13-year-old pitcher may become first female major leaguer
By Brian FairbanksJuly 27th, 2010, 7:54 amComments (12)
Perhaps you have heard of 13-year-old Chelsea Baker, the little league pitcher who plays for an otherwise-all-boys team in Plant City, Florida. ESPN says she's had a couple of unbeaten seasons, including a perfect game on a day when she predicted it before throwing the first pitch.
Better yet, she doesn't like softball and it's baseball-or-die for her:
"After I usually strike somebody out with a knuckleball, they sometimes start crying back to the dugout, and a lot of them just like open their mouth like they can't believe it," she said.
Will she make the majors a few years from now? Her supporters say that, despite her dislike of softball, the boys will eventually hit puberty and make it more difficult for the five-foot-four player to keep up her excellent batting average and powerful knuckleball. In other words, it's too early to determine what she's capable of, career-wise, but just watching this video of her crushing whole teams is amazing enough.
I love that kid who says "Some people might tease me but I'm gonna deal with it" with a shrug. He is cooler at 12 or 13 than I am now, by great lengths.
Via.
Commentarium (12 Comments)
Women are taking over the world
i agree with her supporters, when the guys hit puberty (they're still young enough to be crying at a baseball game?) she'll probably just be an average pitcher.
This is a cute story that should be empowering to young women before she is completely forgotten about in one year.
"powerful knuckleball"...I am going to guess you don't play ball do you Brian.
I see what you mean, JD, but I didn't mean to say "powerful" as in "speed." I meant in her control and ability to obliterate entire teams.
@JD Perfect!
Is she related to Scott Baker?
Would Selig go for maternity leave you think?
I'll never say never, but she's at the age where a physical gap begins to grow between girls and guys. From the video, it looks like her fastball and knuckleball motions are different, which you can get a way with in little league, but she'll have to learn to disguise her pitches at higher levels. The problem with that, is a knuckleball pitching motion tends to be very unique, and not conducive to getting much juice on a fastball. Major league knucklers can pitch this way and still get over 75mph on their fastballs due to size and arm strength. RA Dickey used to throw 95mph before he switched to throwing the knuckleball. Now he tops out in the mid 80's. Assuming she won't grow to over 6' tall and put on a bunch of muscle, it will be hard to keep her fastball as a strong primary or secondary pitch as it is now.
Then I retract my criticism Brian.
@JD When did saying someone never played baseball become criticism? Mind you, I can see how saying someone never played golf is a compliment.
These topics are so cofniusng but this helped me get the job done.
Now you say something