Avantis Softball Team

Dunning Field, St. Paul, MN

The Avantis pose in front of the Minneapolis skyline, 1975. Note that the IDS Center is the only visible skyscraper. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society and Betty Hawes.

Though conceptually rooted in Minneapolis, the Avantis all-women softball team represented a greater relationship between queer women and sporting that is evident in the Twin Cities. Indeed, the team interchangeably referred to themselves as the Minneapolis Avantis and the Twin Cities Avantis. This attests to the compatriotism that queer women felt on either side of the river. Named for their coach’s favorite brand of Italian sports car,(1) the team “modeled how to be ‘out lesbians’: they played hard and looked tough in their baseball pants and black jackets[.]”(2)

Dunning Field served the Rondo Neighborhood long before Interstate 94 erased it from the map in the 1960s. The neighborhood permitted a handful of talented young girls to participate in softball, baseball, and other sports. Notably, old Rondo was home to Toni Stone, a lifelong “tomboy” who became one of the first African-American women to play baseball professionally.(3) In many ways, Stone blazed a path for the Avantis a decade before the latter organized. A group of women organized into the Avantis in 1960,(4) eight years before Honey Harold opened Foxy’s Bar in Minneapolis. At the time, queer bars like the Happy Hour Bar (later a part of the [[Gay 90s Complex[[) or Sutton’s Place noticeably prevented women from sharing space with men. Softball teams provided queer women with the chance to meet once another: “back then, when you’re new in town, the first thing you do is you look for the softball teams, because that’s where you know you can find the lesbians.”(5)

Toni Stone, when she played for the Indianapolis Clowns, Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame's Library and Deborah Blagg.

While the Avantis were visibly a queer women’s softball team, they were not vocally so—a second group, The Wilder Ones, became the first openly-queer women’s team in 1971.(6) The later team challenged the Minneapolis Park Board and set a standard for future relations between the City and queer sports teams.(7)

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(1)Enke, Anne. Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007. Page 151.

(2)Enke, page 145.

(3)Sward, Susan. "Obituary: Toni Stone." The San Francisco Gate. 11/6/1996.

(4)Enke, page 151.

(5)Enke, page 145.

(6) Enke, page 156.

(7) Enke, page 157.

Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)