A Girl on the Mound

Thirteen-year old pitcher Mo’ne Davis will be the eighteenth girl to play in the Little League World Series.  Girls in Little League baseball always garner headlines.  Then they fade away.

Davis, though, says she wants to be the first female player in the major leagues or NBA.  So, let’s say she’s serious.  The interest in basketball suggests she might come from a family where the people grow tall, which would translate well to the pitcher’s mound.  As Tom Seaver would say, legs generate power.

Right now, Davis can hold her own against the boys with a 70-mph fastball, but the guys will more than catch up soon in terms of strength.  If I were Mo’ne or her most trusted coach, I’d be shooting for the ability to throw at 90 by the age of 19-20.  Then, we’re talking serious stuff, that is, if she has command.

That would seem to be the most important asset for any woman pitcher wanting to make it in baseball—be fast enough and be able to spot the ball anywhere in the strike zone.  That would get scouts interested.  An out-pitch would get them excited.

It won’t be a fastball, and it doesn’t have to be a knuckler.  The New York Times Magazine had an interesting story several weeks ago on the screwball, a pitch that forever breaks down and in or down and away on a batter, depending on the particular matchup.  The most interesting part of the story was its contention that fastballs are more likely to hurt a pitcher’s arm than the screwball, which has fallen out of favor as a high elbow-stress pitch.  It certainly didn’t hurt Tug McGraw or Fernando Valenzuela, to say nothing of Carl Hubbell and Warren Spahn.

Mo’ne Davis doesn’t have to win any games to join those ranks.  All she has to do is throw one pitch from a big-league mound.  That alone would get her into Cooperstown.