mamie "peanut" johnson & other women playing men's sports

in conjunction with the opening of baseball, four baseball players have been inducted into the rabble rouser hall of fame. the other four are coming in the next blog.  the most important of the four undoubtedly is mamie “peanut” johnson.  this, however, is not a blog about johnson, per say, as much as about political condition.

in principle, i do not like to single individual people out for iconic status in society, but younger generations do need to start somewhere. i think of mamie johnson in the same way i think of rosa parks or jackie robinson, and don’t see why mamie doesn’t have the same renowned status.

nothing against rosa parks, she must have been an amazing woman and was certainly the fuel for the montgomery bus boycott.  however, with so much attention paid to individuals, like herself or dr. king, public knowledge of the movements overall lessen in time.  lore often transforms itself to celebrating the person over the movement.  check answers.com or yahoo answers for people asking questions about who was the first black person to sit at the front on the bus. people legitimately think it was rosa parks!  to be fair, my memory of school seems to be that we were only ever told about her. in heaping all the praise on rosa parks, we lose sight of all the black women before her that had been arrested for the same thing. these movements happened by design and with a deep cast of characters.  it is not as if rosa parks walked onto a bus one day and suddenly decided, “ah hell, i ain’t going back there. i’m sick of this shit!” and then got famous for it. 

Irene Morgan

that particular moment had been craftily organized by civil rights freedom fighters for over a year. several other times in 1955 alone, when the time was right, the group would execute a plan to make a stand against the man. rosa parks happened to be the chosen person that day, and had been preparing to take that seat for over a month. but all the other women that did as much to integrate the buses in the south get completely lost in the mix, for example: irene morgan eleven years before on a greyhound in virginia.  check out her story and in relation to the historical movement here. and then there’s claudette colvin, mary lousie smith, aurelia browder. what happens to their memories when the only name anyone remembers is rosa parks?    

a smilar case is true with jackie robinson. i am not doubting that he had an incredible amount of bravery to be the first black person to step onto a white ballfield, but there were many more before him that sacrificed just the same.  roberto clemente, the greatest baseball player of all time in kid yoshida’s estimation, had been brought to the brooklyn dodgers well before robinson. branch rickey wanted to bring clemente to the major league club, however the politics of the situation wouldn’t allow that. consider the racism within the racism that many african-americans did not want a puerto rican to become the first “black” baseball player.  at the same time, rickey faced resistance from other owners who also wanted the glory of breaking the color barrier. so, it became a game of backdoor deals and money grubbers dictating history – an all too frequent occurrence – rather than history naturally playing itself out.  it could just as easily have been clemente, larry doby or even satchell paige to be the first to walk out onto a field.  luckily, those particular people do not have a problem being recognized in history.  of course, they also do not get major hollywood treatment the way robinson has, but i digress to the true point.  we should not lose sight of what the times were all about and certainly not forget the unsung heroes.

in the case of jackie robinson breaking the color barrier, him and the other unsung heores played in the negro leagues or south of the border.  the negro leagues get about as much attention as the wartime women’s baseball league, basically the status of a cute footnote. but what else they do is show the complexities of the social structure and perhaps even that racism is still just as rampant today as ever before.

baseball today, as i say with every other major sport, still hasen’t taken women seriously.  they’ve always only been used for publicity stunts. the women’s baseball league should have been a wake up call, if not in the 1940s, then when hollywood showed it off in a league of their own.  however, hollywood did not paint them as true baseball players, as much as tomboy rabble rouser types.  today, we still do not take women in sports seriously and segregate them to their own leagues, which fans hardly pay attention to compared to the men’s leagues.  i will at least congratulate mark cuban on saying that he would be willing to give brittney griner a shot at playing for the mavericks. that would be amazing. and mark cuban is just the kind of guy to tell the other owners to go to hell if they were to resist.

the backwards and racist business of professional sports today, looks even more archaic when compared to the negro leagues. the negro leagues probably would have allowed white players, had any white players ever been willing to risk their shot at the majors by defecting.  but for the negro leagues, it wouldn’t have mattered.  it’s not like the negro leagues needed more or better players. the teams had rosters deeper than most major league teams besides the yankees, and the lore of players like stachell paige, josh gibson, cool papa bell and others have stood up very well in historical hindsight.  but what the negro leagues also allowed, if even for a publicity stunt, was women to play on the same field.  so, this is where mamie “peanut” johnson comes into the picture.

when 5’ 2” mamie johnson arrived to play for the indianapolis clowns in 1953, hank baylis of the kansas city monarchs said she looked like a peanut on the mound.  the name stuck in an endearing way, and so did the fact that she struck baylis out.  she went from the poor kid upbringing in which her uncle taught her to play baseball by using tree branches, rocks and pie plates. in the end, (after having a child) she played three years in the men’s league with win-loss records of 11-3, 10-1, and 12-4 each year.  she was a dominant player, and made between $400 and $800 per month, which had to have been a decent wage in the 1950s, though far less than a fair share.  after three years, mamie left baseball to go to college before spending 30 years as an LPN.

it never is the case that one person can make a huge change. even guy fawkes did not work alone. the closest we have to a single individual in modern society trying to buck the system may be ralph nader. but even he had support along the way, and ultimately his ideas were spoken with only the hope that the future hears them.  it takes a well-run operative to make a change, not to short change rosa parks or jackie robinson, but to give some appreciation for all the others that sacrificed more for less.

think about these women in men’s sports, for starters. babe zaharias is widely considered the first female athlete, but was she really?  she was an track and field olympian, who set five world records in the same day.  she entered pro golf fairly late at the age of 27, playing in men’s PGA tour events in 1938. she later joined the LPGA and was a six-time AP female athelte of the year.  in baseball, playing for the chattanooga lookouts in 1931, 17-year-old jackie mitchell struck out babe ruth and lou gehrig back to back.  women in baseball continues today in the person of side-arm knuckleballer eri yoshida playing the last three seasons with the chico outlaws and the maui na koa ikaika.

Brittney Griner

in tennis, billie jean king beat bobby riggs in a 1973 “battle of the sexes” at the houston astrodome. in horse racing, diane crump rode phantom in the 1970 kentucky derby.  in boxing, jackie tonawanda was allowed into male boxing after a judge ruled that the boxing commission was “continuing attitudes espoused a century ago.”  she won 35 fights, lost 1, and even later worked as mohammed ali’s bodyguard.  in car racing, janet guthrie started the indy 500 in 1977 and 1978, shirley muldowney won three drag racing championships in the 70s and 80s and this year a woman named danica started pole position at the daytona 500.  in football, katie hnida was the first woman to score in division I-A for the new mexico lobos in 2003.  in ice hockey, manon rheaume played goaltender for the tampa bay lightning in 1992.  and in basketball ann meyers was signed by the indiana pacers in 1979, nancy lieberman played in the USBL in 1986 and perhaps next brittney griner for the dallas mavericks in 2014.

this is just a footnoted list of some of the women that have succeeded in men’s sports over the years. is mamie “peanut” johnson the most significant?  there was also toni stone and connie morgan in the negro leagues with her. but for the purpose of the rabble rouser hall of fame we consider mamie johnson. if we praise peanut johnson, for example, as a figurehead icon of the negro leagues or for women in sports, do we lessen the importance of the movement overall or highlight it?  she was just one player of many.  but if we have someone like her to hang onto, maybe it will interest others to read the history and give an appreciation in the team concept.  it might make us all stand up and say, “hey! there was a league that survived thirty years that allowed anyone to perform professionally." plus, if women in sports had been done almost a century ago, it’s not really progressive anymore.  major league baseball and all the other sexist professional sports would not be progressive to allow a female to participate now. they would just be about 70 years late in catching up with the precedent mamie johnson set.  there should still be a judge claiming they are “continuing attitudes espoused a century ago.” it’s all one more reason why i say on the sports show that i don’t give one rip about professional sports.  hail mamie “peanut” johnson!  trailblazer, rabble rouser. 
she struck out hank baylis and that was just the first batter she faced.