Jackie (Virne Beatrice) Mitchell, a left-handed, female pitcher for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a minor league team, struck out legendary New York Yankees Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at an exhibition game in 1931.

Baseball became a major part of Jackie’s life early on. Since she was born prematurely, weighing only 3 1/2 pounds, doctors advised her parents that fresh air and exercise would help her grow strong. So soon after Jackie learned to walk, her father would take her to play baseball at a nearby field.  

By age 8, Jackie learned pitching techniques from her neighbor, Charles “Dazzy” Vance, a star pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers and an eventual Hall of Fame pitcher. He told her that she could be as good as she wanted, as long as she worked at it. And that she did. She practiced and practice until she developed a strong pitching arm and could throw the ball right where she wanted it to go.

At 16, Jackie played for the Engelettes, a girls’ team in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by Joe Engel and coached by Jackie’s father.

At 17, she attended a baseball training camp and then signed a contract to play with Joe Engel’s Chattanooga Lookouts, a men’s minor league team. Jackie became the second woman ever to sign to a minor league. Lizzie Arlington was the first. Joe knew Jackie would bring a lot of publicity to his team. The day before the exhibition game, Babe Ruth was quoted in The New York Times as saying that women were “too delicate” to play baseball.

Minutes before the game started, Jackie created her own show for the cameras, by applying makeup. Then, in front of 4,000 fans, Jackie walked to the pitcher’s mound and struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The crowd sprung to its feet and cheered. Although the Lookouts lost 14 to 4, Jackie made history.  

A few days after the game, baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, voided Jackie’s contract on the grounds that life in baseball was “too strenuous” for a woman. At that time baseball rulings were considered final. No prominent person nor group protested nor came to Jackie’s defense to play in either a minor or major league.

After the game, Jackie received so much fan mail that she explained, “My daddy had to hire a secretary to answer it all.”  Much of it was simply addressed to “The Girl Who Struck out Ruth and Gehrig, Chattanooga, Tennessee.” 

Jackie played for the Engelettes for the remainder of the season, and played baseball until she retired from the sport at age 23.  She died in 1987, at age 73. On Dec. 10, 1993, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues ruled that women could play against men in minor-league baseball.

(Chattanooga, Tennessee: April 2, 1931)