FOX Is Coming Out With A Show About The First Woman In MLB
I still highly doubt that this is ever going to happen.
If it ever does, it’ll likely be for the reason that they alluded to in this trailer, and that’s that a team might eventually want to be the first to have a woman break into the MLB in their uniform. It’s not misogynist, it’s not sexist, and it’s not being an asshole to say that we’ll probably never see a woman in the MLB; it’s just biomechanical. By saying that there will likely never be a woman in the MLB, that’s not saying that women can’t play baseball, either. That’s not true at all. Not only can they play, but there are some who are really good. For example, female pitcher Sandy Almon was once clocked at 86mph. That’s an above average fastball for male high school pitchers. But if the prime example of a female pitcher who can hang with the boys is the outlier who can throw 86mph, well, for every one female who can throw 86mph as their max fastball velocity, there are hundreds and maybe even thousands of males who can throw 90mph+ consistently.
The point that I’m trying to make is that if we ever do see this happen, this FOX show picked the right position, because it makes the most sense that she would be a pitcher. A knuckleball pitcher, actually. I mean, think about it. You don’t necessarily need fastball velocity. The last four years of Tim Wakefield’s career, his fastball velocity was between 72-73mph. You would need a fastball to mix in there, but 86mph is plenty of velocity to throw a hitter off balance if you have a nasty knuckleball. A 17-year-old female knuckleball pitcher threw BP to the Tampa Bay Rays a couple of years ago, and got a bunch of swings and misses.
Who knows how hard they were actually trying, but she’s not the only example of a female knuckleball pitcher who has gotten some recognition. Eri Yoshida is a female professional baseball player, who throws a sidearm knuckleball for the Ishikawa Million Stars. That’s the kind of approach that it’s going to have to take for a woman to make it to the MLB. I don’t think we’ll ever see the day that a woman makes it to the MLB in the sense that this show portrays, as in a female pitcher who strictly relies on a traditional repertoire of fastball, changeup, curveball/slider. That’s science’s fault, not society’s fault.