Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball everyday.” The next day, Ruth and Lou Gehrig were struck out back-to-back by a 17-year-old girl. Making their way home from preseason in Florida, the New York Yankees had stopped off in Tennessee for an exhibition game against the minor-league Chattanooga Lookouts.
The Lookouts handed a debut to a promising young pitcher with precise control, a quirky side-arm delivery and a vicious sinker. Her name was Jackie Mitchell. The strikeouts of two all-time greats sparked still-ongoing debates over the legitimacy of Mitchell’s achievement and the general lack of opportunities for female players.
Mitchell was summoned from the bullpen in the first inning. In front of a 4,000-strong crowd, Ruth, an reporter wrote at the time, came to the plate with “a wry smile playing at the corners of his mouth”. A New York Times writer implied that it was all theater: “The Babe performed his role very ably.
He swung hard at two pitches then demanded that Umpire Owens inspect the ball, just as batters do when utterly baffled by a pitcher’s delivery.” Ruth struck out looking and was said to have hurled his bat while somehow “registering disgust with his shoulder and chin”. Gehrig then struck out after “three hefty swings”. Mitchell came out of the game after walking the next batter, Tony Lazzeri, and the Yankees went on to win 14-4.
Asked in a postgame press conference if the strikeouts were genuine, Mitchell was reported to have “retorted with a gaze of utter scorn and a contemptuous silence”. As Lapham’s Quarterly noted, Ruth and Gehrig enigmatically kept mum on the matter. There is cause to be suspicious.
The occasion had been scheduled for April Fool’s Day, though it was postponed by a day because of bad weather. And the Lookouts were run by a tireless promoter and showman known as the Barnum of the Bush Leagues. A former Major League Baseball pitcher and scout, Joe Engel became president of the Lookouts in 1929 and opened a new ballpark - Engel Stadium - the following year.
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