Stephanie Everett

Play baseball like for a long long time It was like my intro question every year in elementary school and into middle schools like what do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be the first woman in the MLB was my answer shut the fuck up It was my answer for years and years and years and years and years and years and like I was so lucky that I played in

with my friends growing up basically that like their parents became my parents friends and like it never became this space of like you know she's just a softball now like all right this was cute but like move on it was just like yeah we're all friends we're all buds we're playing yeah

Can we talk about the differences for a minute in baseball and softball?

Because I feel like to someone who doesn't know the sport, it's like, okay, what the fuck is the difference?

Like go play softball, you know?

Totally.

Especially because the, the AUSL, the pro softball league is like really exploded last year and is expanding this year.

And like, obviously like the funding there is really cool and they need more of it.

All women's sports need more funding, obviously.

But the way I describe it,

I'm actually going to borrow from a coach.

She's coached for Team USA.

She was a pro baseball player in the 90s when there was a women's team.

Tamara Holmes, she says, you wouldn't ask Serena Williams to go play table tennis, so why would you ask a baseball player to go play softball?

It's not that either sport is easier, harder, better.

more prestigious or anything they're just different it's different yeah like they have some of the similar markings obviously but like baseball and softball the bat is different the glove is different the ball is different the size of the field is different and like you know it was interesting meeting a lot of women who were coming from softball during the tryout process for the pro league wow they were like baseball is low-key kind of easier

what they were like yeah the ball is smaller it looks different coming out of the pitcher's hand but like when a ball is hit to the outfield there's so much time to react and that was like because the field is so much bigger and I was like that's really crazy never thought of that that is actually really interesting yeah because there's obviously this like gender dynamic that like oh if the men are doing this sport it must be harder right it's not true at all and like I haven't played softball to to like know firsthand the difference but when they were explaining it to me I was like that is so fair

the whole position of an outfielder now changes.

Yeah.