Girls and Baseball?

SBK ...

How can that be? Didn't you ever learn that women are not logical and do not have common sense? We are the emotional beings, here to nurture and take care of the world ...

Boy is not good enough to make the baseball team he cant go out for softball. The girl that cant make the baseball team can then go and play softball. Yeah thats fair.

I can just see it now, some legitimately talented girl is pitching. The hitter is a 16 yr. old boy who's 6'4" and 225. She grooves one and he crushes it, and her too when it hits her. We all fear this situation with metal bats, but can you imagine the outrage if a girl was playing baseball and was seriously injured by a boy who could hit the ball over 400'?

That situation would be a big lawsuit waiting to happen against the school district that allowed it.

ALSO, my son was recently pitching in a tournament is SoCal and he had a devil of a time throwing strikes...while there was a very cute teenage girl behind the backstop. Imagine how hard it would be to pitch to one like that!

Simply - NO NO NO, I am old school and girls should play girl sports and boys play boy sports. But, if the girls want to start an all girls baseball team then go for it.

Why can girls join the military at their option but boys when turning 18 have to register and girls do not? Different standard applied here.
Not to open a bag of worms or nothing like that.

CV

Futureback,

It seems like the gals like you that have common sense also do a good job of “Taking care of the world’. The problem are the ones with no common sense that are hell bent on “Changing the world".

Here's another opinion from a woman. Boys belong with boys and girls with girls. Yes, there are girls that have the skill level but the benefits of them being on the team would never outweigh the other social problems that will occur. There are a lot of other considerations besides skill level in mixing boys and girls on the same team.

quote:

Pioneer Dad and P Dog...whew, can't see your argument at all. You state that gender should not limit opportunities yet you then say that really only women should benefit from equal opportunities since they are physically inferior.

I always love it when people say "you state that" and then write something I never said at all. Grant you, it's an easy way to win an argument, but what's the point?

For all of you who have carefully concluded that allowing girls to try to compete on boys teams means boys must be allowed to play on girls teams due to "logic" or "fairness", explain the following to me:

An athlete with a disability can compete in the Olympics if he or she is good enough. Does that mean that able-bodied athletes have to be allowed into the Special Olympics?

Around here schools are placed into different categories based on size of student body, and compete in the post-season within those divisions. A small school can petition to move up to compete in a higher division against larger schools. Does that mean that larger schools have to be allowed to drop down and compete in the small schools division?

A wrestler who has certified in the 125 pound weight class can legally compete in the 135 pound weight class. Does that mean that a 135 pound wrestler has to be allowed to compete in the 125 pound division?

Etc, etc, etc. We routinely classify teams and athletes based on criteria which are generally valid in order to create a fairly level playing field, so we don't have mismatches. The large school against small school may be the clearest example. And we routinely allow teams or players to "play up" under appropriate conditions. But we never allow them to "play down." Letting girls try out for a boy's team, but not allowing boys to play on a girls team is just one of many examples of that generally accepted philosophy.

Now, there are legitimate reasons for not allowing girls to play on boys teams (one of my sons was a wrestler, as you might have guessed. You can imagine this controversy in that sport!) Some of them have been stated by previous posters and I respect those opinions. But "equality" or "fairness" are bogus arguments. Sorry.

Haven't Perfume & Gasoline ruined enough baseball players without putting girls on the boys teams? ;-)

First of all P-Dog I apologize for generally connecting you to a statement Pioneer Dad wrote and I paraphrased. Your post and his had enough similar thought that I grouped you two. Not fair. Let me just say from reading your posts that you two seem to have the same general thoughts on this subject. Again my apologies though. Now we are all discussing specifically gender issues here and very simply is it ok to restrict males but not females? This entire discussion revolves around "is it acceptable for girls to play with boys but not to let boys play with girls", so I would argue with you that it is NOT a "generally accepted philosophy". It may be in practice, but no one put it to a vote of the general public and if you've read the 3 pages of posts here, your side is in the minority at least on this board. Analogies using wrestling weight classes and Special Olymics in my view have absolutely no bearing on this gender discussion. We can argue all day about this and neither of us will move. I would however, like to hear your view of the societal benefit of bigger stronger girls ability to play on boys teams. What general good comes from it? Bigger stronger girls are not the norm as smaller weaker boys are not the norm. Why should we accomodate one and not the other? It seems you have special rules that apply to different sports as well. Tell me your thoughts on why gender discrimination is ok in some sports but not in wrestling? My son is a wrestler as well...152 this year. A young lady up here in Wisconsin made it to state two years running at 103 beating up boys all the way up. Now why is that not ok?

Pdog sounds accurate when writing,

quote:

An athlete with a disability can compete in the Olympics if he or she is good enough.

But do you really think they would let a disabled man compete in a women's event or visa-versa?

quote:

very simply is it ok to restrict males but not females?

Answer: Yes. For the same reason it's OK to restrict big schools from competing against small schools in the playoffs, but not restrict small schools from playing up. Yeah, there are some "weak" big schools. But as a general rule, a school with a bigger enrollment should be able to select enough athletes in a given sport to compete with other big schools. If not, the answer is to improve the program, not to play smaller schools. If a small school wants to try to compete against a school with a built-in advantage, I say why not?
Stating that other situations where we allow people or teams to play "up" but not "down" "have no bearing" is just a copout. Why don't they have a bearing? Now you are being unfair - you're saying that the rules which usually apply in sports don't apply to girls wanting to play on boys' teams. What happened to "equality"?
About girls in wrestling - I never said I was against it. In a perfect world, there'd be enough girl wrestlers to have their own separate competition. Since that's not true yet in most places, girls sometimes wrestle boys. And yes, the biggest danger is to the boys' egos. (Quick story - in my wrestling son's very first ever wrestling match he was sent onto the mat against a girl. And she scored the first points. If he lost I'm sure it would have been tough on him. But he won, and I don't remember him ever wrestling a girl again.)
And yes, if a girl asked my advice about whether she should play softball or baseball, I'd advise her to play softball, for a lot of very good reasons. (Among other things, she'd have to be Wonder Woman to make our school's varsity, but more importantly, there's little or no upside to that choice in my opinion.)
But that's not the question. The question is, should girls be allowed (or prohibited.) The fact that boys aren't allowed to play girl's softball is a phony argument. There are other reasons for arguing that they shouldn't - you make some points that I think have merit - just not the ones you make based on "fairness" or "equality" with boys, which are bogus.

I'm starting to ask myself, what does this have to do with high school baseball and getting to the next level? Some of us seem to get drawn into social and political discussions. Frankly I'm as guilty as the next guy, but there are other mediums and places for these polarizing discussions....why here? I am out...

Opinions of all are respected by me. I just disagree that girls should have the right to play baseball and boys should not have the right to play softball. But what does it matter. This thread has run itself out and like the previous poster Im out of this one.