It’s with the kids out there in mind that I argue that the institutions of baseball, from Little League and other youth leagues, and collegiate baseball, to Organized Baseball, must welcome more girls and women into the game. The attention paid to Little League pitcher Mo’ne Davis in 2014 was encouraging—though it’s interesting that Mo’ne doesn’t seem to have the deep need for baseball that I did; she says she’s headed toward basketball, which offers the possibility of a college scholarship and a professional career. That’s a loss for baseball, where progress for women historically has been glacially slow and too often just a footnote to the “real” game—all the women who played for an inning or a game before leaving the field of play. That continues to be the case. On May 29, 2016, the Bridgeport Bluefish of the Atlantic League invited Jennie Finch—my softball playing neighbor in La Mirada—to serve as guest manager. Jennie did well, strategizing a neat 3–1 win over the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, but once again, it was a one-time shot, another footnote in the history of women in baseball.
If there is hope for women to make headway into Organized Baseball, it will come about because of women like Justine Siegal. I first became aware of Justine when she was playing women’s baseball against my sister’s team in San Diego late in the 1990s. I got to know her better in 2011 when we served as coaches for the WCBF in Taiwan. I found out she dedicated the past two decades to the cause of girls’ and women’s baseball. Siegal is the founder and director of Baseball for All, which strives to bridge the gap between the approximately one hundred thousand girls who play youth baseball and the one thousand girls who play at the high school level. Her nonprofit organization teaches girls to play baseball, coach, and umpire while educating the media and the public that girls indeed play this game. In September of 2015, the Oakland A’s announced that they had hired Siegal as MLB’s first ever female coach. (A check with the Hall of Fame Library revealed no data on any earlier women who might have done this.) So Siegal got a toehold in Organized Baseball’s coaching fraternity: a two-week gig as guest instructor in the Arizona instructional league in Mesa, Arizona. While it’s gratifying to see Siegal get this opportunity, like her, I want more. Girls, and the women they grow up to be, deserve the freedom to seek a continuing presence on the field. It’s my hope that the story told here encourages the institutions of baseball at all levels to open the door wider to those of us who want into the game—and that more women will walk through that door. So I was glad to hear that the Sonoma Stompers signed two women, pitcher Stacy Piagno and outfielder Kelsie Whitmore, to their team in July 2016. (It was Justine Siegal who recommended Whitmore to the Stompers, having known her as a Baseball for All player and coach). The Stompers are part of the Pacific Association, an independent league. Oh that Organized Baseball would take such a step.
Yet there is still much work to be done and many minds to transform. In 2012 the priests (members of the very conservative Society of Pope Pius X) who run Our Lady of Sorrows Academy decided to forfeit a state championship baseball game rather than let the school’s team compete against an opponent whose second baseman, Paige Sultzbach, was female. The school explained: “Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty. . . . Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls.”
Wow! Does the school’s statement mean that any woman in a powerful or nontraditional position is going to make a man treat his wife or girlfriend with less respect? Please! Not one time at Whittier Christian High School did anyone suggest that my playing negatively affected the way guys would treat women down the road. If anything, it opened their eyes to the idea that women can play, too.
I had always wondered whether the magic I had with Shannon could happen again. For the past several years, I had known a friend of a friend named Jenni Westphal. In 2014 I took a chance and asked Jenni out on a date. She said yes. I was smitten right off the bat. Jenni is athletic, smart, and beautiful, and the funniest person I have ever met. Her smile and eyes mesmerized me. Even so, we took it slow. I came to find out that while I was playing for Madison in 1998, she was finishing up her degree in wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She had played basketball there and was also a standout athlete in track and field. We even lived a block away from each other.
Jenni lived in Portland, Oregon, where she worked as a senior footwear analyst for Nike. I racked up many airline miles flying to see her. The forests and mountains of the Northwest, its changing seasons, the Pacific Ocean, the year-round outdoor sports, the wineries, its diverse culture, and its political moderation drew me. Every day I spent there felt like a vacation. I had found my kind of people, a whole lot of them. I had also found in Jenni the woman I wanted to share my life with. Despite my dream job at the Gilbert Fire Department, I decided to move to Portland to be with her.
In July 2015 the Cornelius Fire Department hired me as a firefighter and paramedic. As in Gilbert, I landed with a great department. So here I am in Oregon in a new job, far from family and friends, who I miss dearly. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been running all of my life—to get to first base, to pitch in the game I love, to make it as a firefighter, to find love. As Ron Shelton, who played minor league baseball before writing the baseball movie Bull Durham, put it, “Even when you’re home, you’re on the road.”
I know what he means. After looking for love and baseball, though not always in that order, since I first planted my foot on Dad’s home plate in our front yard, I believe I have landed safe at home. On June 4, 2016, Jenni and I married. We gathered with friends on a ridge above Cape Lookout State Park on the Oregon coast. Before Bridget Schwarting, who served as minister, and with Jenni’s identical twin Janet Westphal and Olivia Dukes as witnesses, we said our marriage vows. Being outdoor enthusiasts, we didn’t want a traditional wedding, so I guess you could say that we did not so much step into our new life together as hike in.
Fully committed to the most important person in my life, I have begun to rethink my old commitment to another love, baseball. A couple of years ago I played a sandlot game and hit two home runs, a triple, and a double, and turned two double plays—as a left-handed shortstop. I came off the field as excited as a kid, remembering all over again how much I love being on the diamond. My career may have ended in 2000, but I’ve never really let go of the game. I wanted to share that excitement with Jenni.
There’s a magical place in New York’s Greenwich Village called the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse, filled with baseball art, memorabilia, and gift items. It’s owned by Jay Goldberg. Prominent on the wall is a large work of art—a cherry-sprigged tablecloth with a quotation on it—that was created by Jay’s now-deceased business partner, Tony Palladino. It is not for sale. Years ago, as Goldberg tells it, Tony was walking down a street in New York when he passed a boy, about eight years old, with his mother. He overheard the boy say a few words that stayed in Tony’s memory. “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too.”
Later Tony came across an old tablecloth with cherries on it. “That’s my canvas,’ Tony said. “And that eight-year-old’s comment is my quote.”
Tony and Jay had no idea who the boy was, of course, but felt he needed a name. Somehow they settled on “Gregg,” which you will find in the bottom corner of Tony’s art, along with Gregg’s quote.
“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” These words of an eight-year-old pretty much sum up the message of this book. So I want to show Jenni the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse—and introduce her to other great baseball people and places in our country, like the Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, Mike Veeck and the St. Paul Saints, and a ballgame at Wrigley Field in Chicago. And I want to meet all the Greggs out there—girls and boys—and teach them about the best game ever.
Notes
Prologue
“There c
omes a time”: Paul Wiecak, “Female Pitcher Has Simunic Steamed,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 30, 1998, D3.
“Read it,” Neal said: Neal Karlen followed me around during my weeks in St. Paul.
1. Beginnings
“that thing”: Neal Karlen, Slouching toward Fargo (New York: Avon Books, 1999), 298. Karlen liked Ed Nottle and expressed disappointment when he called me “that thing.” According to Karlen, the comment was made to a Sioux City radio reporter early in June 1997.
“No crying,” he yells: A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall (Parkway Productions/Columbia, 1992).
“How can you let”: From personal, telephone, and e-mail interviews with Ila Borders and her parents, Phil and Marianne Borders, between 1994 and 2015. This comment may have resonated with the family because it touched on a deep issue faced by girls who play baseball: As Jennifer Ring writes in A Game of Their Own: Voices of Contemporary Women in Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 261: “[Ballplayers’] sense of being an outsider or ‘wrong’ correlates with athletic, more than sexual[,] identity: ‘You’re an athlete and girls aren’t athletes, so which one are you?’” This is particularly true of girls who play a perceived boys’ game like baseball.
“You don’t get many 12-year-olds”: Joseph D’Hippolito, “Borders Breaks Batters’ Hearts,” La Mirada Lamplighter, June 24, 1987, n.p.
At twelve, her fundamentals: Joe Moschetti, telephone interview, July 15, 1999.
Yeah, Mike Moschetti: “Mike Moschetti,” Baseball Reference.com, accessed June 4, 2016, www.baseball-reference.com.
2. Lipstick Adolescence
“Being with a woman”: “Quotes,” Casey Stengel: The Official Site, accessed June 5, 2016, http://caseystengel.com/quotes.htm.
No stats exist: Jennifer Ring, Stolen Bases (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 132. Ring quotes Jim Glennie, a passionate supporter of girls’ baseball, as saying that it’s “no tightly held secret’ that girls are ‘simply shoved gently toward softball after Little League and many go there simply because they have a chance to continue playing through college.’”
“Remember . . . Ila’s ‘round the back’”: Susan Johnson, telephone interview and e-mail, November 11, 1999.
“We’ll try to do things”: Rolland Esslinger, telephone interview, May 19, 1999, e-mail, October 11, 1999.
“We still liked to sneak out”: Alyse Isaac, telephone interview, undated.
One coach called: Rolland Esslinger, telephone interview, November 2, 2015.
“There were never”: Rolland Esslinger, telephone interview, November 2, 2015.
Ila was a key: Esslinger interview, November 2, 2015.
Dad rationalized this: Phil Borders, telephone interviews, September 14 and October 6, 1999.
“I was very much opposed”: Marianne Borders, telephone interview, November 10, 1999.
“I had to deal with”: Jay Paris, “Making Her Pitch,” Orange County Register, April 2, 1991, C7.
“I had to get out”: Phil Borders, telephone interview, June 10, 2015.
“Some really encouraged her”: Steve Randall, telephone interview, June 4, 1999.
“The hitters ask”: Paris, “Making Her Pitch.”
the “fear of striking out”: John Corbett, “‘Just One of the Boys,’” Los Angeles Times, undated.
“I’m going to sign”: Miki Turner, “She Won’t Be in a League of Her Own,” Orange County Register, February 4, 1993, 1.
3. College
“opponents are our guests”: “NAIA District 3 Code of Conduct,” So Cal Baseball program, Southern California College, 1994, 5.
“Hey,” yells a classmate: Karen Crouse, “Borders Finishes What She Starts,” Orange County Register, February 16, 1994, D12.
“Ila-mania”: Martin Beck, “Borders’ Blues,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1995, C4.
“Their players were very abusive”: Register staff, news service reports, “SCC’s Borders Suffers First Loss,” Orange County Register, March 4, 1994, C9.
“We had beaten them”: Charlie Phillips, e-mail, August 6, 2015.
“You saw her pitch”: Phil Borders, conversation with Ila Borders, 1994.
“Media-wise I was shocked”: Charlie Phillips, e-mail, June 5, 2015.
“The [t]aunts are vicious”: Shelley Smith, “Ila Borders,” Sports Illustrated, March 7, 1994. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1004927indexhtm.
“Are you a lesbian?”: Smith, “Ila Borders.”
“I want people to know”: Richard Dunn, “Border(s) lines,” Orange Coast Daily Pilot, February 26, 1994, B3.
“A major portion of lesbian”: Betty Hicks, “Lesbian Athletes,” in SportsDykes: Stories from On and Off the Field, edited by Susan Fox Rogers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 71.
“women athletes are perpetual”: Hicks, “Lesbian Athletes,” 59.
“To most lesbian athletes”: Hicks, “Lesbian Athletes,” 72.
You can throw: Phil Borders, telephone and e-mail interviews, June 8–10, 2015.
“should not anticipate”: Martin Beck, “SCC Uses Post Office to Fire Baseball Coach,” Los Angeles Times, May 10, 1995.
“Because we care”: Youth 95, 15, no. 2 (March–April 1995, published by Worldwide Church of God, Pasadena, CA), inside cover.
“Just what is a real”: Michael Warren, “Would the Real Christian Please Step Forward?” Youth 95, 3.
“Will she wind up”: Tonia Weik, Youth 95, 4–5.
Coach Pigott didn’t care: Mike Rizzo, telephone interview, June 11, 2015.
“the discussion making”: Tim Mead, e-mail, December 8, 2013.
“because it was interesting”: Bob Fontaine, e-mail, December 8, 2013.
“I’ve got my scouts”: Rick Reilly, “Heaven Help Marge Schott,” Sports Illustrated, May 20, 1996, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1008139/index/index.htm.
“Why not play”: Daryn Kagan, “Woman Tries to Make the Cut in Professional Baseball,” CNN Morning News, May 12, 1997.
I showed up for: Barry Moss, telephone interview, May 8, 2013.
“It’s about the only”: Martin Beck, “Borders Cuts Classes, Final College Start,” Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1997, http://articles.latimes.com/1997-04-30/sports/sp-53985_1_borders-cuts.
“When you arrive”: letter from Bill Fanning to Ila Borders, May 8, 1997.
“It goes so deep down”: Neal Karlen, Slouching toward Fargo (New York: Avon Books, 1999), 163.
4. The St. Paul Saints
“There’s a lot of guys”: Ron Lesko, “Love for Hardball, Not Quest for History, Motivates Woman Pitcher,” Associated Press Sports News, May 6, 1997, PM cycle.
“The score didn’t matter”: Mike Augustin, “Borders’ Act Not Bad,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 20, 1997, 4D.
“I don’t put much”: Augustin, “Borders’ Act Not Bad,” 4D.
“She did a whale”: Augustin, “Borders Takes Loss but Has Her Moments,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 23, 1997, 4B.
“In any other given”: Ron Lesko, “Borders’ Work Ethic, Desire Earn Her Spot,” Associated Press report to the Orange County Register, May 29, 1997, sports sec., 1.
“I FUCKING MADE”: Neal Karlen, Slouching toward Fargo (New York: Avon Books, 1999), 293.
“As she was getting”: Mike Augustin, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, June 2, 1997, 3E.
“There is one thing”: Mike Augustin, “Explorers’ Nottle, Relishing Win, Steers Clear of Borders,” Saint Paul Pioneer Press, June 11, 1997.
“I thought Ila showed”: Terry Hersom, “Explorers Pound Saints’ Pitching,” Saint Paul Pioneer Press, June 4, 1997, n.p.
“She threw me”: Bruce Bennett, “Dukes Defeat Saints with Pitching, Defense,” June 16, 1997.
“When my daddy told me”: Mike Augustin, “Saints Start Post-Ila Era with a Loss,” Saint Paul Pioneer Press, June 27, 1997.
“I wi
ll probably be”: Kevin Kotz, “‘I Got Traded for a Girl,’” Duluth News Tribune, June 26, 1997, 1C.
5. Duluth-Superior Dukes
“She is believed”: “Out of the Bullpen; into the Record Books,” New York Times, June 5, 1996.
7. Another Team, Another Town
“Coming up against her”: Larry See, personal interview, June 8, 1999.
“a called third strike”: See interview, June 8, 1999.
“It’s hard to bring”: See interview, June 8, 1999.
“Much of my work”: Steve Shirley, personal interview, June 8, 1999.
“Too much is made of Ila”: Jim Polzin, “Borders Gets New Life in Madison,” Capital Times, June 14, 1999.
“I think the guys”: Ron Ognar, “Borders Sparks Black Wolf, Wisconsin State Journal, June 28, 1999, 4D.
“She battled”: Dennis Semrau, “Black Wolf Can’t Beat the Rain,” Capital Times, July 19, 1999.
“intent to exercise”: Letter from Madison Black Wolf Professional Baseball to Ila Borders, October 20, 1999.
“Ila Borders was one”: Associated Press reports, “Ila Borders Gives Herself the Hook, Retires,” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2000, D10.
Making My Pitch Page 26