You Pitch Like a Boy?

Kerrie just emailed us the article about the two female baseball players competing and I found it to be pretty interesting. Two girls, Marti Sementelli and Ghazaleh Sailors, two of the best female pitchers in a state that produces about 400 a year, head both teams as pitchers into their high school games.

Reading the article, I found it amazing that they performed so well amidst all the tauntings and hecklers. Marti in fact goes to on to have a complete game with only one earned run.
Although, it wasn't the fact that women playing in a "man's sport" that attracted me to this story, because women have been outperforming men in various sports for decades. It was an excerpt from the story that caught my eye...

"In fact, most girls who play youth league baseball are usually convinced to switch to softball when they realize that there is no future in hardball. Sementelli and Sailors, both seniors who hope to play at the next level, are clearly not most girls."
How sad is that? That we have to convince someone that this sport is not for them? Were we not told as kid that we could do anything that we set our mind to? What makes this different than telling a blind kid that he can never play the piano, or telling a paraplegic he can never compete in the Olympics? When Marti and Ghazaleh wanted to play baseball, it's not because they wanted to start some revolutionary movement of women playing baseball, they simply just wanted to play baseball! The fact that we are applying this to a certain sex makes this even more blatantly obvious that we don't want girls tainting a "man's" game.

I admire these two girls not only because they succeeded in a sport that they were told "wasn't for them", but also because they did in the face of adversity.

Adam S.
Kin 338I
T/Th 9:30-10:45