It's Time for Women in Baseball
by Ice Cream on Mar 18, 2008 2:18 PM PDT
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PrintIt's National Women's History Month and therefore an appropriate time to raise the issue of women in baseball.
The fact is there are no women playing major league baseball. There are no women umpires in major league baseball. And it's utter bullshit. And it's time to change.
You cannot convince me there aren't any women ballplayers out there that could compete in the majors. The traditional prima facie argument is that if there were any women players who were good enough then they would be playing. In horse racing, they used to say that about female jockeys, too. They weren't tough enough, they weren't strong enough ... blah, blah, blah. That changed over time. Now you have women jockeys winning with regularity and in top races, too. (Julie Krone in the 1993 Belmont Stakes and Chantal Sutherland capturing the Irish O'Brien Stakes at Santa Anita this last Monday.) But it took some owner or some trainer to give those first women a chance. So it is with baseball. It's going to take some coach, scout, manager, or owner to give some woman a chance. It's time to put prejudice behind and break down the domed ceiling.
Another argument against women in baseball is that they lack the necessary skill sets to compete with men, e.g., upper body strength., to which I once again call bullshit. How many skillsets does a ML ballplayer need? How many already flawed players do we observe every year that have jobs? We're not talking five-tool players but there have to be women that can pitch, throw, run and/or bat successfully enough to compete.
For Shauna, an eighth-grade Little Leaguer, the desire is certainly there.
Horstman said the women weren't as strong as the men, but they trained hard, and above all, they knew how to play small ball.
"Sometimes when we watch these professionals, we just shake our heads because they obviously don't know the fundamentals," Horstman said.
Of course, the greatest obstacle women would face playing pro ball would be the male-dominated culture of baseball. The ingrained attitudes, preconceptions, sexism, superiority complexes, prejudices and biases of not just players, umpires, managers, coaches and baseball insiders, but sports media and ultimately ourselves, as fans.
Here's an example, from The Baseball Reliquary, of what happened to Pam Postena, in her struggle to become an umpire.
After praising her work behind the plate, the Astros pitcher [Bob Knepper] launched into a chauvinistic tirade: "I just don’t think a woman should be an umpire. There are certain things a woman shouldn’t be and an umpire is one of them. It’s a physical thing. God created women to be feminine. I don’t think they should be competing with men. It has nothing to do with her ability. I don’t think women should be in any position of leadership. I don’t think they should be presidents or politicians. I think women were created not in an inferior position, but in a role of submission to men. You can be a woman umpire if you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. You can be a homosexual if you want, but that doesn’t mean that’s right either."
Whatever.
It's high time to end the old boys' club and make room for some talented women. It's going to take desire, courage and a shift in attitudes but c'mon, it's 2008.
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i agree on umpires, front office, and the rest...
We're not talking five-tool players but there have to be women that can pitch, throw, run and/or bat successfully enough to compete.
but what evidence is there that there are women who could play professional baseball at the major league level if they were given the chance? has any woman ever played minor league baseball?
who is the best college softball player out there, maybe she should try playing for a minor league team and then we would have a better idea.
A's v Giants "is kind of like the difference between going to see the Ramones and going to see the Bee Gees. A's fans will go see the Ramones." -BB 07/27/05
Well, for historical precedents ...
Toni Stone, Mamie "Peanuts" Johnson, and Connie Morgan all played in the Negro Leagues.
So it's not hard to imagine a top-flight woman athlete being able to compete in the bigs today. But as far as offering any current evidence of minor league players, I haven't found any yet.
Creamy Orange
Ila Borders
pitched for the St. Paul Saints and several other independent minor league teams during the late 90's/early 00's. Was largely ineffective as a pitcher.
There is an A in Whimsy.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Mar 18, 2008 4:23 PM PDT up reply actions
Also the short-lived and forgotten
Ladies League Baseball of the late 1990s. From the archives, here's a 1997 article about the San Jose Spitfires, who played in Municipal Stadium (the San Jose Giants park).
Don't forget the "Lovely Ladies"
In SNK's Baseball Stars for NES.
I'm rooting for Buck to be a star, and if all it takes the cost of a drink, then it's worth it. -Salb918
I find it hard to believe that at present there are any women ...
who could compete in the majors.
Why?
There aren't any women competing in the minors.
There aren't any women competing in college.
There aren't many (if any) women competing in high school.
There aren't many women competing in little league.
If you want change at the top, there needs to first be change at the bottom.
There should be more effort to diversify the front offices and umpiring corps, though.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
yeah...
I think a major problem with getting women into these leagues is softball, which, unfortunately for girls, relative to baseball, holds no future, career-wise. I also think fewer women are interested in becoming Major League Baseball players, but obviously that has much to do with the roles our society wishes each sex to play.
All that said, I think in a perfect world where men and women were actually treated like equals and you had an equal amount of women trying to become baseball players, yes there would be women that could make the Bigs; probably not as many as men simply because of the body differences, but I have a hard time believing that the top 750 male baseball players (enough to fill all the teams) would all be better than the number one women in the world.
by WhiteElephants on Mar 18, 2008 3:14 PM PDT up reply actions
+1
How are women gonna play in the major leagues if they don't even play in college, and rarely if ever play in even high school ball? You can call them on the lack of diversity in front offices and umpiring, and that I completely agree with. However, It's not really MLBs fault for not having women players, when there are basically zero players in the pool(HS and college draftees) for them to choose from.
If you want change at the top, there needs to first be change at the bottom
Maybe you should try letting her be on top every now and then.
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
Let her? I encourage it ...
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
And what makes it all the more difficult...
...is that many of those attitudes and preconceptions are about as strong at the bottom than they are at the top.
"[Moneyball] is huge [in Japan], I guess, so I'm like a David Hasselhoff type or something..." -- Billy Beane
by FormerHuntsvilleStar on Mar 18, 2008 5:21 PM PDT up reply actions
I'm guessing this was a joke...
there's a reason women don't play professional baseball in MLB. It's the same reason they don't play in the NBA or the NFL.
It bothers me that people think girls should play sports with boys. I'm totally opposed to it, but not for "traditional" reasons. I have 3 daughters, and they all played sports through school. I made it a point to keep them of mixed sex teams. It has nothing to do with social bias either. The fact of the matter is that when boys hit puberty their are certain physical changes that give them tremendous advantages. It sucks for the young girl who was a good player as a kid to be put at such a big disadvantage as she grows. She could be the best player in little league, but by the time high school rolls around she can no longer physically compete....and rightfully so. I believe that mixing the sex's hurts girls competitive sports. I would much rather they play with other girls on a level field so that they continue playing all the way through college. It's good for them to compete, and quite frankly, if viable girl leagues are to ever exist, their must be leagues that support them throughout their formative years.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
I disagree. The question is not whether many will be able to succeed, but rather ...
... whether all should be denied the opportunity to try. To know the door is open, even if you don't choose to or can't use it, is a very important thing in a society that professes equality of opportunity. It's not "should play with boys", but "can play anything, with anybody, if you're good enough at it to contribute."
My two daughters chafed at any implication of such a limitation. One considered football, but really didn't want the pain, and the other played in a both-genders roller hockey league through HS (I was Team Mom for a time, just to emphasize the point.). She absolutely loved it, and there were no girls-only leagues out here in BeaverCleaver country.
I'm sorry, alox, but I think your reasons "are" pretty traditional ones -- and if you substitute any other racial, ethnic, orientation or other classification scheme in place of "boys" and "girls" the point may ring clearer.
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 18, 2008 3:25 PM PDT up reply actions
That's a really bad argument
The evidence for racial differences in sports ability is muddled, inconclusive, and narrowly focused (in the sense that no one thinks it explains all or even most of the differences between individuals' abilities). It's a serious scholarly question whether any difference exists at all.
As far as I'm aware, there's absolutely no evidence of differing abilities based on "orientation" (I'm assuming you mean sexual) whatsoever.
By contrast, the evidence for differing athletic abilities among men and women is unbelievably obvious. There simply are not any women who can run a 9.75 100M dash. At all. Given our current training and technology, it's physiologically impossible.
Marion Jones used to train with a (male) amputee, and the two of them had a highly competitive relationship in which each was very capable of beating the other. On the one hand, this says great things about our prosthetic technology; on the other, though, it suggests that being female in that sport is as much a handicap as losing a limb. And it seems asinine to claim that amputees ought to aspire to compete with everyone instead of being justifiably proud of winning, say, a Paralympic gold medal.
There are sports where being female isn't a handicap, and those sports either are or should be coed. (Like equestrianism.) But it's silly to suggest that most sports fall into that category. If girls want to try out for the high school baseball team, fabulous-- and shame on anyone who tries to exclude them without at least seeing what kind of game they have. And certainly the assertion that they can't umpire is insane and sexist, because physical strength is not an occupational necessity for umpiring. But making sure there are sporting opportunities available to girls seems far more important to me than trying to ensure that girls can try out for boys' teams.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
by PaulThomas on Mar 18, 2008 4:05 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Utter misread.
The question, again, is not one of likely broad participation, but one of arbitrary exclusion of individuals, based on population statistics. Can most women beat most MLBers in a 100 meters? No (and neither can most men, but they get to try). Can some women beat most MLBers in 100 meters --mighty likely yes. Translate that to any other skill, and I'm with WE above that it's unlikely that the best woman would be worse than the 750th man.
And you know what? Even if she is -- I don't care, because I'm happy as long as she got a chance to find out, on a "level playing field." Conversely, I guess you'd be happy for all men to be excluded from any profession in which women, in general, are demonstrably better at it?
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 18, 2008 4:16 PM PDT up reply actions
Talk about "utter misreads"...
You appear not to have read a single word I wrote.
The question isn't whether some women can beat MLBers at the 100 meter dash, which is irrelevant from a baseball standpoint. The question is whether some women can realistically win the (men's) 100 meter dash at the Olympics, to which the answer is demonstrably "no."
As for the last bit, you need to trade your current dog for one of the seeing-eye variety if you think that I advocated "excluding" anyone from anything anywhere in my post.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
You want exclusionary language? I gotcher exclusionary language right here:
Your words above, in service to the remarkable leap that being female in a traditionally male sport is akin to being an amputee:
And it seems asinine to claim that amputees ought to aspire to compete with everyone instead of being justifiably proud of winning, say, a Paralympic gold medal.
"Ought to aspire??" A fair reading of that sentence has somebody other than the competitor deciding who "ought" to compete. My whole point is that That decision "ought" to belong to the competitor, and to No One Else.
As to the underlying amputee analogy, it is absurd on its face and stunning coming from an avowed empiricist.
Further, you seem incapable of disagreement that is not accompanied by attempted belittling insults. It's as if I were to suggest that you "ought" to be grateful that AN does not exclude posters whose amputations go up from the shoulder.
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 18, 2008 6:10 PM PDT up reply actions
"Ought to aspire??" A fair reading of that sentence has somebody other than the competitor deciding who "ought" to compete. My whole point is that That decision "ought" to belong to the competitor, and to No One Else.
...that's why I said it was asinine to make that claim. (That's also why I said that you had completely failed to understand what I wrote.) If the athlete wants to attempt to compete in an event, great. Good for them. Not long ago a deaf athlete won an Olympic swimming silver medal, and the accomodation needed to let him compete (a strobe light linked to the starter's gun) was trivial and didn't give him an unfair advantage. It was a great story. But it's not one that's likely to be repeated with a female swimmer, because being female is more of a disadvantage at a swim meet than being deaf is.
Similarly, if a girl wants to try out for the baseball team, great. If she makes it, even better. Candace Parker could probably start for 90% of the men's college basketball programs in the country, given her overall skills and athleticism. I'm just saying that the fact that she chooses to play women's ball, and be a great player there instead of a decent men's player, is not something for which she should be stigmatized.
As to the underlying amputee analogy, it is absurd on its face and stunning coming from an avowed empiricist.
This is just ridiculous. You dismiss the argument out of hand without even bothering to back up your dismissal with a shadow of fact. Why is this "absurd on its face"?
Again I challenge you to demonstrate where I have advocated excluding women (or the disabled) from anything, because you aren't going to find it.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
Perhaps next time, then, you might choose not to "stigmatize" an argument with which you basically agree.
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 18, 2008 9:58 PM PDT up reply actions
What I learned from this exchange
is that Dogfather is a little bit of an a-hole.
PT, did you kill everybody's puppy on this board before I arrived or something? Some of the reactions to your posts are a little bit shocking.
As for this topic: I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the very best women's softball player in the world today would get absolutely DESTROYED at a level above, maybe, A Ball. And that's being nice. And I don't think having co-ed baseball from the earliest of ages would change that.
Designer steroids probably could though. But then, are those really women when they're shooting themselves full of stuff that allows them to grow a beard better than I can?
by thejd44 on Mar 19, 2008 10:34 PM PDT up reply actions
Since you acknowledge that you're relatively new here, ...
... you might want to reserve published judgment on who, if anyone, resembles what body part until your snapshot becomes a movie.
I'd also like to suggest that you go easy on the "status offenses." You may not like what anyone has written, and that's fair game. But name-calling is pretty extreme stuff*, even if it's only a "little bit," and also because this board is less anonymous than many others. We do meet-up from time to time, and these anatomical characterizations can render participation those meetings awkward.
* yes, I do recognize that just yesterday morning I characterized someone, obliquely, as a "troll" by asking him what they eat for breakfast. It would have been better had I just attacked his writings' content. In my meager defense, others apparently agreed to the point of banning him, which is "pretty extreme."
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 20, 2008 8:10 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
The question is whether the question
of female athletic ability is affected by cultural factors, and if so how much.
Take weightlifting. Very much a "macho" "manly" type sport. Men's weightlifting IS ahead of female lifting. The men lift more. HOWEVER, women's weightlifting was only admitted into the Olympics in Sydney 2000. Whereas men's weightlifting was one of the founding Olympic sports in 1896.
The world records in men's lifting have not progressed much in the past 20 years or so. Compare that to the huge jumps that records in women's lifting have made since 2000. An example, in 1988, the heaviest weight ever lifted by a human lifter in the clean and jerk was 266 KG, about 585.2 pounds, by Leonid Taranenko, USSR. As of today, that total has yet to be beaten. The best today, Hossen Rezzadeh of Iran, has a clean and jerk best of 263 KG, about 578.6 pounds.
Relatively, pound for pound, the women are already reasonably close to the men. At Athens 2004, Nurcan Taylan of Turkey became the first woman to Snatch double her bodyweight. That is lift double her weight from the floor to above her head at arms length in one motion. For a male lifter, a double bodyweight snatch is still a very impressive total, typically enough for a bronze in the Olympics. And she is not the only female lifter to have done so. Her Snatch record in the 48 kg, 105 pound, class was broken in 2006 at the Santo Domingo World Championship by Yang Lian of China.
How much is the difference between men and women in weightlifting due to cultural factors, such as the fact that women were only allowed to compete in the sport in the olympics more than 100 years after the men?
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
In former soviet union
heavy weights clean and jerk YOU.
I'm rooting for Buck to be a star, and if all it takes the cost of a drink, then it's worth it. -Salb918
by JediLeroy on Mar 19, 2008 9:44 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
YSRGVOTY
Yakov Smirnov Running Gag Variation of the Year
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
Why men's weightlifting records haven't advanced in the past 20 years:
Uh, could it have something to do with heavy government-sponsored performance enhancing drug programs in Soviet bloc countries from the 60's to the 80's? Of course women's records are advancing quickly, it's a new sport where more and more women are getting involved as it gets increased visibility. Give it enough time and eventually performance will plateau like most other sports. But to suggest it will plateau at the same level as men is a silly level of political correctness...come on, there are obvious physical differences between the sexes.
So, it was only
the Soviets who used performance enhancing substances? It's always the Other, who are cheating. And of course, only in the past.
Just like the steroid era in MLB is now over. Done with.
Also, reread my post. I make it pretty damn clear that women's lifting is a new sport.
"But to suggest it will plateau at the same level as men is a silly level of political correctness...come on, there are obvious physical differences between the sexes."
Pound for pound, the women are already not that far behind the men, 7 mere years after being accepted into the olympics.
Also, again, the issue is how much of the difference is actually tied to innate unchangeable physical factors?
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
Any stories I've heard
about state-sponsored doping involved Soviet bloc countries. Your example was a USSR weightlifter. Obviously U.S. athletes have doped on an individual basis, but I haven't heard about the USOC distributing drugs to them. Not saying it would completely shock me, I just haven't heard it. But let's take a look at the International Weightlifting Federation records page. The weight classes are slightly different between men and women, but close enough to make a comparison for fun:
CLEAN & JERK RECORDS:
Men's 56kg class: 168kg = 370 pounds
Women's 58kg class: 120kg = 265 pounds
Difference = 105 pounds, not close.
Men's 62kg class: 182kg = 401 pounds
Women's 63kg class: 142kg = 313 pounds
Difference = 88 pounds, not close
Men's 69kg class: 197kg = 434 pounds
Women's 69kg class: 157kg = 346 pounds
Difference = 88 pounds, not close
Men's 77kg class: 210kg = 463 pounds
Women's 75kg class: 159kg = 351 pounds
Difference = 112 pounds, not close
Womens records will continue to get closer as more women attempt the sport, but do you really think they will ever get within, say, 20 pounds? 30 pounds? 40 pounds? The top women lifters already have the same training and technique advances made over the last hundred years in the mens sport, is an increased number of women participating really going to get it that close? I'd say there's at least a 50 pound difference in lifting ability between top competitors in the sport due purely to the unchangeable physical differences between women and men. I'm pulling that out of my ass, but only after looking at the current numbers. So my ass is educated.
By the way, I don't think physical differences affect baseball as much as they do weightlifting. I absolutely believe that if high school and college women started playing baseball today instead of softball, there would be a woman player in the majors in my lifetime (I'm 29). But would it be 50% women? Absolutely not, because it hasn't happened yet in any sport that relies purely on the individual for athletic exertion (i.e. not horses or cars).
And the stories are from whom?
The competitors of the "Soviet" bloc countries. My example was a USSR lifter because no one has yet to break his total.
Modern lifters can cheat just as much as lifters from the past. With the advances in cheating, they should actually have an advantage over lifters from the past.
Also, you might not be aware of this, but the coaching regime of USSR weightlifting was pretty heavily against doping, believing that it "tainted" true scientific training and lifting. They actually heavily criticised another "Soviet" bloc country, Bulgaria, for being too prone to use chemical shortcuts, and cheat.
Your selection has left out the women's 48 and 53 kg classes.
Take a look at the snatch totals, not just the C & J totals. Compare the snatch totals of the top female lifters in the 48 and 53 kg classes, adn male lifters, relative to bodyweight.
"The top women lifters already have the same training and technique advances made over the last hundred years in the mens sport, is an increased number of women participating really going to get it that close?"
The training and technique advances made by male lifters are geared towards men. Technique for women might need to be adapted. Even today, there is debate whether the orthodox technique used in the lifts, is the "best". So, to training methods.
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
I'll have to concede to you
on my Soviet stories because that's all they are, hearing stuff from random people with zero proof presented to me.
As far as telling me to look at the lower womens weight classes and compare it relative to body weight, sorry, it doesn't need to be done when I presented the numbers for 4 different nearly equal weight classes for men and women. If men had 48 and 53 kg classes what's to say they wouldn't destroy the women in those, just like every other class I listed? As far as strength relative to weight goes, it's easier to lift a higher percentage of body weight the smaller you are (given that it's small and muscular, not small and skinny). There are 4 classes we can properly compare men and women in with equal weights, and in those classes men lift a much higher percentage of their body weight than women.
But look what happens when we just go smallest to largest weight classes for the snatch:
Women's 48kg: 98kg = 2.04 times body weight
Men's 56kg: 138kg = 2.46 times body weight
Women's 53kg: 102kg = 1.92
Men's 62kg: 153kg = 2.47
Women's 58kg: 111kg = 1.91
Men's 69kg: 165kg = 2.39
Women's 63kg: 116kg = 1.84
Men's 77kg: 173kg = 2.25
Women's 69kg: 123kg = 1.78
Men's 85kg: 187kg = 2.20
Women's 75kg: 131kg = 1.75
Men's 94kg: 188kg = 2.00
Women: fewer weight classes than men
Men's 105kg: 199kg = 1.90
The open-ended superheavyweight class is impossible to do these calculations on here because the weight of the recordholder is not given.
Notice that the percentage of bodyweight snatched goes down for both sexes as weight goes up. Yes, The lightest women can lift a higher percentage of bodyweight than the heaviest men...but they can also lift a higher percentage than the heaviest women, and the lightest men can lift a higher percentage than the heaviest men/women. Therefore your relative to bodyweight argument is useless. Even giving the advantage to women by using relative weight classes instead of actual weight to match them up, men lift a much higher percentage of their body weight than women.
As far as technique goes, By George you're right, women maybe should use a different technique than men, since they have...GASP...inherent physical differences. You know, the thing most people on this board are giving as a reason for there not being any female major league baseball players, not being able to run a 9.75 second 100 meters, etc.
The evidence for racial differences in sports ability is NOT muddled
It just does not exist, once you actually bother to look at cultural factors. It is NOT a serious scholarly question.
"There simply are not any women who can run a 9.75 100M dash. At all. Given our current training and technology, it's physiologically impossible."
Oh really? PHYSIOLOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE? How so?
Before Vasiliy Alexeev became the first man to clean and jerk 500 pounds, to lift 500 pounds from the floor to above his head, PHDs, medical doctors were claiming that it was "physiologically impossible" for a human being to clean and jerk 500 pounds or more. That the human body was not designed to do that. Alexeev publicly called those people idiots, and then proceeded to make them look like idiots.
"Marion Jones used to train with a (male) amputee, and the two of them had a highly competitive relationship in which each was very capable of beating the other. On the one hand, this says great things about our prosthetic technology; on the other, though, it suggests that being female in that sport is as much a handicap as losing a limb. And it seems asinine to claim that amputees ought to aspire to compete with everyone instead of being justifiably proud of winning, say, a Paralympic gold medal."
Actually, it does say a LOT about PROSTHETIC TECHNOLOGY. Do you know that the International Amateur Athletics Federation, the governing body for international athletics has BANNED the SAF runner Oscar Pistorius, an amputee, from competing in the Beijing Olympics, for fear of the edge that his prosthetics give him?
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
The question is virtually tautological
Given the high profile of international track athletes, if it was possible for today's woman to run a 9.75 in the 100M, someone would have done it.
Even if you postulate that 90% of the world's potential women's track athletes are dissuaded from competing through economic or cultural factors, the odds are still bizarrely small that any of them would be able to run a 9.75 100M. I'm sure someone more versed in statistics could actually prove this probabilistically, given the variance of times among today's female track athletes.
It's akin to claiming that somewhere in the world is a potential baseball player who could hit .450 in the major leagues. You can make the claim, and I can't exactly disprove it, but I sure as hell don't think it's very likely.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
You do not appear to understand what
the term "physiologically impossible" means.
"the odds are still bizarrely small that any of them would be able to run a 9.75 100M. I'm sure someone more versed in statistics could actually prove this probabilistically, given the variance of times among today's female track athletes."
That is the problem. Bizarrely small is not "physiologically impossible". This is not an issue of statistics. It is an issue of biology, mechanics, chemistry, neurology.
The odds were also bizarrely small that Alexeev could clean and jerk 500 pounds. Or so said the statisticians.
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
So, are you claiming that it's not impossible for someone to hit .450?
Merely a "bizarrely small" probability?
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
I am claiming that it is
not "physiologically impossible", unless someone can show me evidence grounded in unchangeable physical laws.
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
It's most definitely not
physiologically impossible. The (rough) odds of it happening are pretty simple to compute: over 600 at-bats, the standard deviation in batting average is about 20 points. In the current environment, the best hitters for average appear to be "true" .330 hitters, so they'd have to get lucky by about 6 sigmas, the odds of which are roughly 1 in a billion. Certainly long odds. Whether or not they're "bizarrely" small is of course subjective.
For a true .380 hitter, like it appears Ty Cobb was in his prime, the odds are only 1 in a few thousand. I doubt we'll see someone like that in today's game, but that's a separate debate.
In contrast, I'm pretty confident that no it's physiologically impossible for a human to throw a regulation baseball 150 MPH (or probably even 115 MPH) though I don't know enough physiology to say what, exactly, prevents it.
As for the original example, the talent distribution of world-class athletes is so far beyond the mean of the population as a whole that it doesn't look like even the tail of a normal distribution, and there are certainly some physiological limits involved but it's not clear exactly where they are, so I really doubt that anyone here could make a meaningful statistical estimate of the odds of a woman running a 9.75 100.
"Tomorrow it may rain." - Leo Durocher
Today's MLB players
are 750 people out of a total population of around, what, 600 million in baseball-playing countries? (I'm going to call it that because it's 1/10th of the world's population.)
So we figure worldwide, there's about 7500 people capable of playing like MLB ballplayers. Call it 10000 to be generous.
One in a billion times 10000 ballplayers gives you a 1 in 100,000 chance of someone being a true .450 hitter in the world today. To put that in perspective, it means that the odds of there ever having been any human being who could achieve that is less than 0.1%.
I call that physiologically impossible, myself.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
improbable =/= imossible
It's physiologically impossible for a pitcher to throw 150 mph or a weight lifter to clean and press 1500 pounds.
It's not physiologically impossible to hit .450 -- just statistically improbable.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
Algong the lines of Devo
Improbable is not equal to impossible. Furthermore BA is the craziest statistic to use (when talking about physiological possibility) because its value is dependent upon influences outside of the hitters control (namely the quality of pitching). By the very nature of BA, there is absolutely no way to definitively argue whether or not BA (of any value!) is "physiologically impossible"
I suppose you can call it whatever you want
but that's not what those words mean to other people.
"Tomorrow it may rain." - Leo Durocher
Yeah
Thank God we've all had the fact that improbable and impossible are different clarified for us.
The point, though, is unchanged. Ain't anybody out there who's gonna do it.
But, hey, semantics trophies look nice on the book shelf, I suppose.
RagingHarden: Yeah if you get 20 starts out of me I'll be shocked. Like, I'll wreck my drawers.
by walk off bunt on Mar 20, 2008 1:24 AM PDT up reply actions
The difference between improbably and impossible ...
is pretty central to this conversation.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
When the odds are enormous that the human race will end
before a certain kind of person comes along, I call it physiologically impossible. Others' mileage may vary.
(Note: It may well not be physiologically impossible for a woman to run a 9.75 100M at some future point, but it is definitely physiologically impossible for a woman to win the men's 100M dash at the Olympics. Record times go down over time, but they go down for everyone.)
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
Perhaps I didn't put enough emphasis
on why I'm opposed. Granted, in the early seventies competitive female sporting opportunities were limited at best. I understand why girls started playing on traditionally "boys" teams. I would have supported it at the time due to there existing no other avenue for the girls to play.
Two of my girls were exceptional female athletes. As a father, I never wanted to put them in a position where they could no longer compete primarily because of their gender. They are 17 and 18 now. They both weigh in at less than 110 pounds, and have each reached the end of their physical growth. Assuming they don't become lazy fat asses like their father that is. At any rate, despite their natural ability, there is absolutely no way they can physically compete with males who are weighing in at 170, 180, and still growing. As long as they want to compete, as a father I want them to have an opportunity to compete. Arguing that girls should have the "opportunity" to play MLB takes away from the overall merit of female athletics. The only "fair" method is for the girls to play and compete in an arena where their performance can be gaged in context with their peers.
Equating past racial/ethnic social mores with modern gender roles detracts from what I view as the problem. I want equality for the majority. I'm not overly concerned with the lone female who may or may not exist that could conceivably make an MLB team as a bench scrub. My view is based on pragmatism rather than social philosophy. I want the girls to play. All the girls.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
There's a reason women don't play professional baseball in MLB. It's the same reason they don't play in the NBA or the NFL.
What exactly is that same reason?
Because the way I see it, the NFL and NBA require quite different skill sets than MLB. If anything, I think women would be more suited to MLB than the other two sports you mention.
Creamy Orange
Probably
Playing basketball with men at a pro level is basically impossible for women because there are so many fewer of them who are actually tall enough. Football wouldn't be quite as hard, because adding weight is a lot easier than adding height, but still very hard.
The issue in baseball is that thing about "throwing like a girl..." Male and female arm mechanics are not identical.
Offhand I'd figure soccer would be the easiest sport for elite women to break into. Certainly high-level women's soccer games are pretty much visually indistinguishable from men's games
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
so all those women I've played ball with
who could throw better than any number of men I know had "male" shoulders? the better explanation is that girls who grow up not throwing things don't learn to throw like an athlete. and soccer is no different from the other sports at the "elite" level: male size and strength advantages will preclude all but the rare freak of nature female athlete from competing. baseball is no different--Ichiro, Juan Pierre, and Mark Ellis are big, strong guys. they just don't look like it on television. stand up close.
And how much of the difference in male / female arm mechanics
is due to innate biomechanical factors, and how much is due to cultural factors?
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
You're arguing that girls are culturally taught to throw like girls?
I've never heard of anyone teaching anyone to throw that way... It's inept.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
No, he's arguing that girls are taught to throw like girls ...
girls that "throw like girls" (and boys that throw like girls) were never taught to throw.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
I'm arguing that girls are not taught to throw at all.
That most girls do not grow up giving a flying fark if "throw like a girl".
I throw like a girl. Worse, I throw like a 10 year old girl.
I am also stronger than most guys, including friends who are / were collegiate athletes. I never learned how to throw growing up, because I never played baseball growing up.
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
Huh
I "throw like a guy" despite
a. never having been taught how to throw anything, baseballs or otherwise
b. being incredibly unathletic
c. having had a near-phobia of PE classes as a child.
Well, in any event, I feel like this is not really the most important point in the discussion. If this were a debate, I'd just drop the argument, since it's not getting anywhere useful.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
Hmm ... do you really "throw like a guy"?
I'm kidding ...
You don't need to have gone to a camp to learn how to throw. Did you regularly have a catch with the old man (or lady)? Did you play ball with the neighborhood kids or on a little league team?
You obviously watch the game -- so really all you'd need is the practice to learn to replicate what you see others do.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
I might have played catch three or four times a year
Never played ball with the neighborhood kids (my "neighborhood" has zero social cohesion of any kind) or in little league (I was far too lazy). I didn't even watch that much baseball as a kid. My exposure to "throwing with correct form" was about as "cultural background-level" as it's possible to get.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
Ok ... well I can't debate your childhood ...
but if you give a ball to a one year old boy and a one year old girl and tell them to throw it -- you'll see that they throw it in the exact same way -- "like a girl" -- flat footed, shoulders square to the recipient, entirely using the arm.
Those who throw properly do so because we learned to.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
My three-year-old nephew
has remarkably good throwing mechanics. Before he could even walk, he could consistently throw a little plastic ball about 25 feet and straight to you. As far as I know, no one ever taught him that. Every other kid I know under the age of 4, both boy and girl, barely manages to move the ball at all. They'll flail and jump and then the ball just sort of drops in front of them.
(His batting, alas, leaves much to be desired. He's old enough now that he'll pick up the plastic bat and want you to throw to him, but he just faces straight at you and hacks wildly.)
formerly known as mdl
I don't suppose he's left handed?
If he is, I'd work on becoming his favorite uncle ...
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
Well, he's only got two uncles
and the other one lives 3,000 miles away, so I think I'm set.
Seriously, I don't really expect that mild precocity in athletics generally and freakish precocity in this one particular skill means he's going to be a star athlete. I do think he'll do well in little league and school athletics, though, in spite of a complete lack of sports tradition in the family. He's definitely a little jock.
formerly known as mdl
If he's left handed ...
that one particular skill can go a very, very long way.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
what I meant was
just because he threw freakishly well at age two probably doesn't mean he'll be equally top-tier later in life -- especially since he's shown little improvement since then: he's not significantly better at three and a half than he was when he was two, so I guess the other kids are already gaining on him.
Oh, and he's RH. I keep forgetting to answer your real question.
formerly known as mdl
too bad on both counts ...
maybe he won't be the next Barry Zito (left handed, unusually talented at a young age, couldn't hit his way out of a wet paper bag)
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
The issue in baseball is that thing about "throwing like a girl..." Male and female arm mechanics are not identical.
Wow. Just... Wow.
Have you ever seen softball players? I know girls who play infield and outfield, and have cannons. This may be the stupidest thing I've read today.
This might not be scientific enough for you, but you don't seem to care a lot about the facts today.
I'm rooting for Buck to be a star, and if all it takes the cost of a drink, then it's worth it. -Salb918
OK, if you're hurling random insults, back them up
What "facts" have I "not cared about"?
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
My "insult" wasn't random. It was quite calculated.
Perhaps I've misunderstood your argument. If I have, I apologize. But you seem to believe that the "throwing like a girl" phenomenon is caused by physiological differences between sexes. Girls that have trouble throwing were never properly taught how to throw. My wife does not "throw like a girl", but she participated in athletics as a kid.
I'm rooting for Buck to be a star, and if all it takes the cost of a drink, then it's worth it. -Salb918
As for the article
again, no one here has claimed that it's not learnable-- a claim which is obviously disproven by any women's throwing event.
But being learnable to the degree that you're a good thrower relative to 90% of the population is a totally different kettle of fish from being learnable to the degree that you're a major league pitcher. At the extreme end of the bell curve, you need both biology and training working for you-- because if they aren't working for you, they most definitely will be for someone else.
To risk reducing this further into gibbering absurdity, the fact that I can learn to swim the dog-paddle does not mean that I will do it as well as a dog.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
Perhaps you chose your words poorly
The "throwing like a girl" comment basically diminished any other points you were making. If you want to argue that most women can't develop the same level of arm strength as men, I won't necessarily disagree. But I wouldn't ascribe the tendency to throw like a girl to anything other than training and practice.
I'm rooting for Buck to be a star, and if all it takes the cost of a drink, then it's worth it. -Salb918
Funny you and PT mentioned this.
I coached girls softball for years, and there happens to be little truth to the "throws like a girl" mantra. Almost all of the girls had to be taught how to position their body and the proper methods for effectively throwing the ball. Not to say that the little gals couldn't put some power on the ball after they grew! I hated catching a lot of them after they hit 14 or so. Those girls could put some heat on the ball. But I can't recall a single one of them who ever threw the ball with a sidearm motion. A lot of guys on the other hand tend to naturally develop this type of throwing motion.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
might be a softball v baseball thing ...
I just joined a softball team and discovered that it's harder to throw a softball, because it doesn't fit neatly within my hand. It's much easier for it to slip out a bit and tail away from the first baseman. In our first scrimmage, I was picking it like crazy at short ... and made four throwing errors in one inning. I'd suggest that (especially among folks who tend to have smaller hands) the bigger ball makes throwing sidearm a bad idea.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
Devo, Pickin' Machine!
I'm rooting for Buck to be a star, and if all it takes the cost of a drink, then it's worth it. -Salb918
I have never understood ...
... (well, no, OK, I understand politically/socially, but not athletically/logically) why the version of baseball for (generally speaking) the more diminutive gender involves ... a larger ball.
I can barely throw a softball myself, b/c I've got stubby, square little fingers (my fielding experiences have all been like yours, devo).
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
Does seem odd, doesn't it
Shot puts, javelins, etc are all smaller for women... yet softballs are bigger.
I'm sure there's a reason for it, but you'd have to dig into the sport's history to find it.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
my guess is, counterintuitively ...
... for a slightly different reason than, but from a similar paternalistic attitude as, the other objects you cited: so girls don't get hurt by playing with a ball that's not only harder, but small enough to be thrown overhand easily at high velocity.
Speaking only from knowledge of my own simian anatomy, every time I throw a softball, my muscles are telling me to throw it like a football.
I have a hypothesis that the size of softballs, relative to girls' hands, may hinder "proper" throwing mechanics -- so that even a girl who's trained to throw correctly, if she plays softball exclusively, will still have a difficult time maximize her throwing potential.
(And I should clarify that I'm using "girl" here very specifically to refer to female children and adolescents.)
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
A bigger ball is easier to hit
Or at least make contact with. Great theories all around, but I think you gotta go with the simplest one.
I'm rooting for Buck to be a star, and if all it takes the cost of a drink, then it's worth it. -Salb918
It's a natural motion....
that doesn't stress the arm like pitching. Softball pitchers can pitch back to back to back games without risk of injuring themselves.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
I dunno...
Perhaps. At the ten year old level the ball is actually smaller. None the less, almost all the girls tended to square their body to their target and draw their arm back in the traditional "throws like a girl" motion. I would usually spend 3 weeks working on throwing mechanics. I can also tell you this should you ever endeavor to be foolish enough to coach girls athletics. Be forewarned....they're DIFFERENT. In astounding ways. Proceed at your own peril.
Boys on the other hand tend to naturally point their non throwing shoulder at their target. Hell, for all I know it's an evolutionary trait passed down from 100,000 years of throwing rocks at rabbits.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
It's an incredibly pointless argument
that does more harm to female athletics than it helps. 750 men play MLB at a given time. Damn few of them stick around for very long before they're removed to due younger competition. Is it within the realm of possibility that the best female ballplayer could someday make an MLB team? Perhaps. Highly doubtful. If she did, she may make an appearance for a day or two and would be gone. All you've succeeded in doing is giving ONE woman a footnote role in MLB history. It's much more preferable to establish athletic leagues and competition for all females Allow the best of them to be recognized for their achievements. Why should it be that the best a female athlete could hope for is a spot as a marginal player?
Interestingly enough, PT makes an excellent argument as to why the NFL would be easier for a female to break into.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
So your argument is that it is a poor and wasted...
allocation of resources therefore you're against it. O.K.
But, resources aside, suppose there was a woman who wanted to play pro ball and had the talent to compete at the highest level--would you still be opposed to her participation in MLB?
Creamy Orange
It's a moot point.
She doesn't exist, and pretending that she may one day exist serves only to detract from the real problem. Also, there's something inherently cruel implying to young girls that the possibility exists when the deck is biologically stacked against her. Impossibly so I might add. All this to satisfy a ridiculous "PC" code that serves no useful purpose.
All this to avoid acknowledging the basic differences between male and female anatomy? I for one am profoundly grateful for the differences.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
She exists right now.
But she was told baseball isn't for girls and so she never played.
I'm reminded of an old proverb....
never underestimate the power of idiots in large numbers.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
Ditto
As quoted in the New York Times, circa 1998:
''NOW is such a blowhard organization,'' Knepper said. ''They are a bunch of lesbians. Their focus has nothing to do with women's rights. It has everything to do with women wanting to be men.''
There is an A in Whimsy.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Mar 18, 2008 4:27 PM PDT up reply actions
Maybe I could have played past
age-12 little league if they had let me onto the girl's softball team. (Then again...probably not.)
stat-addled alien overlord
fast pitch softball is crazy hard ...
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
which is why
on the sports science show, none of the MLB players they bring in can touch jennie finch's fastball
President of the Joey Devine fan club as of 1/15/08. Accepting applications for other positions. "He has no equivalent." -Paul DePodesta on Jeremy Brown
Well that and ...
the fact that they are effectively bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Ichiro could hit Jennie Finch because Ichiro basically plays fast pitch softball.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
That and
she's pitching from 43' away from home plate, which is a huge advantage. According to that infallible depository of all human knowledge, wikipedia, this makes her 71-MPH "riseball" "equivalent to a fastball of nearly 100 mph in baseball" - I assume that estimation is based on reaction time.
"Tomorrow it may rain." - Leo Durocher
That's what I mean -- there's so much less reaction time, you simply don't have time to take a full swing.
60.5/43*71=99.89
I'd guess that's how they're doing it.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
Oh please
Try having the best softball hitter touch a Rich Harden fastball or splitter, or a Johan Santana change-up, or a vintage Randy Johnson slider, etc... Give a MLB player long enough and he'd be able to crush Jennie Finch. I seriously doubt that same softball hitter could hit those MLB pitchers effectively.
"Their batters are patient to the point that it's annoying." -Ryan Franklin
by Helloooo 1st on Mar 19, 2008 7:36 PM PDT up reply actions
equality is not uniformity
I know this is a minefield, and I should know better than to enter, but I feel compelled to...
While I absolutely agree that women should have the opportunity to try out for any profession they wish, I don't believe that they will necessarily be able to compete at a high level of certain sports, as Ice Cream believes.
Acknowledging that there are differences between the sexes isn't the same as saying one is better or worse. As a group, men are larger and stronger physically than women. There is a overlap on the small side of men and the large side of women, but roughly 80% of men are physically stronger than 80% of women. The 750 men in MLB are no doubt within the top 5% of men when it comes to physicality. I'm sure that there might be one or two women athletes who might possess the ability to play in the Majors -- but not dozens, as some apparently believe.
There is a gap in men's and women's athletics in many sports, and it's not a chauvinistic or sexist thing to bring it up. It's a fact. That fact, however, does not pass any kind of judgment on the female sex -- just as the fact that many minorities in the United States have different cultures. Just because someone is different does not mean they have less worth. I'm sure you've all heard that said many times when it comes to race and other groups. It's true for gender, too. Equality does not mean uniformity, in my eyes.
On a related note, the NSAA, the organization that oversees high school sports here in Nebraska, just passed a bylaw allowing girls to compete on boys varsity teams. It was spurred on by a softball player who wanted to try out for the baseball team. I love the idea of her trying to compete, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. However, one interesting double standard was turned up -- it's actually illegal for boys to try out for a girls varsity team, due to Title IX. If, for instance, a boy wanted to try out for the volleyball team, a sport only offered for girls in Nebraska, it would be against the law. Am I alone, or does anyone else think that gender equality in sports should work both ways, or not at all?
(Formerly known as "Nebraska")
The Pastime -- A Minor Consideration -- Catfish Stew
by Ryan Armbrust on Mar 18, 2008 5:45 PM PDT reply actions 1 recs
Again, the Paralympic example is instructive
It would be silly to have an able-bodied athlete trying out for an amputee sprint race. (Although now that I think about it, it might not actually be as silly as it sounds to have an able-bodied athlete try out for a wheelchair race, since that requires completely different physical skills than a footrace. I have no idea if being able-bodied would actually be an advantage in a wheelchair race. If it isn't, I could actually see that as a possibility.)
If the sport is only offered for girls? That's a really thorny ethical dilemma, to which my preferred solution would be to open it up for boys...
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
The Paralympic example is NOT instructive
Otherwise the IAAF would not have preemptively banned Oscar Pretorius.
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
This is a complete non sequiter
It's obvious, reductio ad absurdum, that you couldn't have a fair marathon if some of the competitors were in wheelchairs, as wheelchair marathon times are routinely far faster than running marathon times.
The point is to avoid creating an unfair advantage in either direction.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
The point is that competing on an even playing field
with an amputee is not necessarily an indictment, as you claimed. (Oscare Pretorius is no in a wheel chair, he runs with artificial legs)
While you're probably right that we won't see any female major leaguers in the foreseeable future, to insist and try to prove that it's impossible is just stupid.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
The point is that
Marion Jones having a male amputee as a training partner proves nothing about the capabilities of a female sprinter.
There is some evidence showing that the prosthetic limbs that are used are BETTER than human limbs in term of returning force that is generated. Pretorius obviously disagrees with this.This is hugely important, if true. (Stored) elastic energy is a huge part of human movement. It is why plyo training is often (over)used by coaches and makes up (too) big a part of their training regimes..
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
I think that hitting and fielding, being the province of reactions, rather than brute strength ...
... would be the kinds of arenas in which elite female athletes could compete. Watching the artistry of an Ichiro placing a hit "where they ain't" suggests to me that a woman of similarly extraordinary reactions and training discipline, as well as passable strength, could do that kind of thing well enough to compete. The pitch, after all, supplies much of the ball's total energy.
Similarly, Ellis at second isn't required to be so much "fleet," as "precise" with a passable throwing arm, post BoCro.
As to reciprocity, I think the answer is "of course." The enemy is stereotyping, and the sooner the culture dispenses with those, the closer to our better selves we'll be.
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 18, 2008 6:28 PM PDT up reply actions
I'd suggest, as a comparison for how I suppose a female could do in the majors, Juan Pierre or perhaps Jason Kendall. MLB average defenders, below average power and arm, but decent slap hitters.
(Formerly known as "Nebraska")
The Pastime -- A Minor Consideration -- Catfish Stew
by Ryan Armbrust on Mar 18, 2008 6:45 PM PDT up reply actions
Well put
I agree that physical differences between men and women are sufficient to explain the ability of any women to compete at the MLB level. But only because men at the MLB are in the upper tier of men, physically. (There are plenty of women who could kick my ass at baseball....)
The reason seems less convincing at the minor league level. Do we believe that there are no women who could compete at, say, single A? I think there are probably some who could.
formerly known as mdl
Probably true
Just as I'm plenty convinced that there are women who could be D-I scholarship athletes in men's basketball. You think (arbitrary unfair example) Florida A&M wouldn't be better off with Candace Wiggins running the point than what they've got right now?
The thing is, she wants to compete on a top-tier winning program... so she plays women's ball.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
The problem with this....
is that single A exists as a feeder for MLB. She certainly has no chance of making a MLB team, so she's never going to get the chance to play. My argument is that I want to see them play in an arena where the majority of the girls have a chance to compete and succeed.
"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat."--The Boys of Summer
There are plenty of players in the minors ...
who aren't considered prospects at all -- who are simply there in order for there to be enough players on each team to have a game. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 minor leaguers (not counting players on unaffiliated teams). Maybe one-third of them are even remotely potential MLB material.
Besides which, the lower minor leagues are all about gimmicks to put butts in the seats.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
Of course there is a gap between men's and womens sports
Anyone who pays any attention to sports can see this.
The question is how much of the difference is due to innate unchangeable physical laws, and how much is due to changeable cultural assumptions.
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
Female umpires? Reporters? Execs? Sure.
But players? C'mon.
In horse racing, they used to say that about female jockeys, too. They weren't tough enough, they weren't strong enough ... blah, blah, blah. That changed over time. Now you have women jockeys winning with regularity and in top races, too.
You really wanna go comparing Horse Racing to Major League Baseball, do ya?
Formerly known as hward86.
One word about horse-racing: Ruffian.
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 18, 2008 6:29 PM PDT up reply actions
But she broke... :(
"If I have to be remembered because of *statistics*, then I did something wrong along the way." ~ Brett Favre
Here's the real question ...
do they have lady horses run against male horses?
Do they?
(seriously, I don't know)
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
i believe so
didn't a female horse win one of the big three races in the last few years?
but physical differences between males and females are not the same across all mammal species.
A's v Giants "is kind of like the difference between going to see the Ramones and going to see the Bee Gees. A's fans will go see the Ramones." -BB 07/27/05
True
In the primate world, male gorillas are multiple times the size of female gorillas, while male and female gibbons are identical size. In the Gibbon Olympics, all events are coed.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
And in the Bonobo Olympics, all events are adult pay-per-view.
"If I have to be remembered because of *statistics*, then I did something wrong along the way." ~ Brett Favre
And in the Hyena Olympics, the ladies kick big butt.
Fascinating information about Hyenas in A Primate's Memoir. Author (Stanford guy Robert Sapolsky) talks about fellow researcher in the Kenyan bush who's from Berkeley -- Lawrence of the Hyenas. I think they also keep a breeding colony up in the Tilden Park area.
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 18, 2008 9:46 PM PDT up reply actions
Yes
But not a lot. Three fillies have won the Kentucky Derby in 125 or so years. I'd guess now maybe 5% of the horses in open races are fillies; they're more often run in gals-only events.
There is an A in Whimsy.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Mar 18, 2008 7:38 PM PDT up reply actions
That's the real solution:
Let female horses play major league baseball. They would totally beat every major leaguer in a 100-meter dash.
by Dilferules on Mar 18, 2008 7:26 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Knuckleballer
I always thought you could probably talk a top female softball pitcher and athlete and train her to throw a knuckleball.
It's not hard to imagine a woman who's strong and athletic, maybe 5'11" out there who could become a top knuckleball pitcher.
I'm pretty sure that's where the gender barrier will be broken in baseball and it will probably take a conscious effort on the part of some coach and woman athlete to do it. It wouldn't just happen.
The likeliest scenario would be to take a group of 25 top women softball players and training them exclusively for a year to try to turn out a few knuckleball pitchers.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that there are women out there now who throw harder than Jamie Moyer and Barry Zito.
You can't create a major league player in one year ...
no matter how good of an athlete you're working with.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
are your softball pitchers
going to throw underhanded knucklers?
thousands of strong, tall, athletic males, who've played hardball all their lives, do not become top knuckleball pitchers, despite their comparative advantages over female athletes (size, strength, experience) and the financial incentive to do so. if it were easy, it would have been done, and every team would have a handful of knuckleballers. go to a good batting cage, have the speed dialed up to 90 so you can see what it looks like, then go searching for a woman who can pitch at that velocity, overhand.
Has anyone brought up
an example yet of a girl who could, and wanted to, play with the boys, but wasn't allowed to because she was a female? I'd love to read a story like that if it's true.
And while I don't doubt there are plenty of women out there who could put me to shame in baseball, there's a reason we haven't read about some hot shot gal at Vanderbilt tossing 90 but won't be allowed to play because she's a girl: they don't exist.
Which, again, isn't passing any sort of judgment value on the sexes. But there are differences between them that, at least up to this point in human history, has limited females from hitting a baseball 450 feet and throwing a fastball 90 an hour.
If one exists, though, by all means, let her play. She wouldn't be any worse than Crosby.
RagingHarden: Yeah if you get 20 starts out of me I'll be shocked. Like, I'll wreck my drawers.
um, off-topic
But I go to Northeastern as well, and it's weird as hell to see that N out of context like this. Shoot me an email if you can, moche_m(at)neu(dot), well, you know.
Northeastern University Huskies: Mediocre hockey, guaranteed.
by Carl Johnson on Mar 19, 2008 10:03 AM PDT up reply actions
moche.m
duh
Northeastern University Huskies: Mediocre hockey, guaranteed.
by Carl Johnson on Mar 19, 2008 11:38 AM PDT up reply actions
Two friends and I sat in the Coliseum
on or shortly after July 29, 2001, which was the day that Tim and Kim Hudson became the parents of Kennedy Rose, and drank a toast to the possibility that she would be in the generation of women who would break the gender barrier in MLB. It's going to happen; it's only a matter of time.
Remember the "Silver Bullets"
This article strikes me as a little bitter. I my self have decided that it is bullshit St. Patrick’s day is not a bank holiday. Considering the fact that Irish immigrants helped create our wonderful country it is bullshit that we don't honor their dedication. On that note I also think it is bullshit they put horses down after they get injured. Can't female horses pull a cart as well if not better than male horses? Bullshit I say. I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore! I am personally offended that middle school aged boys do not get the chance to try out for big league clubs and are segregated against because they are "13", again I say bullshit! I believe with all my heart that female figure skaters are considered graceful and males by the same accord are considered gay, bullshit! But what I really thinks is bullshit is that fact that as a male, I personally will never be able to give birth, are females somehow stronger than me? Is my body not good enough? Should I be punished because the so-called "doctors" say I don't posses the proper "organs"? These the same doctors who administered treatment to Rich Harden.......they are full of......you guessed it bullshit. Wow, that was empowering, I feel much better now.
The first rule of Oakland is - you do not talk about injuries. The second rule of Oakland is - you DO NOT talk about trainers." - Larry Davis
Speaking of Silver Bullets...
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
truly you have a dizzying intellect
The first rule of Oakland is - you do not talk about injuries. The second rule of Oakland is - you DO NOT talk about trainers." - Larry Davis
Is there a rule against women playing baseball?
In fact, I remember a woman making it as high as AA in the 90s, but she had a low 80s fastball and a bunch of junk. Never made it to AAA.
There's no reason to exclude women, I just don't think there are any MLB-caliber women players at the moment.
Link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ila_Borders
It was independent league ball, and she was a lefty with a curveball. Not a good one, though.
She pitched against my school in college so I saw her throw.
She was ok, but not a real prospect. She only made the minors as a publicity type thing. She was not even one of the better pitchers in the conference.
Bring back Hammer.
by OaktownPower on Mar 19, 2008 12:07 PM PDT up reply actions
Isn't that what softball is for?
The MLB does not need women. Aside from the obvious awkwardness that would create in a locker room, women cannot compete with men at an MLB level. There was a feature on Outside the Lines the other day about high school women wrestlers, and after guys hit puberty, they just can't compete. I don't see what this push is for girls to play in a guys game. Annika Sorenstam tried it, and she was the most dominant player in the history of the LPGA and she finished 102nd in her first PGA event. I suppose it would be ok for one to umpire, but one of the two female NBA refs was already fired for poor performance.
I know I'm sounding like a total jerk, but baseball is not surfing, pool, equestrian, or bowling. Females cannot compete at the same level of males in the MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, or any professional soccer league. All this will lead to is a subpar female athlete taking a guys spot for all the wrong reasons, e.g., Danica Patrick, or some chick getting seriously hurt.
Nascar drivers are not athletes
and as such there's basically no reason to believe that women can't compete in the sport. (Why they, or anyone for that matter, would WANT to compete in it is an entirely different question.)
I suppose it would be ok for one to umpire, but one of the two female NBA refs was already fired for poor performance.
This is akin to saying that you suppose it would be OK for a black guy to be a senator, but one of the two earlier black senators was a crook. (Which, if I'm remembering correctly, may actually have been the case during Reconstruction. In any event, there were no more black senators for an incredibly long time... and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the reason why wasn't "blacks suck at being senators.")
The specific performance of the first person to try out is utterly irrelevant, and generalizing from that to "women suck as refs" is both asinine and dumb. It's like judging a hitter on his first 20 at-bats in spring training.
... of course people do that all the time, which is why so many statisticians write frustrated diatribes about small sample size.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
If one out of two black senators during Reconstruction
was a crook, I'd say that makes them pretty much the same as whites, percentagewise.
formerly known as mdl
Actually, the corruption of Reconstruction
was seriously overblown in the first wave of histories written about it. Not surprisingly, most of those histories were by white Southerners.
More recent works (hat tip: "Race and Reunion" is a really interesting look at the period) have demonstrated that the Reconstruction governments were better than the all-white governments that succeeded them in pretty much all respects.
/tangent
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
where's LowcountryJoe for his obligatory response?
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
Actually I was thinking of white senators
in every era, not just Reconstruction, and not just in the South.
History of the Civil War and reconstruction is a prominent counter-example to the false adage that "history is written by the winners." (My own one-time field of study, the medieval Near East, provides several more counter-examples.)
When I was growing up, the Civil Rights era revision of American history was in full gear, so it was quite a surprise to me when, years later, I discovered how thoroughly the pro-Southern view dominates all the literature before that. Even the "liberal" authors (eg, Morison and Commager) seemed like Southern partisans to me.
What is most interesting to me -- and one point where your post is wrong -- is that these histories weren't written by Southerners. Dunning was from New Jersey. Rhodes, Morison and Commager were all northerners.
formerly known as mdl
Isn't that what the negro leagues were for?
No, because aside from any questions of discrimination, separate is inherently unequal. MLB is the highest level of competition. It is also the highest level of compensation. If a woman can compete at that level, she should be given the opportunity. They can figure something out for the locker room.
Sorenstam finished 96th ... and beat a handful of men in the process.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
my bad
I read her finishing position wrong. More telling than her actual position might be her quotes;
""I'm glad I did it, but this is way over my head," Sorenstam said Friday. "I wasn't as tough as I thought I was. With everybody here, everybody cheering for me, I was so nervous."
The first woman to play a PGA Tour event in 58 years, Sorenstam says she won't be coming back to the Bank of America Colonial, or any other event on the men's tour, for that matter. "I will not," she said. "I've got to get back to my tour where I belong."
Pretty telling coming from the most dominant women in her sport.
Let me know when girls have to do an equal amount of pullups in physical fitness testing
Start small, then we can gradually work up to women playing professional sports with men, huh?
my firefighting unit
has an annual PT test: run, pushups, pullups, situps. Same numbers for men and women, old and young. fewer women than men are on the crew, but the standards are the same. the women do not finish at the back of the pack generally, especially in the pullup test. pullups are easier for lean climber types, than for big bulky dudes. let me know if you want to come and watch some tough-as-nails put to shame some pretty tough guys.
Well there have been women in baseball...
Who can forget Morganna? LOL ;-)
Aahh, Frick!... Don't tell me Bill King is going to be passed over again!
by PortlandPachyderm on Mar 19, 2008 10:27 AM PDT reply actions
Why be upset about no women in the MLB...
When there aren't even any/many playing BASEball in high school and college. It just doesn't make any sense that a woman would reach pro caliber when she hasn't played at those levels. I'm not in the camp that thinks the physical differences are so much that it couldn't happen one day if women started playing more baseball and there were some exceptional athletes. But shouldn't the people who think there's some kind of cultural bias keeping women out of the MLB maybe turn their eyes to the NBA? Women play a whole lot of basketball in high school and college, and even have a pro league. Obviously the physical difference in height would make it tough for there to be a female center or forward, but what about a woman point guard? There wouldn't seem to be any physical factors coming into play to prevent this, so what gives, why has it never happened?
The problem with a female point guard is that
a girl who grows up playing power forward or small forward, is often the height of an NBA point guard.
So, she does not develope the skills to be an NBA point guard.
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
Muggsy Bogues was 5'4"
and played in the NBA for years. Looking at the current WNBA rosters, there is only one woman in the league that is that short. Most guards are 5'7" to 5'11". That's at a disadvantage to most male point guards, but there have been quite a few in the last 20 years in that height range in the NBA.
How many Muggsy Bogueses are there?
How many points guards in the NBA are there that are 5'7 to 5'11? As it is, Allen Iverson is 6 foot. His smallness is often referred to. So the tallest female guard would be considered a small NBA point guard.
ZIPS: Milledge: 466 HR, 485 2B, 2282 hits, 278-379-524
He's small because he's slight of build, not because he's short.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
Eh... he's plenty short
but that's kind of the point-- AI is unusually short for a basketball player, and his compensatory skills (speed and the ability to make ridiculous off-balance shots) are rather obvious.
Tajuan Porter, Oregon's point guard, is 5-foot-6-- but he can routinely hit uncontested jumpers from 28-30 feet. Most women's basketball players don't even shoot true jump shots from beyond about 15 feet.
You have to have really unusual skills to succeed as a player with that size in basketball.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
There are 8
guards in the NBA under 6 feet tall, the shortest being 5'5". This is from looking at rosters on espn.com, and it could include a couple who are on reserve or injured or something, but I recognized most of the names so the majority are steady NBA players. Also, the tallest female guard is not 5'11", I said most were between 5'7" and 5'11", there were many who were over 6 feet...though those were probably shooting guards, which is a taller position in the NBA. Knowing these statistics, I'm just wondering why a woman hasn't played in the NBA, since physical differences like less upper body strength wouldn't mean much for a point guard. My argument was just that proponents of equality in sports should be much more upset that there's never been a woman in the NBA, given that the play in college and the pros, than the fact that there's never been a woman in MLB.
Have you SEEN a woman who could play point guard in the pros?
Candace Wiggins is a really really good women's basketball player. She's a first-team All-American and holds the all-time Pac-10 scoring record. She would be, by my estimation, a medium-good men's college point guard-- ironically something like the Cardinal's men's point guard, Mitch Johnson (who, even more ironically, is routinely mocked for his awkward-looking set shots and floaters, both of which are shots that are way more common in the women's game).
Medium-good college point guards, as the commercial goes, "go pro" in something other than sports.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
I don't watch a lot of basketball,
I was just wondering aloud why it's never happened, and why people aren't more upset with that than they are with baseball. The fact that no woman has played in the NBA, when women play basketball at the college and pro levels and the strength aspect isn't as important as baseball (but the height is more important) tends to suggest that it's not surprising that no women have played in the MLB.
there's not actually a mass-movement to get women into MLB ...
just an article on a blog ...
I'm a 5'10" white guy who jumps like you'd expect a stereotypical 5'10" white guy to jump. Back in college I played a good deal of pickup hoops and was pretty decent back then. I played quite frequently with players from the women's varsity team as well as the men's JV team. I was as good as any of the players on the women's team. I could guard the center who was taller than me but I was considerably stronger and quicker than and I could guard the point guard who was shorter than me but not really any quicker. By contrast, the worst players on the JV men's team were considerably better than me. I was the height of the point guards but couldn't keep up with them and I was far too short to guard the bigger guys. Both the men's and women's teams were fairly good for the conference (D-III, SCIAC). There wasn't a woman on the women's varsity team that could have played for the men's JV team.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
eh, this question is ultimately gonna be mooted ...
... when they decide to let the robot baseball players in.
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
I thought the link would lead
here.
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
Thanks for sparking this interesting discussion, IC
15 years ago I would have posted the same thing. I considered myself a feminist and generally a voice that would stand up to all oppressed groups. Then my first girlfriend broke up with me, I was heartbroken for a year, and I realized: women aren't powerless. Women have a lot of power, and their access to power is eternal--not subject to any temporary and fleeting political movements.
Anyway, I agree that the gates of MLB should be open. But striving to achieve more of an equality of the sexes because this is 2008? Equality of the sexes? We men should be so lucky.
Brainless Automaton #439
which is also why Nico no longer supports the ERA ...
... the Equine Rights Amendment, that is.
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
I'm powerless.
That's why it's fortunate that big, strong devo knows what's best for me...
"If I have to be remembered because of *statistics*, then I did something wrong along the way." ~ Brett Favre
It's not the empowering thing to say...
But somebody said it earlier and the fact of the matter is that, when talking about the best athletes in almost any sport in either sex, the men will outplay the women. That's not to say that there aren't hundreds of thousands of women that wouldn't kick my ass (and asses of most of the guys here) at any number of sports. It's just a fact of the matter that, at the top levels, there will always be a man better than the very best woman.
I read recently how if you were to compare basically any female record in any sports category, the male competitive record is at the boys-15 year old level. By 17 years old, the mens records blow away the women's. The Women's Olympic Soccer team scrimmages against some of the competitive boys 15 teams and it's a good match. The competitive boys 17 teams can consistently beat the women.
There's a whole chapter on it in this book. They even interview athletes in sports like pool and darts and women athletes like Jeanette Lee talk about how she can get schooled by mens billiards players that aren't even ranked in the top 100.
Was wonderin' how you know
that thousands of women would kick the "asses of most of the guys here" at any number of sports? Are you privvy to inside information the rest of us don't know about?
I mean, if thousands of women would/could kick your ass, then by all means be ok with that ... but don't speak for the rest of us. By the way, hit the gym, would ya?
VacaAsFan
I am rather shocked that none of these
127 comments are you making a snarky comment about Chavez....
The A's colors are green and gold.
you missed it
http://www.athleticsnation.com/2008/3/18/306679/it-s-time-for-women-in bas#2468881
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
I was being self-deprecating
Because if I didn't include that sentence, I would've been put on some feminist blacklist somewhere and I can't end up on any more blacklists. BTW... Why are they called "black" lists? Why can't they just be "lists"? Our society has so many ills to work through.
Oh, don't worry
Even suggesting that "males" and "females" exist outside of society's imagination is enough to get you on plenty of feminist blacklists. And I say this as a political left-winger myself.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
interesting topic
Baseball fans like me are in a wierd position because while guys can let their minds wander during a game and imagine what it would be like if they were on the A's, it doesn't really work for us gals. It's just too big a leap. (Of course, I have done so, but I always have to imagine I have some sort of Buffy the Vampire Slayer super strength, and then I can't play night games because I have to be out killing vampires. It's just too complicated.)
But what really interests me is your point about women in the front offices. I really do wish there were more, and I have no doubt that the few who start making inroads will face some serious boys club bullshit. It pains me to say this, but I do have to admire the Raiders for having Amy Trask in such a high position of power. You can't tell me that there aren't women out there who could and would be just as competent as their male counterparts. And perhaps they would bring new ideas to the table because they come from a different perspective.
"Don't be an ass!" --Bill King
Could be something of an advantage in that
I think if you are choosing largely from a pool of former mlbers, their biases are likely to be more harmful than not having that experience or whatever. Even Beane's "I sucked so I'm going to get dissimilar players from me" is sort of a dumb way of going about things to the extent that it's true.
The A's colors are green and gold.
On the other hand
there will always be a much smaller pool to choose from.
The A's colors are green and gold.
I don't know about other guys here,
but I certainly don't "imagine what it would like" to be on the A's team. I think it is just as improbably remote for me as it is for you. I can no more imagine myself as a professional baseball player than as winner of the Miss America pageant.
formerly known as mdl
oh gosh I do
whenever I'm sitting there thinking about how little I want to go to my job the next day, it's such a fun daydream to think about playing baseball for a living. It's like thinking about what I'd do if I won the lottery. But I still want to be me, I just want a way more fun job for way more pay.
"Don't be an ass!" --Bill King
I don't want to play baseball,
but I often watch Michael Zagaris and wish I had his job (no, not because of the perving opportunities that would come with clubhouse access... I'm totally serious). I can't imagine anything cooler than combining baseball and photography. REAL photography, not the crap I shot at Spring Training.
What's really sad...
... is that I do imagine being on the A's, and my dreams are pitiably modest: No-name middle innings reliever with Moyer-esque game signed for the league minimum who never makes a peep.
I dream that my slow pitch softball team will resurrect my MLB prospecthood ...
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
Wouldn't it be nice...
I think the owners would even get behind the idea, even though they would have to fork out money for a women's locker room. But heck, as far as publicity, they would make their money back 1345245x fold.
We're getting there as a society. I have a 19-year-old cousin who wanted to play HS football but the coach wouldn't let her try out. My cousin could've taken the issue further (no doubt she could beat up the coach in a fist fight), but it just goes to show that the powers that be have to change right along with the potential players.
For now, let's keep on encouraging the young girls and women to play whatever sports they want and make sure the coaches let them play those sports as they proceed up the ranks.
For what it's worth, I always had more fun playing catch with my dad, brother and male cousins than playing softball with girls. Girls are mean, dude.
This discussion has reminded me
that I need to read this book.
It has also reminded me how much I delight in relentlessly semantic debates that somehow encompass paraplegia, Muggsy Bogues, Reconstruction histories, Turkish women who snatch double their body weight, ominous-sounding feminist blacklists, and earnest back-of-the-envelope attempts to calculate the odds that someone might hit .450 someday.
Buncha copies on, well, amazon.com, but they start at $38.
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 19, 2008 5:02 PM PDT up reply actions
Actually, I was thinking of the $106 hardcover.
Because I feel like spending a day's pay on a book.
*smirk*
one of my favorite classic sci-fi films
Invasion of the Turkish Women Double-Body-Weight Snatchers
way to speed humanities demise douche bags! @('.')@
Well, IC, this was fun.
Picking up on batgirl's comment on women in other MLB jobs, Renelle (sp) is now old news, as is the perspicacious SuSlu, and maybe Amy Trask. Some of the A's' business interns are women and maybe those ceilings are the most permeable in MLB, followed by umps, front office and coaches.
I hope we'll see the day when this kind of conversation is considered quaint. Evey age considers itself modern, but when you read some of the dreck the Supremes wrote about women 100 years ago, it boggles the mind -- and the Suffragettes were marching less long ago than that.
Physical average differences will likely remain -- my guess is that they'll continue to narrow, as they have been doing for many years. Women's records have been falling farther, faster than men's. My HS best 400M was a lot better than the women's record of the time, but is not now by more than 2 seconds. The men's record is within a second of Lee Evans' best in the 1960s.
So, IC, I hope yer li'l scooplets, and especially any scooplettes, get a fair shot to do whatever they want to, and can.
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
I don't think anyone has mentioned
Kim Ng, who is the assistant GM for the Dodgers and interviewed for the head job when DePo was fired. She could easily be the GM somewhere within a few years, though she will probably still have more of an uphill climb than her male equivalents (e.g. Forst).
"Tomorrow it may rain." - Leo Durocher
Is there commutativity in this thread? If so, we need to acknowledge Annie Savoy, and
on the non-fiction side 
The meaning of life is not so much 'found,' as it is 'made.' --Opus
by The Dogfather on Mar 19, 2008 5:13 PM PDT up reply actions
I debated flagging this comment
As it is, this "GROAN!" will have to suffice
Brainless Automaton #439
by rubin sierra on Mar 20, 2008 1:04 AM PDT up reply actions
My thoughts
... because I'm in the middle of putting off my reading.
Pointing out physical differences sort of misses the point, right? Granted, the ranks of MLB are tough to break into. It's made up of the cream of the crop of the physically dominant half of our species, as pointed out above.
But put shortly, if the lady can hit, if she can field, if she can throw, she's in. The majors are (purportedly) about showcasing the best baseball players around, not the best male baseball players. To write off an entire gender because of very demonstrable physical differences adds nothing to the discussion of whether women should be playing baseball.
To me, this is relevant: Everyone's asking "where are the women in the lower ranks of baseball?" I ask, "who's encouraging them to play?" Whatever their biological differences, boys and girls are socialized completely differently. How many little girls grow up with their parents fostering in them (or in many cases, pushing them toward) the want to play baseball instead of softball? How many are put into a position of learning the game early and working on their craft for the rest of their young lives, as many boys do? And before you answer that there surely are a few here and there, that does not address the overall social practice of pushing the vast majority of girls away from "boy sports" and toward "girl sports." As A's fans, we should be familiar with the concept of small sample sizes and the problems that lie therein.
I'm not saying changing the social practices of the nation would result in a slew of female major leaguers. But I do think it's premature to dismiss them solely on the basis of physical differences.
Regardless of one's stance on female ballplayers, women clearly should be allowed to ump or to make a trade.
I guess the question then becomes,
should fast-pitch softball just be abolished as a significant sport?
I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that it should be (which would push girls into baseball games instead). Frankly, softball at the highest levels is a cracked code. It's virtually impossible to score runs against the best softball pitchers. A team takes a 1-0 lead in the top of the 2nd inning at the Olympics, and you can basically turn off the TV, because the game is essentially over.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
I don't think baseball and softball are mutually exclusive
Fast-pitch softball is certainly legitimate in its own right, and those who are talented at playing it have no cause to qualify that talent by comparing it to that of baseball players (quick note: not accusing you of doing this, just making my thoughts on softball clear).
I don't know about softball being a "cracked code" at the high levels, but I will cede that the pervasive strategies of that game stand in very stark contrast to what we're used to as baseball fans-- despite the apparent similarities and shared histories of the two games. I would not abolish softball, because that too is substantively unfair to those who want to play it. What I'm asking for-- and what is likely too unwieldy a concept to merely "ask for"-- is that women be offered a true choice, and not pushed in one direction or another based purely on their gender.
I don't propose to offer any practical solutions to the problem of presumptive socialization; it's way too ingrained in our culture, and I'm way too not smart to come up with an equitable process to effect that sort of macro-level change. That said, I don't think flatly denying someone the ability to play one sport in order to encourage participation in a different sport is desirable.
A possible solution
Since many girls play little league baseball with boys, why not create a girl's baseball team in high school. Yes they have softball but it's pretty different from baseball in its dimensions and such. This girl's baseball program would be 90' basepaths, regular distances for the fences (310 down the lines, 350 to center), and overhand pitching. They can take leads on the bases and do everything that a boys baseball team can do.
Instead of just throwing them on to a boys team where more likely than not they are destined to fail, let them compete against players of similar skill levels to gauge whether or not girls can play the sport and produce more than the once-every-10-years type talent. After that then maybe we can start to see more girls making it in college and possibly the minors and beyond.
"Their batters are patient to the point that it's annoying." -Ryan Franklin
The reason is physiological: Girls lack grit.
Just turn over any little boy or girl and look at the ingredients label:
Boys: Snakes, snails, puppy dog tails (all high in grit content)
Girls: Sugar, spice, everything nice (low-to-none in grit content)
Argument over.
"He's a misfit. He gets along with everyone." - Reggie Jackson, describing Joe Rudi
I'm the A's new head trainer.
Hey! You've got a head! And it obviously needs some training. Come over here and let me show you a new treatment I've developed called "Noogie Therapy".
"He's a misfit. He gets along with everyone." - Reggie Jackson, describing Joe Rudi
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