Making My Pitch

by Ila Jane Borders

  When I attended Ila’s first college game in February 1994, I knew that I wanted to follow her baseball story all the way through. The support from my husband, Dan Ardell, and my family for a book that would require more than twenty years to see completion has meant everything.

  Jean Hastings Ardell

  Note to the Reader

  In the preface to her book Koufax, Jane Leavy writes, “You don’t need to know everything to write the truth. You just need to know enough.”

  This is a memoir, so it is a book that relies on my memories of what happened on and off the field over the years that I played baseball. In the Game Day sections, I have reconstructed the inning-by-inning events, particularly the pitches I made, from those memories to the best of my ability. These memories were sometimes corrected by the game notes provided by the front office of the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks. I also checked the statistics provided by Baseball Reference, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Library, and individual clubs. I have also checked with family members, friends, coaches, and others in baseball whose lives touched mine, so as to provide the reader with an accurate account.

  Prologue

  July 30, 1998. I’m in the back of the bus, heading down the highway that goes from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Fargo, North Dakota. This afternoon I’m the starting pitcher for the Duluth-Superior Dukes against the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks. Last week I finally got my first win as a professional baseball player. I was in the zone that day, throwing six scoreless innings, giving up three hits and two walks, with two strikeouts against the Sioux Falls Canaries. So they tell me, because everything from that game is a blur. But my record is even now at 1-1, I’m pitching well, and I can feel the confidence of my manager, George Mitterwald. Today I’ll start against the first-place team. If I do well again, maybe no one will say last week’s win was luck, that I’m a novelty.

  Though “novelty” is one of the nicer words used to describe the women who have fought to play professional baseball. Take Lizzie Arlington, who pitched in the minor leagues in 1898. The headlines were all about what a “sensation” she was, this “most famous lady pitcher in the world.” After that, no woman played a season of pro ball until the early 1950s, when Mamie “Peanut” Johnson pitched and Connie Morgan and Toni Stone competed in the Negro Leagues. The word on these women, though, is that they were signed only to boost sagging gate receipts as the Negro Leagues faded into history once Jackie Robinson had integrated major league baseball in 1947. So no matter where I’ve played, from Little League on, people have been on my case. I still try to win them over, to change their minds about what a woman can do—not just in baseball but also even in life. Trying to win everyone over, though, has been a losing game. What matters most to me now is that my teammates respect me. And, hey, now I have a win on my record.

  It’s a blistering summer day, but inside the bus it’s nice and cool. It’s true what you hear about bus rides in the backwaters of baseball. In the Northern League, the rides can be up to fourteen hours long. We cross the Canadian border to play in Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, Ontario; we travel west to Fargo; southeast to Schaumburg, Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin, and southwest to Sioux City, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. To pass the time I journal, read, listen to music, or watch a movie—Tin Cup and Bull Durham are usually the only ones on the bus, and I bet I’ve watched them a dozen times.

  We all try to rest, but for me it’s hard to fall asleep next to a teammate, never knowing if I might drool and provide a photo op for him to post in the locker room. Usually I stretch out in the aisle or on the floor between the seats, despite the empty beer cans that roll around on the floor. Then I wake up smelling like beer and sweat. Well, that is baseball in the Northern League.

  I jam my headphones into both ears and throw a towel over my face, trying to ignore the guy next to me, who is watching porn on his laptop and seems to be enjoying it very much. The guys across from us are in a farting contest—how many can you belt out in sixty seconds? I tune my radio to a sports talk show and suddenly hear Doug Simunic, the RedHawks’ manager, talking trash about “the woman pitcher.” He is going off about how he will put his pitchers in the outfield, or only play his second string, or maybe just forfeit the game if I play. It turns out he’s complained to the commissioner of the Northern League about me.

  “There comes a time when you have to stop and take a look at the big picture,” Simunic told a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. “But I guess the league thinks she’s a good idea.”

  The league, it turns out, does think I am a good idea. According to the Free Press, the league commissioner, Miles Wolff, had responded to Simunic’s complaints by sending a memo to all the clubs “reminding them of a league rule to field their best squads and compete at the highest level possible.”

  Listeners call in. It sounds like the entire town has gone ballistic over me pitching. Some say that I’m bringing down the game by playing men’s baseball, the idea being if a woman can compete in a man’s sport, it must not be much of a game. One caller gets bleeped, but a few say, “Give her a chance.”

  A chance is all I’ve ever wanted. Growing up, I read every book I could find about misfits like me who found the way past survival to success. Last season, just after I made the St. Paul Saints, Neal Karlen, who was writing Slouching toward Fargo, a book about the ball club, gave me Jackie Robinson’s biography. “Read it,” Neal said, “because I think this is the only thing that is going to give you advice and courage for what you’re about to go through.”

  I read it in a day. I remember my surprise that Robinson felt the same emotions I was feeling—that sense of being cowardly, because you can’t fight back against the naysayers. Back then, his skin, to Organized Baseball, was unacceptably black; my skin was white, though shaped around the less-than-acceptable form of a female. I wished I could have talked to Robinson about his experiences as the man who desegregated the modern game. He had to be so strong. I just wish I were as tough on the inside as I show on the outside. It’s hard to hear people I’ve never met say they hate me—and all because I’m a woman who pitches in the Northern League. Playing in this men’s independent league—it’s outside Organized Baseball—is like skipping rookie ball and going straight to Class A ball. We have former Triple-A players trying to get their careers back on track, unsigned high draft picks like J. D. Drew who want to prove they are worth a bigger contract, ex–major leaguers like Jack Morris and Darryl Strawberry who want one last chance, and misfits like me. Call us the outback of pro ball.

  But castoffs and misfits play well in the media. Who doesn’t like a come-from-behind, against-all-odds story? So Mike Wallace’s television crew from 60 Minutes is on the way to Fargo to film the game. Wallace is doing a piece on me—and how many people ever get to experience that? I should feel grateful but can’t get past the nerves. Like there isn’t already enough stress in a league like this, because if you don’t perform, or even if you do, you can be let go at any time. Now, courtesy of 60 Minutes, I’ll be on a national stage. Mike has turned out to be one of the kindest interviewers I’ve faced, but I know that the message in his story will be that I’m a sensation, a novelty. I’m also worried about the lumps I just found on the back of my neck, which I haven’t told anyone about except God. And I worry about what the people of Fargo will do when our bus pulls into town. I remind myself that God approves of me, and that’s all that matters, but right now He feels far away. The stress is the worst it’s ever been. I’m twenty-three years old and wonder how in the heck I came to be on this bus filled with two dozen randy guys.

  When our bus arrives at the parking lot of Newman Outdoor Field, fans and reporters surround it. “Good luck, Shorty,” says one of the veterans. “Glad I am not you.”

  Then my best friend on the team and last summer’s boyfriend, Dave Glick, puts his hand on my shoulder, and says, “We’re all behind you, Ila. No matter what.”

  I grab hold of his words. I’ll play them in my head all th
rough the game.

  “We’re behind you.” I first heard those words from Dad. That’s what he has always said. He meant it, too, except when he couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t back me up. But baseball’s a game of failure, of errors large or small, and I learned early that having backup is a sometime thing. I learned it from my father, who was also my mentor, coach, agent, and nemesis.

  As we exit the bus, people are yelling, “Go back home—we don’t want you.”

  One man waves a sign: “Go back to the kitchen, Ila.”

  Can’t you show more imagination? I want to say, though I don’t. This is the same stuff that umpire Pam Postema heard in the minor leagues a few years back—“stick to doing the dishes.” One day Postema arrived at home plate, and there was a frying pan. No wonder she called her memoir You’ve Got to Have Balls to Make It in This League.

  Other fans reach to shake my hand or push baseballs at me, asking for an autograph, or they pull at my clothes. In the parking lot, people are already tailgating, and a few drunks are spraying beer all over. Some of my teammates form a human wedge around me as we move through the crowd. It feels good that they think to do this without my asking. Even though I have my teammates’ support, I still feel alone in this quest. If I mess up I’ll be letting down the cause of women everywhere. There’s always a host of ghostly expectations out on the mound with me.

  Shuffling along inside the wedge toward the locker room, I notice the RedHawks out on the field, taking batting practice. I see their manager, Doug Simunic, glaring at me.

  Suddenly a cameraman appears from behind me: “Hello, Ila. We’re from 60 Minutes. Where can we set up?”

  What I want right now is to be left alone. It’s game day, and like every starting pitcher, I want my game face on. Where can I hide? I flee into the stands and find a women’s restroom. So here I am, sitting in my uniform on the toilet with my feet up, so no one knows I’m here. Head down, I whisper a prayer. “Lord, give me the strength to do my best, to be focused, and let me reap what I have been working so hard for. Please be with me.”

  I want this win so bad. When we beat the Sioux Falls Canaries last week, we were at our home ballpark. Now I’m on the road facing the best team in the Northern League. Unlike the Canaries, the RedHawks have been bad-mouthing me. I want to shut Simunic and all the other critics up. So the inner Ila emerges—a controlled, competitive rage comes alive. I charge toward the bullpen like a soldier ready for battle. I’ve been criticized for the stone face I show when I pitch. Some have said, “You’re a girl; smile.”

  Well, screw that. I’m an athlete here to win. Now get the hell out of my face. Would you tell a guy to smile? Growing up, I heard all about Don Drysdale, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ star right-hander of the 1950s and 1960s. I was crazy about Drysdale, who everyone said was the nicest guy around—except for the days he pitched. Then, nobody went near him. Did anyone tell Drysdale to smile? So hell no—no smile. I’ve been fighting for this since I was ten years old.

  1

  Beginnings

  Little League

  Game Day: First Inning. Warming up in the bullpen, I look out at Newman Outdoor Field. Good, everyone on the RedHawks is at his normal position—no pitchers in the outfield, as their manager, Doug Simunic, had threatened. But the lineup card shows that Darryl Motley isn’t playing. This is the guy who said on the radio he would not play against me. Motley, who used to play in the majors, is on a six-game hitting streak, and I wish he were in. I want to compete against the best they have.

  I’m glad to be pitching against the RedHawks’ number one starter, Blaise Isley, tied for most wins in the league. The game is sold out, and the stands are filled with five thousand fans in home-team red T-shirts. It’s pennant night, so the fans are waving RedHawks flags. Newman Field reminds me of the diamond in the movie Field of Dreams, as if it emerged in some magical way out of the North Dakota prairie. Actually it’s on the edge of the campus of North Dakota State University and is a beautiful new brick ballpark: the ironwork and seats are painted forest green, and the field kind of sits up instead of being sunk down. Unlike Midway Stadium in St. Paul last year, Newman is more of a pitcher’s ballpark, because it has lots of foul ground and the prevailing winds don’t turn fly balls into home runs, so I feel free to pitch the way I want to. Funny, the dimensions are the same as those of Yankee Stadium—a tribute to a Fargo native named Roger Maris, who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961.

  By the time I finish throwing, the sweat is dripping off me. And then comes the announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and remove your hats for the singing of our national anthem.”

  I take off my cap, which I vainly hate to do because when I sweat my hair turns pouffy, wipe the salt from my eyes, stand tall, and place the cap over my heart. I can feel my heartbeat through my jersey. As the music begins, the words fill my heart and send a thrill throughout my body. I love this moment. “Land of the free and the home of the brave.” The words remind me that this is where I belong, on the field. After the closing notes I head for the dugout, where everything begins to blur. Players and coaches are moving around me but in slow motion. Fans are yelling and pointing at me, smiling, waving, but I just hear my breathing. They are talking to me, their lips are moving, but I don’t really hear them, focused as I am on the game.

  The Dukes score a run in the top of the first, thanks to an RBI double by Big Papa, also known as Anthony Lewis, one of my biggest supporters. With the third out, I get ready to run to the mound when Dave Glick grabs my arm. He knows that’s the only way to get my attention when I’m about to pitch. He looks me in the eye and says, “You’ve got this, Ila.”

  I grin at him and think to myself, Just do what you did last week when you notched that win. As I jog to the mound, the crowd erupts with cheers and boos. I see the lips of my catcher, Javier Rodriguez, move as he calls my name, but the noise from the stands is so loud that I can’t hear his voice. Great to hear the love, but it’s the boos that will drive me now. I grab the ball from behind the mound, rubbing it to get the last bit of gloss off and get the feel of the ball. I take my place on the rubber. The mound feels right, and I feel comfortable. Mounds are subject to regulation, but there are nuances. From mound to mound, the rubber doesn’t always sit in the exact same place; in Fargo the dirt has more clay in it and feels more stable. After my eighth warmup pitch, I bend low as Javier throws the ball to second, who underhands it to Luis Brito, our shortstop, who throws it back to me. Luis points his mitt at me, as if to say, “Let’s go.” I scrape the dirt off my cleats on the edge of the rubber, take a deep breath, and push it out.

  The RedHawks are intimidating, not just because they’re in first place but because they’re so damned big. They’re also damned good: three of the first four hitters I’ll face are batting more than .350 against us. All we have for big is our first baseman, Ozzie Canseco, six feet two inches tall, 220 pounds—and he’s not even playing today because he’s serving a three-game suspension from last night’s game against the Winnipeg Goldeyes. That’s because umpires don’t like to be spit on. It’s true that Ozzie has a temper, but despite his machismo he’s always been respectful toward me and goes out of his way to offer tips.

  Everyone on the RedHawks seems as big as Ozzie. No surprise, then, that they are a fastball hitting team. So I’ll have to pitch backwards—get ahead with off-speed pitches for strikes, place the two-seam fastball on the outside corner of the plate running away, and spot the four-seamer high and tight to keep them from sitting on the outside pitches. I plan to hit the corners, frustrate them with junk, put a lot of movement on the ball, and put the ball in play. For that I need good defense behind me. Because I’m not a strikeout pitcher, the guys know they are going to be busy in the field.

  “Song 2” by Blur is playing over the public address system. First up is shortstop Chad Akers, a right-handed batter with wheels. He’s a first-pitch hitter, so I start him off with a screwball on the outside corner. He
begins to move on it but decides to lay off. Strike one. To keep Akers honest and make my fastball look faster than it is, I throw the next pitch inside and straight. But it’s high and tight. He takes it for ball one. Baseball’s a game not just of inches but also of microseconds, and pitchers vary their speed to keep batters off balance. I figure he’s a little anxious and looking for a fastball away. My next pitch is a slower screwball away. Akers bites and hits a slow nubber to third base. Briller is slow to get to the ball but fields it cleanly and fires to first. Too late. Akers’s speed gets him an infield single. Shit, I say to myself. Off the field I don’t cuss much, but when I pitch I am as foul-mouthed as they come. I grab the toss from Lewis, our first baseman, and think, Don’t panic, just throw a double play ball and keep this guy close. As I wait for the next batter, I can feel the first base coach and Akers watching me. I don’t have to look into the RedHawks dugout to feel Simunic staring my way. I’m aware that there are four people in the league who despise my presence: Hal Lanier, the manager of the Winnipeg Goldeyes; Ed Nottle, the manager of the Sioux City Explorers (who called me “that thing” in a radio interview last year); Larry See, who is playing out his minor league career with the Thunder Bay Whiskey Jacks; and Simunic, who likes to spit on the ground whenever he catches my eye.

  As Steve Hine comes to the plate, Ozzie Osborne’s “Crazy Train” plays. Always liked that song. Hine doesn’t bother to look down to third for a sign but gets in the batter’s box like he owns the plate. Maybe he does—he’s hitting .385 against us this season. Last night, with two out in the bottom of the ninth, he hit a walk-off double to beat the Madison Black Wolf. Digging in, spraying lots of dirt around, making holes, Hine reminds me of a dog that just took a crap and now he’s trying to cover it. I say to myself, Fuck you, asshole, you are going down.