As I was finishing college and hoping for a call from Organized Baseball, Dad had told me the consensus was that it would create dissension or be a distraction among the other players if I went to spring training camp for a shot with an affiliated team. As you can see by Moneyball, the film about the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s fight to change player evaluation, baseball is not often a game open to change, though when it is, it’s usually great—remember Jackie Robinson. Now, here I am, pitching for another win, and the guys are playing their asses off. It has kind of worked the reverse of how Organized Baseball thought it would go down. Here it seems the guys are playing even harder behind me. The problem was that the decision makers didn’t know me; the players on the Dukes do. Day by day, they know I’m out to win, just like they are.
Returning to the bench, I stare out on the field, concentrate on controlling my breaths, and try to relax with positive thoughts: the Dukes are winners. I look around at my teammates and think how different this is from college, when some of my teammates hated the very idea of me being on the field.
September 1993, Costa Mesa, California. As soon as I stepped on the campus of Southern California College (SCC), I could smell the ocean—it was a ten-minute drive to Balboa Peninsula or Huntington Beach, and that meant surfing. The school’s nine hundred students are screened from the rush of traffic on the nearby Costa Mesa Freeway by the tree-shaded campus. I headed directly to Vanguard Field, where I inhaled the scent of freshly cut grass and scuffed the rich red dirt of the infield. This field meant a fresh start, an escape from the teenaged angst of high school and the anxieties that continued to boil through our family. Just as I was getting ready to leave for college, my sister Leah, realizing that she would now be the point person for our father’s discipline, had run away from home. Well, so had I, just in a different way.
This campus attracted me in other ways, too. I had grown up learning about the world through the books I read. Here, away from the distractions of life beyond the campus, I would be surrounded by knowledge. I looked forward to the challenge of digging deeper into the mysteries of this world and the people in it. I also appreciated that this college, with its ties to the Assemblies of God Church, was far from the secular world of beer and frat parties. Curfew was midnight; attendance was taken at the mandatory Wednesday afternoon chapel. The school objective was to foster in its students a “[Holy] Spirit-empowered life of Christ-centered leadership and service.” That was my goal, too. I wanted to be a Christian role model for the baseball-playing girls behind me. True, there was that problem with liking women rather than men, but at this point in my life I was well practiced in telling God what I wanted Him to do and prayed regularly that He would set me straight. I put my faith in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
It was encouraging to learn that SCC was a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), an early leader in granting collegiate scholarships to women. Now I was the first woman to hold a baseball scholarship, though a partial one. The school was a member of the Golden State Athletic Conference, made up of Christian schools, whose code holds that “opponents are our guests,” umpires’ “honesty and integrity are never questioned,” and “an outstanding play deserves a hand—regardless of who made it.”
I had to wonder, though, whether these standards would survive the heat of a ball game. Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God preach that women must be subservient to men. I had been raised on hard-nosed Bible verses like I Timothy 2:12: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man.” How would a school with these values support a woman playing hardball? After all, a pitcher carries much of the responsibility for how the game goes, though I feared that some would cite this verse no matter which position I played on the field. Besides, what if they found out that I was gay? Pray harder, I told myself.
I also hoped to make some friends. That wish began to come true on my introductory tour of the campus. As we approached the immaculately kept softball field, I saw some girls playing catch. It looked like a pickup game was about to start. “Let me grab my mitt from the car,” I said to my guide. “I’d like to play.” And I left the tour.
I took ground balls and fly balls, hit ground balls and fly balls, and fed balls into the pitching machine for batting practice. I took some swings. These girls were good—the softball team was favored to win the World Series of the NAIA that year. At last, I thought, sports-minded girls like me, who want to have a good time playing ball, not just go out partying. I hit it off with everyone. For the first time in my teenaged life I began to develop a circle of friends and, with it, experienced a happy dose of the carefree adolescence I had mostly missed. Because preseason baseball did not involve travel I had plenty of time to chill with the girls I had met. We would go together to the basketball and soccer games and to movies, or hang out in the dorm and play cards. One friend helped me develop better study skills and taught me how to use the computer. (In 1994, like many of the other students, I did not own a personal computer, but the dorm had two computers that everyone could use). She also got me a job where she worked. Sometimes we went over to her parents’ place for a home-cooked meal. For spring semester I found two roommates to live with in the dorm that looked out to the baseball field.
Preseason baseball began the last week of September. I had come to college with a two-seam and a four-seam fastball, a curve, and an underdeveloped cut fastball. I knew I needed to develop new ways of getting batters out. Coach Phillips noticed my long fingers and showed me the split-finger, though I struggled with it—it is a pitch better suited to guys who throw ninety miles per hour or faster. Throwing the split-finger also bothered my elbow. Charlie differed from Dad in his philosophy on pitching, but I was there to pick up new skills. Charlie liked my split-finger pitch, but it never did work for me—whenever I threw it, they hit it. It would take a few years to find the out pitch that I needed for pro ball, the straight change screwball.
There was more to learn in other ways, too. During an early intersquad practice, I stood on the mound, peering in for the sign, even though I knew what I wanted to throw. I had felt good in the bullpen and was confident. Yet with every ball I threw, I was getting rocked; and the batters were laying off some really good pitches. Maybe I was tipping my pitches.
Finally our catcher, David Seeley, came out to the mound and said, “Had enough?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” I complained. “I feel good, I’m hitting my spots, and I have good movement on the ball . . .”
“Stop shaking me off, and then see if they hit the ball.”
“What?”
“I’ve been telling them what was coming every time,” David explained from his lofty position as senior. “Now quit shaking me off, freshman, and they won’t hit it anymore.”
I was ticked. David had pulled a time-honored catcher’s trick on an independent-thinking pitcher. (In Ron Shelton’s film of 1988, Bull Durham, Crash Davis will pull it on the rookie Nuke LaLoosh.) But I had always thrown my own game and did not want to live and die by my catcher. If I was going to go down, I wanted it to be because of my mistakes, not his. Sometimes I had to throw backwards, like a knuckleball pitcher, because I threw only seventy-eight to eighty miles per hour. Not a lot of catchers got that—they tended to make the same calls for every pitcher. We had a pitcher named Rick Homutoff who threw ninety miles per hour. Of course, he should throw lots of fastballs. Whenever he threw change-ups, he got ripped. Plus, I did not trust David. He was a senior trying to make a point and was also friendly with some of the guys who were giving me a hard time. But for the rest of that game, I threw the pitches he wanted and did much better.
After practice was over, I said to David, “You know a lot of the hitters in the league, and I trust your judgment. But sometimes I just feel more comfortable throwing certain pitches at certain times, like using my curve on a 3-2 count, bases-loaded situati
on. I explained that I was there to win baseball games, get my degree, and make it to the pros. I knew he just wanted to get his degree and become a cop. That season we would go on to develop a better relationship, but whenever he thought he was not in control he tipped my pitches. Still, there were times when I stubbornly shook him off. Then he would come out to the mound, and I would say, “Have faith in me.”
I held my own in the preseason games against local community colleges, giving up four runs and going 2-0 in eighteen innings. In December we played the alumni game. Pitcher Tim Fortugno of the Cincinnati Reds, the only SCC alumnus to make it to the majors, was on the field. Most of my coaches had been right-handed, but Tim was a lefty. He worked patiently with me, showing the nuances of using my fingertips for spin. His greatest gift was in teaching me how to take advantage of my left-handedness to perfect a good pick-off move to first base. He wanted me to feel like if someone got on first, I still had a chance to get him out. So he taught me to know my running counts, know my runners: do they go on first movement, or do they wait a bit, stay close but inch forward slowly? He coached me on finding my balance point, making a good slide step, and understanding the importance of fast feet. Switching up the cadence was the most important, and close to that was not giving away to the runner any clues about where you were going until the last minute. I practiced these skills for fifteen or twenty minutes a day on the ball field. Even in my dorm room, I would have my roommates pretend they were base runners and test my pickoff move. I still have Fortugno’s autographed photo: “To Ila, It’s been a pleasure working with you! Remember, focus on the glove, throw in a downhill plane. Success will follow! Your friend, Tim . . . Phil. 4:13.”
I liked the way Charlie Phillips handled our team. He was not hierarchical. On the field we called him “Coach Phillips,” but off the field it was “Charlie.” From the beginning of workouts, I had thought I was getting along pretty well with my teammates. I didn’t know about the heated meetings he was holding with some of them, or that a few of the returning players had told Coach Phillips they would rather quit than play with a woman. Charlie said he warned them, “If you can’t put up with this, you won’t be here.”
To which one senior reportedly replied, “Thank God I won’t be here.”
Another player said, “We’ll beat her out, so it doesn’t matter.”
As for players who worried how I would affect the clubhouse chemistry, Charlie pointed out, “We don’t have a clubhouse, so it doesn’t matter. And Ila uses the equipment shed to change into her uniform.”
During intrasquad games our pitchers sometimes threw inside to me, and I got hit a number of times. I also remember getting hit by pitches a number of times by our opponents in preseason games, but here’s where Charlie’s and my memories disagree. He maintains he used designated hitters during those games. I had hoped to play first base on days I didn’t pitch, but although Charlie liked my swing and I had been competitive in a home run derby, he had little room for pitchers to play positions on days we didn’t pitch—too many position players on scholarship to fill those spots. I was disappointed because I had always enjoyed coming to bat.
And then Coach Phillips announced that I would start the home opener. Traditionally this honor went to a veteran. Our ace, Jeff Beckley, was a junior and looking to go pro—no surprise that he expected to start. In my opinion he was also the biggest ass on the team. Jeff made a huge stink about me starting and rallied some of the other guys against me. I was just doing what I was told, but I could tell there were bad feelings about it. From what I could tell, Charlie did nothing to stop the plague from spreading. Charlie says that he knew Beckley resented the attention I was getting and discussed Beckley’s attitude with him many times. I think that Charlie got caught up in the drama of a woman starting a college baseball game, though I was not the first—in 1990 Jodi Haller had started in two games for St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. But if I won, history would be made. Oh, I was going to win. My confidence in this was solid. The night before the game, I stood at the window of our dorm room. The diamond below was quiet and dark. I imagined myself on the mound the next day going the entire game for a win. Too excited to sleep, I stayed up most of the night playing cards.
February 15, 1994. The campus of SCC is a frenzied blur. Reporters and sportscasters from the Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, ESPN, WABC, WCBS, WNBC, Fox Sports, and a television crew from Tokyo, Japan, crowd the sidelines, their cameras focused on my every move. I stare past them, refusing to speak to the press until the game is over. My classmates mill around the sidelines in “Jammin’ for Jesus” T-shirts and caps that read “In the Beginning God.” The bleachers, where a couple dozen friends and family of the team usually sit, overflow with hundreds of spectators. A crew from the nearby Costa Mesa Fire Department is here, as are some of my professors, Tim Fortugno, and Alyse Isaac, my friend since second grade. Construction workers in the scaffolding of the new dorm building pause when I step onto the mound. As usual Dad paces alone down the right-field line, cigarette in hand. So they tell me. Right now I see only the field. I’ll be pitching on pure adrenaline.
I take a deep breath, exhale, and stare at the first batter. If I face pressure, so do the Claremont-Mudd Stags—what if they cannot hit me? After Gabe Rosenthal flies out to center field, he angrily spikes his bat, which bounces up out of the dirt and hits his teammate in the on-deck circle. No damage done, though, except to Rosenthal’s ego. The next few batters go down in order. So far so good; my focus is the best it has ever been.
Early on my teammates behind me are edgy—our third baseman, Brian Penner, makes an error. We are in a pitchers’ duel and every out counts. Then, suddenly, in the bottom of the third, we break loose with eight runs.
“Hey,” yells a classmate in the stands to the opposing Stags. “Maybe you should put a chick in there.”
Pitching with a big lead in a game is like going out on the town with a bunch of cash in your jeans—you get to make choices. I keep a good rhythm going: mixing my pitches, changing speeds, and working the corners.
Top of the fourth, with two on and two out, Jake Schwarz becomes my first strikeout victim. Meanwhile, my teammates add insurance runs. I hear the crowd cheering, though at a distance. I’m in the zone, that blessed state of centeredness, a gift granted by whatever gods you believe are in charge of these things. For me that’s Jesus, and right now I feel His presence all around me. I pray for strength, wisdom, and peace of mind, and feel His calming smile.
In the stands, I later learn, Alyse Isaac relaxes as she chats with a spectator, Jean Ardell, who years later will become my coauthor.
“This is what makes Ila happy,” Alyse tells her, explaining that for me the game has always come first.
“Is Ila always this self-contained?”
“She’s smarter than a lot of us,” says Alyse. “She’s always sensed when to be open and who she can trust.”
A grandmotherly woman in a red hat nods. “She’s a cool one, that Ila.”
My teammates pick up the emotion in the stands. In the eighth a solo home run ruins the shutout, and I give up two walks. I throw thirty-two pitches before getting the third out of the inning.
Coach Phillips wants to pull me, get me a standing ovation and a graceful exit.
“How do you feel?” he asks. “Whaddya think, honestly?”
“I feel fine,” I lie. I want a complete game, a clean finish. I want all twenty-seven outs.
“Tell you what,” he says. “If you can get the first hitter, you can finish the game.”
Bottom of the ninth, and the spectators hang on every pitch.
“Go girl! . . . Put it over, babe!”
I try: after a ground out to short for the first out, I turn to my sinker and get two more ground outs. With that our 12–1 victory goes into the record books: first complete college game pitched by a woman; first college game won by a woman.
When the game ends, it is
like the mute button in my head has been released, and I become conscious of my place in this: 104 pitches; one run; five hits; three walks; two strikeouts; 1.00 ERA. My teammates baptize me with ice water. Our catcher, David Seeley, looks pleased.
“We were on a really good page today,” he tells a reporter. “She stuck with the pitches I called, except for maybe three times.”
As I stand on second base and look out at the mass of reporters on the outfield grass, I see a bouquet of microphones thrust in my face. My future coauthor is in the crowd, and I like the questions she asks. Not the usual “What’s a woman doing in a man’s game?” Later she will tell me that she was never more aware of the impact of my playing men’s baseball than when she stepped across the foul line to join the scrum of interviewers—as a woman she even felt a resistance in the air to crossing that line.
“I was confident, happy, in shape, superaggressive, and excited,” I say to the assorted reporters. “It was weird. I could hardly hear anyone off the field—it was as if I had gone deaf and was in tune only with my head and body. All I saw was David signaling pitches and the infielders telling me who had what base.”
The next morning sportswriter Mike Penner will declare in the Los Angeles Times, “Winning pitcher: Borders (1-0). That’s what it will say in the box score, now and forever, a simple notation that will stand as one of the greater understatements of our time.”
After winning that first game, I figured the novelty of my presence on the mound would fade. But that week Pat Guillen, our sports information director, fielded seventy-five to eighty interview requests. The athletic department’s secretary took more than 160 phone calls. Jay Leno’s Tonight Show called one morning. David Letterman’s staff called in the afternoon. ESPN2 arrived on campus for a live interview. Good Morning America and KABC radio did phone interviews. Paramount Pictures called. It seemed like I was in the local papers every day. Headline writers had a good time with my last name, finding all sorts of ways to play with the idea of the gender border I was crossing. Richard Dunn, of the Orange Coast Daily Pilot, kept regular tabs on me in his sidebar “Border(s) lines.”
Making My Pitch Page 9