Written by While the Tokyo Olympic Games consisted of many exciting moments and thrilling athletic accomplishments, its legacy is problematic because Covid-19 protocols created a made for media only spectacle. In laying bare how money rules the sports industry, Tokyo also highlights one of the most insidious, systemic sexist practices in sport: the bifurcation of baseball and softball.
When baseball/softball was added to the Games – along with skateboarding, karate, rock climbing, and surfing, the inherent discrimination wasn’t as easily apparent as the objectifying unitards female Olympians challenged this summer. It is arguably worse, if only because the fix is more difficult than a uniform change. Every new Olympic sport, except baseball/softball, either contains co-ed components or consists of male and female teams. While International Olympic Committee lumped baseball/softball together as one and the same, the use of slash cannot solve for the fact that these are two different sports, separate and not equal.
In the United States, softball is one of the great success stories of women’s sports. Fueled by lucrative broadcast and sponsorship deals with networks and apparel companies making millions, softball is the fourth biggest moneymaker in all of college athletics. To many, this financial success is simply a feel-good empowerment story, but the game’s popularity has a dark underside that comes at the cost of hopes, dreams, and true equality.
For the most part, girls and women play softball instead of baseball. There are countless theories about why women don’t play hardball, but the lack of women’s college teams and baseball scholarships concretely depletes the pipeline and results in softball detours for most women who pursue diamond dreams in college.
Nevertheless, women’s baseball is growing around the world in countries as diverse as Japan, Canada, Venezuela, Australia, Korea, and the United Kingdom, which is fostering a love of the game with co-ed teams and leagues. In Japan, which provides the opportunity to play in college, the Japan Women’s Baseball League is so popular players recently appeared in a car commercial. But in the United States most people don’t even know a national women’s baseball team exists. It ranks fourth in the world and when the United States hosted the 2018 Women’s Baseball World Cup in Vero, Florida, paltry marketing led to a dismal turnout. No games sold out, and only two had more than 600 people in attendance.
The tradition of sidelining stretches deep into American history. After baseball evolved in 18th century from co-ed British bat and ball games, women played it in the United States long before they had to right to vote. They played professional baseball in the 1880s and in organized semi-professional leagues in the 1920s. But during the turn of the century, as the United States entered the global stage, baseball power brokers like sporting goods magnate Albert G. Spaulding heavily promoted baseball as an idealized American masculine identity. Girls were steered to the “gentler game” of softball. As sport became business, women literally got shoved off the bases.
Most general knowledge about women in baseball stems from the 1992 film A League of Their Own, which depicts how women were brought back into the game during World War II while men were serving their country. When men returned, support for women’s baseball fell by the wayside. Over the years, as baseball developed into an international sport, girls in the United States typically opted for softball because they lacked opportunity at all levels of baseball. Although girls successfully fought for the legal right to play Little League in the 1970s, by that time cultural norms were solidified and barriers to play at higher levels of the sport were in place.
At first glance, it may not seem like a big deal that baseball is largely off-limits to 51% of the world’s population, especially if you are a male who loves baseball, but there’s the catch. This cultural disconnect could very well signal baseball’s eventual demise. When new sports were added to the Tokyo Games, IOC President Thomas Bach stated their inclusion was done with an eye to toward maintaining a youth audience. Yet any kid who can pick up a ball knows there’s a big difference between baseball and softball.
Conversely more popular global sports like soccer, basketball, tennis, hockey, and even esports lack this gendered template. With greater possibility for equality, is it coincidence all these sports are better poised for growth over the next century?
At some level Major League Baseball knows this. The league has instituted grassroots efforts like the Trailblazer Series to improve female participation rates and made history with its first all women broadcast crew during a game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Tampa Bay Rays in July 2021. Yet MLB is hardly the first major U.S. men’s professional sports league to give women a bigger voice in this way. In fact, it’s dead last, trailing behind the all-women broadcasting crews of the NBA (2021), NHL (2020), MLS (2018), NFL (2018).
Baseball’s slow pace on gender equity received a boost in 2020 when the Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng as general manager. While roundly and rightfully lauded for her pioneering career, Ng shines a light on the systemic problems baseball faces during a time when we are all rethinking institutions at large. Like many women in baseball, she came up the ranks playing softball. What other choice did she have?
Women as second-class citizens is the invisible force pushing the game further afoul culturally while a reverence for home runs – and consequently penchant for strikeouts, has made the men’s game nearly unwatchable for an aging, shrinking fan base already weary from a well-documented cheating scandal and bickering between billionaire owners and millionaire players.
In losing some luster, baseball went from a culture driver in the 19th and 20th centuries to attempting to lead from behind in the new millennium. As we near the 50th anniversary of Title IX and the mass entry of women into American sports, it is often overlooked how largely excluding women from the game, is the unspoken part of baseball’s fall from grace.
Can you imagine telling a female high school tennis star in college she must play ping pong? There is no logical reason to prevent collegiate baseball for women, particularly given the NCAA’s stated core value of fostering diversity, inclusion and gender equity among its student athletes, coaches, and administrators. Why do we accept the cultural myth baseball is for boys and softball for girls? There are 100,000 girls in youth baseball, but only 1,000 play baseball in high school. If you want to get a scholarship to play ball in college, any rationale female would switch to softball. The NCAA can help save baseball by fostering participation rates through adhering to its own mission. It’s time to mandate women’s college baseball teams and scholarships.
The United States led the way for baseball ‘s global growth and popularity and now it is time for it to ensure its longevity. While industry forces may work to minimize women’s baseball, it’s time for a new narrative emerge honoring the game’s co-ed beginnings and powered by a soaring anthem exalting fundamentals like including women.