Photos by Laura Wulf.
11岁的莉娜·帕克（Lena Park）从记事起就热爱棒球运动. She grew up playing the sport, dreaming of someday becoming the first woman to play in the majors, and entered high school excited to try out for the varsity team.
“I walked up to my biology teacher, who was also the baseball coach, and he looked at me and laughed and said, ‘Oh, we don’t let girls try out for baseball,’” she recalled. “当你14岁的时候，你不会真正考虑如何与之抗争, you just think, ‘Ok, I guess those are the rules.’”
But Park continued to play baseball, 高中期间，她一直是男子联盟的接球手和中场内野手，并在太阳城网赌平台学习了四年英语和社会学专业. And now she’s working with the nonprofit organization Baseball for All 确保其他年轻女孩有机会参加她们喜欢的运动——无论级别如何.
Begun in 2015 by Justine Siegal, the first woman to ever coach for an MLB team, 全民棒球的使命很简单：让女孩们有机会打棒球，而不用被迫放弃这项“男孩运动”，或者转而打垒球，以提高她们获得大学奖学金的机会. 该组织与高中女生合作，鼓励并授权她们参加大学“男子”队的选拔, 同时与全国各地大学的女性合作，推动女子俱乐部团队的发展. If enough club teams are formed, 女子棒球更有可能成为NCAA的新兴运动, said Park.
自朴槿惠5年前加入该组织以来，工作取得了很大进展, 全国各地都出现了女子棒球队，数百名球员参加了全民棒球锦标赛. Last year, 大学棒球队的女运动员比以往任何时候都多, 全民棒球校友凯尔茜·惠特莫尔成为第一位在大西洋联盟打球的女性, an official professional partner league of Major League Baseball.
“It’s been pretty explosive in the past five years,” said Park. “The growth has been incredible.”
In August, Park帮助组织了最近一次成功的活动：在波士顿大学举办的为期两天的女子棒球邀请赛，来自北美各地的24名有才华的高中球员（其中一名来自澳大利亚）在7名大学教练面前展示了他们的技能. Spread across the Harrington Athletics Village, 球员们参加了一项大学风格的训练：进行击球练习, doing infield and outfield drills, running timed sprints, 在分成两队进行两场九局的比赛之前，先进行牛棚训练. On Saturday, 他们休息了一下，听取了一个由现任和前任大学女运动员组成的小组讲述她们在大学打棒球的经历.
莉娜·帕克在太阳城网赌平台为期两天的邀请赛上对选手讲话.
“听到这些大学棒球运动员的故事让人惊讶. 他们中没有一个人在获得大学棒球机会方面是相同的,” said Park. “我希望这能给年轻球员留下深刻的印象，如果你真的想参加比赛，就没有一条特定的道路, 大学棒球是一个真正的选择，你有不同的方式去做，并找到机会为你这样做.”
球员们也从在场的大学教练那里得到了建议和鼓励, 包括波士顿大学棒球总教练迈克·甘比诺和助理教练格雷格·沙利文, both of whom were impressed by the caliber of play they observed.
“我给他们的一个小建议是，首先把自己看作是球员，不要听其他所有会分散他们注意力的噪音,” said Gambino. “很明显，他们热爱这项运动，很明显，他们是棒球运动员——不要忘记这一点.”
For female players hoping to someday compete at the college level, 在一个一级项目主持并利用其最先进的设施是一次令人振奋的经历, said Park.
“It helps legitimize what these girls are hoping to accomplish,” she said, 这表明像太阳城网赌平台这样的机构是他们的后盾, which is a really powerful message to send.”
这种支持有助于消除女棒球运动员仍然面临的许多障碍：围绕性别和体育的社会耻辱仍然存在, 不过朴槿惠发现，最强烈的反对声音往往来自成年人, not other players; and talented girls are often told that switching to softball will be their only chance at a college scholarship, even though the sport is, in many ways, fundamentally different from the one they love (“if they’re pitchers, those skills just do not translate,” said Park). For girls who play on a “boy’s team,“作为名单上唯一的女球员，也有一种被孤立的感觉.
朴槿惠还记得在12岁时必须在垒球和棒球之间做出选择的挑战, and making a pros and cons list to help her decide what to do. 她希望她与“全民棒球”的合作将使今天的女孩更容易追求她们的激情, but she doesn’t regret her own experience, or the hurdles she faced.
“I got to play the game that I love for a long time, and it taught me a lot about adversity, how to manage failure, how to carry yourself in male-dominated environments, 以及如何在这些空间中把自己看作是平等的——而不仅仅是一个幸运的人,” she said. “这些东西一直延续到我生活的许多其他方面, and I couldn’t be more grateful to baseball for giving them to me.”
Alix Hackett | University Communications | October 2022
