Jackie Mitchell
American baseball player
Virne Beatrice "Jackie" Mitchell Gilbert (August 29, 1913 – January 7, 1987) was one of the first female American pitchers in professional baseball history. She was 17 years old when she pitched for the Chattanooga Lookouts Class AA minor league baseball team in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, and struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in succession.
Early life
Jackie Mitchell was born on August 29, 1913, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Virne Wall Mitchell and Dr. Joseph Mitchell. When she learned how to walk, her father took her to the baseball diamond and taught her the basics of the game. Her next door neighbor, Dazzy Vance, taught her to pitch and showed her his "drop ball", a type of breaking ball. Vance was a major league pitcher and would eventually be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
At the age of 17, Mitchell began playing for the Engelettes, a women's team in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and went on to attend a baseball training camp in Atlanta, Georgia. In doing so she attracted the attention of Joe Engel, the president and owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, who was known for using publicity stunts as a way to draw crowds during the Great Depression. Seeing Mitchell as an opportunity to draw attention to the Lookouts, he signed her to the team on March 25, 1931.
The public source identifies “Jackie Mitchell” as american baseball player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jackie, Mitchell and American.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18729185. VIAF identifies the subject as 14102624. The Library of Congress control number is n99042284. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1987 and 1931.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jackie Mitchell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.