Invisible Women in America’s National Pastime . . . or,“She’s Good. It’s History,Man.”

“Girls Can’t Play Baseball”

American culture insists that girls can’t play baseball, and has made it stick. Yet from the late 18th century to the selection of the 2010 U.S. National Team, women have refused to relinquish the nation’s diamonds. Girls and women have played for nearly two centuries in the United States, but each generation is still greeted with astonishment, as though it were an historical first: This just in! Some girls are playing baseball and they look pretty good! What will it take to move Americans beyond their historical amnesia, and transform women’s baseball into an accepted, everyday occurrence?

The “Breaking News! This Just In!” attitude created a media event in Van Nuys, California on March 5, 2011. Marti Sementelli (personal communication, September 24, 2010) and Ghazeleh Sailors (telephone interview, September 15, 2010) were teammates on Team USA, 2010, and now in their senior seasons on their high school teams, Birmingham High of Van Nuys and San Marcos High of Santa Barbara. In an exhibition game scheduled for just this purpose, they would be the starting pitchers in a game between their schools. For the first time in American history, two high school boys’ baseball teams would play a game in which the starting pitchers were girls. The attention was amped up even more than usual because the event took place in media-obsessed Los Angeles, between two highly rated large urban schools. More than a thousand girls in the United States play high school baseball on boys teams, but the story would not have had such affect if it had been a game between two small town schools.

The stands filled and spectators stood when there were no longer seats available. Media trucks from ABC, NBC, and ESPN jammed the parking lot as fans arrived at the field. Prominent reporters from Southern California newspapers, including a syndicated high profile sports columnist, and representatives from network news and online webcasts were busy interviewing parents, siblings, friends, and teammates before and during the game. For a full hour after the game, both pitchers answered questions for reporters and television crews. Even the Birmingham Junior Varsity team, sitting in the bleachers waiting for the press to clear so they could take the field and play their game, were asked, “How do you feel about this? What’s it like to have a girl on the team? Is it okay?” They responded with positive grunts, well-representing the vernacular of many 14- and 15-year-old American young men: “Yeah. Uh, fine. She’s good. It’s history, man.” The reporter appeared not to grasp that the girl on their varsity team was a better player than these younger guys. They aspired to play on varsity, like she was doing.

The questions asked by all the interviewers seemed to me startlingly naive: “Isn’t the overhand throwing motion dangerous for a girl’s arm? That’s why girls play softball, isn’t it?” “Do you think a girl will ever play college baseball?” “Do you think there will ever be a time when a woman can play in the major leagues?” “What does it feel like to strike out a boy?” “I noticed that you wear your hair tucked up under your hat. Isn’t that uncomfortable?” “Do you think this game will end prejudice against girls playing baseball?”

The well-respected, and probably well-intentioned, reporters who asked these unsophisticated questions had just witnessed the girls playing successfully with and against boys’ teams, but seemed incapable of believing their eyes. Marti Sementelli (personal communication, September 24, 2010), pitching for Birmingham High, had gone the distance, giving up only one run and two hits. Ghazeleh Sailors (telephone interview, September 15, 2010), pitching for San Marcos High, had pitched superbly, opening the game with a three-up-three-down first inning, and allowing only two runs off three hits in three and a half innings. After she came out of the game, the boy who relieved her gave up the walks, hits, and runs that allowed Birmingham to break open the game. Both girls performed beautifully, but the attitude of the press was the same bewildered astonishment that characterized news stories about girls playing baseball in the early 20th century. Unlike in the past, however, and perhaps indicating some real change in the making, the stories that emerged from the bizarre questions were uniformly supportive and serious, avoiding the trivializing and patronizing attitude that often accompanies news about effective female athletes. A front-page article by Bill Plaschke (2011) in the Los Angeles Times Sports Section on Sunday, March 6, 2011 was accurate and respectful. Mark Saxon’s (2011) ESPNLosAngeles.com article was equally admiring, and raised the question of both girls moving on to play college baseball, and perhaps minor league ball.

I was caught up in the excitement, and pleased to be witnessing the event and all the attention it garnered, but I was also amazed that this is still news. I have written a book—Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball (Ring, 2009)—on the history of the exclusion of American girls and women from organized baseball, introduced with the story of the resistance my younger daughter faced when she wanted to continue playing baseball beyond Little League. It was legal for her to play Little League in the 1990s, but the cultural barriers she faced were not very different than what I faced when I was a girl in the pretitle IX era and wanted to play baseball.

When my daughter was 12 years old, the age limit for Little League, she was expected to give up the sport she loved and at which she excelled, and switch to softball. She was pressured to change games “for her own good,” with the counterintuitive argument that she was so good at baseball she should not squander that talent on a sport where she had no future. She could expect to earn a college scholarship if she played softball. There is no college baseball for women, so what was the point of continuing to play the sport? The rationale occasionally took the form of astonishing responses to her finest moments on the baseball diamond: The better she played baseball, the more stridently she was urged to play softball by concerned parents, umpires, and the coaches at the local high school. My daughter refused to give up the game she loved. Her baseball journey took her from Little League, through high school and college baseball, to the virtually unknown U.S. National Women’s Baseball Team. When Stolen Bases was published, her story attracted more attention than any other aspect of the book, even though it is only the prologue.

Why does a girl playing baseball still evoke incredulity, and why was a high school game with two girls pitching important enough to be covered by what seemed to be every news outlet in Southern California? Can we foresee a time when a woman in uniform on a baseball diamond, whether with men or in women’s leagues, will be “business as usual” for the sports media? I began writing Stolen Bases to find out why American girls are shut out of the “national pastime” and discovered my own ignorance about how many girls and women have simply refused to be moved off the field. Baseball’s masculine exclusivity was institutionalized when the game was declared our national pastime in the 1890s, and associated with American militarism and global expansionism. softball also was invented in the 1890s and its existence created an even more entrenched obstacle to female participation in baseball. Baseball’s link with American global economic expansion has gone hand-in-hand with the belief that women’s baseball is economically unviable. But selling softball as a female version of baseball continues to deprive American girls of the choice to play the national pastime. This article chronicles factors and forces that have kept women out of baseball and the refusal of many to surrender the field, concluding with the story of Team USA, 2010. It documents women’s current baseball reality and suggests ways to enhance opportunities for American girls and women to play the national pastime on every level from youth to professional. Such a change would indeed be transformative and consistent with the social justice principles championed by the United States.

Method

I have been acquainted with the players, coaches, and administrators of Team USA since 2006, when I first learned of the team’s existence. My daughter tried out for and made the team after she graduated high school, and has been a member on the 2006, 2008, and 2010 teams. Travelling to Taiwan and Japan with the players, I had occasion to hear their stories as we spent hours in airports, on planes, in hotels, and at meals together. The stories took shape as a new book, and I began collecting oral histories more methodically. In August, 2010, I attended the USA National Women’s Baseball Team Trials in Cary, North Carolina. This account is based on interviews with the players and coaches of Team USA, 2010, as well as some members of the 2008 team, about the 2010 Women’s World Cup Tournament. All players and coaches were approached and invited to contribute shortly after the return of the team from the Women’s World Cup Tournament in Venezuela, August 10 to 23, 2010. Interviews were conducted in person, and by phone, depending on geographical proximity. The final stage of interviews for a subsequent book will be more detailed in-person oral histories of their paths to baseball.

Creation of a National Pastime

“Baseball is war!” said Albert Spalding (1911). He was referring to the game’s new identity as the “national pastime,” suitably masculine, a young man’s game for a young nation with ambition for power and global expansion. Spalding (1911) was emphatic about the game’s unsuitability for the nation’s women:

A woman may take part in the grandstand, with applause for the brilliant play, with waving kerchief to the hero . . . loyal partisan of the home team, with smiles of derision for the umpire when he gives us the worst of it . . . But neither our wives, our sisters, our daughters, nor our sweethearts, may play Base Ball on the field . . . Base Ball is too strenuous for womankind (Spalding, 1911, p. 9).

Spalding’s description of baseball as war has always seemed far-fetched to me: A wish or a fantasy on the part of a baseball man who hopes that what he loves is the equivalent of history’s ultimate descriptor of masculinity. Baseball is not a contact sport, its goal is not primarily to penetrate and possess an opponent’s territory, and in spite of American passion for power, those purist fans who really know baseball will tell you stories of great moments that involve finesse, speed, artistry and subtle deftness. A base runner who turns an infielder’s slightest hesitation into an opportunity to steal or score, a speedy outfielder who reaches over the fence to rob the slugger of a homerun, or lays out in a diving catch to prevent a run from scoring, are as much admired as the ballplayers who display the strength and power to hit bombs. The suicide squeeze is the virtual opposite of the homerun, and one of the most daring and thrilling plays in the game. A runner on third base sprints toward home at the pitcher’s windup, and the batter attempts to bunt so the runner can score. It is small ball at its finest.

In contrast to my perspective of baseball as Elysian, however, in The Empire Strikes Out, Robert Elias (2010) echoes Spalding’s conviction, and delineates American baseball’s deep metaphorical association with war, as well as the historical reality of baseball’s influence on U.S. militarism and imperialism. For example,

In baseball the batting team pursues a constant war of maneuver. To make a successful advance it tries to put the ball out of its enemy’s reach. A hit baseball challenges the opponent’s defenses, drawing his troops out of position and giving the batter a chance to occupy enemy territory; that is, the batter tries to get on base (Elias, 2010, p. 34).

Baseball was explicitly associated with both military prowess and the global spread of American power at the end of the 19th century. In 1887, Spalding took a team of White professional baseball players (and a Black mascot, Robert Duvall) on a world tour to spread baseball as a “civilizing” American influence on “little brown men,” and to drum up business for his sporting goods company (Burgos, 2006; Spalding, 1911). The tour began in Hawaii, continued west around the globe to Asia, North Africa, and Europe, before returning to New York. In 1889, a banquet was held at Delmonico’s restaurant to celebrate the victorious tour. The banquet was a male-only gala, with a celebrity studded guest list that included President Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain. During the evening, Henry Chadwick, a major figure in early American baseball who had immigrated from England to the United States as a child, asserted that baseball had derived from the English girls’ game of rounders. He was shouted down with the chant, “No Rounders! No Rounders!” (Block, 2005; Seymour, 1971, 1989).

Spalding decided it was time to establish baseball’s masculine and American origins and called together a commission with explicit instructions to find the game’s American roots. Eight years later, in 1907, Spalding’s commission finally submitted a report containing the story that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, by drawing a diamond in the dirt with a stick (Berlage, 2005; Crepeau, 2000; Ring, 2009; Zoss & Bowman, 1996). Doubleday was a U.S. army general with a distinguished record in the Mexican Wars, the War against the Seminoles, and the Civil War. But in 1839 he was a cadet at West Point, and unavailable to draw diamonds in dirt fields at Cooperstown. Doubleday always denied that he had anything to do with the invention of baseball. The report was pure fiction, but the myth stuck in the American popular imagination, somewhat like the also fictional story of George Washington and the cherry tree.

At nearly the same historical moment that Spalding was claiming baseball as the invention of a soldier, the creation of softball inadvertently contributed to baseball’s exclusive masculinity. softball was created in the late 1880s and early 1890s in Chicago and Minneapolis, by men who wanted to play baseball during the frigid northern winters. It was intended for play in a gym, with soft large balls and small bats. Originally called Indoor Baseball it soon moved outdoors because it was an appealing game even when the weather warmed. Then, to ensure that the smaller, safer game not be confused with the more manly national pastime, it was given sexualized derogatory nicknames such as “Sissy Ball,” “Panty Waist”, and “Nancy Ball.” The game that ultimately became known as “softball” was adopted by educators in the early twentieth century as “girls’ baseball” (Dickson, 1994; Zoss & Bowman, 1996). Currently, softball is played on a diamond with 60 foot baselines, (compared to baseball’s 90-foot baselines). The softball outfield fences are set 195 to 225 feet from home plate, whereas the average full-sized baseball field has outfield fences between 300 and 400 feet from home. The softball is pitched underhand from 43 to 45 feet (depending on the level of play: the more advance level, the shorter the distance), whereas in baseball the ball is pitched overhand from 60.5 feet. The softball is about 12 inches in diameter and weighs between 6 and 7 ounces, where the baseball is about 9 inches in diameter and weighs a little over 5 ounces. In elite level softball, the pitch travels at 70 to 75 miles and hour from the shorter distance. In professional baseball, pitches can reach speeds of 90 to 100 miles an hour, but must travel 17 feet further than in softball to reach home plate. The different dimensions in all aspects result in a different pace and feel to each game. Neither is more inherently masculine or feminine: they are simply different games. Culturally, however, the segregation of American girls and boys into these separate sports was cemented in 1939 when Little League Baseball was created, for boys only, to promote the qualities of “citizenship, sportsmanship, and manhood” (Hyman, 2009, pp. 5-14; Ring, 2009, pp. 116-133; Van Auken & Van Auken, 2001).

In 1973, after Title IX was passed, the National Organization for Women, on behalf of 11-year-old Maria Pepe, brought suit against the Hoboken, New Jersey Little League, with the claim that it was illegal to exclude girls. Attorneys for Maria Pepe used the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, intended to protect freed slaves in 1869, which states “No state shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Title IX made a distinction between contact and noncontact sports, and exempted contact sports from sex integration. Although baseball’s claim to be a contact sport is highly questionable, it attempted to achieve this designation (McDonagh & Pappano, 2008). The Fourteenth Amendment thus proved the more effective legal tool with which to attempt to integrate baseball, because it made no mention of sports at all, contact or noncontact.

In its legal effort to save Little League Baseball for boys, the New Jersey Little League seized on the argument that baseball was a contact sport, too rough for girls, that girls’ bones break more easily than boys, and that girls would get breast cancer if they were struck in the chest by a baseball. One coach, advocating the exclusion of girls from Little League, described what he perceived to be the danger of girls being allowed to play: “If girls played, the league would ‘get sued if they (females) get breast cancer from getting tagged out on the boobs’” (Fields, 2001, p. 34).

All these arguments were challenged by expert medical witnesses and ultimately dismissed in the hearings. Judge Sylvia Pressler of the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights found excluding girls to be discriminatory. Her decision was appealed by Little League Baseball, and upheld by the Supreme Court of New Jersey (Ring, 2009, p. 116-133). Little League also argued that it would inconvenience (male) Little League coaches as well as violate the privacy of little girls if they were injured and needed to be touched or undressed by a concerned coach (Fields, 2001, 2005). In the end, NOW’s lawsuit was successful, although it resulted not in the actual integration of girls into youth Baseball, but in the establishment of Little League Softball for girls.

When it became illegal to exclude girls in New Jersey, over 2,000 Little League teams in New Jersey alone chose to shut down for an entire season rather than let girls play with boys. ¹ “Pony Tail” or “Bobby Sox” softball was soon created, and girls who wanted to play baseball were urged to take this route. No statistical records are kept by Little League Baseball on how many girls play baseball, as compared to segregated softball (Fields, 2001, 2005). The creation of organized softball for girls preempted any impetus to organize girls’ baseball, leaving girls who wanted to play hardball in nearly the same place they had been prior to the lawsuit. Girls who wanted to play baseball found themselves alone on boys’ Little League teams. Boys did not play softball, but most girls did. There were no truly gender-integrated baseball teams, nor separate girls’ baseball teams and leagues. The creation of Little League Softball thus actually cemented the post Title IX segregated masculinity of baseball.

There have always been, and continue to be, exceptions to the sex segregation of baseball. The 1990s was a particularly good decade for competitive women’s sports. The success of the World Cup winning U.S. Women’s Soccer Team in 1999 crowned the decade and made the seriousness of elite women’s team sports visible to the American public. One professional women’s baseball team briefly existed in the mid-1990s and attracted more attention than any other modern women’s baseball team. The Colorado Silver Bullets played from 1994[to]1997. It was organized by a man named Bob Hope (not the comedian), who received sponsorship from the Coors Brewing Company of Golden, Colorado. Hope persuaded former major leaguer Phil Niekro to manage the team, and the best women ballplayers in the nation were scouted and invited to tryouts. Most of the athletes were softball players who had not played much baseball. Approximately 50 games a year were played against men’s minor-league, semiprofessional, and college teams. The Silver Bullets held their own, but never dominated the all-male competition, and after three seasons, the Coors Company withdrew as sponsor and the team folded. Although 3 years was insufficient time to create a lucrative franchise, especially in the absence of any infrastructure for developing women baseball players, the Silver Bullets have become almost mythological heroes to the young women who want to play baseball today. Indeed, some of the original Silver Bullet Players, who were in their early twenties when they played on the team are the veterans on the current Team USA. These women are now in their middle or late thirties and still playing baseball. They are revered by the younger members of the Team USA. The difficulty of developing a professional women’s baseball team is the obvious result of the nation’s resistance to girls’ baseball, whether played with each other or with boys (Cohen, 2009). Sex segregation has kept American girls and women from playing the national pastime.

Sex Segregation in Sports

Sex segregation in sport is based on assumptions about male physical superiority just as race segregation was based on assumptions about White superiority (Travers, 2008, 2009). Little League Baseball attempted to exclude girls with the argument that baseball is a contact sport. This assumes that girls cannot play contact sports with boys and that boys are always going to be bigger, stronger, more aggressive, and better able to take a hit. But baseball is less dependent on size for excellence than many other sports. Its most celebrated Major Leaguers include small and highly skilled men such as Dustin Pedroia, David Eckstein, and Steve Garvey as well as big power hitters like Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder, and Mark McGuire.

In many sports size and muscle mass provide an advantage, even though rarely definitive. Studies have shown that differences in ability have as much to do with encouragement and training as any inherent biological factors (Cahn, 1994; Dowling, 2000; McDonagh & Pappano, 2008). Women’s World Cup Baseball, for example, is dominated by Team Japan, whose players are on average of smaller stature than the women on Teams USA, Canada, and Australia. The Japanese women dominate because they have access to year-round baseball, from grade school to college, and the cultural backing of their nation. The Japanese women’s national baseball team is well known and well supported with funding, publicity and attendance at games as well as an infrastructure that encourages development from childhood.

Segregating sports by sex rather than ability is not a response to “nature” or biology. Rather, it is a political statement (Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Sykes, 2006). McDonagh and Pappano (2008) argue that Title IX missed an opportunity to create true equality in sports, by drawing a distinction between “contact” and “non-contact” sports, institutionalizing the prejudice that girls and women are weaker, more prone to injury and that it is immoral for men and women to have physical contact with each other on the sporting field. By enforcing a distinction between contact and noncontact sports, Title IX assumed a paternalistic and protectionist stance toward female athletes, doing a disservice to gender equality by encouraging sex-segregated competition even where it is clearly unnecessary. Sports such as bowling, riflery, curling, and golf, are currently segregated. McDonagh and Pappano (2008, p. 29) conclude that “In effect, Title IX reinforced, rather than challenged, assumptions of male superiority and female weakness.” These authors make the telling observation that sport is the most sex-segregated institution in the United States, even more so than the military.

Baseball is not the only male institution to claim that letting women play with men will ruin the game (McDonagh & Pappano, 2008, p. 223). However, of the major American sports, it is the only one where the segregation is so complete that girls are directed to an equivalent sport. softball occupies a sort of parallel universe that precludes the choice to play baseball. Girls’ and women’s participation in many other sports has increased dramatically since Title IX. ² Basketball and soccer are two examples of sex-segregated sports that have large female contingents. Softball, as girls’ baseball, recruits girls from a young age, trains them, creates a pool of elite softball players for college and university play, and sends them down a path for life that is not baseball, but a different sport.

Team USA: The Invisible National Baseball Team

The journey of Team USA 2010 from USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, North Carolina, to the fourth biennial Women’s World Cup baseball Tournament in Caracas, Venezuela makes visible the challenges faced by American women baseball players. USA baseball’s sponsorship of a women’s team beginning in 2004 is perhaps the most important development in American women’s baseball history. The existence of a team of 20 women wearing the uniform of the United States of America reflects both the progress women have made, and the challenges they still face: invisibility at home, the difficulty of finding a team to play on, whether with boys or girls, and the pressure to play softball instead of baseball.

The women who play elite baseball at the national level in the United States are aware of their invisibility. A former player, an all-star who played in 2004, 2006, and 2008 (and who took 2010 off to have her first child), told me she believes “nobody wants to know we exist” (Donna Mills, personal communication, May 16, 2010). Echoing that sense of invisibility, after being cautioned about security concerns for Americans in Venezuela where the 2010 Women’s World Cup Tournament was held, two players on the national team joked about the probable consequences of being the victims of crime during the tournament. “If a busload of American women baseball players gets kidnapped in Venezuela it will solve our publicity problems!” one noted. Her teammate retorted, “Oh yeah? If we get kidnapped, nobody will pay our ransom . . . they’ll just say, “What US women’s baseball team? There are no women baseball players in the U.S.! Did they kidnap the Easter Bunny too?” (Veronica Alvarez, personal communication, May 30, 2010; Jacobson, personal communication, May 30, 2010).

Contradictions are built into the core of Team USA’s existence. When Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball in 1947, he and the African American community of the mid-20th century were consciously challenging racism, and were part of the larger civil rights movement. Embattled women baseball players, in contrast, are barely visible even to women’s rights activists. The women who play baseball rarely think of themselves in political terms, and feminists have not widely embraced the sexual integration of sport in general and baseball in particular as a significant cause. Women’s marginality to baseball is so entrenched that it seems to be a frivolous issue, which only confirms the cultural conviction that equal participation will never happen. The women who play baseball are articulate about the fact that gender bias has interfered mightily with their lives and professional choices, but most articulate it in terms of their individual desires. They speak about “just wanting to play ball” rather than positioning themselves as political activists.

In terms of race, class, sexuality, and politics, Team USA 2010 was diverse. Yet players express the challenges they have faced in remarkably similar terms, focusing on how gender has created problems in pursuing their sport of choice. All claim it was the thrill of a lifetime to don a jersey with USA written across the chest and to represent the nation, playing the game they love. Given baseball’s history of nationalism, and its early efforts to maintain its White, Christian, and male exclusivity, the image of a woman wearing the national uniform while competing against women’s teams from Latin America, Asia, and the former British colonial empire, begs for interpretive unpacking. Has the meaning of baseball changed between the late 19th century when baseball was used as a vehicle for American expansionism, and the 21st century when baseball is a player in global capitalism? Where does women’s baseball fit into that inherited historical context?

Although virtually none of the global capital is trickling down to women, there are a few signs of new life in the Old Ball Game. Since 2004, USA Baseball, which is sponsored by Major League Baseball, has funded a women’s team, chosen every 2 years, and sent it to the biennial Women’s baseball World Cup Tournament to face 12 teams from around the globe. In 2010, the tournament was held in Venezuela, the first Latin American country to host the event. ³ Thirty-two ballplayers were selected from throughout the United States at a preliminary round of six regional tryouts held earlier in the summer, ⁴ and invited to the National Training Complex in Cary, North Carolina, to be culled to a team of 20 players in four grueling 12-hour days in the 95-degree heat of North Carolina in August.

USA Baseball operates out of its expansive, pristine National Training Complex in pastoral Cary, North Carolina, near Raleigh, and exists primarily to showcase the best amateur boys and men in international tournaments. ⁵ The organization sponsors and funds a range of boys’ youth teams and the elite NCAA collegiate baseball team, which includes the nation’s most promising draft picks for professional baseball. The boys chosen for those teams are brought to Cary for team trials lasting up to 2 weeks, and then travel to tournaments from July to September, facing national and international competition nearly every day all summer long. ⁶ The promising male ballplayers who play under the auspices of USA Baseball usually play only one season in this venue, and then move on. Team USA is but one more showcase for them, a stepping stone to what they hope will be a future in professional baseball and the possibility of wealth and fame.

For the women, Team USA holds a very different meaning. It is a brief interlude lasting a little more than 2 weeks every two years, and is the only nationally validated elite level baseball available to them. Because USA Baseball provides the best game in town (or in the country) for these girls, they tend to return to play on Team USA over and over again. They have become a tight knit group of friends, and welcome new talent to their midst each season. This may be a blessing compared to the cutthroat high stakes politics of boys’ and men’s baseball, but it also reflects a sense of embattlement, spawned by neglect, indifference, and outright hostility to women’s baseball in the United States. For the women themselves, playing on Team USA is akin to being in the Olympics: the highest achievement available in their baseball careers. Except that nobody in the United States knows about them.

Many of the veterans of the women’s U.S. National team keep in touch with each other by playing on a women’s baseball tournament team based in Boston. During the 2-year interval between World Cup Tournaments, they play three or four tournaments a year held on major American holiday weekends, against a handful of teams from major American cities. Most regular participants in these tournaments are teams from Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. Tournaments are generally held Memorial Day weekend, July 4 weekend, Columbus Day Weekend, and Veteran’s Day weekend.

To arrive at the final USA Baseball tryouts has been a long march for the women, who range in age from 17 to 36. Achieving regular access to baseball is nearly impossible for girls and women. Many played Little League baseball, instead of softball until they were twelve. The very existence of baseball’s female equivalent creates a source of difference between the girls who play softball and those who refuse to. softball represents selling out to some, but for others it provides an opportunity for them to attend college, and to continue playing a sport with a bat and ball in a challenging competitive context. The women who play only baseball claim that even the best softball players do not have the baseball instincts and game experience needed to be elite baseball players. softball is simply a different game, with different dimensions, a different pace, and different moves. Some of the players who came to Team USA Baseball via softball played baseball for as long as they could—even into high school—before making a change to softball. The baseball purists—the militants in this context—have had the opportunity to develop better baseball skills, but have missed out on the experience of playing competitive elite level sports with other girls. The crucible of being the only girl on the team throughout their adolescent baseball careers forges a special bond between them when they do finally meet each other. But having been the only girl on teams where boys are taken more seriously and assumed to have greater playing ability means they have usually paid a psychological price in confidence and sacrificed playing time. The softball players—or moderates—gain experience playing with young women like themselves at the highest level of athletic competition, and enjoy the privileges of being NCAA Division 1 athletes. But they sacrifice baseball experience during critical years of their athletic development.

This conflict is captured in the reflections of Loren Smith (telephone interview, September 28, 2010), a 19-year-old college softball player and Team USA Baseball pitcher. She chose to play softball even though she knew she preferred baseball, and after experiencing the thrill of baseball once again in 2010 as a pitcher for Team USA, she regrets the time “lost” to softball:

In baseball I had the heart to play, and softball wasn’t really filling the void. You know, it was the closest thing to baseball, but it just wasn’t the same. I played varsity softball all four years of high school and got a college scholarship to Indian River where I am now. Until I tried out for Team USA I hadn’t realized how much I missed baseball. I’ll be at the softball field or tournament and I’ll just sit in the dugout thinking Why am I here? I just don’t enjoy it.” When I started playing baseball again this summer I was sitting there thinking, “Gosh I’m so glad to be here! I just love this sport.” When I played softball I thought I had lost baseball forever. I just wanted to play baseball and I thought “I’ll never make it back!” I thought that every year of playing softball. Now (after playing on Team USA), I’ll never leave baseball again. I feel like I fit in. . .all these girls love baseball, just like me” (Loren Smith, telephone interview, September 28, 2010).

So isolated are the girls who play hardball that many of the ballplayers themselves are unaware of each other’s existence. The younger players trying out for the first time are astonished to discover how many accomplished women ballplayers exist in the nation. Most of the younger players have never before been on a baseball diamond with another girl. The amazement of one 17-year-old high school baseball player captured the exhilaration of discovering a group of peers:

Well it was pretty amazing because I have never really set foot on a baseball field with another girl before. It’s always been me with a whole bunch of boys. I have never, ever played softball, I’ve never picked up a softball, I’ve never played baseball with girls. You have a lot of stuff you have to go through, a lot of hardship and disappointment and broken hearts, and you kind of meet people that have the same story as you. And there is no one better that can relate to you. Your parents try, your coaches try, your mentors try, your [male] teammates try, but no one can relate to you better than another girl who has been through the same stuff that you have. So that was pretty thrilling (Ghazaleh Sailors, telephone interview, September 15, 2010).

Another teenaged rookie on Team USA played youth baseball with boys, and a year of high school baseball before switching to high school softball. She now has a college softball scholarship, but marveled at finally being able to play baseball with other girls: “Oh my gosh it was extraordinary. I have never had an experience like that in my life. I’ve never played with a group of girls who have the same passion for baseball—not softball—as me” (Clarissa Navarro, telephone interview, November 2, 2010).

Visible at Last: Gunfire and Baseball Drama in Venezuela

In contrast to their invisibility at home, when the Americans enter the international arena they are treated as celebrities, and regarded as the team to beat. The difference was overwhelming to the 20 players selected for Team USA, 2010. When the women arrived in Caracas on August 12, they were greeted at the airport with television cameras, paparazzi, lights, and microphones. As the players passed through the doors, a brass band burst into song, they were showered in American flags, presented with flowers, and ushered into a press conference. Treated as interlopers at home, Team USA abroad was greeted like a major league team arriving for the World Series. The Venezuelan press quickly descended on Veronica Alvarez (telephone interview, November 16, 2010) and Laura Espinoza-Watson, both fluent Spanish-speakers who were pleased to address the Venezuelans without translators. Arrangements were made to interview Veronica Alvarez (telephone interview, November 16, 2010) in Spanish after every game.

Baseball-crazy Venezuela welcomed all the women’s teams as they arrived. The press conference for the Americans ended only when Team Cuba stepped off their plane. As Cuban flags began to appear in the reception area, the Americans were directed onto a waiting bus, surrounded by a police motorcycle escort and members of the Venezuelan National Guard, and followed by an ambulance. The players themselves were accompanied by their translator, and two private security officers sent by USA Baseball. The team bus never went anywhere without this motorcade, and the players and coaches never went anywhere unaccompanied by armed national guardsmen.

The players had been briefed about security issues in Venezuela, especially for a team of Americans wearing USA on every piece of clothing, but most of the women regarded the warnings as excessive. This relaxed disposition was undermined when, on the second day of play in the tournament, the shortstop on the Hong Kong team, Cheuk Woon Yee Sinny, was shot in the leg during a game against the Netherlands. All play was halted while the incident was investigated. The American team was in lockdown in their hotel rooms for 48 hours until Venezuelan authorities and tournament coaches and officials had determined that the shooting was an accident: a gun had been discharged into the air from outside the stadium, and the bullet had, freakishly, landed in the shortstop’s leg.

The team responded with a combination of concern for the Hong Kong players, panic that the tournament would be cancelled, and fear that they might also be targets if they took the field again. Eighteen-year-old pitcher Marti Sementelli (personal communication, September 24, 2010) captured the general sense of dread: “We played one game, and they’re saying we don’t know if we’re going to continue! We worked so hard. My heart was like ‘I don’t want to go home! We just started becoming a team. We just got here. And we’re going to be told that this tournament’s over?!’”

Seventeen-year-old Ghazaleh Sailors (telephone interview, September 15, 2010) was more worried about going home than being shot. “The first thing in my mind was ‘Oh no, oh no, they are going to call the tournament off aren’t they?’ And I thought: ‘Are you kidding me? Do you know how hard I worked for this? Do you know how long I worked for this? You are going to send us home after one game? Really???’” Ghazaleh Sailors (telephone interview, September 15, 2010) declared she would prefer to stay and risk being shot than miss the rest of the tournament: “If I’m going to die, I don’t want to die like an old lady in a hospital bed. I’ll die doing what I love.’”

Tamara Holmes, a 36-year-old Oakland firefighter, veteran of Team USA, and former Silver Bullets professional baseball player, was less sanguine about dying with her cleats on: “I remember Ghaz saying ‘Well if I have to die at least it will be playing baseball.’. . . I’m looking at her and I’m like ‘Later for you! I’m not going to get shot over this . . . ’” Holmes was, however, sympathetic when she saw 16-year-old Wynne McCann in tears, not from fear of physical danger, but because she feared her parents would insist that she leave when they learned of the shooting. A couple of other younger players were truly frightened at the prospect of sniper fire if they took the field again and wanted to go home to safety.

Veteran catcher Veronica Alvarez (telephone interview, November 16, 2010) was confident that this was a onetime incident, and did not pose a threat to the ballplayers. After being assured that the Hong Kong player would recover, she wisecracked, “If I knew it was only going to be a gunshot to the leg, I would have taken it. I’d take it if I got a little ESPN action.” When it was determined that the gunshot was an accident and that it was deemed safe to resume play, the American coaches told the players to meet and decide whether they wanted to continue, or to withdraw from the tournament and return home. At first news of the shooting, half the players were frightened enough to want to return home. During the lockdown at the hotel, and during the team meeting, all views were aired, and the players were determined to reach a unanimous verdict about whether to stay or go. In the end, they reached a unanimous decision to stay. Tamara Holmes described the tension: “You get back on the field, you don’t know what’s going to happen. But I think people just wanted to play in the end. They just really wanted to play . . . At the end of the day everybody, even those people who were afraid, weren’t ready to go home.”

Hong Kong had withdrawn from the tournament immediately after the shooting. Their wounded player had successful surgery in a Caracas hospital, and her teammates accompanied her home. Many of the other teams, including Australia, Canada and Puerto Rico, had been awaiting Team USA’s decision. If Team USA withdrew from the tournament, chances are the Women’s World Cup 2010 would have been cancelled, and the future of women’s baseball would have been even more precarious. The reason that Team USA’s decision carried so much weight with the rest of the teams in the tournament is because the United States is indeed the country most associated with baseball. The irony is that American women represented American baseball and American international presence to the rest of the world while most Americans do not even know they have a women’s baseball team.

Team USA coach, Tim O’Brien (telephone interview, October 14, 2010), was impressed with the courage and responsibility of the team: “What the girls were choosing was, I think, in no small part, going to have a huge impact on women’s baseball around the world. I think the girls had a lot of respect for that: that it was important that they measure up to the challenge. It was not easy. There were very high emotions involved on everybody’s part. . . . In the information void people tend to assume the worst, but our kids were measured, they were controlled, they were disciplined: all the things that as an athlete it takes to be successful, and as a person makes you exceptional.”

The tournament resumed, and Team USA won the first four games they played, against Korea, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Canada. Perhaps the 2-day confinement resulted in pent-up energy released on the field, as Americans hit the first four out of the park homeruns in modern women’s baseball history, three of them during the first game against Korea, and two of them grand slams. American left-fielder Tamara Holmes hit both grand slams, one a ball 360 feet over the left field fence against Team Canada, a big league shot in any ballpark. Second basewoman Malaika Underwood (telephone interview, September 9, 2010) hit a line drive out of the park against Korea.

The most dramatic game of the tournament, however, was the one all that Venezuela had awaited, with the home team competing against the United States. Over 16,000 fans filled Jose Perez Stadium, and thousands more had to be turned away. All games in the tournament were televised, but USA-Venezuela was scheduled for prime time, at 7:00 p.m. Venezuela, a country that loves its baseball and supplies Major League baseball with a disproportionate number of stars, had turned out to watch its women’s team play.

For American girls accustomed to playing before a handful of family members and friends scattered throughout bleachers, taking the field before thousands of fans in a professional stadium was electrifying. Malaika Underwood (telephone interview, September 9, 2010) remarked,

I thought the crowds were just amazing. When we played Venezuela there were over fifteen thousand [spectators], and none of us had ever played in front of that many before. And it was not just fifteen thousand sitting on their hands: they were all screaming and yelling the entire game. It was a great experience, and I’m not sure unless we go back to a South American country that we’ll have that experience again. The local support was just astounding.”

Veteran U.S. centerfielder Tara Harbert (telephone interview, September 21, 2010) experienced it as a moment of vindication in a lifetime of neglect as an American ballplayer:

They loved us. I mean they all knew our names, they all knew we played baseball. And then you come back to America and people are like ‘Oh you play softball?’ We had sixteen thousand people at our game versus Venezuela. . .it was a dream come true, even though they were cheering for Venezuela, in my mind they were cheering for us. Because I’ve always played my entire life (in order to) to play in front of that many people. . . . Really I can’t express how much it means. . . . Down there we were stars, and we come back here and it’s like you barely make ends meet, no one knows who you are. I feel like, “Oh my god, I want to go back!”

The Americans lost to Venezuela in what was, to them, a heartbreaker. They took an early lead: the Venezuelans were unable to hit American pitcher Marti Sementelli’s curve balls. Then a pitching change was made after three innings, and the relief pitcher was less effective, walking a player, allowing a hit, and then hitting a batter. The momentum shifted, the Venezuelan crowd got back into the game, and the American team succumbed to the noise and pressure. Catcher Veronica Alvarez (telephone interview, November 16, 2010) felt helpless watching the game turn:

He [Manager Don Freeman] took Marti out in the fourth inning and then everything shifted. As a catcher looking out, I just felt. . . . I saw our team crumble. I’m trying to calm them down, but what can you do? They don’t hear each other, there’s so much chaos. I thought “Oh my God!” The crowd went crazy, the bases were loaded, a run scored then she walked another. Our team crumbled.

Marti Sementelli (personal communication, September 24, 2010), watching from the dugout, was devastated:

I had to watch from the bench. When you have a five run lead and your team is looking sharp, and then you see it all unfold, it is so hard to watch. None of us once thought we were going to lose that game. It just slipped through our fingers. We just lost our composure. . .lost everything that we had, so much strength. It was nuts, 15,000 people are all cheering against you, and then everyone [on the team] got in their own head, and played uptight, and [the Venezuelan] momentum just kept going. We couldn’t stop it at all, we were just there watching.

The Americans did not recover their momentum after that game, and settled for the Bronze medal, with Japan winning gold and Australia silver. This could have been anticipated, and might have been prevented: the Americans have less baseball available to them between tournaments than either Japan or Australia. . . or Canada. Both Japan and Australia have girls’ and women’s baseball, organized from childhood through high school. Their national teams are chosen a full year before the tournaments, and they have both A and B teams. They are deep (meaning they have many talented players to draw from) compared to the Americans, who provide no infrastructure for girls to develop as baseball players, and then put together a team with a combination of college softball players, and girls who have managed to find boys’ teams to play on. And as they all will attest, being the only girl on a competitive boys’ team brings unique pressures and challenges, both in terms of athletic confidence and gender identity.

For the Venezuelan fans, defeating the American team felt like winning the entire tournament. This is understandable given the recent political history between the two nations, and the symbolic significance of a poor socialist country defeating one of the wealthiest capitalist nations in the world. Remembering American baseball’s early colonialist designs on Latin American, it would be difficult for any game between the United States and a Latin American country not to be overloaded with political and cultural significance. The vision of American might, however, was somewhat misplaced on a team of women who have experienced neglect and the complete absence of funding at home, and are more accustomed to the echo of empty stadiums than the roar of tens of thousands of nationalistic fans.

Beyond Next Season

USA Baseball is an important key to bringing women’s baseball to life in the United States. Steps have been taken in the past 4 years to strengthen the women’s program. Ashley Bratcher (telephone interview, September 29, 2010) has been hired as the first director of the women’s program for Team USA, and she has proven a very effective advocate, pushing for a yearly international tournament and more systematic recruiting for the women’s national team. She is highly regarded by the players, who think she has been instrumental in making the Women’s National Team “more than an afterthought of the men’s teams” (Malaika Underwood, telephone interview, September 9, 2010). Ashley Bratcher (telephone interview, September 29, 2010) believes that if Team USA is to be more successful in international competition, they need to make sure the women have a chance to practice and play together for more than a few days every two years before a tournament (Ashley Bratcher, telephone interview, September 29, 2010). She has been successful in gaining approval for an international competition to be held in the “off years,” between the World Cup Tournaments. USA Baseball hosted a women’s tournament in Cary in August, 2011, and is working to extend its scouting and recruiting network for the national team. The ballplayers are in total agreement with the need to play as a team more often. As one Team USA veteran sees it, fixing the problem is pretty straightforward:

If we are serious about having a women’s team that can compete with Japan, we need to be able to play more often together. We know who we have to beat, and we know what they’re doing. They’re practicing consistently together for five to six days a week and it’s not just the month leading up to the tournament. They are doing this throughout the year. If we are going to compete with that machine, we have to do more. We need more time together as a team, and more consistency from a structural perspective (Malaika Underwood, phone interview, September 9, 2010).

Building the national program is critical to the future of women’s baseball. A high profile women’s national team will give American girls a visible goal and the baseball dream of one day being good enough to wear the Team USA jersey in international competition. USA Baseball’s current mission, however, is to identify rather than develop elite baseball talent. The boys and men who are chosen by USA Baseball develop their skills by playing ball on the myriad teams available to American boys. It’s up to the nation to provide equal opportunities for girls to develop their baseball skills. Beyond simply hoping “If you build a national team, they will come,” steps must be taken to develop an infrastructure that allows and encourages girls to play baseball. Girls need both the elite goal of playing on the national team and grass roots opportunities. Team USA member Sarah Gascon (phone interview, October 3, 2010) suggests that women from the national team visit local communities and schools to meet young girls personally, and in uniform, to inspire them to play baseball.

Americans must overcome their compulsion to sex-segregate children’s sports. Boys and girls should be encouraged play together when they are young, not only to avoid the stigma of “separate but equal” for girls, but to build confidence and mutual respect among all children. In adolescence there should be separate boys’ and girls’ baseball teams available for all who prefer baseball to softball. Capable athletes, both male and female, in all sports, should continue to play with each other. The Australian model of mixed-sex baseball to age fourteen, and separate leagues for boys and girls after that time is one way to prepare girls for their own elite competitive play. Japan has high school and college baseball for girls, Australia has state girls’ teams that feed the national team (Interviews with Australian players Kathy Welsh, Katie Gaynor, and Taylor Welsh, personal communication, August 2, 2010, Cary, North Carolina), and Canada has full season baseball for its women’s teams (Team Canada Coach Andre Lechance, personal communication, August 6, 2011, Cary, North Carolina).

Finally, the United States must get over its belief that softball is an acceptable alternative to baseball for girls. The softball players who have been recruited by USA Baseball for the national team, or who have found a way to play baseball after a college softball career have been extremely effective on Team USA. But their sheer athleticism is not what women’s baseball should rely on in building a national team and nurturing future players. Even a team of the best athletes in the tournament is not necessarily the best baseball team. If the national team can win bronze with no baseball available to them, imagine the thrill of watching their play if they had the opportunity to develop skills over a lifetime. When girls and women can choose to play baseball from Little League to the Major Leagues, the United States truly will possess a “national pastime.”

Baseball’s historical association with American boyhood and manhood, its connection with global economic and cultural expansionism for over a century, the symbolic association of the American president throwing out the first pitch of the season, and the command Play ball! after the playing of the national anthem in every game, testify to the game’s place in American life. The denial of girls’ dreams, represented by their exclusion from the baseball and their inability to advance in their chosen sport even as amateurs, much less as professionals, signifies marginalization from the heart of American citizenship. Imagine the change in American values that will have occurred when a woman president throws out the first pitch to a woman major league ballplayer, and the American news media celebrates only that a new baseball season has begun.