996 at the age of 75.
