Major League Baseball made an important declaration – if late – in 1947 when the Brooklyn Dodgers promoted Jackie Robinson.
Everyone has the chance to play.
The MLB partnership has recently announced with the Naiscent Athletes Unlimited Softball League is not a female rehearsal of the Lib of modern racial integration of Robinson. An initiative for professional softball does not create a path for the first MLB female ball player. Not literally tomorrow, anyway.
But Jackie’s message – that everyone should have the chance to play – sounds strong again with the arrival of Ausl. And it is because the league is supported by MLB.
MLB shares not only its richness, infrastructure and gravity to support professional female softball, but the former leader of the Kim NG League is the first commissioner of the AUSL. She broke the barriers herself as the first woman to become the MLB director general, with the Marlins of Miami.
If women’s softball will work in the functioning of other professional leagues, this is the beginning of how it will happen.
The most famous historical example of professional ball players comes from another company supported by MLB – or at least one of its owners. The owner of the Cubs of Chicago, Philip K. Wrigley, founded the Professional Baseball League of the All-American girls, who played from 1943 to 1954. Many fans have heard of it, if for no other reason than Penny Marshall’s film with Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna: “A League Clean”.
Wrigley may have considered women players of professional bullets as a gadget and as a chance to earn money for the MLB until soldiers returned from the Second World War. This is why he had no more stay. The example given by the women who played will last. But the film was released in 1992, and it document a league which folded almost 40 years ago. It has been so long since it was real that the events of “a league for their own” could just as easily be a work of total fiction.
The company has changed in the past 70 years. We are no longer stupidly worried that individuals break femininity because of sport. Legions of girls play the little league and high school, and softball has been a huge success in university athletics for decades – and that is growing. But only a few amateur players have ever obtained a crack to play professionally. The opportunities were ephemeral and the leagues were limited.
MLB’s involvement is nothing sure.
Professional Softball Fastpitch leagues have existed in one form or another since 1997, but none has been supported by full faith and the credit of an existing major league.
What will we miss without an MLB partnership with professional softball? The other day, Tennessee’s softball AS Karlyn Pickens, launched a 79.4 MPH throw in the NCAA tournament. When you take into account that a softball rubber is 43 feet from the marble instead of 60 feet, 6 inches as in baseball, it would be like trying to hit a land launched 111.71 MPH.
No, this does not mean that Detroit Tigers should try Pickens tomorrow, and that’s not what the Ausl is used for. But it would be a sin if Pickens had no place to play as a pro, like the best qualified collegial baseball launchers when they finished with school.
It goes without saying that the fastest and the best path to women with a lasting place to play softball professionally comes from MLB lending its weight.
The WNBA, which also started in 1997, would not have done so far and has been healthy without the support of the NBA. But whoever has good faith can see that it goes beyond that. All the owners of the NBA who were ready to invest there 20 years ago could never see a huge return to their net profit. But this is not the only way that an investment can bear fruit.