Jackie Mitchell was a natural but never made it to the big leagues because she was born into the wrong gender at the wrong time. Still, she made a splash by fanning two of baseball's greatest: the Sultan of Swat and the Iron Horse, in succession. Instead of a big league contract, Jackie's achievement got her minor league contract invalidated by the baseball commissioner because baseball was too strenuous a game for delicate women. She didn't know that of course.

It may not have been her father's bitterness and disappointment at her not being a son that put the steel in Sarah Emma Edmonds spine, but certainly growing up in pants must have helped prepare her for her masquerade as a male when she ran away from her home in Canada to Michigan. As Frank Thompson, she became a bible salesman and then joined the Union Army.