To say that I was absolutely obsessed with the new ‘A League of Their Own’ series would be an understatement. The execution, the pure queerness, and the complex but very realistic storylines had me hooked from the first episode. For a story set in 1943 though, it hit a little too close to home.
In 2021, I transferred from a lifetime of cricket to baseball. As a skill acquisition specialist, I love to put myself in the shoes of the new learner and remember what it feels like to experience something for the first time. I also like to remind myself that no skill is purely transferable: the way I learned to hit a cricket ball with a cricket bat ultimately interfered with my ability to swing a baseball bat and hit a ball that does not bounce. I still don't know where the strike-zone is half the time! But it is a very visceral reminder that learning is messy and hard and ongoing so that I am sensitive to those experiences when working with others.
Now, cricket in Australia is incredibly well resourced, and women's cricket in particular has been ahead of the curve in many ways in terms of support and opportunity. Not perfect, but certainly better than most sports. I still have stories of training at the elite level in the headlights of someone's car because they couldn't turn the lights on at the field while we trained. But that was almost 8 years ago now, so I hope the athletes of today do not share that experience. When I transferred to baseball, I was wholly unaware of what a downgrade that would be.
At the start of my very short baseball career up to this point, my first experience of women's baseball was a winter development program that was largely player-led. We would meet at the batting cages (it certainly feels like a cage) and we would run through warm ups, play catch, and hit 'soft toss' (underarm throws) and 'live arm' (overarm throw, shorter distance). I even stood on a makeshift mound and threw a few 'pitches', although there was a lot of self-discovery in learning to throw while effectively falling off the front of the mound. I was slightly impressed that such a group of women were training together, and openly welcomed me into their fold despite my cricketing background and lack of experience. My first season was a messy experience, like most community sporting endeavours, but I was slowly learning to play the game with each passing week.
Upon reflection, it is my ability to resonate so deeply with a series set in 1943 that infuriates me the most, because our experiences to this day as female baseballers has barely improved. Our matches throughout the season are scheduled on weeknights rather than weekends, which makes it very difficult to leave work on time and get an effective warm up in before the match starts. Some nights, we cannot even warm up on the field that we will be playing on because there is a (predominantly male) high performance squad still training on that field. If we're lucky, all of the lights will be on so we can actually see the entire field, but there is a very strict neighbourhood curfew and those lights often go off before we have even left the field at the end of our game. I have lost count how many times I have had to pack up my gear using my phone's torch light, and then precariously walked to my car in the dark, fearing for my safety with my keys between my fingers.
And that is just the start.
When I wanted to further develop my ability as a baseballer, I trialed for a high performance program in the hopes of joining a squad and receiving quality training. Instead, I was met with a coach who used language and pedagogy that he did not understand the meaning of, a slideshow presentation that was designed for parents rather than athletes, and I was sorted into the pathway stream with 14 year old boys. Now, while this may be an accurate representation of my current skillset given my lack of experience, I certainly did not appreciate training with 14-year-old boys as a 25-year-old woman. And to expect that grown women should train alongside teenage boys to receive any sort of skill development is not a barrier that many women would consider worthwhile overcoming. If anything, the fact that many other women, who have played baseball for much longer than I have, are only considered to have a skillset of the average 14yo boy who has received ongoing and extensive skill and talent development opportunities is an embarrassing red flag. A red flag that, when raised, is overlooked very comfortably despite our incapacity to be competitive at national championships.
In my short time in baseball so far, I've met:
Athletes who had spent their entire life around baseball, and could not remember the last time they learned something new or received any guidance when searching for a way to improve.
Elite athletes who had been competing at the open women's national championships since they were teenagers, and had gone almost a decade without winning a single match while at that tournament.
Community athletes who were so frustrated with their club politics and ignorance for their team that they left mid-season to join another club just so they could continue playing.
There is still a prevailing stigma that baseball is for boys and men. And our ongoing experiences as female athletes at the community level makes it very obvious that the system is not built for us, and very few people are willing to do anything about that. It is not as simple as just playing in a men's team, because this experience in and of itself is traumatising, both on and off the field. I am yet to enter a space within the baseball environment and feel safe, or invited, or welcomed. I have had teenage boys as coaches, I have been coached via Zoom at a match and watched grown men argue over tactics that mean little to the majority of the team because they are operating on the very fundamental level of just trying to make bat-ball contact, because they have never been supported to move beyond that phase of skill development.
There is an entire generation of women who will never consider themselves baseballers, but rather people who enjoy playing baseball, because even the term 'baseballer' implies some level of belonging that we have not been afforded.
And if you find this recount of just two(!) years in a sport uncomfortable or confronting, spare a thought for all the women who have endured. For the women who do not hesitate to sign up when the next season rolls around, despite knowing exactly what they are in for. Knowing they will likely be let down again this year. Knowing that nothing has changed since they started playing, and that their experience is marginally better than the women of 1943.
As a female athlete, I am bone-tired. I am sick of collecting these stories, of having to write about them just to get some peace of mind that maybe, with enough awareness, someone will finally give a shit. And writing this, on behalf of the teammates that I adore for their perseverance, may pigeon-hole me as the complainer, as "uncoachable", as the annoying female athlete who is never happy with what she has been given. But I am willing to wear that criticism in the hopes that we, finally, have an equal opportunity to develop as athletes, to reach our potential, to arrive at training or a match during the season and feel like we belong.