Sometimes, throwing like a girl isn’t such a bad thing.
Thirteen-year-old Chelsea Baker has dominated boys’ Little League in Plant City, Fla., since 2006 and shows no signs of slowing down, ESPN.com reports. Baker didn’t lose a Little League game in four seasons, and with a fastball in the mid-60s and a knuckleball taught by Joe Niekro, she struck out 127 batters in 60 innings this year.
“I’ve had an opportunity to play with some girls coming up in Little League, and they were actually pretty good ballplayers,” Keith Maxwell, one of her coaches and a former minor leaguer, told ESPN.com. “Chelsea is on a whole different planet compared to them.”
“Chelsea Baker is by far the best female 13-year-old girl [baseball player] in the United States,” Maxwell added. “She is the best I’ve ever seen in my life hands down. The sky is the limit.”
Former Boston Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette agrees that Baker is one heck of a hurler, even though she’s a girl in a boy’s sport.
“People will recognize Chelsea Baker, and they’ll promote her based on her skill,” Duquette told ESPN.com. “Her gender won’t really matter to anybody if she develops the skills. She’ll find the opportunity.
“I know that there are some physical limitations that will not allow the girls to compete with the boys on higher levels, but if Chelsea Baker can perfect her knuckleball, she has a chance. The knuckleball is a great equalizer, and that would give her an out pitch, where she could get hitters out, irrespective of their sex and irrespective of their level.”
While softball is generally seen as the female equivalent to baseball, Baker tried playing it and decided to stick with hardball.
“‘Go play softball with the girls’ — we get that a lot, and we have gotten that a lot over the last three years,” Missy Mason Baker, Chelsea’s mother, told ESPN.com. “‘When is she going to move to softball?’ At some point, maybe she might have to go play softball, but right now as good as she is doing and she is able to keep up … and that is her goal, I am going to stand behind her and let her continue playing baseball as long as possible.”
Over the past four years, Chelsea’s Little League teams are 95-8-2. The teams have won three city championships, two District IV championships and two tournament of champions titles.
She heads into eighth grade next year and plans to try out for the boys’ high school baseball team. She then hopes to play college and professional baseball.
Duquette believes a female could pitch in the major leagues some day.
“I think it would be a terrific human-interest story, and I think with the girls doing weight training, the breakthrough in nutrition, their capability to train on a year-round basis and to develop these fine skills, all those opportunities are there,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see that.”
If a woman ever made it to the majors leagues, it would be like Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.
So remember the name Chelsea Baker. She could be a pioneer.
