Strike Out

fair share of legends. Greats like Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, and Ty Cobb have left their marks not just on baseball but on the landscape of American sports. Yet there are two players who have been named as legends despite suffering a few embarrassing losses at the heights of their careers, specifically at the hand well the arm of one unsuspecting picture. The name Jackie Mitchell probably doesn't ring a bell even to the most ardent baseball fans.

Mitchell was a left handed pitcher for a minor league team in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Before that, Mitchell grew up learning from some of the best pitchers the game had ever seen. Dazzy Vance, who had played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the nineteen twenties, had once taught the up and comer how to throw a sinker. There were also the kids around town who would all play ball together, giving Mitchell all the practice needed to take on the biggest names

in baseball, specifically Babe Ruth and lou Garrig. By one, Ruth was a star on the field and off. He'd already won three World Series with the New York Yankees, He'd been in a feature film, and he was doing some of the best playing of his life. And Lou Garrig, Ruth's teammates, was right behind him. In more ways than one. Where Ruth batted third in the lineup, Garrig batted fourth. From extra base hits to total basses, lou garreg stats were often one or two places behind the Babes, making

the two players a powerful duo on the field. Joe Angle, formerly of the Washington Senators, was looking for a way to boost ticket sales for his minor League Tennessee baseball team. It just so happened that the Yankees were passing through Chattanooga on their way back from spring training in Florida. They decided to play a few exhibition games against Angle's team,

the Lookouts, which were sure to drum up business. After all, it wasn't every day that Chattanooga locals got to see Babe Ruth and lou Garreg play against their hometown heroes. And to really seal the deal, Angle brought over his newly signed picture Jackie Mitchell to face the Babe and the Iron horse head on. Mitchell couldn't wait to knock Ruth and Gereg for a loop, especially with the possibility of a big league career on the line. The date

was set on April second. Four thousand cheering fans filled the stands at Angle Stadium. The day before, reporters had interviewed Mitchell, who was quoted as saying, I'll do my best and we'll go out there with plenty of pep and with my mind made up on one thing. To fan Babe Ruth. The picture took the mount. Ruth stepped up to the plate. The crowd roared. Mitchell through the first pitch as a ball inside a rough start. A second pitch flew over the plate, Ruth swung and missed

strike one. Another pitch came sailing through and he swung once more, Strike two. Ruth asked the umpire to examine the ball for any defects or signs of tampering, but the umpire didn't detect anything out of the ordinary. Mitchell had smoked him fair and square. Ruth angrily accepted the umpire's ruling and got ready. Finally, the last ball sailed straight ahead, landing in the catcher's mitt. As the Great Bambino swung for the third time, he was out, much

to the surprise of the crowd. He threw his bat on the ground and stormed off as Garret stepped up to the plate and Lou didn't fare any better, swinging at every pitch and missing each time. Three strikes and he was out for one heavy hitter. To strike out against a newcomer was a shock, but two that was unheard of. Even more surprising was who they'd lost to. Jackie Mitchell wasn't just a minor league nubi. Jackie Mitchell

was an eighteen year old girl. Now, some historians claim the whole thing was a set up from the start, After all, Joe Engel's nickname was the Baron of Bologna. He was known to pull all kinds of stunts to sell tickets to his games, including replacing his shortstop with a live Turkey. Pitting an unknown Mitchell against two willing participants in Ruth and Gereg may have been just another ruse to get people in the seats. Others believe Mitchell

really did strike them out. Neither Ruth nor Gereg ever admitted to being in on it. She was young and inexperienced, so it was possible that they just didn't expect her to pitch the way that she did and missed because of it. Either way, Jackie Mitchell died in nineteen eighties seven, believing that she had struck out Babe Ruth and lou Garrig. She was a legend in her own right and an

inspiration to women everywhere. At the height of World War Two, people all over the world were pitching in to support the war effort. Those who couldn't fight helped organize scrap metal drives, welded airplane wings together, and sold war bonds. Many of these jobs were done by the wives and mothers of the men fighting overseas. However, over three hundred and fifty thousand women served during the war, from the

Army to the Air Force. In fact, several women helped the Allies win thanks to a particularly crafty secret weapon, one that the enemy never saw coming. Phillis Latour was born in South Africa in nineteen twenty one, but at the age of twenty she moved to England and joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She had never intended on going into the field, instead opting to become a flight mechanic and work on planes. However, her superiors saw her as a valuable asset outside of the shop due to

her fluency with the French language. Latour had been chosen to become a spy, and she jumped at the chance. Her godmother's father had been killed by the Nazis and her godmother had sadly taken her own life while she was held prisoner. This was her chance to avenge their deaths, and Latour's spy training was multifaceted, with a strenuous physical regimen on top of a rigorous mental exercise. She learned how to infiltrate buildings with the help of a former

cat burglar, while also studying Morse code. She also had to make fourteen parachute jumps and know how to pick locks to prove that she could do the job. Once her training was complete, Latour was given the code name Genevieve and deployed out into the field. She worked on a v she France for a year for beginning the biggest mission of her life. On May one, nine four, she parachuted into Nazi occupied Normandy. Her name this time was Poulette and she was just a poor French girl

selling soap to make ends meet. She traveled by bicycle, stopping and talking pleasantly with the Nazi officers she met. To them, she was a simple, unassuming girl just passing by. To her, the soldiers were tools to be used as she coaxed valuable information out of them. Then she took what they told her, like their current positions and plans, and sent everything back to the British. But in order to get the messages across enemy lines, Latour had to

encode it in case the Germans intercepted it. To do this, she didn't use a common cipher or encryption technique. She relied on something she had on hand, her knitting needles. It sounds crazy, I know, but knitting was a perfect way to hide messages in plain sight. La Tour used knit stitches and pearl stitches to represent the dashes and dots of Morse code, which were translated later using a

special machine. She had thousands of codes at the ready, all of which were stored on a piece of silk she kept tied up in her hair, and she wasn't the only one. Knitting was a popular way to transmit messages for both sides of the war. It was said that the Germans had taken to knitting entire sweaters in order to conceal their messages. If someone were to unravel the sweater, they'd find a wool thread with knots up

and down the length of it. That thread would then need to be placed against a door frame that had been marked up with the letters of the alphabet one inch apart. The letters that the knots touched were the letters used to encode the message, and even those who weren't knitting codes into their gloves and scarves could serve as great spies, blending into the background and just listening to conversations. This was a technique often used during the

Revolutionary War. The messages overheard by knitters were written on little pieces of paper and stuffed into balls of yarn that were then passed two American soldiers without the British ever know what was going on. It seems that for hundreds of years, knitting flew under the radar as it tried, in true way to undermine the opposition. The stories of those who stitched their way to victory might sound implausible,

but they are anything but yarns. Their tales of courage, about the women who won by doing what few people could do. They pulled the wool over their enemies eyes. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership

with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.