Should girls be allowed to compete?

If anyone has was it takes (male or female) I say they should have their shot. If anyone demonstrates the qualities of an athlete that has worked hard to perfect their game then they should be allowed to play. We all need to get out of our comfort zone and imagine the possibilities. Have a wonderful day all!!!

Catchermom,
Should men be allowed to compete in girl's softball at the college level?

Forgive me ladies...

I know plenty of fastpitch softball pitchers who have what it takes to play with the women, but like Fungo said, it ain’t gonna happen.

On the one hand I say “good for her”, but on the other hand, she is taking up a slot that a male pitcher who probably throws harder than 70 and IMHO would be more effective, would have.

Question is, how is this played out with Title IX??

If you believe that girls should be able to, you have agree that guys should be allowed to play softball, which is another game altogether.

Just touching 70 mph and pitching in college? Publicity stunt. If they were looking for someone slow enough to throw other teams off for an inning they could have found a male pitcher with arm problems.

That's the speed my 13yo throws and he gets hit fairly hard at times by the better 14yo teams. Sure he'd be effective at times against a college team because they just couldn't handle the lack of speed but that doesn't mean he should skip HS for a college scholarship before he starts throwing hard enough for them to time.

How the heck tall is she? She looks huge; great build for a pitcher of either ***.

Can't imagine that a fastpitch softball pitcher could switch to overhand throwing (or visa versa). Could happen only if the pitcher did both from a very early age. Like pitching Right and left handed which a microscopic few (including one or two major leaguers) have done...sort of.

micdsguy,
She's 5'8". Fairly short for a pitcher of either ***.

quote:

How the heck tall is she?

Oops, helps to actually read the article:
" she was more than a ponytail bobbing out from behind her slender 5-foot-8 frame."

5'-8", 70 mph, baseball scholarship. Hmmm???

It brings folks out to see a girl compete against guys especially at that level. It would turn folks off to see a guy play softball against girls. If a girl is good enough to compete and help teams win then on one hand I say why not. If she is on the team just as a publicity stunt I think its a sham. Then I think if a girl is allowed to play baseball then why isn't a guy allowed to play softball? Lets say a good high school baseball player walks on at a college and does not make the team. He then walks out for softball and makes the team. What happens when he starts playing and makes an impact on the team? Wouldnt there be alot of upset people? Why are people not upset when a girl is on the roster of a baseball team taking a roster spot from a guy that is probaly more deserving? Now Im starting to confuse myself. It opens a whole keg of worms.

I could see her being effective on a limited basis hitting her spots with movement, maybe an inning. Little leaguers throw as hard and harder. She gets an A for overachieving though.

Absolutely, she should not be allowed to compete in baseball unless 1) they change the rules and allow many more schollies, or 2) they allow men to compete for softball schollies!

She pitched six innings. She earned a win. She struck college hitters out. She belongs. There are lots of male pitchers across the country who would have loved to pitch that many innings in their freshmen seasons.

Men should not be allowed to play women's softball.

quote:

There are lots of male pitchers across the country who would have loved to pitch that many innings in their freshmen seasons.

If the NCAA would let them play girls softball they could

Good ole double standard Grateful?

The hardest thing for the boys to learn would be the cheers.

JK, I watched almost all of the Women's College World Series. Some very talented ladies!!
I've been in two Men's fastpitch world tournaments back in my heyday. I wouldn't want to face Cat!

grateful,
And if they had fastballs just touching 70 mph they would never, ever get the chance. I watched Robin Ventura shut down the Angels for an inning throwing a 70 mph fastball. Does that mean he should have been a pitcher? Of course not. He was thrown in there so they wouldn't have to use a real pitcher. You don't make a place on a team for a pitcher when their only purpose is to eat 6 whole innings so you don't have to use a real pitcher.

Let's face it that girl isn't going to have any more ability next year or any other year. You can't say the same about a male pitcher with an 80+ fastball who could have filled that spot.

Frank....sure, it is a double standard, but we all know that in general females are weaker and slower than males.....this girl had a goal to play baseball and is achieving that goal.

CADad......did they have to cut a male player who throws 80 mph for this girl to play? The article didn't say anything about that. Look at stats for teams at all levels of college baseball. There are plenty of pitchers who threw 6 innings or less on hundreds of teams. Are you saying that they are not "real pitchers"? This has nothing to do with Robin Ventura.

If the players on the team, the coach, and the adminstraters at the college have no problems with this why would any of you?

As long as Title IX exists - why would anyone allow that.

Talk about wanting your cake and eating it too.

If I were a player on that team - I would be a very very angry young man.

Not saying my view is right or wrong - just telling the truth.

Grateful,
Because there may have been a male player with potential to improve who didn't make that team and didn't get to attend that school so that they could pull off this publicity stunt.

Robin Ventura got to pitch without having the ability to pitch. The point is that the fact that she got to throw 6 innings doesn't mean that she had the ability to compete at that level.

You can put a midget up to the plate so that they can draw a walk. It doesn't mean they have the ability to play baseball. It is simply a publicity stunt. Putting a pitcher on the mound who can't throw as hard a many 12yo's is simply a publicity stunt. If they said she threw 70 mph I could almost live with it but they didn't they said she could touch 70 mph. That translates to a pitcher with a 65 mph fastball.

For the 1 in 874,509,590,495,841 that could compete EFFECTIVELY against men in college baseball, God bless her.

For the rest...enjoy the sunshine, hotdogs and apple pie.

In Doonesbury years ago, B.D. was asked if women should be allowed to play football. His answer:

"Yes, just as soon as it can be reliably determined that h**l has frozen over. After that, it's fine with me."

Not politically correct, but once you're past Little League, and in a very rare instance, high school ball, physiologically it's not happening. I still can't quite understand the female reporters in men's locker rooms, while in ladies' pro tennis, male reporters are barred.

Like it or not, there are differences between males and females. Viva la difference!

Is this stuff really necessary? If we're gonna remove postings that are critical of certain showcase sponsors, I don't see why gratuitous images like this are allowed. I'm not a prude, but ask yourself - does this advance the dialogue. I don't think so...

I agree, VA.

Plus...In my opinion, looks like it's silicone.

She looks like a nice girl to me. The pictures are from her website....and yeah Beenthere is correct.

VA Sportsman,
Welcome. I see this is your first post? You may be right but seeing how this was in our local paper this morning (a Gannett publication) and considering Jackson, Tennessee is in the heart of the conservative bible belt of America, I didn’t think anyone would see this as too risque. (Maybe I can explain why I think this way later in this post).
Brittany Jackson was a D-1 athlete here in Tennessee and desires to go into sports reporting and since the thread had expanded into the area of women being allowed in men’s locker rooms, I felt it had some relevance to the subject of girls/baseball/sports/and reporters. Brittany Jackson is currently conducting a basketball camp here for young girls (this is what prompted the article in our paper).
This thread is not meant to improve one's ability to hit a curve ball but to attempt to understand some of the influences being placed on men’s sports by the emergence of women into areas thought to be exclusive for men and why it happens. I admittedly am a conservative but don’t see that this has any bearing on why I feel men are being held to one standard and women to another. By simply “giving” a female special consideration indicates a camouflaged discrimination against her in my opinion. After some thought I have come to the conclusion that if we are going to have gender specific sports then let’s have gender specific sports. Men’s baseball is gender specific! Another thing while we’re on this topic, s e x ual innuendos seem to be accepted or overlooked if they are made by women, but totally unacceptable if made by men. For instance, if I was seeking a job in sports reporting, and included in my resume was a seductive photo of me in tiger striped Speedos (oxymoron) I would be banned from all sporting events and have to register as a weirdo.
The way I see it.
Fungo

Question---can a male athlete go out for the womens softball team?

TRHit,
I would be willing to bet if TRHit were 20 years old again and in college where this was happening....we would soon find out!

Fungo

God created the game of baseball for MEN and softball for women

As far as I am concerned it is a travesty to have girls playing baseball on amens team-- let them play on the womens baseball team--The USA has such a team

But you didn't answer my question--can a male athlete play on the girls softball team ?

BRITTANY can keep score on my team or should i say my son's team.

Nobody's answering your question TR because the question is uncomfortable. It shouldn't make any difference what *** a person is, just as it shouldn't make any difference what race a person is, in order to take a place on a team or in a job for that matter. That, however, ain't the way things are.

Who is the man looking to take a place on a women's team? There are some men significantly larger and more powerful than many women, and that would be more of an 'issue' than a man, say, 5'9" and 165lbs trying for a spot.

My own reaction is, however, that I don't want men taking any spots on any women's teams. When I was a girl, I wasn't allowed to play LL baseball. That took a lawsuit 30 years ago. Heck, when I was a baby going to some of my first games at the old Sportsman's Park, I (actually my Mother, I was fairly quiet on the subject at the time) was denied Bill Veeck's promotional Future Baseball Contract because I was a girl and would never play ball. A lousy piece of paper. Because of what wasn't in my diaper.

More recently, I was run out of LL coaching because the Board couldn't deal with a woman coaching....whose teams won the championship pretty much every season. Long and ugly story.

It took Federal legislation to get money for women's sports in college and the attendant scholarships...the same kind of scholarships many of us here depend on and enjoy for our sons.

So do I think it's OK that a man takes one of these long overdue slots? When men have had the advantage of youth, hs, collegiate, and professional sports opportunites only recently "granted" to women? Am I concerned with that particular "anti-male" segment of "discrimination"?

NO. H*LL, NO.

Orlando

Why is the question uncomfortable?

The point is this --women are permitted to plays mens sports but men cannot play womens sports--- is this gender equity ??? The ladies cannot have it one way

The question is uncomfortable because it shouldn't make a difference, but it does. And it does because of prejudice and discrimination. On the gender issue, overwhelmingly against women. It's further uncomfortable because you are a repected member of this board, and it's blatantly obvious what you wanted to get across:

"The ladies cannot have it one way"

Why not? The men had it one way for 80% of the last century. Is discrimination only wrong when it excludes men?

Well they do call it the Men's College World Series .

I have a son and daughter and am all for equality, but isn't the point of Title IX and the entire structure of college athletics that there are men's and women's sports and equality is addressed in this fashion.

Forgetting the greater philosophical issues, in practical effect how do you handle this at the collegite level as to locker room facilities, travel considerations, etc. etc. Every school would be bankrupt. Unfortunately, at the bottom line, you can't structure programs effecting tens of thousands of people over the issues of 1 or 2 people.

Little League for example has tried to address this "equality" issue by experimenting with boy's softball. It's been a joke.

Actually, Hey, as long as there are opportunites for women to play sports at all levels, segregating them by gender doesn't bother me, for many of the practical reasons you mentioned.

Me, I was just rising to TR's bait about the poor, beleagured men being discriminated against.

And I've always enjoyed that it's called the Men's College World Series....it helps balance out my irritation at the girls and women's school teams called, say, the Lady Panthers when the boys/men's team is the Panthers. Why not the Gentlemen Panthers? Why can't everybody just be Panthers?

Orlando-just wanted to mention that I wasn't responding to your post. I think we had "posted" simultaneously.

Anyway, "gentleman Panthers"
One school who had an interesting "solution" is Claremont McKenna. They were always known as the Stags, so when women's sports came along- Lady Stags, nah. their women's program is called the Athenas. So the school has two names Another member of the Claremont schools -Pomona and Pitzer- are known as the Sagehens. Men's teams have tried to refer to themselves as the Sagecocks, but it's just never caught on. Perhaps U of SoCal Lady Trojans may be the weirdest of all

Orlando

Please get down off your soap box--- if ladies can play mens sports then men can play ladies sports--it is bad enough that schools create sports so they can handle the gender equity issues--ladies crew with ladies who have never seen an oar-- ladies handball-- and for this schools like Providence and Iowa State had to give up baseball to meet "NUMBERS" and others had to cut back scholarships

My Dear Orlando that was not bait I threw out there, that was fact

For the record I am great supporter of ladies college sports.In fact, I am a host at the America East Basketball Tournament where I host the SUNY ALBANY TEAM , this will be three straight years, and I am one of the most ardent UCONN Ladies Hoops fan

So it is not a matter of bias, prejudice etc--it is a matter of what is right---the ladies cannot have their cake and eat it too --- not when it costs baseball players scholarships and programs.

All the talk about what a pitcher needs to throw in terms of velocity and then they put a lady on the team who throws with less velocity than the guy who did not make the team

I call it as publicity stunt, plain and simple

Hmmm.....USC.....I guess we should only expect "product placement" from the same wonderful folks who gave us Hollywood.

TR, the bait I was responding to was your repeated question about 'should men be allowed to play on women's teams?' No "facts" involved there.

Bringing up the creation of women's crew or handball is a non sequitur. Your own question was about men playing on the women's teams, following the story about a woman pitching on a men's baseball team. And blaming Title IX for cutbacks in men's teams ignores the influence of football on the numbers. Are you saying that there should never have been a Title IX? Would the schools have offered female athletes opportunites otherwise? Perhaps the "ladies" should have just sat demurely and simply hoped for the "gentlemen" to open the door for them.

I'll get off the soapbox when you get off the cross.

Tell ya one thing, if this female pitcher gets nailed with a comebacker and hurt, or plowed over and hurt covering first or home. I guarantee the situation wont be treated the same(equally)as if the pitcher was a male.

And for a good reason, like it or not shes not the equal of a male baseball player. Randy Johnson is inferior to Jenny Finch and Jenny Finch is inferior to Randy Johnson.

I can live with that.

TR is right and thats a fact. As long as men are not allowed to play womens softball then women should not be allowed to play mens baseball. To say that women have been held back for so long, so its ok to have a double standard is bs. It is nothing more than a publicity stunt this girl playing college baseball. A 70mph fastball? Come on we can all see why she is on the team. If she had a 95mph fastball I would not be in favor of her playing baseball untill the guys that want to play softball are allowed to do so as well. You cant tell me there are not several guys at every major d-1 program that fields softball that couldnt take a roster spot. How would you feel about your daughter being cut because some guy came out for softball and made the team? But it is so cute and great that a girl is on the baseball team. What a bunch of ****!