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.
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| Irene Morgan |
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.
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.
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| Brittney Griner |
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.
she struck out hank baylis and that was just the first batter she faced.
