Girls play baseball in boys’ world
TOWSON, Md. — Spectators gasped as the baseball — thrown inadvertently off course by the pint-size pitcher — plunked the batter high on the arm.
Charlie Martin, 7, a girl with a traditional boy’s name playing in a boys’ world, stood at home plate in her baggy uniform, determined to remain as stoic as a big-leaguer in front of everyone at the Towson, Md., recreational field.
“I wanted to cry but I knew I shouldn’t,” said Charlie, whose ponytail extended from her cap and fingernails sparkled with polish.
Sometimes, there really is no crying in baseball, particularly when you are the only girl on the team and bent on proving your mettle in a sport that stubbornly remains a male bastion.
Baseball — whose appeal is grounded in tradition — remains in many ways an anachronism.
“I think the challenge is that America has accepted this myth,” said Justine Siegal, founder of the nonprofit organization Baseball for All, and the first woman to serve — albeit briefly — as a coach for a major league team, the Oakland A’s.
University of Nevada-Reno political scientist Jennifer Ring worries about the larger consequences of restricting girls’ opportunities in baseball.
“A girl who has been part of a team of boys hits the glass ceiling and suddenly she and the boys get the message she’s not good enough anymore,” Ring said.
Forgoing girl’s softball, played in the nearby Lutherville-Timonium rec league, they choose instead to play in the Towson Recreation Council’s baseball league, which counts about 35 girls among its 710 players from ages 4 to 15.
Charlie — it’s her real name, not a nickname — is a soft-spoken but self-assured public school principal’s daughter who doesn’t see why she shouldn’t play the same sport as her 9-year-old brother.
More than 4 million kids from 6 to 12 play baseball, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
The number of girls playing has been estimated at 100,000, said Siegal, whose organization works to create opportunities for girls in the sport.
Area youth league organizers see a familiar pattern.
Some girls become self-conscious in a male-dominated setting, and feel an increasing tug to play sports and socialize instead with female peers.
Some girls internalize that and try to prove to themselves that they belong, with every at-bat and every pitch — which I think is unfair pressure.
On a recent weeknight, the 9-year-old had a traditional baseball look: gray pants, high black socks and, occasionally, a wad of chewing gum stuffed into her cheek.
The only things setting her apart from her teammates were a ponytail and earrings depicting tiny green elephants.
The boys on the Athletics regard Charlotte as just “a teammate,” said 10-year-old Baxter Pierce, the league commissioner’s son.
Charlotte said she wanted the challenge of hitting a regulation baseball and overhand pitching.
“I guess I just grew up with brothers, and I kind of wanted to play baseball, too,” she said.
Softball, with its smaller field, larger ball, underhand pitching and fewer innings, can appear to be a fraternal twin to baseball — similar, but decidedly not the same.
To Ring, the political scientist, softball is the “culprit” siphoning girls away from baseball.
“I know I get in trouble every time I say this, but I teach a course on the politics of sports, and I refer to softball as ‘Jim Crow baseball,’ ” she said.
While boys can receive college baseball scholarships, girls need to switch to softball to vie for the same opportunities.
Boys “can dream their baseball dreams until they figure out they’re not good enough to get a Division I scholarship or make the pros,” she said.
Except that I have a feeling every little girl dreams for a while that she will be the first girl to play major league baseball.
The organization says it doesn’t collect demographic information on how many girls play on its baseball teams, but it’s believed they are a small minority.
[...] while our affiliate leagues were open to the idea, they had difficulty securing enough female interest to get started.
Siegal threw batting practice during spring training for several big-league clubs in 2011.
Other sports, such as soccer and basketball, offer girls opportunities to play on their own teams at early ages.
In the 1990s, the all-women Colorado Silver Bullets, sponsored by the Coors Brewing Co. and managed by Hall of Fame knuckleballer Phil Niekro, played a series of exhibition games, mostly against men’s amateur, minor-league and semi-pro players.
The 1992 movie “A League of Their Own” offered an interpretation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the real-life organization that was launched in the 1940s, when World War II had depleted the major leagues of much of its male talent.
In 2014, Mo’Ne Davis became the first girl to throw a shutout at the Little League World Series.
On Sunday, softball great Jennie Finch is to serve as “guest manager” of the Bridgeport Bluefish, a men’s minor league baseball team in Connecticut, against the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.
Finch led the University of Arizona to a national championship in 2001 and played in two Olympics, winning gold in Athens in 2004.
Four shiny trophies and a league all-star team shirt are displayed at her home, along with an assortment of gloves, bats and balls, including some signed by members of the Orioles, her favorite major league team.
[...] she noticed that boys sometimes got embarrassed if she batted ahead of them in the lineup, or got a hit off them.
With Hannah gone, Grace Parcover — a tall 13-year-old who likes to play infield and hopes to pitch one day — is the league’s most senior girl.