By Elizabeth Jones | Observer Contributor
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia
Baseball, America’s favorite pastime, has a way of bringing people together. For Martha Ackmann, it connected her to a woman who may have been left by the wayside of history. That woman was Toni Stone.
The life of Toni Stone is the subject of Martha Ackmann’s book Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone the First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League which was discussed in a presentation at the Athol Public Library on March 23 supported by the Humanities Project at MWCC. As the title suggests, Ackmann detailed the struggle Stone faced throughout her life and career as an African American woman playing professional baseball.