If they're betting women, Chodorow and Tannen probably have bets down already against the Silver Bullets. But I suspect that the Bullets may take a few games in their exhibition series.
As a coach in Pasadena (Calif.) Southwest Little League, the last time when girls play baseball before social pressure forces them into softball, I would always draft girls onto my hardball teams. My co-coach, a young Harvey Mansfield with more common sense, liked to draft girls because he thought they "civilized" the boys. I liked to pick girls because I like to win, and the girls were every bit as skilled, strong and tough as boys.
Sarah, an 11-year-old who played second base for one team I coached, was the perfect counterexample to the "fairer sex" stereotype. Sarah would fling her body at ground balls that seemed out of her reach, spit, and power long drives into left-center field for extra-base hits.
She wasn't big or particularly intimidating in appearance, but she scared the boys. When I brought her into pitch an inning once, she struck out the side and got a standing ovation from the mothers in the stands.
During an exhibition game between the Little Leaguers and a squad of parents, Sarah looked like she was going to be forced out at second. But her slide into second base was so vicious that the parent playing second dropped the ball and fell to the ground writhing in pain. X-rays later confirmed it. Sarah had broken his leg in two places.
Hillary, another girl in the league, played first base, batted clean-up and specialized in running over catchers. But when the two headed to area high schools, they were immediately shuffled into softball programs.
Phil Niekro, the Silver Bullets manager, is right, but he understates the situation. American society is systemmatically squandering half of its baseball talent.
But the current emphasis on gender equity is separate but equal. Women athletes at Harvard want the same resources for their teams as men. That's a good impulse. Such equal funding is fair, and the law--Title IX--requires it.
But still better would be to drop the artificial distinction between women's and men's sports. Let's do battle together on the field of play. May the best players win.
This might hurt the level of participation of women in athletics, at least at first. But I don't think it would be women who would put up the greatest resistance to such an idea. Secretly, men have got to be scared to death by the possibility of being beat, defeated--outmanned, if you will--on the field of play by women.
The Silver Bullets represent a good start, but they are far from the ideal. The perfect professional baseball team should have women and men on it.
Give the idea 20 years. It's 2014, and Marion B. Gammill, president of the United North American Free Trading States trots out to the mound at Dodger Stadium to throw the first ball for Game 1 of the World Series between L.A. and the new expansion team from Kuala Luampur.
Gammill hands the ball to the pitcher, a foul-mouthed, hard-sliding former Little Leaguer from Pasadena, Calif., who spits tobacco juice on the president's high heels.
"May the best ballplayer win," she says.