By age eleven I had become obsessed with hitting more home runs. In my first season of Little League, I had hit a couple, but they hadn’t cleared the fence—so to me they did not really count. I kept begging Dad to pitch batting practice so I could perfect a mighty home run swing. One afternoon we went to Behringer Park. After what seemed like hours into it, I had no success. I kept making the same mistakes—late on my swing and late getting my hands through. Despite the batting glove on my left hand, both hands began to blister. On one swing, the ball hit my left hand—I was too tired to get the bat around on an inside pitch. I broke down and cried. Dad yelled, “Get back in the box.”
When I said I couldn’t, he replied, “We’re not going home until you stop crying. Now step in the batter’s box and take another swing.”
I did but once again couldn’t get the bat around on an inside pitch, and the ball hit my hand again. My knuckles were swelling and bloody. Something turned inside me, something I had never felt before. I stepped into the box in a rage without tears, determined to hit the ball right back at him. I wanted to hurt him. I hit a line drive off his foot. It did not faze him—or me. On the next pitch I wanted to hit the ball right at his head. I swung as hard as I could, and, for the first time, hit the ball out of the park. Suddenly the rage turned to joy. In the years to come, there would be plenty of injustices to rage about, and I would remember that afternoon when I learned to channel and control my emotions on the field. Bloody hands and all, I hit for fifteen more minutes, now belting the ball deep. I felt invincible, like I could do anything. Afterward Dad shook my hand and, for the first time, as far as I could remember, gave me a hug. “Ila, that’s what makes a winner,” he said. “Someone who never gives up, works hard, and is determined. Congrats, you did it.”
For me, the joy I found in the game would always be mixed with pain. But in that moment at Behringer Park, I knew what it took to excel in baseball and would take that energy into my next two years in Little League. Dad was a great coach. He knew he would not always be there to cover me as I went deeper into baseball, and over the next few years, he would test me to get me ready to deal with the adversity as well as the glare of attention coming my way.
“It’s up to you,” he told me. “But if you want to be successful you have to start working out twice as hard and twice as long as the guys. The injury to his pitching arm years ago had prompted him to research conditioning—exercises, elastic bands to build strength. He believed in being proactive. “For starters,” he told me, “to keep your arm healthy do your exercises three times a day, and run.”
My dream of making it to the major leagues did not waver, but I was beginning to understand the obstacles Dad talked about. For the most part, the guys I played ball with were fine with me. I could get guys out, so they wanted me on their team. At age eleven, I learned to hit the curve ball, a skill that is the great divider between players who continue in the game and those who fall away. “Read the seams,” Dad would say. “Keep your head still and watch the seams as the ball approaches the plate, to see which way it’s gonna go. Read the seams.”
In this way I lost my fear of getting hit by the ball.
To keep my bat in the lineup, my coaches played me at short and first base when I was not pitching. Opposing pitchers, though, still sometimes threw at me—not exactly up to the youth baseball code, but that’s how it was. As the teams got used to me, though, the opposition began to fade. Yet I still heard the catcalls from the stands. It was the Little League mothers and fathers who were the angriest. During a game, a Little League mother said to Mom: “How can you let your daughter play a boy’s sport?”
Dad recalls a Little League father confronting him: “What are we supposed to do, put dresses on our boys and send them to school?”
As the jeers continued—and because she had two young kids at home—Mom stopped going to my games. Sometimes I felt like I was out there on my own, trying to perform while I shook off the insults being thrown at me. I knew it was hard for Dad to not clobber the critics. One day I saw him fume while a parent screamed at us as we left the field. Dad didn’t blow up, he just kept walking to the car. I asked why he didn’t say anything back and shut the guy up, and he repeated his mantra about winning: “Some people will never understand or accept your dream, no matter what you do. So don’t give them any reason to stop you. Stay out of trouble, turn the other cheek, and just perform. People want to be with winners. So win.”
In my first full season of Little League, I showed that I was there to stay. Few home runs are hit in the majors, and the elite players usually hit the few balls that do go over the fences. Players can win the home run title with just a couple. I hit my first one, a solo shot over the centerfield fence, as Dad watched. Rounding second, I caught his eye and waved. I hit one more that season, but one of my teammates on the White Sox, Stephen Pereira, won the home run title with three. That year I was named to the all-star team.
We went on a roll, rallying against Metropolitan of Norwalk to win 11–6, beating the same team again 2–1. Pitching against Eastside of Norwalk, I threw a one-hitter, with eleven strikeouts and five walks. My friend Mike Moschetti’s two-run homer was the only score of the game. The next day Mike matched my one-hitter for another 2–0 win. In the third round of the tournament I had a no-hitter going for four and two-thirds innings before giving up a hit. I drove in the only two runs we scored with an RBI single and a home run. We’d made it to the semifinals but were losing 4–2 until we rallied with four runs in the third inning and four more runs in the fourth. We played Metropolitan again for the tournament championship and won a nail-biter, 2–1. For the first time in ten years, the La Mirada major division all-stars had won the district 29 tournament. If it’s possible to be high on baseball, I was. We went on to the Big League sectional tournament in Long Beach to compete for the western division district 3 championship. But our ride ended there.
My record should have convinced any remaining critics that I was for real. After all, they couldn’t argue with my stats, but some coaches’ and parents’ thinking was stuck in the past. I was able to compete in Little League because of the girls and their parents who fought for their right to play in the 1950s and ’60s. Little League spent nearly $2 million defending lawsuits in fifteen states to keep girls out, which I will never understand. I am so gosh-darn grateful for those girls and for the New Jersey judge who ruled in 1974 that a girl from Hoboken, New Jersey, named Maria Pepe could play. By then, Maria was in high school, too old for Little League, but she and the others who would not take no for an answer made all the difference for those of us who followed. In response Little League immediately launched a division for softball, which has become the organization’s de facto sport for girls.
In spite of the dramas that played out on my Little League diamonds—or maybe because of them—by age eleven I had grown into a confident daredevil. If there was a challenge I was all over it, ready to squash the idea that it could not be done. Borrowing the next-door boy’s Honda 125 dirt bike and popping wheelies all the way up our driveway was a favorite stunt. These boys were older than me and could not do it, so of course I had to try. What made me successful was that I didn’t even think about the pain of falling. Mom knew this about me, and it worried her terribly. I especially enjoyed riding my bike off the roof of our house and trying to land correctly on the Bermuda grass lawn or, even better, into the backyard pool, with an audience of Leah, Phillip, and the neighbor kids. One day, with only Leah watching, I rode my bike down the shake shingles of our roof as usual and lifted off. This time I overshot the grass and hit the asphalt. My chin went numb, and I could feel blood running down my chest. Leah started to scream, and I remember thinking, Oh, no. Mom is going to freak out, and Dad is going to kill me. My crying days were behind me, and I walked into the kitchen to show Mom the bad news. I remember her eyes opening wide, like she had seen a ghost. “Your bone is showing,” she said, and we were off to the emergency room.
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p; Fourteen stitches later, I faced Dad. To my surprise there was no beating that day; he just took away my bike. I am grateful that Mom did not put me on meds for hyperactivity, but I know that I drove her nuts with my energy and shrank her wallet by breaking our windows with baseballs. And always, I tried to fix things before Dad got home.
After my second year in Little League, I took Dad’s advice and began my own daily workouts. He never had to wake me up in the morning on school days, because I was already out of bed, doing my arm exercises; after school I ran, then did my second round of arm exercises; and right before bed I did the last round. I also ran whenever I could—I actually loved it because my hero at the time was Madonna, who liked to run. I saw the increase in my strength, the feel of solid muscle.
If I was a local celebrity on the field, by fifth grade I was also becoming known as the local rebel. In school, I had often gotten into minor trouble—from hitting the tetherball too hard at recess to playing with unauthorized worms in class. Seeing someone pick on an underdog made me really angry, and I would jump in to defend the victim. If Mom had put a bumper sticker on her car it could have read, “My kid beat up the bully that was picking on your kids.” I became known as the “good bully” of Dulles Elementary School.
I was also sneaking out of the house at night with my friend, Alyse Issac. I think that lots of people grow up with a friend like Alyse, who’s always up for anything. When we met in second grade, we quickly saw we would be partners in mischief. At night, we’d meet up down the hill to play football with some older kids. We also liked to ride around town with a girl named Janine Lindemulder, a softball star at La Mirada High School, where I planned to go one day. Alyse’s older brother had a crush on Janine—well, a lot of the boys did—and Alyse, who was into softball, really looked up to her.
On another night, I was riding around town in the back of a pickup truck crowded with older boys and girls when they started pairing off to make out. I was not afraid of a good fight, but this scared me badly. I had a crush on the sister of a guy I was playing with. All I wanted to do was be with her and kiss her. She liked hanging out with me, but when she fell for a guy named Kevin, my heart broke. And that’s the way it went over the next few years: one crush after another would find a boyfriend, and my imaginary romance would be over. I tried everything in my power to make my feelings for girls go away. I prayed, and when that didn’t work, I prayed harder. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I came to believe there was something terribly wrong with me, like there was an evil spirit lurking within. To keep it at bay, I accepted Christ into my heart and was baptized at age twelve. I was born again and awaited the transformation to “normal,” but it didn’t come. I continued to get crushes on girls, I continued to swear, and I continued to fight with other kids.
Looking back, I think fighting was the only way I could show my anger. At home Dad was the only one allowed to get angry, and on the diamond he had taught me to keep my emotions in check. With Leah, Phillip, and even Mom afraid to stand up to Dad, I appointed myself the defender of the family. I expanded that role by beating up on the neighborhood kids who teased others who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back. As fifth grade wound down that spring, I had two fights: one with a girl who had been picking on another girl, the other with a boy named Jason who had been picking on one of my friends. For some reason, he had a Halloween mask with him, and I grabbed it and beat him with it. The good bully had gone too far. Parents of other kids showed up at our house. Conversations were held. I knew that my parents did not like the path I was on, sneaking out at night, running around with older kids, some of them troubled, and beating up on people. With Mom pregnant again, I felt guilty for causing her grief. My parents weren’t the only ones worried. I worried about what was coming next—in our family and inside my own confused self as I approached puberty. Could I will myself to like boys? Would I still have a place in baseball when they grew taller and stronger than me?
Given my behavior, it should not have been a surprise when my parents told me that for sixth grade I would not be returning to Dulles Elementary School, where I had been confident of my place in kid society. I had never doubted that I was accepted for who I was—a loud, feisty, athletic girl with a big heart. Instead I spent sixth grade at the local Christian elementary school, where I knew no one. I went from being popular to not fitting in. I didn’t even fit into my own body. I was developing breasts and took to wearing sweatshirts to hide them. I call it the lost year. The great bright spot came early in December, when my brother Randall was born. The afternoon Mom brought him home from the hospital, I sat with him in my arms. It was the beginning of a lifelong bond.
Baseball became my sanctuary from all that went on at home and at school. Dad showed me how to use our isometrics machine to strengthen my rotator cuff, which I think helped me avoid shoulder injuries later in my career. When Little League season began again, I threw myself into the games. Early one Saturday morning, Dad brought me down to Behringer Park. He put a baseball in my hand and showed me how to throw a one-fingered curve, a pitch that the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Sutton had taught him. He arranged my fingers on the ball, and said, “Throw it like a fastball. I don’t care where it goes; just get used to the feel of throwing it.”
What was great about this pitch is that it didn’t add strain to my elbow because it’s thrown like a fastball. Most kids my age couldn’t do that yet, but I had really large hands, which helped me master it. It would prove to be a good pitch to master because I never did develop the elbow injuries that plagued other Little Leaguers who had started throwing the traditional curve at this age. At that time and place Little League had no rule against throwing curveballs or, for that matter, the number of pitches a player could throw in a game.
At age twelve, I had a golden season with the La Mirada White Sox, throwing two perfect games and three no-hitters. Sportscaster Rick Lozano of KABC’s Eyewitness News showed up to film me pitching. What I remember most from that game is the sixth and final inning. I had struck out all fifteen batters I’d faced and was going to move heaven and earth to get the last three. I got the first guy, but the next batter came up and tried to bunt, just so he wouldn’t strike out. His bunt went foul, and I remember my fury that he’d tried to avoid a strikeout. I threw the ball as hard as I could. Another K, or strikeout, and then the final one.
I was hearing sweet music from my coaches. My regular season coach, Patrick Van Horn, told a reporter, “You don’t get many 12-year-olds who can throw the ball with the speed and consistency that she can. . . . Last summer she was clocked in the 68 mph range. . . . Even for a 12-year-old boy that is unheard of.”
As the head of the sports program for the city of South Gate, Joe Moschetti had seen many athletes. So it meant a lot to me that as my all-star coach, Mr. Moschetti, liked my style. As he told my coauthor:
At twelve, her fundamentals were just so good. Nobody could touch her; she was dominant. She was one of the most competitive youngsters I’ve ever seen—and I ran a sports program for twenty years. I always felt that when Ila pitched, we were going to win. . . . This girl could hit the ball farther than most boys, including one home run that I figure went close to 300 feet. She was by far in the best shape of anyone on the team. I used to see her running in the park—this was before regular practice—and I didn’t see the other guys or my son, Mike, doing that, and he was a pretty good athlete. I think she knew she was going to have to try harder to play ball. I think she knew what she was up against, much like Jackie Robinson [did].
Yeah, Mike Moschetti was more than a “pretty good athlete”—the Oakland A’s drafted him out of high school in the second round of the 1993 MLB June Amateur Draft, and he played three seasons of minor league ball.
Over the sixty innings I threw that season I gave up a total of ten walks while averaging about ten strikeouts per game. I ended the season with a 9-1 record and a 0.75 ERA. At the plate, I hit .500 and struck out six times in fifty-six at bats
. The home runs so dear to my heart had started coming, too: I led the league with eight.
I was named to the La Mirada major division all-stars, and we made it to the western division district 3 championship game, one step farther than last year. I poured everything I had into that game, going the maximum innings allowed. I struck out seventeen, giving up two hits and two walks. At the plate I doubled and scored on Mike Moschetti’s double, and I repeated the feat in the ninth. I got three of the team’s eleven hits and figured in both runs scored. But in the thirteenth inning, we lost 4–2. Our season was over, yet I knew I had again proven myself. The city of La Mirada awarded me a certificate of appreciation. Many of the critics in the stands had quieted down. Dad had been right: I had to win my way into acceptance. Then I read that my hometown newspaper, the La Mirada Lamplighter, questioned how much longer I could play. And I learned that the father of one of my Little League teammates told Dad, “Soon as Ila becomes a teenager and puts on lipstick, she won’t make it.”
So it would come down to this. Would my baseball dreams be defined by lipstick?
2
Lipstick Adolescence
Game Day: Second Inning. Ever since I started playing ball, I’ve jogged to my position on the field and back to the dugout. I can’t stand the laziness of walking there. Coaches call this “hustle” and love it, but for me it’s also a sign of my impatience to get on with the game. After the Dukes go down fast in the top of the second inning—two strikeouts sandwiched around Rodriguez’s ground out—I hustle out to the mound.
Catcher Chris Coste, a homegrown boy from Fargo, is up. Right now Chris ranks ninth in the league in batting average: .333. He’s also third on the RedHawks in slugging percentage: .507. With those numbers he can afford to talk trash, but he hasn’t. He didn’t do it on the pregame radio show and hasn’t been part of the stare-downs from the dugout. (This is the same Chris Coste who will go on to the Philadelphia Phillies World Series championship team of 2008.)
Making My Pitch Page 4