As the summer went on, my teenaged view toward life changed. One of my teammates was married with a child. His wife was pregnant again and having problems. I listened as he worried over his wife’s health and the baby’s. I had entered the adult world, with all of its complexities. Witnessing the fights and the swearing, encountering jealous and angry women, and listening to the men’s concerns for their families changed me. I still lived in my fourteen-year-old body, but my sensibilities were more adult.
September loomed and with it high school. Would I fit in with the team at this level—would I even fit socially into the teenage world again? After empathizing with the player whose wife had miscarried and escaping a knife-wielding woman, how could I relate to my classmates’ worries over what to wear to school or a bad test grade? Normally I would have attended La Mirada High School. That’s where Janine Lindemulder had played. I had been surprised when Janine didn’t continue her softball career—she was good enough to go to college on a scholarship. Instead, she turned to Hollywood. In 1988 she appeared as Janine Linde in an Italian-made film, Moving Target, followed by Spring Break USA and Caged Fury. La Mirada High School was also where Jennie Finch was headed to play softball. But not me.
In the 1980s, Title IX was murky about girls playing boys’ baseball if there was a girls’ softball team—it was the coach’s call. Given its strong softball tradition, La Mirada High’s coach told Dad that the baseball diamond was no place for a girl. No way was I going to play for him. Dad decided not to challenge the decision legally. He wanted me to understand that if someone did not want me out there, then go find the coach that does. His philosophy was, If you run into a roadblock, go around it.
Whittier Christian High School’s head baseball coach was Tom Caffrey. His son-in-law, Steve Randall, had umpired a game I pitched and told Dad that he liked my ability and my attitude. Coach Randall, who coached frosh-soph baseball at Whittier Christian, was concerned about how I’d be accepted by the guys on the team. After he spoke with Rolland Esslinger, Coach Caffrey was willing to give me a fair shot, according to Dad. If I was good enough, I could play frosh-soph baseball.
The policies of a private Christian school such as Whittier, unlike those of a secular school, would continue the conservative values I was taught in middle school. I wouldn’t go to dances here, but I would attend chapel every Wednesday. Yet this place was open to giving me a chance when the public school would not. This difference was curious. In the late 1980s the Religious Right was strong in Southern California, earnestly trying to restore women to their “proper” role as homemakers in American society. Was it even biblical for a girl to play with the guys? Coach Randall said that he didn’t think the issue was an important one for the teachers and administrators at our school. And no one cited the Bible on me, though I held the impression that playing the game I loved was just not quite right. Nothing, God forbid, was said about gay girls. If there was a school rule about sexual conduct, I didn’t know about it. All I remember is the message in chapel about saving yourself for marriage. But it was tough to overhear a conversation Dad had with the father of a softball star, who casually said that despite being recruited, his daughter would never attend a certain university because the coach was a lesbian. So I was to be a Whittier Christian High School Herald, though a closeted Herald.
Coach Randall explained that no matter how talented a ballplayer was, no freshman was allowed to go straight to varsity. I was to play freshman ball. The boys were bigger now than most of the girls, and I had to work harder than ever to keep up. I got up routinely at five in the morning to run and lift weights. That spring I tried out for the team: one girl in a crowd of seventy boys. I had added a four-seam fastball to my pitching repertoire as well as a not-so-loopy curve that I’d tightened to a 10-2 arc. And I kept dabbling with the change-up. Would these be enough? I’d also be pitching from the major league regulation distance to home plate: sixty feet six inches. Luckily I’d been doing that since age fourteen in the semipro league.
After freshman baseball ended, three players were bumped up to the junior varsity team. I was one of them. I pitched one game against Orange Lutheran High School. In the stands that day I noticed a stern-looking man watching my every pitch. I knew who he was—varsity coach Tom Caffrey. Was he pleased to see a girl pitcher out there? I couldn’t tell from his expression whether he liked what he saw or not. Actually Coach Caffrey was thinking. It was one thing for me to play freshman ball—but varsity? It was 1990 and he had been coaching high school sports for thirty years. “I had to deal with some of my archaic attitudes,” he told a sportswriter for the Orange County Register. “Coming from the old school of baseball, that [girls competing with boys] just doesn’t happen.”
We won the game, and that night Dad received a phone call. “We’re going to the California Interscholastic Federation championships,” Coach Caffrey told Dad. And he planned to bump two of the freshmen up to varsity. I was one of them. I played first base in the fourth and fifth innings and was on deck when the last out was made. But I had achieved something: my record was 5-1, with a 3.05 ERA and fifty-one strikeouts; and I got to play varsity baseball as a freshman.
At age fifteen I again played Senior League. Our team ended up going all the way to the PONY League regional playoffs, just one victory away from the USA Senior League championship. In the bottom of the ninth, we were up by one run, with two outs and the bases loaded, when I came in to pitch. I got the hitter to hit a lazy fly ball to center field. With the runners going, our center fielder, Chet Van Horn, camped out under it—so much time to think. The ball hit the tip of his glove, and he scrambled but failed to recover it before it hit the ground. Game over.
Even though I was disappointed, I went up to Chet, and said, “It’s okay, we’ll get them next time.”
I could imagine how bad he felt. Chet’s father was the head coach, and you could see the humiliation in his son’s face. We never did get them next year—we aged out of Senior League—and I don’t think Chet ever played baseball again.
If the diamond was open to me in high school, acceptance off the field was not so good. I had lost touch with most of my elementary school friends, who went on to La Mirada High School. The culture at Whittier Christian, however, wasn’t very different: the guys were trying to be cool with their cars and seeing how many girls they could be with, while the girls were wearing makeup and sexy clothes, talking about the latest fashions, and dating guys. There was drinking and some drug use. Except for being a daredevil, I was a pretty straight kid. I never did try drugs, though I did drink alcohol. Alyse and I liked to camp out in our front yard with my neighbor Julie. Mom knew I was sneaking beer and wine coolers into the tent. She also knew that I was the kind of kid who, if told no, was going to do it, but if given the freedom to do it at home, wouldn’t be so interested. She was right. The longer the leash, the better I behaved. And when it came to tobacco, Dad once had me smoke a whole cigar to warn me off it. It worked—I vomited. What I wanted from high school was to learn, play baseball, and get a scholarship to college. I was driven at that age and didn’t want anything to get in my way. Sure, there were times when I wanted to go out and party, but I knew if I focused on baseball now, I could progress down the road. Besides, Dad would have thrown me out of the house—his threat whenever any of us kids got out of line.
Whittier Christian had a lot of kids from families with money. Our family was still struggling financially. Mom made sure our clothes were always clean, but our wardrobe was limited—I had a couple shirts and pants, and a pair of shoes. When my school called, it was not to talk about my grades or unexcused absences but to learn when the tuition check would arrive. To help out with the cost, I cleaned Mom’s preschool at night. Unknown to my father I was traveling the three miles to school on an old motorbike that had been lying around the carport. I kept to the side streets while riding to school, so my classmates wouldn’t see me and because I had no license to drive a motorbike. You might think this
would be seen as cool, but my classmates’ attitude seemed to be, “Look at her, she has no money, poor thing.”
If one quality describes my life at this time, it was loneliness. Thank God for baseball, or I could have ended up somewhere bad. I had way too much energy, harbored no fear, and could not relate to anyone my own age. I wanted to be part of a group of friends to hang out with. That group became the team on the baseball diamond once again. Everything that was wrong in my life disappeared when I hit the field. No worries over being unpopular, liking girls instead of guys, or dealing with my family’s drama—all I had to think about was what was going to get us a win. Away from the field, I took to wearing black, with Doc Marten–type boots. I went a little punk, with a pale face and my light-brown hair dyed dark. It sent the message that I wanted to be left alone, even though I really didn’t.
As sophomore year began, Coach Caffrey seemed impressed that I had survived another summer of heated semipro competition, and he promoted me to the varsity team. I felt that he was pulling for me to do well. He worked me hard at first base, giving me lots of advice, almost as if I were his daughter. Hyper kid that I was, I kept to a daily routine that involved an eight- to ten-mile run and six light workouts with weights. My change-up had developed to the point where I could trust it, and when the season started, I was the number one pitcher.
I avoided the locker room, instead seeking out a nearby bathroom to change in. But that didn’t mean I escaped the locker-room culture. Before the game we stretched on the field, and some of my teammates liked to test me by changing their jockstraps in front of me or throwing their cups nearby. They gave it up after a while, and I started to loosen up with them. After practice I sometimes took the position of catcher with some of our pitchers. I have good vision and could tell when their mechanics were off or when they were telegraphing their pitches. I started giving them pointers on putting spin and movement on the ball. Many coaches just say, “Get your hand on top of the ball,” when that has nothing to do with it. Other pitchers on the team threw harder than I did, but they envied my control. So I also told them how I visualized my pitches when I was away from the field. One of our pitchers finally said, “God, I learn more from you than our coaches.” I felt that too few players spent enough time on the mental aspect of the game—visualizing themselves being successful.
That season I had attention from one teammate that went beyond my pitching performance and coaching. When I’d eat alone outside, Jim would somehow find me and sit down. He was a nice guy, fit and kind of quiet, and I could tell he liked me. He introduced me to his friends. Other girls told me, “What a catch.”
“Wow, he looks like Mel Gibson,” Mom said.
Jim invited me to a couple of picnics on campus. One day we drove twenty miles down Beach Boulevard to Huntington Beach State Park. Other kids looked on while he flirted with me, but I had my eye on a girl. No matter how much I tried to like him, I couldn’t get there. I’m sorry to admit that I dated Jim because it made me seem straight. Sometimes I looked around, hoping to find a girl interested in a romance with me, but the world at the time showed me no one. I decided I would rather be alone than a miserable phony.
Another reason for not wanting to get too close to Jim was my parents’ arguments, which had spilled over from finances to just about everything. Sometimes when I got home from school, I’d stand at the door and listen for sounds of a fight. If it was quiet I knew it was safe to come in. Then I would jam into my room and hide. I couldn’t imagine bringing a boyfriend into this mess. Jim kept calling, but I stopped returning his calls. I’m not proud I broke off our friendship that way—I just wish I could have been honest with him. About a year later I called to apologize, but he never called back.
My good luck with teachers who recognized I was a decent kid, just different, continued in high school. I spent a lot of time with them, getting academic help. Math and science were my strong subjects, English and languages not so much. “I stink at this,” I complained to my English teacher. “I want to get better. Can you help me out?”
Over lunch, she worked closely with me. I admired her creativity and her kindness. Other teachers encouraged me to hang out in the science lab and the woodshop. I started to enjoy carpentry and learned how to use the tools. I was told I was good at it. While other kids sketched art, I was sketching houses. I brought home a report card that showed my GPA had risen to 3.5. I began to think I might be worthy of an academic scholarship to college.
Dad’s response: “You’re not giving enough time to baseball.”
I came to believe that nothing would please him, and I sometimes avoided him, so he wouldn’t bring me down. Meanwhile Coach Caffrey’s decision to let me play varsity turned out to be a good one. He had scheduled me to be a spot reliever and a sometime starter. Developing a good sinker helped my effectiveness. By midseason, I had thrown a one-hitter and led the team in innings pitched. I was named Cal Hi Sports Athlete of the Week. I ended the season with a 5-2 record, a 2.07 ERA, and fifty-seven strikeouts. That summer I re-upped for a third season of semipro men’s baseball.
For my junior year Steve Randall was now the head baseball coach. (Coach Caffrey still taught history but had retired from coaching.) Coach Randall had inherited only two returning players. Would we be able to stay competitive in the Olympic League this year? I was working on a circle change-up, which would successfully evolve into a screwball, and this new pitch added to my confidence. Any harassment I got was mostly from the girlfriends and parents of opposing players. After a game I’d go to my car and sometimes find flat tires that looked like they’d been cut with a knife. Our team’s second baseman, Eric Willie, worked at a gas station and gave me a hand. Dad had trouble with the continuing catcalls from the spectators and began watching my games alone, standing near the right-field foul pole. “I had to get out of the stands,” he said. “As a parent I had two choices: complain or step back. If I really tried to change those people it could end up in fist fights or hurt the chances for other girls to play baseball.”
At school, the girls could be critical, too. Coach Randall thought their mixed reactions gave me the most trouble off the field. As he recalled, “Some really encouraged her while some thought, What’re you doing in a man’s game? Or is it the publicity? They questioned her motives—just as a lot of other coaches questioned my integrity. Was I playing her for the publicity? . . . We kept wondering when . . . the boys would overtake her in physical ability, but about junior year we realized she [had] the tools to make it.”
After my years of semipro baseball, the doubts and criticism didn’t faze me. It was the hitters I faced that tended to be fazed.
As our catcher, Brock Lumsford, observed to a reporter, “The hitters ask, ‘Is that a chick out there?’
“I say, ‘Yes, and you’d feel pretty dumb if she strikes you out.’”
Our left fielder, Chad Callahan, told a reporter that the “fear of striking out against a girl does work to [my] advantage. When they first see her, they say, ‘Gosh, I can’t strike out against a girl,’ . . . It definitely has an effect.”
I struck out a satisfying number of players that year and made the All-Olympic League first team. One day I was going to be late for practice. I blew my cover and, trailing my usual bag and mitt, rode my motorized dirt bike onto the field and parked by the dugout. My coach suggested that it wouldn’t be a good idea to do that again—these bikes weren’t legal to drive on the street. Dad also freaked out when someone told him about it. Time for a car, he decided. I got a 1976 turd-brown Toyota Corolla. The color embarrassed me, perhaps because I was sixteen.
By contrast, Mom was not ashamed to drive us kids all over town in her ’85 Chevy truck. She was the coolest of moms. My brothers’ and sister’s friends always liked coming over because of her—they called her “Mom”—and our home often looked as messy as a frat house. When I forgot my mitt, which happened too often, she’d drive it over from the preschool. She was my comfort when things i
n baseball went bad. Though I never told her everything that went wrong, she somehow knew when things were tough and found a way to make me laugh or took me on a quick trip to the beach or the mall to get away. Much as I loved Mom, I was dying for a strong female role model. Madonna was someone I could look up to—a woman who did what she wanted, worked hard, stayed in killer shape, and made things happen. She inspired me not only to get into running, which I did whenever I wasn’t working out or playing baseball, basketball, or golf, but also to stand up for myself. I played Madonna’s music all the time.
Dad continued to mold me into a warrior. He taught me to change a tire on my car in ten minutes or less; change the oil; replace the fuses; sand, buff, and pinstripe a car; and jump-start the battery. I thank him for making me tough, handy, and independent. But his anger took its toll. To this day, someone can yell at me at the top of their lungs or try to humiliate me, and as the voice rises I tune them out. I was determined not to hate Dad—I wished him well—I just did not want to be angry like him.
The Heralds ended with a 4-11 record. Coach Randall said that my 3-4 win-loss record did not accurately reflect my performance, pointing out that in the four games I lost, the opposing team had scored three or fewer runs, and that I led the staff in strikeouts (thirty-nine), innings pitched (thirty-five and two-thirds), and complete games (four). My ERA was 3.25. He also appreciated that my fastball clocked at eighty-three to eighty-four miles per hour.
In the summer of 1992 the movie A League of Their Own came out. The director, Penny Marshall, had had trouble raising money for the film because Hollywood’s financiers did not believe people would pay to see a story about women playing baseball in the 1940s. They were mistaken. The movie was one of the ten highest-grossing films of the year, and its popularity continues. You could say that the movie proved to have legs in an important way. When Leah and I went to see it, my first thought was, Skirts? These women had to play in skirts? Given my junior-high phobia about that piece of clothing, this aspect of the film was awful. But Dottie Hinson, the character played by Geena Davis, appealed to me. She was strong, the catcher who led the team. Yet she still had to fit that role of the all-American girl, the feminine wife of the husband away at war. I watched the story unfold, knowing I was never going to be that sort of person. I also envied the League’s camaraderie, singing together a cappella as they traveled the Midwest from game to game. I’d had a taste of that closeness on the girls’ basketball teams I’d played on and missed it.
Making My Pitch Page 7