Pitch: Could This Be The Future of Baseball?

When my friend told me about the new Fox show, Pitch, I immediately thought of one of my favorite movies, A League of Their Own, which is based on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

I dreamed of playing on a team like that but I knew it was far from realistic considering a) the league doesn’t exist anymore, and b) there has never been a woman on a professional baseball team. It was always just a dream and the fictional character Ginny Baker is living it.

Fox

By the time I turned 5, I could name all the players on the New York Yankees and knew enough ballpark lingo to argue with anyone who hated my favorite team. Soon enough, I was in the backyard playing baseball with my dad and brothers, slowly falling in love with the sport. My mom wanted me to do ballet, my brothers weren’t all that into sports, but I wanted to scrape up my knees sliding into home.

When I was younger, baseball was what I wanted to play and, of course, I wanted to boast a #2 Jersey just like my idol did but I quickly learned that my beloved sport wasn’t for girls. I was told to join the softball team when I was old enough to be on the youth team. Sure enough, my handgrip got bigger as I learned to throw a softball rather than baseball but I wasn’t too upset because my team became my family.

That is why when the opportunity to play for my county’s youth baseball team opened, I declined. I had already been playing softball for a couple of years and didn’t want to give up my third base position to go play for a team that would probably just stick me in the outfield. My friend on my team, though, decided to go try it out but she quickly learned why women don’t play with men.

She basically got the same treatment Ginny Baker got from her team but from a bunch of 10-year-olds. Sure, you could say that she was purposely hit, teased, and not taken seriously because it was a youth team but look how society treats women today. I can’t even go around telling people I am a huge baseball fan without someone trying to make me prove it.

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Baseball has been around for more than a century and it wasn’t until 1952 that MLB banned the signing of women. It happened after the minor league pitcher, Jackie Mitchel, struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game. She was only one of the few females to play in the minor leagues and yet, despite the fact that she struck out two of the greatest baseball players in history, Mitchel was treated like a publicity stunt.

The last time a professional men’s baseball team had a woman on it was back when we had a Negro League and only three made the cut. Why do you think the creator of the show, Dan Fogelman chose to give Baker #43? It was supposed to be symbolic like she is the next Jackie Robinson, the player that broke barriers, yet, those barriers should have been broken a long time ago.

The ban was lifted in 1992 but women still stayed out of the Major League Teams. Softball was still considered the substitute for baseball and it isn’t taken all that seriously, especially since men love to play it on their downtime. Every time I see college softball games, I think about how many of those girls only chose the game because baseball wasn’t an option to them.

Mo’Ne Davis became a very well known name after she was the first African-American girl to compete in the little leagues’ world series and the first girl overall to win. Sports Illustrated featured the pitcher on their cover, making her the first little league player ever to be on their cover. I was so impressed by this 13-year-old and hoped maybe she would be the real life Ginny Baker but that doesn’t look like it is going to happen. Davis decided to pursue basketball as her dream goal, a sport that doesn’t care about your gender.

Davis isn’t the only talented female ballplayer and she certainly won’t be the last. Just this year, Sarah Hudek was the first woman to receive a baseball scholarship and the only girl in the college leagues playing the sport this year, but she wasn’t the first. Julie Croteau was the one that opened doors by being the first woman to play baseball at a college level in 1989.

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Suffice it to say, it shouldn’t be all that surprising when a girl knows how to throw a baseball or hit one out of the park. While my dreams of playing on a diamond were halted at age 16 due to an injury, I know there are plenty of girls with the same kind of passion I had. If you would rather play baseball than softball, then I say, go for it. We live in changing times so might as well prove it!

I hope that one day, we will look back and say, “wow, I can’t believe women used to not play for MLB!” just like we do when we look back at the time when blacks couldn’t play in the league. The next Derek Jeter could be out there, and while she will probably have to deal with the struggles that Ginny Baker has, I believe she will be as strong as Jackie Robinson was.

Trust me, the only crying that will happen in baseball is after they win the World Series. And to all those people who think no one will want to come see a woman play a man’s sport, let me answer that with a quote from one of the greatest baseball movies of all time.

Universal Pictures