Go!
Today, we will witness the first co-ed team
in professional baseball since the 1950s.
You see baseball all the time,
but you never think about seeing a woman out there.
I don't know why they get so hung up on this.
There's nothing wrong with being not so great at sports.
Like I can't cook a good soufflé.
What you're about to see
is not a work of fiction,
but it is a story of many dreams
that you've likely never seen it or heard of it before.
A pivotal Group C matchup today.
Two teams collide on a huge stage.
Both need a victory to advance.
Holmes and her first triple, the play today,
a double to left that brought home two runs.
Courage, passion,
perseverance against all odds.
This is the world of women's baseball.
-Let's go, Ebony, let's go. -Let's go, Ebony, let's go.
People wouldn't believe me
when I'd say I play baseball.
They're like, "Oh, you mean softball."
I'm like, "No, I play baseball with all the guys."
And you have to actually do the function,
-like not this, but... - Yeah, you can't do it
-like this. -Yeah.
My coach said "I don't think you should play
for my team anymore, because you're taking spots away
from boys that could potentially be college prospects.
It was after a game,
and this guy had tweeted,
"Why aren't you playing softball?"
Baseball is for boys and softball is for girls.
That's something that's just been kinda carried
in people's head for so long.
I played baseball since I was five years old,
and ever since then,
I just fell in love with the game.
I played till I was 14.
Went to high school, they didn't let me play.
I think that's just something
that we have to deal with
being women playing in a men's sport.
Women play rugby, women play soccer,
women play basketball, mixed martial arts.
Women do all these violent sports.
What is the issue with baseball?
Whoa!
Good job, Marti, way to hit the ball, all right.
You are the next Nomar Garciaparra, baby!
I grew up playing baseball in Southern California.
My dad trained me before I could walk.
Marti was adorable.
She looked like Shirley Temple,
striking out boys when she's seven, eight years old.
KNBC and KABC would show up.
They thought she was the mascot or something else,
and then they would see the windup,
pretty much the same windup she has now
that she had at seven,
and it just made for pretty good TV.
Well, it looks like you enjoy playing baseball,
-is that right? -Yeah.
That I can be in the major leagues.
-The major leagues? -Mm-hmm.
As far back as I can remember,
I've played baseball and I've loved the game.
I used to turn on a baseball game
and fall asleep on the couch,
and my brother would walk in and change the channel
and I would immediately wake up.
And I would say, "Hey, I was watching that."
And he would say, "You were sleeping!"
And I said, "No, I was watching it."
I like that baseball is way more complicated
than people think.
The average fans sees the game, they see home runs,
-they see strikeouts...
and that's about as deep as they get.
But it's so much more complicated than that.
There's so much more going on.
I can't say that at five, I appreciated all those things,
but certainly, the seed was planted.
We start in tee-ball and there's a handful of other girls,
and then you get to machine or coach pitch, and...
there are fewer girls.
Then you get to kid pitch and I was the only girl.
But I love the game.
In 1931, The Yankees were on their way back
from spring training when they stopped
in Chattanooga, Tennessee to play an exhibition game.
There, they faced Jackie Mitchell
who struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
The next day in the paper,
Babe Ruth was quoted, saying,
"I don't know what's going to happen
if they begin to let women in baseball.
Of course, they will never make good.
Why?
Because they are too delicate."
No one knows for certain why.
But the next day,
Jackie Mitchell's contract was voided.
Since then, no woman has played
on a Major League affiliated team.
Ever since I was six, I've been playing baseball.
My dad kinda got me into it.
When she was a very young age,
you know, I would teach her the proper mechanics
to throwing, balance, the swing mechanics.
I would video tape her,
we'd break it down, she'd get to watch it.
It got to the point where he was like,
"Well, don't you wanna get in a league,
and don't you wanna play?"
And I kept saying no. I didn't want to do it.
And one of my biggest concerns, I was like,
"Well, if I gotta play, do I have to have my hair up?"
She saw every girl
that had her hair in a ponytail,
assumed that it had to be that way.
I said, "You can have your hair any way you want to,
first of all."
"Then I wanna play baseball."
At 11 and 12, you know,
I kept getting people that would say, "Well, you know,
when the boys start getting stronger and faster,
things are gonna change a little bit,
and they never did.
She was a baseball player. You know?
And it wasn't she threw like a girl or threw like a boy,
she threw like an athlete.
And then high school came around,
she's like, "I wanna play baseball."
I'd always wanted to be on the Dodgers.
And I kept having these fantasies,
this might be why I became a political scientist,
that they would change the law
by the time I got to be nine and I could play Little League.
In 1973, there were lawsuits
to allow girls to play Little League Baseball.
One team physician said,
"No, girls' bones are softer at this age.
They break much easier."
Or there was talk about
if a girl gets hit in the chest with a ball,
she's gonna get breast cancer later.
I mean, this is just crazy science
to keep little boys and little girls segregated.
Little League Baseball lost in 1973,
and the Hoboken, New Jersey Little League
shut down for a year rather than let girls play with boys.
Of course, legally they couldn't stop
the two girls that played with the boys,
but they certainly didn't support them.
Instead of starting girls baseball
or welcoming co-ed baseball,
they created the softball league.
And that sort of became the popular version
of this is what girls do and this is what boys do.
Totally two different sports.
We're two different sports.
I relay to this as tennis and ping-pong.
It's the same concept, different dimensions,
but totally different sport.
She can hit, she can pitch,
but Stacy Piagno doesn't play softball.
As Fox30's Brent Martineau explains,
like the movie, Stacy, she's in a league of her own.
The fastball is pretty good.
The curveball can be nasty.
Strike!
Not bad stuff for a pitcher with a ponytail.
This is normal for me, you know.
I've always played baseball since I was little.
Stacy Piagno is one of the guys.
I grew up playing when I was younger.
You know, it just started off as something fun to do.
Me and my brother, we both played.
As I got older, um, I definitely fell in love with the sport,
just how, you know, anybody falls in love with what they do.
And I had a pretty easygoing past.
You know, I was always pretty accepted growing up
with my coaches and teammates.
But it got to the point where
I have to either, you know,
work my butt off to stay in this sport or just slide out.
I played high school baseball with the boys,
then I went to college and I ended up playing softball.
Softball, it is a different sport,
but at least I was, you know, running
and throwing something.
You just gotta work a hundred times harder
to fit in, to earn respect, and to, to do well.
Whenever I came into the ballpark,
I was a little nervous, I was a little scared.
I didn't know what to expect.
I wasn't like the guys who were able
to change in the locker room.
I changed in the restroom.
As I was walking to the batting cages,
I literally asked myself, "Do I want this?"
Like, is this something I really want?
I, like, paused and I was like, "Yeah, I want this."
Run! Go!
I definitely had that dream as a kid.
I wanted to be the first woman in professional leagues.
I, I think I probably wrote some story
for some elementary school essay.
I decided I was gonna give it a shot
at the high school level.
I actually wrote a letter to all the high school coaches
uh, at schools that I could attend.
I wasn't asking for special treatment,
I was simply asking for a fair shot.
Frankly, some coaches said no, there's a softball team,
um, and a handful of coaches said,
"Sure, if you're good enough, you can come play."
I stopped going to the games
because the boys were hurting her.
At that time, she played second base.
There was a man on first, there was a ball hit to second.
She charged the ball and the runner,
put his knee right into her head
as she was going for the ball and knocked her out.
And I was done, 'cause I was gonna kill somebody
if I continued to watch what was going on in the field.
For nearly a century,
there were only two opportunities
for women to play baseball.
In the 1940s, while the men were away at war, women played
in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
as portrayed in the movie A League of Their Own.
Even though by the 1990s the ban on girls
in Little League had been lifted,
in practice, very little changed.
From 1994 to 1997,
a few women got to play for the Silver Bullets,
a professional women's team that barnstormed the country
playing against men.
Otherwise, girls who play have no choice
but to play on boys teams if they're fortunate enough
to have school, league, and parental support.
-Hooray! -Hoo-rah!
Every time I go out to pitch against a guy team,
I hear chatter.
I've been trained by doing this so many times
that I kinda, it's like, mute them out.
Come on, dummy, get 'em out!
-The boy can play! - Let's go!
Tie game!
What? No.
Got 'em at three!
There were times I would feel
left out as an athlete.
People in the crowds would,
would sometimes think differently.
Guys on the other team would make it a big deal.
One dad came up to my dad and said,
"She'll never play high school baseball in this town.
Not as long as I'm around."
I've had people try to peg me.
They went after her all the time.
They hit her like six or seven times with a pitch.
Talk about pursuing a dream. It takes a lot of courage
to come out to this field.
When I finished my senior year,
for all intents and purposes,
I thought that baseball was over for me.
I wanted to go to a big Division 1 school,
I wanted to have that experience.
The best way for me to do that
was to use volleyball as a means to get a scholarship.
You can't go anywhere with baseball
if you're an athletic girl.
And, and that's, that's a real roadblock.
Whenever people doubted me,
I would take that energy and that would fuel me.
That's what made me keep going.
Go, go, go! More!
Sometimes baseball will be tough and it'll be hard,
and I get frustrated with it,
so I'd want to do something else.
I liked being with women athletes like my own.
There are times I, I would want to pursue soccer or golf,
and then there are times I just thought like,
I just, I just really love baseball.
Like I just can't imagine stopping.
- Woo!
I was Googling women's baseball,
men's league,
I was just looking for anything,
and I stumbled on the fact that USA Baseball
had a women's team, which I didn't know,
and they were having open tryouts
for the 2006 National Team
that was going to play in the World Cup in Taiwan.
I thought, well, I haven't played in a while
but I'm gonna give it a shot.
USA Baseball is the governing body
for the sport of baseball.
All Olympic sports have one.
One of our jobs is fielding national teams
to be able to complete with the best in the world.
Life is such a special thing,
where you get to come out
and finally, you know, play baseball together.
So we don't get paid, we don't have salaries.
It's not like that.
This is purely the love of the game.
In 2004,
the first Women's Baseball World Cup was held,
providing international playing opportunities,
and giving women their only chance to play
high-level amateur baseball once every two years.
And in 2015, women's baseball was included
in the Pan American Games for the first time.
Team USA won the gold.
The World Cup in South Korea is next and that's our focus.
We're currently number two in the world,
but we wanna be number one.
The top 40 female baseball players in the USA
compete to represent their country
and the sport they love.
I hope it goes further than, you know, just this year,
this, this go around.
It'd mean the world to me to go play,
especially for the United States.
Only 20 will make the cut
for the rare opportunity
to play baseball with women and against women.
Every year, we get more girls
that find out about the team and try out,
and each year it gets better, and stronger, and bigger
and more of a program.
Did you ever pitch 'em on top?
I did, actually was a... pitched quite a bit,
-about 400 years ago, but...
I probably crossed.
I was really hurt too.
I got pulled out of the first inning.
Oh, yeah, you were hurt? You started? And mentally?
I'm actually gonna go take pitching lessons
and come back to the team
so that I can pitch one inning and redeem myself.
I got you, Holmsie.
I've never been more butthurt in my life.
It was awful.
Tamara, she's just like a goofball, to be honest.
She's just great to have around,
and it's funny, 'cause she's so intimidating.
Like, physically.
But she's the nicest person that you've ever met.
Being the oldest person on the team,
you know, I'm gonna get beat up with the old person jokes,
but at the same time, they have to carry the equipment
so it's good to have the youngins around.
My biggest responsibility
is to, is to lead by example,
and help groom them in the USA Baseball way.
You can look at any high-end elite athlete
and you see that, that what we call that it factor.
You gotta have that heart
and you gotta have that confidence.
A lot of times, you can't teach that.
I work as a full-time firefighter in Oakland,
and I run a CrossFit gym in my off days
when I'm not playing baseball.
Up in my 20s, I played the last two years
with the Silver Bullets,
and then USA Baseball came around
and that also provided another high level of play.
We can try it out.
Yeah, we need to get it.
There are a handful of us
who have been playing together since 2006,
and we've built a very good camaraderie
and some really close friendships.
This is what we look like when we play catch
and Catchphrase.
Recently got married and then a handful of players
that I'm the closest to came to my wedding,
so, you know, we are, in fact, a family.
-Yeah! -Yeah!
I anticipate this being my last World Cup.
I'm definitely gonna go down swinging for sure,
but I don't feel any extra pressure.
- Yeah.
I come and sit here all the time.
More, more, more!
Hit me, hit me!
Ones are at the 45, twos are at first base.
I mean, shoot, I, when I came walking in,
I saw the third baseman make a play that,
I mean, it's do or die.
-And she made it look easy.
So that's the need to see.
I mean, these girls are playing
and everything full board.
More of like, old time baseball,
like a manufacture runs and stuff.
Tell me again uh, what you do.
-I'm a scout - All right.
for the Toronto Blue Jays.
I have dreams about old baseball at night,
like living in Brooklyn and the Dodgers and stuff.
Baseball was played totally different.
Power's an added thing to it.
Now that it's so individualized,
everyone wants to see the guy throwing
a hundred miles an hour and hitting 495-foot home runs.
You kinda lose the whole team thing.
While bat and ball games
go back as far as ancient Egypt,
one of the more direct ancestors of the game
was invented by women.
Milkmaids in the 15th century
were the ones that have been credited
with inventing a game called stoolball.
They set their milking stools in a circle.
One served the rock to the other,
and the other one hit it and ran to the first stool.
And you got out if a fielder picked up the rock
and threw it at you before you got to base.
I mean, you know, simple, right?
Very feminine.
But it wasn't a boys' game.
Twenty women will go home, and 20 will stay
for a bi-annual opportunity to play competitive baseball.
The ones who don't make the cut will have to wait two years
for this opportunity to come around again.
So this next year coming back,
I will definitely be way more prepared.
It is sad, you know, you're not going
to South Korea or playing,
but it wouldn't help at all if we didn't come back.
And then when you go to your exit meetings
and the coaches sit down and talk to you
and tell you, you know, what you're gonna work on,
the positive things they have to say about you,
it's just motivation to come back.
The competitiveness of breaking down to 20 is so hard.
And that sometimes it's gonna mean
you're not gonna make that final 20
and it's gonna be devastating.
And it happens in all sports, right?
I mean, you sign up for that.
-Say home team.
So it's gonna be a culture shock for me,
'cause I'm in little Southern Louisiana, you know?
for women's baseball.
Well, we have 14 teams in Sydney.
They all play in the competitions.
The women's game is the dirty little secret
that's swept under the rug.
And it won't get on ESPN,
but you put on chess and you put on poker,
and you put on the spelling bee.
Why wouldn't there be one highlight?
Women's World Cup today.
Blah, blah, blah.
It's a beautiful event. Looks great.
The top two teams from each group
move on to compete for the gold medal in games
broadcast on live TV in several countries.
And for the first time,
streamed on the Web around the globe.
The remaining teams will play consolation games
before returning home empty handed.
Women play on the same field as the men.
There are only a few differences.
The women play with an aluminum bat,
the outfield fence is moved in about 15 feet,
and they play seven-inning games.
And with that, a very warm welcome
to Gijang, South Korea
and the 2016 Women's Baseball World Cup.
The U.S. has been shut out of the top spot
over the last four editions of this tournament
by a dominant Japan national team,
and the Americans looking to atone for that.
Stacy Piagno gets to start for the United States
this afternoon, as the U.S. takes on Hong Kong.
Piagno is a member of last year's
This just should not be a special event.
It should be here all across the country
on diamonds in local communities everywhere.
This is the first event that we've done for the girls,
but what is beyond that, you know, who knows.
It could be league, it could be a woman coach,
it could be a lot of different things.
- Who's the first? - I am!
- Who's the best? - I am!
-Who are you? - Trailblazers!
The Trailblazer Series ended
with the girls being honored on the field at Dodger Stadium
as part of the Jackie Robinson Day celebration.
My hopes and dreams is that this would continue,
this would be a start,
and that the girls
that develop and really become real talents
will get an opportunity.
♪ Can you see
♪ By the dawn's early light
♪ What so proudly we hailed
♪ Free
♪ And the home
♪ Of the brave
For a while, there were a lot of games
where we weren't getting in.
So, you know, it kinda takes a toll on you.
It starts to make you feel like, "Am I ever gonna get in?
Am I ever gonna get my chance?"
We're out here, we're working hard every day,
physically and mentally, like I said,
and it's like we wanna get out there
and prove what we've been working for.
I mean, we're skeptical.
We were wondering whether they were just there
to fill roster spots,
or just there to, you know, for the experience.
We didn't know if they would play
or if they would get any time on the field.
I have over 20 years
of professional baseball experience.
Won a World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006,
so it's an interesting thing, you know?
A girl is gonna play professional baseball.
It's something you wouldn't normally, uh, see.
And, you know, they'll joke about it here and there.
One of our guys last year, he hit one home run last year.
He hit it off of Kelsie.
It was his first professional homer,
and it was his only professional homer,
and we said, "Hey, maybe this year
you can hit a homer off a guy."
She was on the mound, it was the first inning,
-and she came up like this.
Add there must have been 500 to 600 people there,
which for us, is a huge crowd.
And hushed, I said, "I've never in my whole life,
ever been to a baseball game
where there wasn't a single sound."
I felt very comfortable, I felt in my zone,
and, you know, from then on out they were very quick innings,
and I felt like I just couldn't be stopped,
and they just weren't getting a hold of any of my pitches.
Last week, the young recruit, she belongs.
She tossed seven innings, gave up a run,
struck out four, and won the game.
Just the third female pitcher
- to claim a victory...
in a men's league since the 1950s.
That night she won, to me, she looked like
an ex-big league pitcher that threw,
you know, 78 miles an hour.
Last year, both me and Kelsie,
we were both being recognized
for just being girls and being here. You know?
But this year, what was so special to me
is that I actually got recognized for playing,
and for something that I've physically done.
I've grown up playing ball with Stacy,
so I was definitely, um, honored to be part of that game,
and I was super proud of her.
I knew she was gonna take care of business that day.
And she didn't only pitch well, she dominated.
At least I can say I played with a girl before.
Not a lot of guys can say that.
That's probably one of the coolest things
I've ever been a part of.
It was a tough loss to take,
but she deserved the win
and it was neat to, uh, to be here to see her.
Those of us who love baseball
know there's no other game like baseball.
As soon as I hear the sound of a ball
hitting a leather glove or see it flying off a bat,
I learned so many life lessons in baseball,
like as a person, as an athlete, as a teammate,
even as a daughter, like, and as a sister.
I've been through so many ups and downs,
and, like, I've learned so much.
Baseball is not only played on the field,
it is also played in the hearts of players and fans.
And what is played in the heart is then reflected
in all other aspects of our lives,
from the classrooms to the living rooms,
from the boardrooms to the courtrooms.
They're playing baseball now, but you know what?
They're learning that they can be anybody.
The future's in the smile on these girls.
Whatever it is, it's their choice,
and that's what they're learning on this baseball field.
They gotta keep fighting,
or else, nothing will really happen,
but I also think as we go,
you know, the generations are getting stronger.
And the confidence just oozing, dripping everywhere,
which is just awesome to see.
I say I think we're in the middle
or beginning of the story, not at the end,
and probably, to get to the end,
we'll go this way and that way,
and...
forward and backward, and everywhere in between.
For every woman and girl
who has been denied the right to play,
another has stood up.
The game is far from over,
but they stand united with their allies.
Headed towards one clear goal.
The freedom to pursue their dreams.
The right to play baseball.
Yeah, yeah!
At seven, women's baseball World Cup
USA, Venezuela.
Amanda Giovani, a diamond grab to double up the rudder.
It was really embarrassing.
She's just anti-visor.
Does not want to wear it.
We ordered these, uh, custom-made Nike baseball hats.
We're gonna do a little ceremony,
and give her, her, uh, big baseball hat.
Finally, you've got something you can wear.
-So cute. -Yes.
We'll play baseball in a little bit, okay?
It's okay, we'll go play baseball.
-I'm very proud of Marti. -Oh, my god.
Would have loved to go further but, uh, she did good.
She did everything she could do.
I can't be any prouder in you than right now.
Then buy me a new car.
No, we'll get some soup on Witty Street and Waltham.
Oh, cool, I get soup.
I mean I've been there.
A lot of the girls on the team have been there.
Isn't that life?
Don't you have to make those hard decisions with anything?
Got a buddy right here.
Um, you have to make those decisions, I mean,
do you wanna move down to the other busking zone?
And that's a wrap.
And that's pepper.