I've always wondered exactly why women's baseball has never really achieved any real attention over the years. Women's basketball, tennis, even women's soccer have all had some decent press over the years, but not women's baseball. Having always been a lover of the game I never understood why women seemed to get the shaft of a game, well quite frankly of a game they we're pretty damn good at.
Now this thought has come even more so for me over the last few months since my son has begun playing T-Ball. Now up until 1973 girls were not allowed to play in Little League. Though it is still dominated by boys I see girls on almost every team in our league here. Which is good because it turns out, my daughter has an arm. I mean a pitching arm. At 4 she can already hit & throw the ball as good (if not better) than the boys on my son's team, and she still has a year before she's old enough to play.
But what happens if it is her calling? She plays baseball her entire childhood, knowing that she doesn't have a shot at ever playing in the majors. Well that plain sucks. We may still be a little ways off from seeing a woman in the White House, but hey at least women like Hilary Clinton are on the field!
With MLB, there might as well be a big sign out front the stadiums that say "No Girls Allowed." Well, they kind of did actually. In 1952 Major League Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick decided that women are not to play on major league teams, stating his 'purpose was to prevent teams from using women players as a publicity stunt.' Yea, thanks for the protection. Too bad he couldn't have made a similar rule about fashion magazines, but I digress.
Even the Olympics are getting with the times by adding Women's Baseball to the Bid to reinstate Baseball into the 2016 Olympic games. Women's Professional Baseball is taken pretty seriously in many other countries as well. Just not here.
Even after years of girls playing little league beside the boys and excelling in other ranks of baseball, in fact most people can say they've seen plenty of baseball players that are girls that can play just as good, if not better, then any man on a MLB field today. Yet here in the states, they still run into a brick wall when it comes to stepping out on to that Major League Field.
Well, MLB you better take note, I've got a girl here who can play ball. And in about 15 years her and I are going to be showing up and you damn well better have a uniform that fits.
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