Jackie Mitchell, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig
There are undoubtedly plenty of pictures of baseball legends Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig out there but that is not who we are looking at in this 1931 photograph, it’s another less well known legend, Jackie Mitchell.
Mitchell was one of the first female pitchers in professional baseball history. On April 2nd 1931, aged just seventeen, she would take part in an exhibition match against New York Yankees pitching for the Chattanooga Lookouts.
She would cement her legacy by becoming only female in history to strike out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Ruth was less than graceful in defeat as he was later quoted in a Chattanooga newspaper as having said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball. Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball every day.”
