If the title had been in French, you would have immediately known that we were talking about baseball players. Only the photo might have given you a hint about the subject of this article.
The story of Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in the American major leagues, made headlines and shattered prejudices. He had to fight against all kinds of injustice that no human should experience. Our world is full of these inequities, and our history books recount them more or less accurately, but never as powerfully as those who live them. Today, looking at the American major leagues, you wouldn’t think that nearly 50 years earlier, this sport was as segregated as its ruling country.
This parallel serves as a reminder that female baseball players still feel this exclusion today. Baseball is a mixed sport, and while there aren’t many, the race for progress has narrowed the physiological gaps. Our societies are opening up to leave doors open where the will to succeed rushes in where it seems unimaginable. Many dugouts around the world see young female players competing in strength, speed, and game sense.
Justine Siegal, first female MLB coach for batting practice in 2015
In 2015, Melissa Mayeux, a young French player, broke a first barrier by being listed among players who could interest American MLB scouts. National and international press picked up the story. Discussions about the first woman to play in the MLB began. Six years later, no woman still plays in the major leagues. However, here and there, we see female coaches arriving and taking their place in entirely male locker rooms. In 2016, the American series « Pitch » tackled the subject head-on and made the breakthrough possible. As a preparation of minds, so that little by little, the possibility becomes reality. While the series available on « Disney plus » romanticizes the subject with several key characters, one cannot deny its approach to the question through the psychological depth of the main players. The public, for its part, is entirely won over by this cause, but the reality of the entourage: players, coaches, managers is quite different.
Melissa Mayeux in 2015
At the end of 2021, Genevieve Beacom, an Australian player, joined as a pitcher the highest level of baseball. Fiction becomes reality with this exception that it does not take place in the USA. Even if the news went around the world, it will not have the same impact as the day the Americans do it. It is interesting to look at this evolution of baseball. Can the game benefit from it? Can strategies change if one or more women integrate the highest world levels? The first thing that is certain is that diversity always brings, in all areas, a balance that pure groups of men and women never achieve. The approach to life in the locker rooms, the dugouts, the third innings (if we can use this term in baseball!) will be turned upside down. As always, only competence and talent will be the judges.
Genevieve Beacom
There remains the question of physiology; hitting and pitching call upon musculature and, by extension, testosterone levels. Without resorting to doping, these women will need physical capabilities to compete with extremely trained men. However, baseball has an advantage over other sports: it calls upon other qualities: speed, reflection, analysis, strategy… and in these areas, the female being is fully equipped to make the right decisions.
Series « Pitch » 2016 with the San Diego Padres
Baseball will, in any case, be faster than other sports in establishing diversity. Other popular team sports like football, rugby, handball, or basketball only address the subject through the development of women’s sports as such. It is not in the minds of these sports to consider any kind of diversity. Out of the 28 Olympic disciplines at the Rio Games in 2016, only one was completely mixed: equestrian. However, when a champion arrives in a women’s sport, she changes the codes; Lyndsey Vonn in alpine skiing never stops demanding her participation in men’s downhill events, the federation first gave her a regulatory refusal then informed her last year that they would study the question. In tennis, the approach is not there, even if a first blow was struck in 1973 with a male/female duel, very well told in the recent 2017 film « Battle of the Sexes ».
Place your bets, when will the first female baseball player in the American major leagues be? Before 2030? Personally, I’m betting on it.
Didier Cannioux
