‘MLB The Show 24’ Is Finally Celebrating Women In Baseball

When fans sit down to play this year’s edition of MLB The Show, they’ll once again get the chance to play as today’s biggest stars, build up their own franchise, and relive the game’s storied past while getting a glimpse at its more inclusive future.

“If you say you’re going to tell stories rooted in baseball history, then you have to tell stories about women,” says Ramone Russell, the public face of MLB The Show who has been working in brand communications and brand strategy for Sony for more than 15 years.

Diving into the sometimes sparingly taught history of the sport has become a passion project for Russell, and a guiding tenet for how the studio hopes to push its baseball sim forward despite real competition in the space. In 2023, MLB The Show introduced a new Storylines mode highlighting the stories of Black athletes who played in the Negro Leagues before baseball was finally integrated. According to Russell, partnering with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and its president Bob Kendrick — who appeared in the game’s documentary video vignettes — enabled the MLB The Show team to faithfully resurrect stadiums and offer fans a chance to better discover legends like Satchel Paige and Rube Foster. In short, it was a “game-changer” for the studio.

But, when Kendrick was recording trailers for the first edition of the update, he threw Russell a curveball.

“We needed to record the promo, and Bob was like, ‘What do you want me to say?’” Russell recalls. “’Say something to the effect of, we’re going to introduce you to some of the baddest men that ever played the game of baseball.’ And Bob stopped me; he said, ‘Men and women.’”

“Wait, there was a woman who played in the Negro Leagues?” was Russell’s next question, and the answer led him to Toni Stone. Stone joined the Indianapolis Clowns as a second baseman in 1953, making her the first woman to play as a regular on an American major-level professional baseball team. Russell knew telling her story would be crucial to the game if Sony was serious about honoring the history of the sport, but it wouldn’t be easy.

MLB The Show never had a playable female character before despite women popping up in various professional leagues over the years. And Russell’s team didn’t want to stop with Stone, who they wanted to be the catalyst for a new edition of the game’s Road To Show mode, an origin story they could build from to introduce playable female athletes designed to welcome a wider audience — to the video game, yes, but also to the sport.

Introducing A Legend

Marcenia Lyle “Toni” Stone was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1931. Her family described her as a tomboy — she played practically every sport, from basketball to football, golf, and hockey. But baseball was her first love, which is why, at age 16, she joined a semi-pro all-male team in the Twin Cities. Her career high came when she played second base for the Indianapolis Clowns and got a hit off the league’s greatest pitcher, Satchel Paige, but Russell knew those stats weren’t enough to capture the legacy of who Stone was as a player and a pioneer.

Sony worked with Stone’s family and estate, perfecting everything from the skin tone of her in-game character to what earrings she wore when she was on the field.

“We had to figure out, ‘How do we get her femininity to come through?’” Russell explains, noting her family wanted the game to honor her, not just as an athlete, but as a woman in a male-dominated sport. Using archival footage, audio recordings, and animated storytelling, MLB The Show 24 recounts Stone’s beginnings from a rebellious young girl set on defying the status quo to a player breaking barriers by filling the shoes of one of the sport’s greatest names.

According to Russell, bringing Stone’s journey to life encouraged progress within Sony’s team as well.

“The video game industry is not necessarily super diverse, so it forced us to have some really difficult conversations and put an extra focus on making sure we were listening to the marginalized voices on the team,” Russell shares. “I have been in plenty of meetings where the women on the team don’t feel like there’s a conducive environment for them to speak up. They just won’t say anything. And then something will happen, and someone will say, ‘Oh, why didn’t they speak up?’

“That’s not the question we should be asking. The question we should be asking is, ‘Is this a healthy environment where they feel empowered to speak up, where they feel like they’re equal?’ The problem isn’t them. The problem is us. So how do we start to create an environment that’s more conducive to women feeling like their voices are heard?”

Making sure women feel represented — during the development stages and when fans pick up their controllers to play — is also the reason why Russell’s team wasn’t satisfied with adding just one female character to MLB The Show. They’re planning on covering other Black female ball players like Connie Morgan and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson in future seasons. There’s also interest in bringing the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (the inspo behind A League Of Their Own) to life one day. But for now, they’re using the addition of Stone and the game’s RPG mode, Road to the Show, to expand their roster, and they’re doing it with the help of some heavy-hitters.

Paving The Way

“See me as a baseball player first.” That was the directive from Staten Island FerryHawks pitcher and outfielder Kelsie Whitmore, as well as several female athletes and executives whose experiences and expert input helped shape this year’s Road to the Show narrative. While Whitmore was in the studio, lending her voice to dialogue scenes and her body to motion-capture work off which players would eventually be modeled, the rest of Sony’s team was interviewing coaches, managers, and trainers about the realities of being a woman in baseball at the moment.

“We took what the women said to heart and reflected back as much as we could into the game,” Ashley Sanders, Content Specialist for MLB The Show, and Mollie Braley, the game’s Narrative Designer, tell UPROXX. “Their stories were that of any other athlete’s triumph and hardship, but with the unique twist of trying to break into a sport that is almost entirely male-dominated. Most scenes you’ll encounter in Road to the Show as a female character are universally understandable, but a lot of them have extra details that reflect that of a woman’s experience in baseball.”

Those details proved difficult to perfect, especially for a game that’s existed for almost 20 years without women as playable options.

“It was a major undertaking,” Russell admits. “Because if women’s faces don’t look right, that’s going to be an issue. If their hair doesn’t move, that’s going to be an issue. Women wear makeup. Most men who play major league baseball don’t. All of our pronouns had to change for the commentary. It forced the team to have some really difficult and honest conversations to get this right.”

But the nuances of how female players look in the game were just the beginning. The team behind MLB The Show knew they couldn’t just throw women on the field and call it a day. There needed to be storylines and narrative arcs that did justice to their unique experiences at the professional level.

“A woman’s path to MLB looks a lot different than the typical grind,” Sanders and Braley explain. “We didn’t want to shy away from telling a complete story. With that in mind, our lead narrative designer incorporated a friend, Mia Lewis, who experiences the path to the majors alongside our fans’ ballplayer.”

It’s alongside Mia that gamers get a sense of the hardships and joys that come with being a female baseball player. Through friendships built in locker rooms and on the field, the game makes a concerted effort to show how women in the sport lean on each other, look out for each other, and encourage each other to perform their best. Along with Whitmore, the team worked with names like Olivia Pichardo, Liz Benn, and coach Veronica Alvarez to get a deeper understanding of what made being a woman in baseball so special.

“They mentioned the importance of celebrating the myriad ways in which female players make themselves competitive and valuable on the field, despite differences in strength compared to male players,” Sanders and Braley say. “Many people have the idea that women must play a certain way in order to be successful but we want to challenge that idea and remind folks that since its inception, baseball has required the skills of players in all shapes, sizes, and strengths.”

As for any pushback they might receive by adding women to the game, Russell seems unbothered.

“Who cares?” he says. “It’s a fantasy video game. Representation is important. And if you don’t want to play as a woman, you don’t have to.”

He also offers the same guiding principle behind The Show’s Negro League Storylines in defense of inviting women to the game: It’s not a subtraction. It’s an addition.

“There are lots of women who play MLB The Show and they’ve never been able to see themselves in the game,” he says before sharing an anecdote of the day the team filmed the promo for Road To The Show: Women Pave Their Way. The little girl in the video is the daughter of a member of Playstation’s creative team and a baseball fan. Once the shoot was done, Russell invited her to play the game and she was able to build a player that finally looked like her.

“When we looked at her and we saw that smile, I was like, ‘Okay, this is why we did this,’” he says. “’If it’s only a hundred women, who gives a fuck? Look at the smile on her face. She can see herself now. This is why we did this.’”