Cooperstown: Who's on First?

I'm in Cooperstown for two weeks with my baseball playing 12-year old, participating in a summer ritual familiar to serious baseball parents throughout the country. Every summer, Cooperstown Dreamspark runs weekly tournaments at a facility so stunningly perfect in baseball terms that it lives up to its own advertising as the Little Major Leagues.

In most respects, my baseball adventure is identical to that of the 15,000 other baseball families who come here each year. We will win impossible games on walk off home runs by the small kid who has never hit one before, or we will be mercied, maybe even by teams we should have beaten. We will learn about baseball, and we will learn about character. We will take photographs and buy T-shirts. But in one way, my experience is different.

You see, my 12-year old ball player is a girl. And even at Cooperstown Dreamspark, where "dreams come true," they don't sell a little brother's T-shirt that says, "I have no life, my SISTER plays baseball."

At Cooperstown last week, there were 1400 boys competing, and 6 girls. In America, girls don't play baseball. Some of this is by choice; some of it is because they are refused the opportunity by schools which still prohibit girls from participating in America's pasttime.

In my particular corner of the law, I am still often the only woman. I am accustomed to walking into large conference rooms or courtrooms, and finding I am alone in a group of 40 men. I have never been uncomfortable. In truth, I rather like it. But I'm not 12 and still growing into my adult self, and while I may meet the occasional old-timer who is a little confused by me, no one, absolutely no one, ever tells me I can't do what I'm doing.

My daughter's world is tougher than mine, perhaps more like the women entering the legal world in the '60's and '70's, but the rules are the same. And they are, I think, a good reminder that while it may be easier now for women in law than it was thirty years ago, and while we may bend these rules more now than ever before, they still apply and we break them at our peril.

Here are some things my daughter--let's call her Ursa--has already had to learn.

To succeed as a girl in a boy's game:

• It is not enough to be good. You have to be better. You may have to be the best.

Ursa is a very good player, but she is not the best. She is good enough to make every team she tries out for, but she is not so good that they HAVE to have her. Often, that alone makes all the difference. They will not change rules for her (e.g., at a school that does not allow girls to play), and she depends on having "enlightened" coaches who see only a ballplayer, not a ballplayer with a ponytail.

• Walk like a boy. Talk like a boy.

As a female in a male world, it's important to fit in and not call attention to one's femaleness. In my world, that requires a certain comfort level with off-color jokes and sports banter.

For Ursa, it is the same. She loves her Cooperstown team because they accept her completely. The proof? They don't stop being crude 12-year old boys when she enters a room. And when Ursa takes the field (and no where else), she lopes along in the same rangy saunter of her team mates, shoulders slouched, head bobbing. If it weren't for the ponytail, you'd never know she is a girl.

I have met many girl ballplayers in the last few years. Off the field, some are girly, some are not, like any collection of adolescent girls. But on the field, they are all the same. They all walk like boys. Very young, they realized this was their ticket to admission into the clubhouse.

• No short shorts.

Ursa is lucky enough to play very occasionally on a national all-girls exhibition team as well as her usual, local boys' teams. The girls' team competes against boys at big tournaments (including Cooperstown), and at such tournaments, her coach has only one piece of advice that Ursa never gets from her other coaches:

"No short shorts. We want to be remembered for our play on the field; not how we dressed off the field."

Women lawyers have much more freedom in dress now than when I entered the profession, but the fact remains. If you want to be sure you are taken seriously, be remembered for your play on the field, not the cut of your blouse.

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Each fall, I take Ursa to tryouts for her spring and summer teams. Some of those teams are highly competitive, and the tryouts are huge. Ursa is always the only girl. I cannot describe the feeling of 200 pairs of male eyes simultaneously pretending not to notice my girl. But I can relay the whispered comments: "Get a load of that pony tail!" "Oh, this is going to be rich."

Some how, Ursa finds the courage to close her ears, time and again, and she saunters to the practice mound, seemingly oblivious.

She looks in. She sets. She deals.

And the snickers are no more: "Hey, that girl can throw!"

That 12-year old is my hero. After all, you can learn a lot from a kid.

For girls' baseball opportunities and to learn more about girls' baseball, visit http://www.baseballforall.com/ and http://www.girlsplaybaseball.org/.