Review: In ‘Toni Stone,’ America’s Pastime Meets America’s Problem

In 2015, April Matthis won an Obie Award for sustained excellence as an actor, having played almost every kind of role Off Broadway could offer. Or so I thought until I saw her as half of the strangest — and in some ways the loveliest — love story ever.

I’m talking about her terrific performance as Toni Stone in the play of the same name by Lydia R. Diamond, in which the other half of the love story is a 9-inch sphere of horsehide, rubber and yarn.

Stone, who in 1953 became the first woman of any race to play in a professional baseball game, was obsessed since childhood with the sport — and thus with its main piece of equipment. “It is round, and small, and it fits right there in your hand,” she says, expressing the same kind of longing she’s heard other girls express about boys.

Ms. Diamond’s play, which opened on Thursday at the Laura Pels Theater, tracks Stone, whom history has almost forgotten, from her tomboy youth on the sandlots of St. Paul to her years of barnstorming with men’s exhibition teams, to her historic first at-bat for the Indianapolis Clowns of the professional Negro Leagues. It considers her character — and those of the men she played with — in the context of social change reshaping the field and the country.

Source: The New York Times

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Keywords:

Toni Stone • Obie Award • Off-Broadway • Toni Stone • Romeo and Juliet • Lydia R. Diamond • Natural rubber • Professional baseball • Roundabout Theatre Company • Tomboy • Barnstorming • First baseman • At bat • Indianapolis Clowns • Negro league baseball • Social change • Baseball field •