I was failing miserably at getting left-handers out. Usually left-handed pitchers have greater success against lefties, but I had faced mostly right-handed batters throughout my years in baseball and had developed successful pitches against them. In Canada I now faced mostly left-handed batters. The Indians wanted me to win, not work on a new pitch. I also had to make time to earn money. I lived rent-free in the basement room of a family’s home in town, and for transportation I borrowed the family’s bike. But I still had expenses, like three meals a day. From nine in the morning until one o’clock in the afternoon I worked for minimum wage at a sod farm. I hand-pumped water uphill from the reservoir to the sprinklers. Then I cut the sod, rolled it up, stacked it in the truck, delivered it, and unloaded it for the customers. I think my forearms nearly doubled in size that summer. The other cool thing about the job was driving the tractor all over the place under the big blue sky. When there was no work at the sod farm, I painted houses and fences. After my work was done, I bicycled several miles to the ballpark.
I liked being in Canada. I got to know the locals by going to dinner with different people in town. The people here loved hockey—baseball was second—and everyone looked out for one another. I appreciated that. Still, there was the constant loneliness I endured. One of the hard things about a female playing baseball is spending time and bonding with your teammates without their girlfriends or wives getting mad. So I hung out with the guys and played cards but kept a certain distance. That way there was never a problem. These guys were cool. Unlike my college teammates, it was no big deal to them that I was a girl.
We played all over the prairie, from Oyen and Kindersley to Moose Jaw. Our team traveled on a red-and-blue bus with yellow bench seats and a round table in the back, where the guys usually played poker. The players called it the bubble bus, a party on wheels. I remember one guy, Steve, trying dip for the first time. The guys were all over him for not chewing or dipping. They gave him a tin of Copenhagen, he put in a dip and within twenty seconds he had thrown up and fallen asleep—or passed out, I’m not sure which. The coach was pissed and made us live with the mess.
I laughed. I am either blessed or cursed, I do not know which, with a male sense of humor. I don’t know what it is with guys, but they love to make you do gross things. Girls’ humor can be demeaning and cruel; guys’ jokes are disgusting and funny. They would not let me avoid the pranks, so I gave in to the less invasive ones: for twenty bucks I ate a worm, and for ten dollars I tried the hottest hot sauce. I turned down gulping a box of doughnuts and cup of milk—not worth the money offered—and the full-body shave. But it sure was funny to watch the guy who did the shave scratching himself all the time. He was always squirming, and maybe it gave him a new appreciation of what women go through to look good.
Traveling on the bubble bus was an adventure. Returning from a game around two in the morning, we drove into a huge thunderstorm. The lightning was practically nonstop, making the middle of the night seem like day—the driver did not need his headlights on. Everyone was nervous, remembering the rumor that a player in the league had been killed while he was just standing in center field. A bolt of lightning hit him and traveled to his metal cleats. I wanted to stick my head out the window and breathe in the fresh storm air but thought better of it. On another night, the bus struck a deer; the collision took out the front windshield and a fender. On yet another night, the bubble bus broke down forty-five miles from home, so a few teammates trekked to the nearest town to call for a tow. A few hours later, we were on the field for the next game.
Later that summer came a jolt of heartbreak. Shelley called to say that she was not coming to visit. While I was playing ball, she had found a boyfriend. “I can’t live your baseball dream with you,” she told me. “I have my religion, and I want to get married, have kids, and fit in.”
I had no answer for that old argument. Shelley could not see the pain on my face or the flood of tears that came upon me. After we hung up, I cried like I had never cried before. The family I was staying with came downstairs to see if I was all right, and I told them that one of my friends had died. Well, something had died. I felt my heart close around the grief I felt. At the end of the summer I left Canada with an ache where love had been and having learned not near enough about baseball.
Back on campus for junior year, change had come to SCC. In my freshman year, the student body numbered nine hundred; this year there were twenty-seven hundred. I felt bad that Charlie Phillips was gone. With my nemesis Beckley graduated, I was pleased to have a new coach, Kevin Kasper, until I found out he had a different role in mind for me: I was to pitch out of the bullpen in a setup role. But I felt I had the makeup of a starter: I put the ball in play, did not strike out a lot of hitters, and did not throw in the nineties. Pitching in relief meant that I was not going to get a lot of innings, and scouts want to see innings. My pitching continued to be lackluster, in part because in losing Shelley I lost the laser focus I had during freshman year. The season looked like it was going to be a washout, but it was too late to transfer. I ended up going 1-1, with a 5.18 ERA over twenty-four and a third innings.
Off the field, I fit in even less than I had the previous year. Wanting to be with Shelley, I had neglected other friendships, and seeing her with her boyfriend almost every day brought me down. She tried to reason with me, saying that it was for the best. “You know I want a family, and you can’t give me that. You have to live your baseball dream, so it’s best if we go our separate ways now.”
She wanted me to get on board with dating guys too, but that was not going to happen. Even getting my degree wasn’t a priority. My determination to make it in baseball, despite my declining performance on the mound—call me stubborn—remained my driving force, though it caused me to neglect other aspects of my life. I looked at my options. Transferring schools seemed the best answer. While I had problems with the baseball program, the main reason I left SCC, though I didn’t admit it at the time, was to get away from the pain of seeing Shelley every day. I looked for a school where I could find the backing of a coach and get in a lot of innings. I got lucky.
Whittier College, a small liberal arts school, was just a few miles from my family home. The school was founded by the Religious Society of Quakers in 1887, and to me its campus felt peaceful and quiet. It is named after the abolitionist and Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. I loved the school mascot: a fierce-looking patriot dressed in circa 1776 garb and three-corner hat, on the run, a book under one arm and grasping an oversized pen inscribed with the nickname of the team, “The Poets.” Richard Nixon, the school’s most famous alumnus, ran for student body president. Campaigning on a platform to end the bans on smoking and on-campus dances, he won.
Playing in the Southern California Collegiate Conference, the Poets’ baseball team had gone 8-26-1 the year before. Coach Jim Pigott was delighted to see me, as he had lost four pitchers from that team to graduation. He, the staff, and the players were used to seeing me on the mound when the Vanguards competed against the Poets, which made my transfer an easier transition. I was blown away by the friendliness I found at Whittier. The first time I stepped onto the field, six teammates greeted me and told me that I was to come to them if I needed anything. I think this attitude came from the top. As Mike Rizzo, the assistant coach, later said:
Coach Pigott didn’t care whether she was a girl—if she can pitch, it was okay and my message to the team was: judge her as a baseball player, not a girl. One thing that stood out was her work ethic. Back when it used to rain in Southern California, I’d go out to the field—practice would have been canceled—and she’d be working out. She’d be the only one out there. To this day, I use her as an example. If we’d had twenty-five players with her work ethic, we could have gone far. She was as fierce a competitor as you can imagine, a pitcher who consistently got outs, and she could make [a batter] look bad.
But the language coming from opposing team’s dugouts bothered Coach Rizzo: “Sh
e heard things coming from the dugouts that no one should ever hear, but her teammates here had her back. We had a transfer catcher on that team, and when the language got to a certain point (meaning personal), the next hitter needed to be light on their feet if you know what I mean!”
Coach Rizzo has his own opinion about the razzing, though. “Today,” he said, “You’d never get away with that kind of language. But I think the players back then were a little bit more mentally tough because of it. The players today are much more sensitive—they get hurt feelings, and I tell them, they’d never have made it back then.”
I pitched for the Whittier College Poets with body, soul, and heart. Here I perfected the straight change-up I first learned in Japan. I now had a reliable screwball. At five feet nine, 140 pounds, never having taken steroids, and topping out at eighty-one miles per hours, I had a hard time drawing scouts. I watched soft-throwing major leaguer Jamie Moyer pitch, and tried to emulate him. So many in Organized Baseball have a prejudice in favor of hard-throwing, hunky pitchers. (After the Los Angeles Dodgers signed Pedro Martinez in 1988, manager Tommy Lasorda said that at five feet eleven and 170 pounds, Pedro’s officially listed height and weight, he was too small for a starter—look how that turned out.) From my time in Japan, where I was taller than many of their professional players, I knew I was big enough. I remembered freshman year when I met the Atlanta Braves pitcher Greg Maddux, in San Francisco, and that we stood eye to eye. I also knew I was built for the game, with a wide back; strong, big legs; and huge hands. I just wish I had lifted weights more—ten or fifteen more pounds of muscle might have caught the eye of someone in Organized Baseball. But Dad had always warned me off weight training—he was from an era that didn’t believe in bulking up for fear of becoming muscle-bound. He also wanted me to look feminine. Teammates and friends warned me, too, saying that I already looked like a guy because I was big-boned. In the closet as I was, I unconsciously accepted the message that I must look feminine. So I only did cardio workouts. Foolish. After I left baseball, I began to lift. Today I feel stronger than I ever did back then.
Spring of senior year was an edgy time of waiting to see whether a professional club was willing to sign me. I was in touch with Akiko Agishi, who had connections in Japan through her work with the WCBF. We talked about my playing there, but it didn’t come to anything. Meanwhile, rumors circulated about major league clubs that might draft me. Randy Youngman, a sportswriter for the Orange County Register, reported that the Anaheim Angels intended to draft me in the late rounds. Tim Mead, then the Angels assistant general manager, recalled “the discussion making its way around the Baseball Ops area.” Bob Fontaine, the club’s scouting director, also remembered the discussion “because it was interesting,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I know we talked about it & tossed it around & had we decided to draft her it would have been late. But we never came to the conclusion that we intended to. As I remember she had a decent breaking ball but didn’t throw real hard.”
In May of 1996, Sports Illustrated ran this comment from the Cincinnati Reds owner, Marge Schott: “I’ve got my scouts looking for a great girl. . . . Wouldn’t that be something? Her coming in and striking all these boys out, honey?”
Dad recalls that one of the club’s cross-checkers told him that the Reds were interested in drafting me. (One of a cross-checker’s duties is to vet the scouts’ reports and recommend whether to sign a player.) But just before the draft, Marge Schott was suspended from MLB. I would not have been the first woman drafted. Carey Schueler, a left-hander like me, had been drafted in the forty-third round of the 1993 MLB Players Draft but never played professionally. She was also the daughter of Ron Schueler, the general manager of the Chicago White Sox. Dad knew about Carey and now asked around, “Why not Ila?”
When Dad spoke with Steve Fuller, a scout for the Chicago Cubs, he said Fuller replied that he “did not have big enough cojones. And whoever does draft her will have to have the biggest cojones of all time . . . because it would be the biggest story in baseball ever!”
But with a 5.22 ERA my senior year and velocity in the low eighties, the clubs passed on me. I hadn’t expected to be a top draft pick like pitchers Jon Garland (first round), Jeff Weaver (second round), and Tim Hudson (sixth round) in the 1997 baseball draft, but the draft went into the ninety-second round, and toward the end the Tampa Bay Devil Rays drafted a slew of pitchers, mostly out of high school. Where was the harm in giving me a tryout at spring training? Dad had shared in my dream of getting a shot in Organized Baseball. I know that he was as disappointed as I was when an invitation to spring training did not come.
Then there were the Colorado Silver Bullets. Julie Croteau had played with them after college, and popular opinion seemed to be that I should, too. Early in May, Daryn Kagan interviewed me on CNN’s Morning News. She wanted to know, “Why not play with the Colorado Silver Bullets. A lot of people are familiar with this team. It’s a professional baseball team featuring all women who play against men’s teams. What [sic] not go with them?”
Kagan also wanted to know why “not play softball like other girls?”
I explained the difference between throwing overhand in baseball, which I had done successfully, versus throwing underhand in softball, which I never mastered.
The Silver Bullets’ owner, Bob Hope, had left a couple of telephone messages for me, urging me to sign. But Dad had watched their games on TV and felt there was little percentage in my playing with them. He did not believe—and I agreed—that playing against teams at that level would help me develop as a pitcher. I worried that somehow my signing with the Silver Bullets would seem like a gimmick. Besides, I just didn’t see the Silver Bullets as a promising stop along the route I’d have to take to achieve my dream of making it to the major leagues.
To keep the pressure off, Dad led the Silver Bullets to believe that I would come to their spring training camp. They sent me a plane ticket. But since the Silver Bullets were a professional club, he asked that they not announce that I would join them while I was still playing college ball, to avoid any issue of eligibility. Dad says this was the only way he could think of to keep the club and me apart.
A soft-spoken Southern Californian named Barry Moss had played eleven seasons of minor league baseball and later stayed around the game as a coach, manager, and scout. What I remember most about meeting him when he scouted me were his kind blue eyes and Robert Redford good looks. Barry had great baseball smarts and knew the local baseball scene well—he scouted for the Los Angeles Dodgers and also recommended players to the Northern League, an independent professional league in the Upper Midwest. I didn’t know that late in March a chain of telephone calls had begun. Mike Veeck, the son of the legendary baseball entrepreneur Bill Veeck Jr. owned the St. Paul Saints of the Northern League. Mike had heard of me and asked his manager, Marty Scott, to check me out. Marty then phoned Barry Moss, who recalled:
I showed up for a Saturday game at the University of La Verne—I believe Ila pitched the whole game. I saw a good curve, seventy-five to eighty mph velocity, and good control. They tried to bunt on her, and she handled the plays well. She showed a variety of skills. I liked her pick-off move as well—she kept the runners close, which a left-hander must do. After the game I introduced myself to Ila’s father, and we talked. After I got home—this was in the pre-cell-phone days—I called Marty with a positive report.
On the verge of signing, I got nervous. I was to start my final college game at home against my old school, SCC. So close to the next step of my dream, I thought, What if I get injured? I talked with Dad, who said, “Don’t take the chance.”
Hours before the game, I officially withdrew from classes. I told the press that I was close to signing a contract and might have to leave town at a moment’s notice. Besides, if I agreed to a contract it would end my college eligibility. What I did not say was that I was afraid of getting hurt. Coach Pigott told the Times, “It’s about the only disappointing experience I’ve had w
ith Ila. . . . I wish she would have waited [to withdraw]. I think the guys would have liked to see her pitch one more time. I would have liked that too.”
Looking back, I wish I had finished out the season—and it would have been great to win that last game against the Vanguards. It’s a regret. It would have been the right way to repay Whittier College’s hospitality, which continued—even after I turned pro, I had a key to the gate to the field and was encouraged to return to practice there. As it was, I finished the season with a 4-5 win-loss record and a 5.22 ERA over eighty-one innings.
After Barry’s conversation with Marty Scott, the St. Paul Saints confirmed on May 5 that I was invited to spring training camp. A few days later, I received a letter from the Saints’ general manager, Bill Fanning. Enclosed was my airline ticket to Minneapolis–St. Paul. “When you arrive in St. Paul,” Fanning wrote, “please give me your return ticket and when it is time to return home I will have another ticket ready for you.”
Time to return home? Never, I hoped. I was so damn excited. The Northern League is not part of Organized Baseball, but it has an awesome reputation. It takes in anyone it cares to, from rookies who need more experience to veteran major leaguers who need to rehab an injury to their bodies or their reputations. In the year I joined the league, J. D. Drew was the Philadelphia Phillies’ number two pick in the first round of the 1997 MLB draft but felt he was being offered too little ($2.6 million). Drew decided instead to showcase his talents with the St. Paul Saints for a year, did well (hitting .341 and eighteen home runs), and signed the following year with the St. Louis Cardinals for nearly $7 million. Steve Howe, the Dodgers pitcher who had tested positive several times for alcohol and cocaine use, pitched what would be his last season for the Sioux Falls Canaries. Darryl Strawberry, dogged by drug abuse and marital and tax troubles, had been released by the New York Yankees in December 1995. Mike Veeck and the Saints chairman of the board, Marv Goldklang, took him in. Strawberry went on a tear—batting .435, with eighteen home runs and thirty-nine RBIs, in twenty-nine games—and landed back with the Yankees. After his last game as a Saint, Strawberry told author Neal Karlen, “It goes so deep down inside, what the St. Paul Saints mean to me. . . . Those players gave me the energy and lift to go out there every day. We became a unit together.”
Making My Pitch Page 12