by Mo'ne Davis
Scott was startled.
It was so funny—you should have seen the look on Scott’s face!
I was supposed to pitch a baseball to Jimmy inside a batting cage.
“But to protect the audience, they went to a Wiffle ball, which she had never thrown before—ever,” says Scott. “We got a five-minute practice in the hallway, and she didn’t throw anything that even came near the plate.”
Right before we went onstage, this guy came up to me and told me he was a Wiffle ball champion. He told me that if I throw the ball with the holes up, it will go up. If I hold it with the holes down, it will go down. If they are left, it will go left. It worked.
When we got on the stage, Jimmy did a funny introduction of us. Then all of a sudden he said, “Now, the time on the show when we do random dancing.” I didn’t know what he was talking about—I wasn’t really ready for it.
I’m not the best dancer.
I went along with it, and Scott did the dance that Erik on our team does—playing the air bongos.
Then Jimmy made a joke and said random dancing was my idea.
What?!
After that, he put on this crazy red helmet, and did a pretend stare-down, and talked a lot of trash. I blew the ball past him a bunch of times. Scott and I were laughing the whole time.
“On the last pitch, I told her to hit him,” says Scott.
Jimmy stormed the mound and gave me a hug.
“Mo’ne Davis from the Taney Dragons,” he said to the audience. “Remember her name!”
After that, we got to meet Macklemore and sit onstage when he performed his song “Arrows.” Macklemore’s dancing is pretty wild.
Then one day, kind of out of the blue, my mother said, “You wanna do a commercial with Spike Lee?”
“Sure,” I told her. “When?”
“In two weeks.”
When she told me the date, I already had told my friend that I was gonna come to her party, and we had the day off from school. I figured we’d finish filming the commercial in time for me to go, since the party started at seven.
On that Friday, we filmed the scene of me walking up to the mound, and hitting in the batting cage, and stuff like that. But we ran really late and I missed my friend’s party. Being kind of famous isn’t always that fun.
Saturday was the most packed day of filming. At six thirty in the morning, we filmed me running up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps, like Sylvester Stallone did in a scene in the movie Rocky. If you don’t know about it, you can find it on YouTube. Then we drove to my new house, and they filmed the entire family.
Then we came back to Philly, and went straight to South Street to Lazaro’s, my favorite pizza place, with my brothers and sister. After the Little League World Series was over, Lazaro’s put the Mo’ne cheesesteak on the menu, which has Cheez Whiz and fried onions in it. I think the way I eat my cheesesteaks—with mayo, melted American cheese, salt and pepper, and ketchup—must have been too boring.
That Sunday, Spike Lee filmed me at Marian Anderson, then interviewed me. After that, I went straight to our baseball game against the Full Armor Falcons, a team from Northeast Philly that plays in the Tri-State Elite League.
I kept thinking my life would return to how it normally was before the Little League World Series, but it didn’t.
On September 25, my Taney and Monarch teammates and I traveled on our barnstorming tour bus up to Cooperstown, where we played an exhibition game and I donated my Little League jersey to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A lot of our families came. Coach Brady came, and so did Miss Mamie Johnson. The mayor of Cooperstown read a proclamation that designated it Taney Dragons and Anderson Monarchs Day.
The Hall of Fame is really cool. It has all sorts of things from baseball history—from sandlot games to the Negro Leagues to Hank Aaron chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record to baseball in the Caribbean.
“I haven’t seen Mo’ne’s jersey. Where is it?” Coach Brady asked my mom while we were walking through the museum.
“Are you kidding me?” my mom said. “They took that as soon as she finished the game that day!”
During the ceremony, Coach Steve made a nice speech about me.
“She pitched two complete-game shutouts, eighteen strikeouts, no walks. And she captured the hearts and the imaginations of girls not only in this country, but around the world. I can’t think of a more perfect ending to an incredible summer and a more fitting place to end it than at the Hall at Cooperstown,” he said. “We’re just so proud that her jersey will be on display here, to be an inspiration to just countless generations of girls to come.”
Then I handed my jersey back to the head of the Hall of Fame, for them to officially put in the museum.
It was kind of hard to hand it over because it was a special jersey, but I have another one. And to see my shutout jersey here with the other jerseys would be amazing.
“She is going to be the first lady to go to the major leagues,” Miss Mamie Johnson told a reporter. “That’s where I want her to be. If you want to do something, you can do it, because I did it, and did it well. And she can do it, too.”
From October 8 to 10, ESPN held its Women + Sports Summit in California. I was invited to participate in a panel called “Voices of the Future.”
A few days later the Women’s Sports Foundation held its annual Salute to Women in Sports in New York. The Women’s Sports Foundation was founded by tennis legend Billie Jean King to support girls and women in sports and physical activity. I met Muhammad Ali’s daughter, Laila Ali. I hope you know who Muhammad Ali is—he’s one of the greatest boxers of all time, and he’s one of the most well-known people in the whole world. You can Google him. Laila Ali was a women’s boxer, and used to be the world champion. She was really nice and spent time talking to me for a few minutes, until she had to go sit at a different table.
On October 24, I traveled to San Francisco to throw out the first pitch at game four of the MLB World Series, when the San Francisco Giants played the Kansas City Royals. The night before the game, I got to see my friends from Jackie Robinson West. The MLB was going to honor them, too, and they were going to stand with me when I threw out the first pitch. Pierce, DJ, and Trey and I were up until three o’clock in the morning, playing pool. But I woke up at five a.m. because the time zone is different, so it was kind of weird.
Before the game that day, we went to a clinic with a lot of kids and teenagers. Jimmy Rollins was there. J-Roll plays for the Phillies and is one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball. And I got to talk to Chase Utley on the phone—he was funny. He asked me if I was taller than Jimmy Rollins. Jimmy Rollins is a little short, but he’s definitely taller than I am. I found out that San Francisco is chilly and foggy and rainy a lot, and it was drizzling when we drove to the stadium. I started feeling pretty nervous. But when we got there, my nerves started to calm down.
When you first get to AT&T Park, the first thing you see is a giant Coca-Cola bottle, then you see a huge glove next to it. It looks like the bottle is going to pour Coke in the glove. People say AT&T is a pitcher’s park, since the outfield wall is so far away. It is right next to San Francisco Bay. During the game, people park boats and row kayaks in the bay, right on the other side of the stadium, because they hope they’ll get the ball after a “splash hit,” a home run hit into the bay.
We walked across a bridge to Pier 48, then came into the stadium from the ground level. When I saw the field, it seemed small, even though it’s not.
When we went inside, I met the officials from the Giants and the MLB. Spike Lee was there, too, behind home plate.
On television, the commercial Spike Lee filmed of me ran during the game, and I made fun of the insult “throwing like a girl” by reminding people that girls can throw seventy miles per hour and play baseball with the boys.
Right before the game started, they took me behind home plate while they introduced the Chicago kids, played a video about them, and announced the name
s of some of them. When they ran out to the field and stood by the mound, I started wondering how I was going to do. It was wet out, I was cold, and I hadn’t had a chance to warm my arm up. Then they played a video to introduce me and called my name. There was a lot of clapping.
I walked out toward the mound and the Chicago kids, who were standing between the mound and home plate. I asked the Chicago kids if I should go all of the way to the pitching rubber or if I should stand in front of the mound, the same distance that a Little League pitcher would throw. Of course, they said go to the mound. When I did, the crowd got a lot louder. I started wondering if I’d be able to throw a strike.
Then, I, Mo’ne, a city kid who plays sports with the boys, stood on the pitcher’s mound at the MLB World Series. I set myself, went through my windup, and threw a perfect strike!
The crowd made this super-loud noise. That was kind of cool because I didn’t know that many people from San Francisco would actually know me. I figured the people who knew me were just out on the East Coast.
Then I fist-pumped and smiled because all my years of hard work and sacrifice and practice had helped me throw a strike in front of all those people, even in the cold, and even when I hadn’t practiced.
During the game, we sat in a box next to a lot of Giants fans. A couple of the Chicago kids were rooting for the Royals. Needless to say, the crowd drowned out their cheers.
The best part was there were a lot of Hall of Famers there—Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Frank Robinson, and Hank Aaron. I got to meet Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron, but not Willie Mays or Barry Bonds. I asked them about Hunter Pence’s swing. They told me it was kind of ugly, but that if it works for him, he should keep it. And then Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson both signed a baseball for me. We also got to meet Giancarlo Stanton from the Miami Marlins.
After the game, they gave me the World Series ball that I threw out, and they put an official sticker on it. I also got a Giants shirt, a signed bat from Clayton Kershaw, and Matt Kemp’s jersey, and I gave him a signed Sports Illustrated and a baseball undershirt, so it was trade for trade. And I brought home some hotel lotion.
That weekend was up there with the Texas Little League game as the best time of my life.
I saw Laila Ali again toward the end of the month, when we presented an award together at the Soul Train Awards in Las Vegas. Someone had written a script for us to say, so we had to practice it together.
I was nervous. But Miss Laila told me that if I took deep breaths it would help keep me from being so nervous. I got to say who won the award for Song of the Year, which was Pharrell Williams, for “Happy.” I wanted to meet him, but he wasn’t there.
I did meet some other famous singers and celebrities, though. I met the singers Tank, Tiggers, and Joe; the rappers Lady of Rage and MC Lyte; and Judge Mathis from TV. I also met Boyz II Men, from South Philly.
I started learning that most celebrities are just like regular people.
Later in October, I was invited to participate in a ceremony honoring Malala Yousafzai. If you don’t know Malala’s story, I really think you should learn about her. She’s the youngest person ever to be given the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the most important awards in the world. She won it when she was seventeen.
Malala grew up in Pakistan at a time when the Taliban—which is a religious organization that became powerful in politics there—made a law that only boys could be educated and that girls had to stop going to school. Malala kept going to school anyway—her father owned some schools.
When she was nine, she started blogging about the bad things the Taliban was doing in her community. As she became older, she was posting on Facebook, going on the radio and TV, and giving interviews to magazines, to fight for education for girls. The Taliban hated her so much that they tried to kill her by shooting her three times—one of the bullets even went into her forehead.
But Malala lived.
And as soon as she recovered, she continued fighting for girls.
Malala is so brave that she is an inspiration to me. I may be able to throw a mean fastball, but I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t go to school, or if I had to make a choice between going to school and staying alive.
So I was super, super nervous when the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, invited me to read a passage from her book I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. I had to get up in front of a lot of people and read passages she wrote about wearing a uniform to school, and the Taliban. I didn’t want to mess anything up. Before I read the passage, I was so nervous my teeth were chattering.
I got to meet Malala and a lot of other teenagers who were doing meaningful things. It was a really good experience.
On Thanksgiving, all of the Dragons were invited to be in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—the biggest parade in the country. There are balloons and floats and marching bands and celebrities—all sorts of stuff. But I didn’t know that my teammates and I, we would be in the front of the whole entire parade.
The night before, we went to the Hard Rock Café, and I had a burger. After that we went to the Big Apple Circus at Lincoln Center, but Scott and Jahli kept giving away the secrets to the tricks. On the way there, we took a picture in Times Square. We had to wake up at five to be ready for the parade. We took a bus to the start of the parade and lined up for an hour and a half while they staged the entire parade. While we were waiting, we got to run around with the crowd and throw confetti. After the parade began we talked to each other because people were waving more at the clowns than they were at us. It was cold, so afterward we went to Macy’s to try to watch Becky G. perform her song “Shower” in the parade, but we had missed her. We drank hot chocolate and took pictures with Meghan Trainor, the Vamps, and Nick Jonas.
I never expected any of this. But I really didn’t expect to be invited to the White House on the night that they lit the national Christmas tree in President’s Park across the street. But after my school day ended on December 3, my mom and I headed to the train station to go to Washington, DC.
When we got there that night, we were directed into a big tent, which was like the greenroom, but they called it the “talent tent.” Everybody was rehearsing their acts. I practiced my part with a very nice assistant who stood in for Mrs. Obama—she called Mrs. Obama “FLOTUS,” which is short for First Lady of the United States. I also got to meet Tom Hanks, and I took a picture with him. On the way to the hotel after rehearsal, my mom told our driver that I am a big fan of Fifth Harmony, and the driver told my mom she’d tell them when she picked them up to take them to the tent for rehearsal the next morning. It was a little awkward. I don’t know if she did.
Early that next morning, we went back to the tent for a second rehearsal and to practice the grand finale. I was pretty nervous. The singers Patti LaBelle, who’s from South Philly, Ne-Yo, and Nico and Vinz were there. I got to meet Ne-Yo, and he was really nice.
At one point we were all standing around and I was minding my business, kind of nervous, singing to myself.
“What song are you singing?” my mom asked.
“‘Am I Wrong?’” I said. Then I realized it was Nico and Vinz’s song. I think it got in my head because Jahli played it in Williamsport so much.
“That’s amazing!” Nico and Vinz said.
So I started talking to Nico and Vinz. Since they’re from Norway, they don’t really understand baseball, so they were asking me a lot of questions about how the game is played.
Then I got on my phone and started playing a baseball game. I didn’t realize it, but while I was playing, Fifth Harmony walked in. While my mom was getting a cup of coffee, she went and told them that I wanted to meet them but was scared.
“Is that the pitcher?” they asked.
“Yes, that’s her right there,” my mom said.
They came over to introduce themselves right when I had put a big piece of Dubble Bubble in my mouth! I shoved the wad of gum i
nto the side of my cheek so I wouldn’t embarrass myself trying to chew it. They were super, super nice to me, and we took a few pictures before they went to rehearse.
“You, my friend, are an inspiration,” one of them said. That was pretty awesome.
Everyone had been very friendly. There were a lot of “Good lucks” and fist bumps all throughout the day.
When we came back for the live show later that evening, we had to wait for a long time in traffic because the president was coming and the police had blocked off all the cars.
Finally, we got to the talent tent. The president and Mrs. Obama were in a different tent, and Sasha and Malia were in a whole nother tent that was connected to their parents’ tent but not ours.
We got to go into the tent where the president and First Lady were sitting. President Obama said, “Mo’ne Davis!”
When he called out my name, I saw Sasha and Malia peeking into the room from their tent. We took a picture with the president and the First Lady.
President Obama said, “You should come back one day and I’ll challenge you to a game of H-O-R-S-E.”
“He’s a little competitive,” Mrs. Obama said. “I’m rooting for you to win.”
I laughed.
It was pretty chilly that night, but a lot of parents and children still came to the show. While they were getting seated, we all sat in the talent tent. Right before Tom Hanks went onstage, I remembered that he had been in the women’s baseball film A League of Their Own.
“Filming that was fun,” he said. “All we did was hit baseballs and catch fly balls.”
If you’ve never seen A League of Their Own, it’s a film about an all-girl baseball league. Tom Hanks plays a baseball coach, and he makes one of the players on his team of all women cry after she made a mistake.
“Are you crying?” he says to her. “There’s no crying in baseball.”
That’s become a famous line.
Tom Hanks was the MC of the show with his wife, Rita Wilson.