Jackie Mitchell, 17, Struck Out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in 1931 Tennessee Exhibition

Jackie Mitchell, a 17-year-old left-handed pitcher for the Chattanooga Lookouts, struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in a 1931 spring training exhibition in Tennessee when the New York Yankees stopped there on their way home from preseason in Florida.

Babe Ruth had publicly expressed scepticism about women in baseball, saying, “I don’t know what things are coming to,” and adding, “I don’t know what’s going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball,” followed by, “Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball everyday.” The next day Mitchell was summoned from the bullpen in the first inning before a crowd of about 4,000; an Associated Press reporter noted Ruth came to the plate with “a wry smile playing at the corners of his mouth,” while a New York Times writer wrote, “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.”

In the sequence of at-bats Mitchell struck Ruth out looking and then retired Gehrig on strikes after “three hefty swings”; she walked the following batter, Tony Lazzeri, and was removed from the game, which the Yankees won 14-4. Mitchell’s postgame response was recorded as having “retorted with a gaze of utter scorn and a contemptuous silence,” and, as Lapham’s Quarterly later noted, Ruth and Gehrig themselves remained publicly silent on whether the strikeouts had been staged.

Questions over the legitimacy of the moment were fuelled by context: the exhibition had been scheduled for April Fool’s Day and postponed by a day because of bad weather, and the Chattanooga club was run by promoter Joe Engel, who became Lookouts president in 1929 and opened Engel Stadium the following year. Engel was known for publicity schemes — the report recalls he once traded his shortstop “Binky” Jones for a turkey and later pretended to take a wartime phone call from Adolf Hitler at home plate — and while Mitchell’s signing has been described as a publicity stunt, the contemporary coverage did not establish definitively that the strikeouts were faked.

Mitchell was born in Chattanooga on 29 August 1913, stood 5ft 8in, learned baseball fundamentals from her father and played for Engel’s all-female team, the Engelettes. The account credits her with a distinctive side-arm delivery and a “drop” pitch she was said to have been taught by a neighbour, “Dazzy” Vance, whom the article identifies as a Hall of Famer who led the National League in strikeouts for seven seasons in a row.

Reports from the period also say Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of baseball, voided Mitchell’s contract on grounds that professional baseball was too physical for women; those reports have not been definitively confirmed, but Mitchell herself told the St Louis Post-Dispatch in 1933, “I believe I could qualify and might be signed by a major league team and might someday get to play in a World Series if Judge Landis hadn’t ruled against my playing in major league ball.” She capitalised on her profile by appearing in exhibition games and, at times, pitching for the barnstorming House of David team.

The episode sits within a longer chronicle of women’s participation in baseball cited in the report: organised women’s baseball began at Vassar College in 1866; early professional novelty teams, the Blondes and the Brunettes, played in Illinois in 1875; Barnstorming Bloomer Girls were common from the 1890s and Lizzie Arlington pitched a scoreless ninth inning for Reading in 1898. Later examples recorded in the article include Babe Didrikson Zaharias pitching in spring training and for the New Orleans Pelicans three years after Mitchell’s appearance, Mamie “Peanut” Johnson compiling a 33-8 record for the Indianapolis Clowns between 1953 and 1955, Eleanor Engle’s cancelled minor-league contract in 1952 with George Trautman condemning “such travesties,” the Chicago White Sox selecting pitcher Carey Schueler in the 43rd round of the 1993 draft (she did not sign), and Ila Borders’ 52 minor-league appearances for four clubs over four seasons.

Sexist contemporary coverage treated Mitchell as a novelty — one preview suggested “the curves won’t all be on the ball when pretty Jackie Mitchell … takes the mound,” while another item noted she “can sew and make a dress, she cooks with skill and success and even plays the piano.” Mitchell retired from playing in 1937 and went to work for her father, an optician; she was invited back to the Lookouts to throw a ceremonial first pitch in 1982.

Shortly before her death in 1987 Mitchell told a reporter, “Why, hell, they were trying, damn right,” asserting the strikeouts were genuine.