Making My Pitch

by Ila Jane Borders

  The Los Angeles Times called the frenzy “Ila-mania.”

  Being on an athletic scholarship, I felt obligated to cooperate. I asked the athletic department to not schedule interviews during practice, but sometimes they did. I began missing meals and struggled with my studies. After giving up three hits and an unearned run in another win, it all caught up with me. I pitched seven innings against the University of California San Diego (UCSD), eighth-ranked in Division III of the NCAA. The team’s players were a raucous, name-calling bunch. “Their players were very abusive,” Pat Guillen told the Orange County Register. “They were calling Ila names and using profanities throughout the game.”

  But it had been no different at our NAIA games, despite its code of ethics. Charlie recalls the worst he heard was at Christ College (now Concordia), a Lutheran school in Irvine. “We had beaten them twice and their players were all over her: ‘Didn’t know a pussy could throw a ball. Whose cock did you suck to get the chance? Your boyfriend hates you for trying to be a man.’ ‘Cunt’ was used a lot. This was a Christian school?”

  In our game against UCSD I threw 109 pitches, giving up four earned runs and six hits in a 4–3 loss. Afterward Dad intervened and cut the number of interviews. His position to the press: “You saw her pitch Friday—no arm strength. She’s worn out. If she doesn’t get some rest, she’s not going to be effective, and she’ll be off the team. And if she doesn’t get her grades, she’ll be out of school. Then there’ll be no story for anyone.”

  But the campus still buzzed. Charlie, my cool and supportive coach, seemed to be enjoying it all, though I didn’t know at the time that he too was overwhelmed. He remembers walking onto campus the day after our 12–1 win and seeing the story all over the sports pages of the local newspapers. “Media-wise I was shocked,” he said. “Later, with all the interviews, phone calls, et cetera . . . who would have thought?” He recalled listening to the radio one morning as he drove to school and was surprised to hear a local broadcaster named Charlie Tuna announce an interview with himself and me scheduled for 8 a.m. that day. We did the interview live on the school intercom so the rest of the students could hear. On the road, Charlie remembers arriving at the hotel and finding twenty requests for interviews: “I would call Ila and say, ‘Pick one or two.’ . . . We tried to cut down media stuff and limit things for her, both Pat Guillen, the SID, and myself, but Ila would at times bite off more than she could handle. She was young then. . . . It was crazy, but we all tried to keep it under control.”

  Charlie thinks the pressure of those days affected his marriage, which later ended in a divorce. “I’d come home at eight o’clock, and my wife would have a fistful of phone messages from all over the country.”

  If Charlie was affected by the intensity of the press coverage, so was I. The media attention during my prep years had been local and fairly benign. Now there was nowhere to hide. Maybe if I had been out of the closet, I would have handled the media attention better. I thought of Roger Maris, the New York Yankees right fielder whose successful pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961 had evoked an insane level of national media attention. No wonder his hair started falling out from the stress.

  Ila-mania also introduced me to journalistic dishonesty. One sportscaster reported that for my historic first game all of my teammates had worn adjustable caps in support of me rather than the traditional fitted caps. It is an important distinction. Adjustable caps are for Little Leaguers, fans, and wannabe ballplayers. Fitted caps are the professional standard, the serious cap. In high school, I always wore a fitted cap, cutting a hole in the back to accommodate my ponytail. The claim that my teammates wore the adjustable cap in solidarity for my ponytail problem was untrue. The truth was that our shipment of fitted caps had not arrived in time for the game, so we wore what we had. When the fitted caps arrived, I cut a hole in the back for my ponytail, as I always did. No big deal. But to this day, people believe that the Vanguards wore adjustable hats for me—they’ve seen the clip on YouTube.

  When I first learned of this account, I naïvely thought, How can sportswriters make up anything they want and say it’s true? It drove me nuts. Rumors spread that Whitey Ford—Whitey Ford, the ace of the New York Yankees pitching staff during the 1950s—called, claiming he had seen a TV segment of my pitching and had spotted a flaw in my technique: it was my habit to keep my index finger out of the mitt. It turned out that Ford had indeed left a detailed message with Pat Guillen’s office, urging me to keep my finger inside the glove to avoid a broken bone.

  I saw that some in the media worked hard to do their jobs well. Richard Dunn, who covered sports for the Orange Coast Daily Pilot, was one. And I remember talking a lot with Mike Penner of the Times, as he wrote regular updates on my season. Penner seemed to understand my side of things and always tried to get the details of his stories correct. And then there was former major league catcher Joe Garagiola Sr., the childhood pal of Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. Joe’s interview on March 17 for NBC’s Today Show was a blast. Joe, known for his humor, wanted to know the weirdest question I’d been asked by a journalist. My answer: Did I wear a cup or a jockstrap? But Joe’s questions were primarily about baseball. He had me throw him a few pitches—he cut his finger on one. Afterward, he said, “You have what it takes, you have good stuff. Don’t let anybody tell you that you need to throw the ball harder.” Then he gave me his business card and said to call if I needed anything. Wow, that was my first interview with an ex–major leaguer who thought I had a shot.

  If a woman plays hardball, people figure she’s likely gay. Despite the values espoused by the NAIA, opposing players and their fans often told me so. “The [t]aunts are vicious and vulgar, laced with profanity and sexual innuendo,” Sports Illustrated reported. “In sum, ignorance surrounds 19-year-old Borders.”

  The ignorance, though, was not limited to irate fans or ballplayers, many of whom like to attack whatever chink they can find in your facade. Some interviewers pursued me about the boys in my life, who I was dating.

  “Are you a lesbian?” a New York radio interviewer asked point blank.

  I wasn’t ready for that question.

  “No,” I replied. “I like men and I love baseball.”

  For Richard Dunn’s “Borders(s) lines,” I elaborated, explaining that “I want people to know that I’m still feminine.” I wanted to send the message that I liked dating guys.

  Well, journalistic dishonesty has two sides.

  I could not understand why reporters dragged sex into the conversation when I was there to talk baseball. I usually tried to bring an interviewer back to the game. People have a certain image of what a lesbian looks like, and with my long hair, I did not fit the stereotype, so reporters dutifully wrote that I was straight. I conspired in this, wanting to present myself as a good straight role model, despite knowing that I could never live up to that image. I also regret that I was deeply ignorant of my small place in the history of women athletes and the whole gay rights movement. The very year I entered college, SportsDykes: Stories from on and off the Field was published. It was an anthology filled with information written for someone like me. I wish I had found it. Had I read it, I would have learned that I was not alone. I would have learned from Betty Hicks’s essay “Lesbian Athletes” that “a major portion of lesbian athletes’ fortitude and energies must be directed toward maintaining straight façades.” And that “women athletes are perpetual targets of homophobic attack, most of it from straight males.” And these comments by Lynn Rosellini, in her essay, “The Lesbian Label Haunts Women Athletes”: “To most lesbian athletes . . . coming out is not yet worth it.”

  To this day I beat myself up over my ignorance and my falseness. But back then I was not ready to speak the truth, and I remain certain that my professional career would not have been possible had I come out. In 1994 few in baseball—or in the country—were ready to accept a gay player, male or female.

  The rest of spring semester was a blur of people and e
vents that spun me around, faster and faster. I threw out the first pitch for the California Angels in Anaheim and did the same for the Los Angeles Dodgers. On May 30, I flew up to San Francisco as the guest of Dusty Baker, the manager of the San Francisco Giants. Dusty had heard the tale of my seeing him hit a home run at Dodger Stadium and invited me throw out the first pitch of the game against the Atlanta Braves at Candlestick Park. Barry Bonds came over to talk with me about workouts: Was I lifting? he wanted to know. He gave me his phone number, with an offer to help. I became a fan of Bonds that day and remain one, despite his later fall from grace over performance-enhancing drugs. I shook hands with the Braves pitcher Greg Maddux and met the team’s first baseman, David Justice, and his wife, the actress Halle Berry. Fun stuff but not exactly in the rhythm of ordinary campus life. That rhythm was gone. With no gates or security guards, the campus was open to anyone who wanted to visit. Occasionally strangers would pound on my dorm room door to say, “Hi, please sign my ball.”

  A bus full of Japanese tourists stopped by to visit Vanguard Field, see my dorm room, and meet me. One afternoon a stranger came up to me at lunch in the cafeteria and snapped my picture. Sitting in the auditorium for my general psychology class, I would see professional photographers making their way up to my row for a quick snapshot. At first my professor thought it was pretty cool, but when it kept interrupting our class it became not so cool. I was mortified. Some of the encounters were good, though. At practice one afternoon, I almost collided with a man who had bent to pick up a baseball that had rolled off the field. He scooped up the ball, looked up at me, and said, “Ila! It’s you! I’m a fan of yours. Good luck!”

  This fan was an actor named George Gerder, who had appeared in Lee Blessing’s play Cobb, about Hall of Famer third baseman Ty Cobb. Gerder, a huge baseball fan, drove down from Los Angeles on the days I pitched.

  With little privacy left on campus, surfing became my release from the pressure. On my board in the Pacific, I could be alone. The waves challenged me, washing away some of the anxiety, and I found peace in the water. Sometimes spectators followed me there, and I would look at them on the beach, cameras in hand, and think, Take pictures all you want, but out here you cannot get to me.

  With the intense attention, my newly discovered sense of freedom evaporated. One night six of us met for a study session for English class when the media showed up. I know my friends felt uncomfortable about this, and it made me feel disconnected from them. I felt the old loneliness returning and began to revert to the aloof, stone-faced girl I had been in high school. Despite being raised in an abusive home, I was at heart a fun-loving kid, but the fun was fading. I wished for a protector, but Charlie seemed to be on a media high, so I did not feel like I could go to him for help. And Dad would just tell me to stop being a wuss or tell me to quit, so I never told him how bad it got. Dad had taught me to control my emotions. This worked great for baseball, and I felt like I could do anything in life because I had confidence in my body and brain. But I had trouble with female friendships. I didn’t want to talk about my emotions, or cry, or go out to dinner and talk—I wanted to go hit a bucket of golf balls and have a beer afterward. If I wanted my emotional stuff fixed, I took it to God.

  That spring I heard about the all-female baseball team, the Colorado Silver Bullets. A man named Bob Hope (not the comedian) had gathered a team of mostly softball players sponsored by the Coors Brewing Company, in Golden, Colorado. Under the coaching of Phil Niekro, the Silver Bullets had begun playing men’s college, semipro, and minor league teams across the country. They played their first game on Mother’s Day. My reaction was dismay. Their sponsor was Coors Lite beer, and their level of play felt like baseball-lite. Here were mostly softball players trying to play hardball. I would have felt the same if I had tried to switch from baseball to softball.

  One day as I walked on campus, I saw her. For reasons that will become clear, I have changed her identity. “Shelley” wore her black hair long, had piercing blue eyes, stood about five feet eight, and was skinny. She did not look like she belonged at SCC—she looked like she belonged in a rock band. I had never met anyone quite like her. I knew right away I wanted to get to know her better. I also knew I wanted more than friendship with her.

  The attitude toward homosexuality at SCC was curious. Everyone had been raised to believe that it was wrong, but I do not recall hearing it discussed in chapel or in class. Yet it was whispered that in our midst were gay coaches, instructors, and students. Things operated in a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” sort of way. As Shelley and I spent more time together, I was careful not to outwardly show my attraction to her. Even so, rumors began to spread that we were lesbians. The fact that I was at a Christian school did not protect me from the snarkiness of other girls. I noticed that some Christian girls had a tendency to focus on the appearance of how godly they were, rather than the reality of who they truly were. I started to see that Christians didn’t have the lock on good works and that the good works I saw done by secular people sometimes seemed more genuine, as they came from the heart rather than a desire to look good. I managed to avoid some of the girls’ accusations, because I was also spending a lot of time with the guys on the team, but the snarky girls gave Shelley a hard time and told her to dump me.

  “They’re just jealous,” I told her. To others I said, “God forbid you have two people of the same gender who get along, have a good time, and enjoy each other’s company. It doesn’t have to be sexual.”

  But deep down I knew I was in love for the first time and that I was loved back. I also feared that nothing would come of it. We talked it out, over and over. Our conversations showed how young we were.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “If you were a boy I would marry you in a second,” Shelley would say. “But I can’t. I want marriage and a family—and not to live that life.”

  I had never felt this way before and was not thinking straight. “Why can’t you just wait for me? I’ll find a way to make some money—and then I would give up everything for you.”

  “Maybe you could dress like a guy,” Shelley suggested. “Then we could be together and no one would know.”

  But she was torn. If we did not have to worry about going to jail for being gay, as in Victorian times, we knew we could lose everything if we gave in to our feelings—our families would disown us; I could be kicked off the team; heck, we could be kicked out of college. Yet, there it was: love. We held each other close and Shelley would kiss me on the cheek, but that is as far as we ever went. Our physical attraction was painfully real, but we never acted on it—we both were too scared.

  As the season got under way, another problem arose. The guys I played against had always given me flak; now some of my teammates began to do it. They resented all the media coverage coming my way. (I agreed and wished that things could be handled like Coach Rolland Esslinger had in junior high.) Rick Homutoff tried to mediate. He clued me in that two of our teammates did not believe it was biblical for women to be on the field. I know he told the guys to give me a break. Then Charlie broke the tradition that freshmen pitchers don’t start conference games. True, he was out of available starters that day, but some of my teammates held it against me. (I went six innings that day, giving up three runs, two earned, seven hits, and three walks). What also concerned me was that our assistant coach, Jim Kale, was close with Jeff Beckley, our jackass ace, and I sensed that Kale was less than happy with my being on the team. During pitchers fielding practice, Beckley would hit the ball as hard as he could at me. (This practice covers moving your feet, covering first base, and following the track of the ball.) When I shagged balls in the outfield—whoever was pitching the next day shagged balls—and turned to put them in the bucket, Beckley sometimes nailed me in the back with balls thrown as hard as he could. Charlie’s memory differs somewhat. “I remember guys throwing at her, but they all did it to her when we took batting practice and the shagging pitcher
was behind a screen from the hitters, and players would throw balls like it was hockey. I would assume guys threw more at her to see if she could handle it and see how tough she was. If it was during a drill I would have run all of them until they threw up. I did not tolerate people messing around during fundamentals.”

  But I don’t think Charlie was aware of a lot of the stuff that went on. And I was convinced Beckley had it in for me.

  Dad recalls standing alone near the right-field fence one afternoon when a ball whizzed by his ear. He turned and looked around: Beckley, who was warming up nearby in the bullpen, grinned sheepishly and shrugged. Dad walked up to him and began a one-sided conversation that went something like this:

  “You can throw at my daughter—she can take care of herself. You can throw at me—I can take care of myself, too. But I’m six-two, two-forty. So the next time you want to buzz me? I’ll take the ball and shove it down your throat so far you’ll be shitting baseballs for a week. Got it?” Beckley got it. He never threw at me again, but it didn’t stop him from going after Ila. . . . Do we hold Beckley accountable for how he was at twenty-one? I think if he just said he was sorry sometime, that could help.

  At the end of my freshman year I had gone to SCC’s president, Wayne Kraiss, to ask for financial help. I explained that on a partial scholarship I could not meet my academic and baseball responsibilities and still work. He had been kind to my father and me when we first met with him, and he quickly understood my dilemma. President Kraiss agreed to pay my full tuition. It was a relief to know that from now on I would only have to cover my living expenses and books. I looked forward to next season. I had gone 2-4, with a 2.92 ERA over forty-nine and one-third innings. Not bad for a freshman.