Comments on: Baseball no field of dreams for female athletes

By: Robin Beckman

Robin Beckman — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:38:16 +0000

My daughter has been playing baseball since 6 yrs old. She is now 13 and is playing for a Little League team in our area. This year has been a tough one for her in aspects of her being treated fairly. As a girl she been encouraged to play soft ball which she has no interest in; her love is baseball. We have found that it is NOT the boys on her team or the opposing team that have a problem with her playing the game, but it is the dads. No dad wants their son to be struck ot by a girl or to hit a home run off of him. These are comments that we have heard this season. Its hard to believe that even today we have the prejudices of yester years. My hat is off to all girl baseball players!

By: Nikki

Nikki — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:19:18 +0000

I have been interested in Baseball for years. I have a strong, albeit, untrained pitching arm. This year, I’ve gotten the nerve up play with the Chicago Gems. Check us out. They don’t force us into skirts anymore. I look great btw, but I ain’t playin’ in no skirt.

By: Marc Schneider

Marc Schneider — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:16:48 +0000

In my daughter’s Maryland rec league, they experiemented with having girls play baseball and she played on a girls’ team against boys when she was 8. After that, they moved all the girls to baseball. I think baseball is a much richer and better game than softball and it bothers me that girls are automatically moved to softball. I’m not saying that girls should necessarily be playing on boys’ baseball teams–I think that’s unrealistic in most cases–but they shouldn’t be shuttled off to an inferior sport. For one thing, I think a baseball is much easier for younger girls to throw than a softball.

I do think there should be boys and girls baseball and softball but the point that boys can’t play softball is sort of silly; it’s like saying that white people didn’t have the choice of attending black schools in the South in the 50s. I doubt many boys would choose softball over baseball.

By: Aaron Matthews

Aaron Matthews — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:09:21 +0000

The funny thing is, girls are allowed to play baseball in every state if they don’t have a softball team, and in many states they can play either sport if they want because the courts ruled that softball is significantly different from baseball

Of course, what’s missed is that boys cannot play softball for any reason unless they develop the league themselves whereas girls don’t have that responsibility. Not only that softball girls use baseball as a benchmark for the support they want and require. That includes making the school supply field work if the baseball boys do their own or the boys’ parents help out. Of course when it comes to scholarships, the girls and their parents don’t complain so much that they get a few more as a team and a good deal more when you look at per athlete.

Basically it’s another person whining that in one small situation girls can’t have everything they want. It’s abhorrent to the author that sometimes they might actually be limited to equal rights.

But they’ll fight against that limitation.