About

There’s no sexism in baseball!

Actually, there’s a lot, which is why I’m starting a blog. I grew up on baseball—the Cardinals, specifically—and, along with my older sister, I learned the ins and outs of the game from my mother. (Over the years, she brought my father into the fold, too, but there’s no mistaking the fact that baseball-mania is entirely matrilineal in our family.) In St. Louis, where baseball is religion and bad ballpark beer is communion wine, a girl can be a passionate and knowledgeable baseball fan without raising as many eyebrows as she might elsewhere, but the older I got and the more I immersed myself in the baseball culture of the real and virtual worlds, the more weary I got of the testosterocentricity of it all.

“Chicks dig the long ball”? Not really—I’d rather see a squeeze play almost any day. Pink bats for breast cancer? Lord, don’t get me started. “Hey, you know a lot about baseball for a girl”? Yeah, I’m guessing I’m not the only one who’s been on the receiving end of that charming pat on the head, usually after I’ve corrected the speaker’s stats or explained a scoring decision to him.

So I’m digging out my own little dugout, a place to wield my feminist fungo bat. Some posts will specifically address the role of women in today’s business of baseball, and others will simply offer baseball talk that’s guaranteed to be free of sexist language, irritating stereotypes, and the color pink. There will be rants, raves, musings, memories, and almost certainly a heavy Cardinal bias, for which I credit my excellent upbringing. Grab a glove and come along.