I have always loved baseball. Not only was I born on opening day, I was born on the last ever opening day at “The Stick” (Candlestick park in San Francisco). After I was born, everyone but my mother and I went to the game. Since that day I have been a die hard Giants fan. My family has a shrine in our front room with a selection of the hundreds of bobble heads and other memorabilia that my father has gathered over the decades of being a Giant’s season ticket holder. I have witnessed two perfect games and three World Series wins in my lifetime. However, with every season that passes I become more and more disillusioned by the team I onced loved absolutely. I have realized that all I ever wanted was to see someone like me out there under the lights playing baseball–or any other sport for that matter.
My brothers both still play and whenever they get too big a head about how talented they think they are, my father always reminds them who was the first person in our family to make All Star’s (it was me). However, I quit softball when I was 11, not because I didn’t love it but because loving it hurt me. The other girls on my team use to kick dirt in my eyes, fill my glove with chewed up seeds and laugh at me when I struck out. I wish I still did though. Once, I had just enough courage to tell my mom that I wanted to play baseball like my brothers but she never let me try. Some days I want to pluck up the courage to “walk-on” for SU’s baseball team but I don’t even know what would happen. I have never heard of a girl doing that before. Would they laugh at me? Would they tell me to go join the girls softball team instead?
“Softball” by the way is an absolute misnomer. There is nothing harder in the world of sports than a softball; those things are massive. It is not without reason that pitchers and infielders wear heart protectors and face masks. Anyone with half a brain knows that Jennie Finch can pitch circles around Major League Stars, but where is her 7 figure salary? There is a USA women’s baseball team that plays in international tournaments, and back in 2016 two women were signed to a club team, but nothing has moved beyond that, and no matter how spectacular an athlete they are, no women are in the MLB.
During World War 2, when the young and fit men were all away at war, women played professional baseball. One of my most favorite movies of all times, A League of Their Own, tells the story of the women’s professional baseball league. Many of those women like Dottie Stolze and Claire Schillace are now in the hall of fame. Though honestly I don’t want a seperate women’s league. When we do see women playing at a professional level but separated by gender, like the US’s Women’s Soccer team, they make 40 times less than the men, even though the women are ranked #1 and the men are ranked 30th. Not to mention that they have brought in $17 million dollars in one year while the men lost $2 million dollars. If Brown v. the Board of Education has taught me anything, it is that separate is inherently unequal.
Baseball is “America’s Pastime” yet 50% of the American population is not being represented by professional baseball. Frankly it is just another thing in a long list of things I love that the patriarchy has taken away from me. The real issue is not that there is a lack of women wanting to or being able to play baseball at the professional level alongside men, but rather that it seems men cannot stand the idea of women being equal or god forbid better than them in an occupation that they have always held a monopoly on. If a man was actually struck out by a female pitcher in the MLB the world would never let him forget it.
Back in 2016 there was a TV show called Pitch in which a young woman named Ginny Baker was the first female to ever play in the MLB. However after just 10 episodes it was canceled. Apparently the American people were not ready for a female baseball player on their TVs once a week. Why would they want to see a female baseball player on their TV every night of the season. That of course is no reason to back down from any sport. The American people did not want to see women in the military because “they were not strong enough” yet there they are, fighting alongside men. The American people did not want to see women voting because “they were not smart enough” yet every November we show up at the polls. Anyone who says that women are not strong enough to go up against men in sports can just talk to any mother who has carried and pushed a 9 lb baby out of her vagina. Trust me–a 250 lb linebacker is nothing.
Women like Billie Jean King, Serena Williams, Diana Taurasi, Katie Ledecky, and Danica Patrick, as well as so many others, have been fighting for women’s equality in sports since the very beginning. There is still so much hope. We have young girls like Mo’Ne Davis chomping at the bit, demanding an equal shot, wanting nothing more than to be seen for what they can do rather than what they identify as. One of my students told me that one day she would be a professional soccer player and no one would dare pay her any less than a man, she would just be that good. Girls like that are gonna change this world, no doubt.
So what? Sports are not just about entertainment, they exemplify our culture and values. I want American sports to exemplify the paradigm of equality and opportunity our country was meant to be.