As senior year began, I was still driving my brown Toyota Corolla but no longer worried much about my high school image. I was looking ahead to college. Steve Randall and Don Rounds coached varsity now, and I was the number one starter. In a telephone interview with my coauthor, Coach Randall recalled a tournament we played that year:
The competition was tough, and opposing coaches did not want her to pitch. But she turned those guys upside down, pitching one of her best high school games. Sixth inning she got into trouble and loaded the bases. Then she struck out the side. We won, 5–3. And the way she walked off the mound, I knew then she was something special.
I finished the season with a 2.52 ERA and was named the team’s MVP. Over four years of pitching at Whittier Christian, I had gone 16-7 over 147 innings, with a 2.31 ERA and 165 strikeouts.
When I was twelve years old a coach had asked Dad how far he thought I could go in baseball. Dad replied that it would be great if I could get a college scholarship.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” the coach said.
Dad always remembered that conversation. (We both knew I wouldn’t be the first woman to play college baseball: in 1987 Susan Perabo played a game at second base for Webster College; two years later Julie Croteau played first base for St. Mary’s College of Maryland.) During junior year, local community college coaches had started scouting me. During senior year, so did Jim Pigott, the head coach at Whittier College. Just as other students look for a good law school, business school, or medical school, I wanted a baseball scholarship at a Christian college where the players were seen by scouts in touch with organized baseball clubs. The school also had to be affordable. My parents had no money for college, which was not part of their thinking anyway. I would be the first person in our family to go to college.
Coach Rounds helped me organize my stats, told me how to write a letter, and suggested that I make a video. I showed him my drafts, and he edited them. I sent my package to twenty-five schools. Three colleges responded with “We want you”: Bellevue University, a Christian school in Nebraska; Dordt College, in Iowa; and King University, in Tennessee, with ties to the Presbyterian Church. We heard from schools in California, too: Westmont College, a small Christian school in Santa Barbara; Cal Poly Pomona; Cal State Dominguez Hills; and nearby Cypress College, a two-year community college. Dad pushed me to stay in California so I could play baseball year-round, though I could’ve done that in the South, too.
On the night before Christmas Eve, I watched as a tall, handsome man walked up our driveway to the front door. My parents welcomed him into our living room, and we all sat down. He was Charlie Phillips, a crafty, rather than hard-throwing, left-hander who had played for the great coach Rod Dedeaux at the University of Southern California. After the Dodgers drafted him in 1976, Charlie spent the late 1970s in the minors. He was now the head baseball coach at Southern California College (SCC), of the Golden State Conference, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), in Costa Mesa, about an hour’s drive from our house. I had sent him a newspaper clipping from the Orange County Register about me. I didn’t know that he had read it, had seen my high school stats, or had confided to his wife, Maiko, “I’m going to sign that kid someday. She’s something special.”
I fit Charlie’s trio of requirements: interest in spirituality, good academics (a 3.3 GPA), and athletic talent. He told Dad he wanted to work on my mechanics and help me develop a split-fingered fastball. He wanted me to be a starting pitcher. Dad liked that during Charlie’s four seasons at SCC nine players had signed with professional baseball clubs, among them the Blue Jays, the Cardinals, the Dodgers, and the Tigers, as well as a couple of independent league clubs. Charlie said that SCC was a great place to be seen by scouts. A big draw for me was that the SCC Vanguards also played division 1 teams of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) like Cal Poly Pomona and that they had a preseason in the fall. To me, that meant plenty of baseball, plenty of time to improve. I saw in Charlie Phillips a good guy with baseball smarts. I saw my baseball savior.
Charlie explained that he had only seven scholarships to spread over twenty-one players. He offered a scholarship that would cover half of the $4,500 tuition, though not room and board. He told me what I could expect in the way of financial aid, schooling, and baseball. As we talked, I felt a huge burden lift. It seemed I had a place to go next September. It was far enough away from home that I could live on campus but close enough to home so I could keep in touch with Mom.
I asked about playing girls’ basketball in college, too, a sport I enjoyed. But Charlie explained that it would be difficult to expect a baseball scholarship when I would have to miss most of the fall baseball pre-league games for basketball. My heart sank, because I truly wanted to play both. But with my main mission to play pro baseball, that settled it.
The letter of intent was on the table, and we read through it. Charlie could have vetoed the idea, but as he rose to leave he encouraged me to play girls’ basketball during my last semester of high school. “Relax, live it up,” he said. “Just don’t get hurt.”
When he left, he had my signed letter of intent.
Charlie had told us that he planned to tell his players about me before announcing it to the press. On February 4, 1993, I was getting ready to pitch when sportswriters from the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, and the Orange Coast Daily Pilot crowded around me. Suddenly I was big news. One reporter asked whether I realized the impact my presence would have on the team. I hadn’t thought much about it. I didn’t know that when the news broke, some of Charlie’s returning players told him how unhappy they were about the idea.
I took Charlie’s advice and played one last season of girls’ basketball. I was friends with Stephanie de la Corte, the team captain, and Denise Huizing, the co-captain. Both girls were motivated athletes, had boyfriends, and planned to excel in college. They did not seem to mind going out in my brown Toyota for ice cream after the games. I was excited to hang out with them. Denise was popular and told others to give me a chance, that I was fun and good-hearted. They did.
It helped that I had finally grown out of the awkward stage. My skin cleared up, my hair was soft, curly, and styled. I was getting pointers on how to dress. Guys started to notice and asked me out. I tried to be kind about saying no, using the line that I was saving myself for marriage. This seemed to make me even more appealing to them—though no one ever challenged me by asking how I expected to marry without first dating. I stopped sending “don’t hang out with me” vibes and became more approachable. I was learning how to be a friend and to be smarter and not just punch my way through life. I read books on psychology, the power of positive thinking, and visualization. High school life greatly improved. Looking back, I could see how fearful I had been to reach out to others. Now I was learning that when I did communicate and didn’t hide what was going on in my home life, I felt freer. Though I never told Denise I was gay.
At home things only got crazier. Dad and Hot Pants Lady were still together. Then a neighbor boy, who was a year older than my twelve-year-old brother Phillip, talked him into an adventure. They “borrowed” a Ford Thunderbird and drove it to San Francisco. Once there, they got scared and called the police with a story of being kidnapped. My parents got the call, and we all thought Dad would thrash Phillip. But by then Dad had mellowed somewhat—or just gotten tired—though he still held on to the threat of kicking us kids out of the house. We’d be living on the streets, he would warn. By senior year I didn’t care anymore, because I had a place to go. When Dad’s fights with Mom got too bad, I turned to Denise Huizing’s family, who lived two blocks away. They took me in and gave me a safe place to sleep. I spent much of my senior year there. The only time I went back to my house was to see Mom and my sister and brothers. Denise’s mom had grown up in a similar situation, and she understood. When I turned eighteen, she made me a birthday cake and we went out for ice cream. They were into academics and helped
me study. They were Christians but not fundamentalists. I admired the kindness of their relationships and the way they showed their faith, rather than lecturing about it. Being with the Huizings gave me a self-confidence that carried into freshman year in college. Sometimes Denise and I went out and played basketball until midnight. We played at a Catholic school down the street that had lights. One night Coach Randall showed up and shot some hoops with us before saying, “Girls, you better go home—it’s late.”
In June 1993 Denise and I graduated from Whittier Christian High School. I had encouraged Denise to go for a basketball scholarship, and she wound up at Chapman College, just up the Costa Mesa Freeway from Southern California College. I graduated with honors and received the National Army Reserve Scholar/Athlete award. At our graduation ceremony at the Crystal Cathedral in Orange, I posed for the family photo, but to me it felt false, a pose to present the image of our perfect family. It was a relief to know I’d soon be getting away from the troubles at home. I spent the summer practicing my pitching skills. Dad worked with me on the screwball. He wanted me to be able to throw the ball in both directions. But he resisted teaching me the split-fingered fastball, which he said would take years to perfect until I would be able to throw it on a 3-2 count and know it was going exactly where I wanted it to go.
It’s funny how adolescence goes. In a few short years my list of anxieties had shrunk. I had not just survived six years of boys’ (as well as three summers of men’s semipro) baseball but also had thrived in my chosen game. At age thirteen I had envied Janine Lindemulder and Jennie Finch for the easy path they chose in softball. But after Janine’s mainstream film career faltered, she went a different way. In 1992 she starred in her first porn film, Hidden Obsessions. She would become well known in her new field, in part for her refusal to have on-screen sex with men, only women. Meanwhile Jennie Finch was developing into a well-known softball pitcher. In 1992 she led the California Cruisers to the twelve-and-under American Softball Association national championship. La Mirada High School was later delighted with her arrival on campus, where she went 50-12 with a 0.15 ERA during four years of varsity softball. It only got better: on scholarship at the University of Arizona, Jennie would lead the Wildcats to the 2001 NCAA championship and was named National Player of the Year. Playing for the USA softball team, she won Olympic gold in 2004 and silver in 2008. In 2011 she coauthored Throw Like a Girl: How to Dream Big and Believe in Yourself. The book’s blurb says, “In a society that sends incredibly mixed identity messages, sports help preteen and teenage girls make the right choices. Athletic girls not only grow up to be healthier, they learn teamwork, gain self-confidence, and mature into society’s leaders.”
I think anything that helps a teenage girl gain self-confidence and discipline can shape them in a positive way and help keep them out of trouble. It can be playing a musical instrument, being on the debate team or student council, or playing sports. Playing baseball gave me strength of character: perseverance, determination, audacity, a good work ethic, and physical stamina. Yet I was also the odd one out because my dream was different from the norm. So often people—adults and friends—had said to me, “Take the easy road and play golf, softball, or basketball.”
“Easy” in the sense it was considered normal for women to play these sports. Well, what about Babe Didrikson, the golfer? She was a renegade for her time—more of a renegade than I, at age eighteen, knew. Besides, I didn’t want easy—why be afraid to step up and go after what you really want? And I wanted to play baseball. So I was called ugly, gay, and weird all through junior high and high school. Janine was called names, too, and some of the other girls on the softball team told her she would not amount to anything, and ultimately she took a different path. I made it through because I believed there was a God out there who loved me unconditionally. Jennie was the girl next door and fit the American girl profile. I was the opposite of that.
Looking back at Janine’s and Jennie’s and my paths, I have to wonder how responsible we are for our passions. Do we choose them, or do they somehow find us? Maybe we’re only responsible for how we deal with our passions. For people like Jennie Finch, the choice is a comfortable fit that’s acceptable within society’s norms. I envy her that. For others, like Janine Lindemulder, the choice takes you down a whole other path. And for some people, like me, it’s a continuing battle for the freedom to do what you love.
On my way out the door toward college, I knew that my decision to stick with baseball may have been difficult but was the right one for me. I was deeply grateful that my faith in God had kept me together through the uncertain times of the past few years. Now if I could just do something about being gay.
3
College
Pitching through Adversity
Game Day: Third Inning. The Dukes have two outs in the top of the third when Luis Brito and Chris Schmitz both single. But Anthony Lewis flies out, and the score remains 1–0 when I take the mound. The number eight and nine hitters come up this inning, and I tell myself to go after them and keep the ball down. Keep them off the bases for when the big guys come up again. One batter at a time, one out at a time.
It’s said that the difference between a pitcher’s success in major league baseball versus that in the minors has less to do with talent than with consistency and keeping your team in the game, even when you don’t have your best stuff. Every game day is different. Tonight is one of those times when I’m hitting my spots and my stuff is moving. Right now I’m so in tune with the ball in my hand that I can, in the instant before I release my pitch, add a last bit of pressure for even more spin. To sum it up, I feel great. So I step on the mound, peer in at Javier, and tell myself, Throw the hell out of this ball, Ila.
The first batter, center fielder David Francisco, has been hot lately—11-for-24. He bounces a grounder to our shortstop, Luis Brito. But Luis bobbles it, and then, trying to make up for lost time, throws it away. Oh, shit. A pitcher’s feelings about errors in the field behind him vary with the situation. Most pitchers will publicly say that it’s no big deal, that it doesn’t affect them, but sometimes it does. If the batter is a slow runner, no big deal; if he is a power hitter, no big deal; but the number eight hitter with wheels, with the top of the lineup coming up and a two-run lead over the first-place team—that is a big deal. I need to keep Francisco close and get a ground ball. I knew I had very few mistakes, if any, to make with Fargo. So this error was of the “Oh, shit,” variety but not a national tragedy. The ground ball misplayed by Boston Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner late in Game Six of the 1986 World Series, taking with it the team’s chance at its first World Series championship since 1918—for Red Sox Nation, that was a national tragedy.
With a runner on first, I pitch out of my stretch, rather than a full windup. Francisco is fast, though not as disciplined a runner as others, and I know he’s going to try to steal. Tim Fortugno’s name flashes through my mind. During freshman year in college, Tim, then pitching for the Cincinnati Reds, taught me an effective pickoff move. Successfully picking off a runner takes the pressure off the catcher and lets the air right out of a potential rally. And it makes the pitcher feel terrific.
Bless you, Tim, I think, as I come to the balance point in my stretch. I step off the rubber and hurl the ball to first base. But Francisco’s bolted for second. Plenty of time for the first baseman to throw to second—he’ll be out by a mile. Anthony Lewis, who’s filling in for the suspended Canseco, doesn’t cover, and the throw plunks the runner in the back of the head. Luckily the ball doesn’t roll far, and Francisco stays at second.
Fuck all over again. Light-hitting Cory Smith walks to the plate and looks to the third base coach for the sign—he’s likely to call for a bunt to advance Francisco to third. I throw a fastball inside and it’s a hit-and-run play action. Smith hits a grounder to shortstop for the out at first, but Francisco has indeed advanced to third. Okay, one out, and it’s still 1–0.
Chad Akers come to the p
late again—last time he had an infield single, so I think, Keep it low for another ground ball and give my fielders a chance. Our manager, George Mitterwald, calls time and comes out to the mound, along with our third baseman, Chris Briller, and shortstop, Brito. George tells Briller to stay close to third and remain even with the bag in case they try a suicide squeeze. Brito is to play his normal position and toward third. We need outs right now. We all nod seriously—we know we need outs—and return to our positions.
I deliver a screwball and Akers hits a grounder to shortstop. I hold my breath as Brito comes up firing to Anthony Lewis at first. His throw beats Akers—two outs now—but Brito forgets to check and hold Francisco at third. As Francisco digs for the plate, Anthony throws home. It’s going to be close. Javier blocks the plate, and Francisco collides with him. The home plate umpire jerks his thumb up and yells, “You’re out!” No runs, no hits, one error, no one left on base.
Holy shit, yes! Javier and I slap a high five. He is jacked, I am jacked: third out at home with the number two hitter coming up—a beautiful thing. The guys coming off the field go nuts, yelling, “Yeah, come on . . . Let’s do this now . . . Ila needs some run support.”
Making My Pitch Page 8