Mamie Johnson — pitched against men in Negro Leagues
Mamie Johnson, one of a handful of women to play in baseball’s Negro Leagues in the early 1950s — and the only one known to pitch — died Monday in a Washington, D.C., hospital. She was 82.
She had been admitted to the hospital because of problems with her pacemaker, her stepdaughter Yvonne Livingston said. Johnson lived in Washington.
The Negro Leagues were waning when Johnson joined the Indianapolis Clowns in 1953. Jackie Robinson had integrated the majors with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, and the most talented black players were being recruited by major-league teams.
But Negro League teams still cultivated talented players. (Hank Aaron played for the Clowns some years before Johnson joined the team.) And the Clowns were open to signing women: Two others, Toni Stone and Connie Morgan, also played for the team in the early 1950s, both as infielders.
Johnson, who stood about 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighed about 120 pounds during her playing days — hence the nickname Peanut — was initially signed largely as a novelty. Besides serious baseball, the Clowns and other teams in the Negro leagues also staged comedy routines and barnstormed playing exhibition games to supplement what they earned from competitive play.
She was born Sept. 27, 1935, in Ridgeway, S.C. Her mother, Della Belton Havelow, a dietitian, and her father, Gentry Harrison, separated when she was young. An uncle, Leo Belton, who was near her age and more like a brother, taught her how to play baseball starting when she was about 6.
“There was nothing else to do,” Johnson said in a video interview with the National Visionary Leadership Project. “We didn’t have basketball, we didn’t have football, we didn’t have tennis. We didn’t have that; all we knew was baseball.”
She married Charles Johnson and had a son, Charles, shortly before she started playing with the Clowns. She last played for the team in 1955, leaving to become a nurse and to spend more time caring for her son. She also coached youth league baseball teams and worked in a store that sold Negro Leagues merchandise.