Independent Baseball Team Signs Two Women

Josh Luckenbaugh | July 1, 2016
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While the Sonoma Stompers of the independent Pacific Association of Professional Baseball Clubs will never be in the same league as the New York Yankees or St. Louis Cardinals, the California-based independent baseball team made headlines on Monday when they announced the signings of two female players -- seventeen-year-old Kelsie Whitmore and 25-year-old Stacy Piagno -- who will be in their starting lineup Friday. 

This will be the first time a professional baseball team has been co-ed since the 1950s, when three women were allowed to play in the Negro Leagues. 

Whtimore is a recent high school graduate with a softball scholarship to Cal State Fullerton, while Piagno won a gold medal with Team USA's women's baseball team at the 2015 Pan Am Games. Both will also be teammates on the United States squad at the Women's Baseball World Cup, scheduled to take place in South Korea this September.

The move was primarily sponsored by legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola's Virginia Dare Winery. Coppola released this statment concerning the signings:

My family would play co-ed baseball games and inevitably the star player would always be an aunt who could run and hit and that made the games so much more fun. When watching Major League Baseball, I always wondered why there couldn’t be a co-ed team. It’s the one major sport in which weight and strength come less into play. So when my Sonoma winery became involved with the Stompers, I had the opportunity to turn this thought into a reality and recruit these amazing women capable of playing alongside men.

Theo Fightmaster, the Stompers' general manager, voiced his hopes that Friday will be the start of a larger movement to integrate women into all levels of baseball:

“While many believe it's only a matter of time before we see a woman playing in the MLB, I've learned over the past several months that there are many steps in between where we are and where we should be in terms of women in this sport," he said. "We hope this sends a message to the rest of the baseball world that there is room for women and girls in this game – from Little League to the Major Leagues.” 

Fightmaster was adamant this is not some sort of publicity stunt, and that Whitmore and Piagno will be treated like any other player, even if thier play does not match that of their male counterparts. He told MLB.com:

 "I've never seen [Piagno] pitch against grown men. It was girls and aluminum bats and it was a different environment [...] They're gonna play however much they earn. They are not gonna be in the starting lineup every night so we can sell more tickets. It's a big game on July 1 and they'll both be in the lineup and after that we'll see what their performance dictates."

The Stompers have made similarly progressive moves in the past, becoming the first professional team to include an openly gay player in 2015.

It will be interesting to see how Whtimore and Piagno perform against professional competition Friday night, as thier success could determine how wide the door opens for women to compete with men in baseball and, possibly, other sports. Check out a video of Whitmore showing off her abilities below:

 

 

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