Baseball and softball are no more “similar” to each other than apples and oranges. That’s a false dichotomy foisted on young girls who WANT to play baseball – and continue playing through high school and college – to convince them that softball is an acceptable alternative. While it may be a terrific sport on its own merits, it is in no way an “alternative” to baseball; that’s like saying piano lessons are an alternative to learning to play the saxophone. Two different instruments requiring an entirely different set of playing skills.

As the previous commenter notes, women have been playing BASEBALL here in the United States for more than a century and a half. Women played hardball at colleges up and down the east coast back in the late 1800s. A team of black women players from Philadelphia known as the Dolly Vardens barnstormed around the country taking on all-male teams as competition when major league baseball was in its infancy. Amanda Clement was a highly respected umpire out in the midwest at the turn of the twentieth century who would have been the first female major league umpire if she had accepted an offer from Ban Johnson, the president of the newly-formed American League, to join its staff. (She didn’t; she preferred to stay close to her South Dakota roots and teach youngsters the healthful ways of exercise and outdoor activity, which she did all the days of her remarkable life.) Women played professionally during World War II; the film “A League Of Their Own” later immortalized the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, whose players’ achievements had been rendered largely invisible with the passage of time until the film revived interest in the league and the players, about 100 of whom are still alive and thriving. More recently, Justine Siegal became the first woman to coach a major league men’s team (the Oakland As) when she served as a guest instructor during the Arizona Fall League last October, but her focus is actually on creating opportunities for girls and women to play, coach, and umpire through tournaments she sets up via her organization Baseball For All that draw HUNDREDS of girls of all ages, all of them BASEBALL players, as participants. An organization called the International Women’s Baseball Center (full disclosure: I serve on the board of directors) has embarked upon a campaign to join Justine in creating opportunities for girls and women to play, coach, and umpire – we’re sponsoring a tournament at the Big Vision Sports Complex in Leesburg, Pennsylvania this June – while also raising funds for the construction of a museum/conference center that will honor the accomplishments of all the women who have worked so hard for so long with so few accolades to make baseball accessible to girls, women, and anyone else who ever wanted to play but was told “no” for whatever spurious reason.

The myth that baseball and softball are similar sports has been a manufactured ploy designed to shunt girls into softball, which was actually invented as an wintertime, indoor version of baseball for MEN called “kitten ball.” The reasons for this separation of the girls from the boys beginning at about age 12 has traditionally been attributed to the need for a less contact-heavy sport because girls are so, you know, delicate. THAT myth has been pretty solidly busted by the growing numbers of girls and women worldwide who now play baseball in leagues and on teams all across the globe; they currently number in the thousands, perhaps the tens of thousands. The USA Baseball women’s team routinely mows down the competition in international tournaments, yet few people are even aware that there IS a USA women’s team playing baseball, not softball, much less one of the championship caliber of the squad that won the Gold Medal at the World Cup in Toronto last summer against some excellent competition from Japan, Canada, and other countries where there are national programs designed to draw women into baseball as players, coaches, and umpires. There is no such infrastructure of recruitment, training, and support here in the USA where baseball is supposed to be our national pastime but cannot truly be regarded as such until it stops excluding women from the professional baseball diamond. That may happen sooner than we think: a woman named Jen Pawol earned a job in pro ball out of umpire school this spring and will begin her career in the Gulf Coast League in Florida in June, ending an almost ten-year drought during which there were no women umpires at any level of pro ball. With high-profile major leaguers like Jamie Moyer, Clint Hurdle, Casey Candaele, and others all attesting to the fact that they believe the integration of women into professional baseball is inevitable and not to be feared, we may make it sooner rather than later – and it will be about time. And worry not, skeptics: opening the door to one or a few talented, dedicated women with the skills and the ambition to make it to the highest level of playing, coaching, or umpiring will NOT unleash a raging torrent of shrieking, estrogen-crazed banshees seeking to take over and feminize the field. Baseball will not be ruined by our participation, but will be made much the better for it. Thanks to the author of this article for shining a light on this issue.