Making My Pitch

by Ila Jane Borders

  In Japan I had become a player of interest. Japanese reporters flocked to watch me play all season. That was surprising, as I had always believed that the Japanese, despite not having a Southern Baptist tradition, saw women as subservient to men. But that would not be my experience at all. When freshman year was over, I was invited to quit SCC to play for Tokyo University. Instead I accepted an invitation from the World Children’s Baseball Fair (WCBF) to go to Miyazaki, on the island of Kyushu, Japan. At the college and professional games I attended, I saw that baseball in Japan is like football here or hockey in Canada. Every pitch, every batter, and every inning, people were on their feet and sounding off with their hand-held clappers. They appreciated the game like I always had, and they accepted me. I loved Japan, with its culture of family, baseball, fun, strong work ethic, and good citizenship.

  The WCBF was founded in 1989 by Sadaharu Oh, Hank Aaron, and Dr. Akiko Agishi. Each summer about two hundred children from nations like Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Canada, the United States, Australia, and Spain, are invited to attend for a week. Each morning ten coaches teach the game’s fundamentals to their group of kids—pitching, hitting, base running, and sliding. Afterward everyone takes part in various events, the idea being to promote a better understanding of different cultures through baseball. You do not need to speak the same language to have fun with baseball and develop friendships by playing together. I pitched forty-five minutes of batting practice to the U.S. and Japanese All-Star Legends, including Lou Brock, Dock Ellis, and Harmon Killebrew, in hundred-degree heat and 70 percent humidity. I also threw in the bullpen. Given my large hands, a number of players tried to teach me the knuckleball; but, like many pitchers, I never could master it. Ozzie Virgil Jr. went out of his way to encourage me. I think it was Ozzie who told me, “You have enough speed to make it. You just need one more pitch.” Ozzie showed me a straight change and I tried it with a twist and so began to develop a screwball. When I returned home, I showed the pitch to Dad, who worked with me. I moved my thumb up on the side of the ball and put a different spin on it just before release. That pitch would become my out pitch in professional baseball.

  That first trip to Japan was a kaleidoscope of fish farms, rice paddies, green mountains, and tiny cars. I got lost in the subway system, attended a tea ceremony, and learned a few Japanese words. On one occasion we were in downtown Tokyo and someone left their camera on a street-crossing pole. When we returned one hour later it was still there. I admired the Japanese values that allowed that. One night I ran a mile through a horrific rainstorm to an Internet café to check my e-mail in hopes that Shelley had written. She had. I thought about staying on to play baseball in Japan, but with Shelley back in California I could not accept living there without her. I also worried about living my lie there. They would surely get rid of me if they learned I was gay. Had I thought I could be accepted there, I might have stayed.

  To me, baseball and running have always gone together, not just because speed is one of the game’s five tools, along with hitting, hitting for power, throwing, and fielding, but also because the game gave me a great escape from our family’s troubles and, when I was on the field, an escape from the worry over my love for a woman. Maybe that’s why Japan, an ocean away from these worries, was so appealing.

  At the beginning of sophomore year came a material bonanza for the whole team out of all the media hype. The Japanese baseball equipment company SSK took an interest in my pitching. They filmed two commercials, with most of the team participating. They couldn’t pay us (eligibility rules), but our team got new uniforms, gloves, and cleats. Charlie was delighted, as he usually had to scrape up money out of the college’s budget for equipment.

  Over the summer I had pitched only about twenty innings. It was not nearly enough, and it showed up when the season began. I was slated to be the number three starter and in my first game faced last year’s nemesis, UCSD. In three and two-thirds innings, I gave up nine hits and six runs (four unearned). It got worse. On my twentieth birthday I pitched at San Francisco State. In the worst outing of my life, I got rocked for seven runs and thirteen hits. Alone in my hotel room I bawled my eyes out. The bad streak continued. My mechanics were off—Charlie urged me to pitch inside more—but the competition was tougher and my confidence was low. Opponents were hitting .406 against me, and my ERA was 8.80. I made fourteen appearances, twelve of them starts, without a win. The drought finally ended at home with a ninety-six-pitch, 11–7 win over Claremont-Mudd.

  But by then, Charlie Phillips was on his way out. In a game at Point Loma Nazarene College in March, Charlie had been ejected after arguing with an umpire. Charlie did like to chatter during games. As he told the Los Angeles Times, “That’s baseball. . . . You have to protect your players and gain their respect.”

  Charlie’s college coach had been Rod Dedeaux, known to be a maestro at teaching his players how to get into the heads of the opposing team. Bench jockeying, it’s called. (In 1976 Charlie had won the team’s Vic Lapiner Award, also known as Captain of the Bench). Likely the constraints of the NAIA code were tough for an award-winning bench jockey. But on this particular day at Point Loma, Charlie was in the clear as far as I was concerned.

  At the Point Loma game, during their argument, the ump had shoved and sworn at him. Back on campus President Kraiss called Charlie into his office to discuss his use of profanity, which was in violation of the NAIA code. Charlie explained that the ump was the only one using profanity. Pat Guillen, our sports information director, backed him up; I hadn’t heard Charlie swear either. Charlie considered the matter closed. But early in May, President Kraiss, who had definitely not trained with Rod Dedeaux, mailed Charlie a note, stating that he “should not anticipate receiving another contract,” according to the Times. President Kraiss told the Times that “he and Phillips had some philosophical disagreements, among them a dispute whether coaches should badger umpires.”

  I thought Charlie’s treatment was unfair. To me he handled himself well with the umpires. Charlie knew rule-wise we were not supposed to be able to bench jockey like he had in his college days. In the NAIA, you could ride your opponents, but if the ump heard, you were usually warned and then ejected. I think SCC wanted a more passive coach who didn’t question the school’s position. But Charlie came from USC and pro ball, and that’s how things went. He went to bat for his players, and we appreciated that. The school, on the other hand, did not. The players on our team came from different states and from very different backgrounds. I can’t speak for them, but I never heard them complain about how Charlie conducted himself on the field.

  After making the playoffs four years straight, we had failed for the second year in a row, so maybe that was a factor. President Kraiss was a formal and proper man who dressed in suit and tie. I had never known him to attend one of our games, and I had to wonder if he knew how much swearing goes on in the game of baseball, even in the NAIA, and if he was aware of the language that had been directed at me: blunt references to female body parts and threats of rape.

  That spring relations with some of my own teammates improved. It came about because of a midnight phone call in February: three of our players had gone to Tijuana and got drunk. For some reason they had no ride back and called, begging me to pick them up at the U.S.-Mexico border. I did what a good teammate does—snuck out of the dorm, hopped in my car, and made the ninety-mile drive down the San Diego Freeway. I found the guys at the checkpoint and piled them into my car, where they slept all the way back to school. We didn’t discuss the adventure at the game we played that afternoon, or ever, but they started backing me up more.

  One of the highlights of that season came away from the diamond. One afternoon I picked up my mail and found a letter from Cooperstown, New York. A new exhibit was to be added to the Diamond Dreams: Women in Baseball wing at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. My SoCal (no. 25) jersey, along with my glove, cap, and baseball, as well as photographs, would go up on the wall. I th
ought it was a joke at first and had to read the letter over and over to accept that it was true. I was beyond thrilled. I showed the letter to Charlie and to Pat Guillen, who gathered the requested equipment and mailed it off to Cooperstown. I did not have the money to travel there to see the exhibit for myself but would hear from friends who did.

  All through sophomore year, Shelley continued to be pressured by friends who wanted to set her up with guys. She resisted, which only fueled more gossip. So if Shelley was there when I went to the cafeteria, I sat somewhere else. And all the while, I would be looking to catch her eye, wanting her to agree that this was all so stupid. As for stupidity, consider this: earnestly complying with the media’s portrayal of me as the poster girl for the all-American Christian athlete, I did an interview for a magazine called Youth 95 for its March–April 1995 issue. The Worldwide Church of God published the magazine: “Because we care about teenagers around the world. We’re dedicated to showing that God’s way of life is relevant, interesting, and helpful to today’s teens.” The issue opened with an article titled “Would the Real Christian Please Step Forward?” The writer wanted to know: “Just what is a real Christian, anyway? And how can you tell the phony from the real?”

  Flip the page and there was a photo of me, smiling through my lipstick. The headline read, “Will she wind up in the big leagues?” Listed was my “personal stuff: Goal—to make the majors; PE major; writes ‘Psalm 37:3–5’ on every ball she signs,” and “fave saying: Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

  I was struggling mightily with Psalm 37:3–5: “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this.”

  That was just not happening. And “don’t judge a book by its cover?” That’s just what I was seeking—to be judged by my “cover,” given that I was, at heart, gay. I felt like a fraud.

  On campus I was easy prey for anyone who wanted a piece of my life. Letters crammed my mailbox at school until the administration gave me a separate post office box. Men in the military proposed marriage. I also received a letter from a man in prison. He signed the letter “Dracula.” I cannot recall what he had done to land in jail but he now offered a marriage proposal—we would meet up when he got out. Because I tried to respond to everyone, I wrote back to Dracula, thanking him for his support and wishing him well. I thought that would be the end, but his letters continued for several months. I always worried that he might show up on the field or at school. I also heard from Bible-thumping women who berated me for sending the wrong message to girls and boys. A woman in Alabama was especially incensed with me: here I was at a Christian school, and ladies were not supposed to be playing baseball with men. To clear my head, I gravitated to the field late at night. One of my fondest memories of SCC is those quiet moments there. I’d lie down on the mound, look up at the stars, and reflect on the beauty of this game. Other nights, when I needed to burn off energy, I ran the track. Usually I did not wear headphones so I could be heads up—paranoia doesn’t mean somebody isn’t after you—but one evening I put them on anyway to drown out the negative comments that too often played through my mind . . . Lap three: I’m into the music and beginning to break a good sweat when suddenly someone grabs my right shoulder and throws me to the ground. Two other guys are with him—I recognize one—he’s a teammate. I pull my knees to my chest, and wrap my hands around my head in defense. As they yell and kick and rip at my clothes, I remember thinking, Oh, God, I’m at a Christian college and I’m about to get raped. Then I go into a white rage. I start kicking back and screaming. I know my teammate wants me to see him, that he wants to put the fear in me so I’ll quit the team. Suddenly they leave, running, and I’m left on the ground. My virginity intact, I stand on shaky legs and hurry to my dorm room. No one is there. I feel like an idiot—Dad would have said, “It was your fault for not being heads up.”

  When my roommates walk through the door, they know something is wrong by the dirt on my clothes and the odd look on my face.

  “Why are you acting so standoffish?” they want to know. “Why is your face all ashy?”

  “Oh, I just got spooked by someone,” I say. I want to tell them the truth but know they would make me report it, and then it would be so easy for the administrators to say, “See what happens when you put a female in a man’s role?”

  The attack hardened me. I took kung fu lessons and tried to bury the memory.

  Because so many guys had threatened it, I figured that I was probably going to be raped at some point in my quest to play professional baseball. Perhaps this sounds harsh, but I decided to not let anyone break me by taking my virginity—if it were to happen, I would not let the rape mean anything to me. Only the person who captured my heart mattered. I was, and still am, able to turn off a switch in my head in order to endure a lot of pain. Just like that time freshman year when my roommate saw where the baseballs had left bruises and imprints of their seams all over my back. So I borrowed a friend’s dildo and took my own virginity. I remember seeing blood and wondering what I had done. I just didn’t want anyone to take anything from me that was precious, so afterward I felt relief. It was a solitary act I now find sad.

  I was between role models. Growing up it had been Madonna—strong, confident, and independent. As in high school, I turned to a teacher. Most of the faculty was encouraging and worked with my baseball schedule. Then, during sophomore year, I signed up for the mandatory Western civilization class taught by John Wilson. Professor Wilson was open-minded, a Democrat like me in a mostly Republican school, and a lover of baseball. He usually sat in the stands for the games. I could tell that he was pulling for me, and I enjoyed talking with him. We kept in touch after the semester ended. Otherwise I could think of no one to turn to except God, and that was not going well. For the first time I questioned my spiritual beliefs. If Christians had to be straight, why had He allowed me to be gay? I wanted to be seen as a child of God, not a reject. But I did not fully accept that He was in control; I wanted control, perhaps because there had always been so little stability around me. I had been attending Calvary Chapel, a nondenominational megachurch, in Costa Mesa. I liked hearing Greg Laurie preach there, though always with the dread of hearing a comment about the abomination of homosexuality. I never did hear it, but I knew where the church stood, and it excluded someone like me.

  Campus gossip and the media’s scrutiny of my sexuality had lessened, though my own uncertainties still tore at me. Here I was at a Christian school, where people were expected to be kinder than in the secular world, but much of what I saw involved greed for publicity and judgmental attitudes. What did it mean that the same teammates who harassed me one minute spoke of their Christian faith the next? I would pray, I am relying on You to get me through this tough time and help me be a good example and represent You, but I am failing, and these Christian people are treating me like shit. That was another struggle: I had developed a full repertoire of swear words, which I used liberally on the diamond; I prayed that God would change me. Meanwhile, I tried to remember to not swear so much, or I could wind up gone, like Charlie. My poor numbers—1-7 with a 7.20 ERA over fifty innings pitched—the attack at the field, and my heartbreak over Shelley had sunk my confidence. I had let my personal messes affect my schoolwork. I wish I had had a safe outlet for the turmoil inside. Even so, I refused to consider quitting baseball. My dream was central to who I was; I would stubbornly hang on to it.

  For the summer of 1995 the World Children’s Baseball Fair invited me back to Japan. I turned it down. Should I have gone? Maybe, but I just couldn’t see myself over there alone all summer. Going home was not a happy option, either. Mom continued to hide from the reality of her failing marriage, and the atmosphere in our house was thick with tension. I had some hard lessons to learn about life, but at this point, except for Dad’s teaching me to be self-sufficient and successful, my guidelin
e was mostly to do the opposite of what my father would. That was why I did not smoke or drink or lie, aside from hiding my gayness. I tried to live by the motto “Always leave things—and people—better than when you found them.” So, better not go home for the summer. Besides, after putting up lousy numbers my sophomore year, I needed to develop another pitch, work on getting left-handed hitters out, and get my head together. Where to run to now? I signed on to play ball in Canada with the Swift Current Indians of the Saskatchewan Major Baseball League, a five-team league of collegiate and other amateur players from throughout the United States and Canada.

  Summer 1995, Saskatchewan. Sometimes you go through a time in life and just think, What the heck was that? That was Canada. I got off the plane in Calgary, a city girl, a surfer, arriving in another country. The sky was so clear and blue it looked as if I could reach out and grab it. I was in the plains, seeing for the first time vast stretches of open land, farms with cornfields, and horses alongside the road. Getting out of the car in Swift Current, I met Saskatchewan’s “official bird.” I had never seen so many mosquitoes. They welcomed me.

  Shelley had promised to come up in a few weeks, and I couldn’t wait to see her. Together, out of town and away from suspicious friends, maybe we could work things out. Mom came up with Uncle Ray. Dad and my brother Phillip watched me pitch in Moose Jaw. They had to use a towel to wave off the mosquitoes. The temperature was about a hundred degrees, but I wore leg tights, two pairs of socks, two long-sleeve shirts, a jersey, and tons of Off! insect repellent, and still got eaten alive. Dad and Phillip ended up watching the game from inside their rental car, but the mosquitoes swarmed through the vents and continued the attack. I never have heard of a game called for mosquitoes, but this one should have been. Even the locals said it was crazy that day. That summer, not only did I lose ten pounds, but I also looked like I had chicken pox.