Sunday Extra

One of the boys

All Molly McKesson has wanted in her baseball life was to be treated and judged by her merits on the ballfield, just like her male counterparts. So how has it turned out? Dad would be proud.

By JOHN C. COTEY
Published May 15, 2005

	[Special to the Times: Nikki Boertman]
	Since she was a little girl, Molly McKesson has wanted to be a baseball pitcher. This spring, the Gibbs High graduate made six appearances for Christian Brothers University.

MEMPHIS - The little girl, forced to attend her brother's Little League game, looks for something to do. She finds a baseball. She picks it up and throws it to a friend.

She throws it again, and again, and again. Just like the boys, she throws overhand. She has learned a little watching her brother. She is good, and she falls in love.

She keeps throwing that ball, to her father alongside their house, to her brother in the street, to teammates who aren't sure what to make of her.

She throws the ball like the baseball players on television, even as those who watch tell her to throw it like the other girls. Underhand. But this is how she wants to throw, like the boys, against the boys, against all odds.

At age 8, she writes a story about playing in a World Series.

This is her vision: on a big field somewhere, at a college far away, she will be a pitcher.

Molly McKesson, 18, left St. Petersburg for the quaint and neatly landscaped campus of Christian Brothers University in August, her bags packed with extra clothes and books like everyone else, distinguished only by one of her most prized possession.

Her baseball glove.

She didn't go to Memphis to make history, but to make a team.

To do so, she had to prove coach Phil Goodwin was warranted in making her the first woman to earn a partial baseball scholarship. She had to convince her teammates she was more than a publicity stunt; that her arm was strong enough to retire the bigger, stronger men she would face; that she would not turn her team into a laughingstock; that her roster spot couldn't be better used; that she was more than a ponytail bobbing out from behind her slender 5-foot-8 frame.

It wouldn't be easy. Goodwin had convinced athletic director Joseph Nadicksbernd, a former baseball coach at the school, he was bringing in McKesson because she could pitch, not for publicity. But then he started hearing about parents calling and complaining. Some of his players were antsy.

A girl? On a men's college baseball team? Are you kidding? Despite the resistance, it was too late. Goodwin had bought into McKesson a long time ago, while watching her two years earlier at a baseball expo in Cocoa Beach.

"I trusted her dream," he said. "That was her dream, and maybe sometimes you attach yourself to things you can't reverse. I trusted her. I trusted her abilities, and I wanted to help her accomplish her dreams. Now the job is hers to prove that I was right."

Bob McKesson could have taken the easy route. He could have replaced the baseball with a softball, taught an underhand delivery, steered his daughter in the direction everyone told him he should.

Instead, he nurtured her hopes and encouraged her to play the sport she wanted to play. He coached her in boys leagues at Fossil Park and Northeast, her brother, Kevin, a teammate many times along the way. In her early teens, she starred on a women's national team. She became the first girl in Pinellas County to play baseball, starting for Gibbs High.

McKesson made sure his daughter was not deterred. He played catch in the back yard with aching limbs, the result of delivering the mail all day. He drove his daughter around the country for tournaments. When her women's baseball team needed a site for a weeklong tournament, he negotiated with the Devil Rays for the use of Florida Power Park and Tropicana Field.

He hadn't played baseball, but McKesson bought books, studied and tried to teach. When he couldn't teach, he spent as much as he needed to find someone who could. His daughter always had the best pitching coaches and the most talented instructors.

And at the end of the day, she always had him.

"He never once ever said he was too tired to play catch with me and always supported me," McKesson said. "He never suggested I play softball. My dad was wonderful." Over a cheese calzone cut into neat, little pieces at the Memphis Pizza Cafe, McKesson pauses. The wound is still too raw, and the tears flow freely.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night stopped McKesson from helping his girl to her dream. But when it was finally realized, brain cancer had punctured the joy. McKesson died in July, two months after being diagnosed and a month before his daughter was set to leave for college.

She knows he would have liked driving to Memphis to see her pitch.

"He was so proud," his wife, Sheryl, said. "Other parents would come up to us and say she should switch to softball so she could at least get a scholarship. And he'd say, "You know, maybe she'll get one for baseball."'

McKesson should have been there for her debut. He would have cheered as she pitched a 1-2-3 inning against Lindenwood of St. Charles, Mo. Ray Dankle was there. Wouldn't have missed it for anything. He was Bob McKesson's best man and best friend. In his stead, no one was prouder. With tears in his eyes, he walked up to Goodwin afterward, shook his hand and said, "Thank you."

When McKesson showed up for CBU's first meeting of the season, she quietly took her seat in the bleachers near the home dugout. Some players wondered why a woman was there. "We had heard toward the end of last year that she might be coming, but we really didn't know until we had the first meeting," catcher Brian DeJean said. "I think everyone was looking to see if it was true, see if she was there."

DeJean admittedly wasn't supportive initially. Neither was pitcher Charlie Soukup, a sophomore from prep baseball hotbed St. Paul, Minn.

Soukup believed her presence made the Bucs a "laughingstock." He said it was frustrating to watch other teams pull out cameras when she took the mound. He believed the presence of a woman changed the way the male players interacted.

"There's a lot of people that take baseball seriously, and we're all trying to get better and had to deal with what some felt was a publicity stunt," he said.

"I was initially upset. I'm really trying. I have dreams of playing after college. This is a big step for me, and I was real excited about it. Then this happens. It's kind of a mockery of the game and everyone's ability."

DeJean came around before the season started. Soukup said he was still trying, and McKesson said while she could tell he was uncomfortable, he was always nice to her.

Wes Hoover, a co-captain along with DeJean, was on board from the start. A senior outfielder, he was the first to tell McKesson if she had any problems, to come see him.

"I didn't mind, not one bit," Hoover said. "I think it was probably about 50-50 in terms of who supported it and who didn't. A lot of them thought it was a (public relations) thing. They were like, "Yeah, it'll never happen. She'll get here and we'll root her out,' that type of thing. But that never happened."

Hoover said many players had to admit McKesson was better than they believed. First-year pitching coach Tom Densford said she was more polished than a lot of the pitchers he has tutored.

She touches only 70 mph with her fastball, but her delivery is sound and breaking stuff some of the team's best. "Anybody that ever sees her throw will say she has good mechanics," Densford said. "She works at what she does, which is impressive. She was a lot better than what I thought. Location-wise, she surprised me. She can go inside. She can go outside, spots the ball real well and has a nice split-finger and changeup.

"Everyone is going to have questions, but she answered those questions very quickly."

Fitting in socially was harder. Painfully shy, McKesson stood off on her own during most practices, shagging fly balls away from the cliques. When she could, she interacted from a distance, laughing as her teammates chased a freshman for a head-shaving ritual.

When it was suggested she let them shave her head, she instead offered to let them dye it.

It didn't take long for McKesson to win over teammates with an impeccable work ethic and good results. In the fall, she struck out some of her teammates in intrasquad games, pitched well in an event at the home of Memphis' Triple-A team and never embarrassed herself. "You find yourself rooting for her," Hoover said. "I root for her because she's one of the few that will even try it. She is ... man enough, I guess, to even attempt it, and I respect her for that."

On April19, coming off being swept by Delta State, ranked No.2 by Collegiate Baseball, by a combined 49-5, CBU was tied with Bethel after six innings.

To pitch the seventh, desperate for a win, Goodwin called on McKesson.

Until then, she had pitched four innings of mopup duty, never as good as she was that first game with her 1-2-3 inning. Against the Tennessee college, however, she answered any lingering questions about her place on the team.

She walked two batters in the seventh but allowed no runs. In the bottom of the inning, the Bucs scored three runs. McKesson qualified for the win at that point, but Goodwin wanted to see more. Though he had maintained she would be a one-inning pitcher, he left her in the game. A leadoff double, error and wild pitch put runners on second and third. McKesson struck out the No.2 hitter and walked the next to load the bases.

Facing the cleanup hitter, McKesson got a ground ball for a double play. John Daush pitched a scoreless ninth for her victory.

"Highlight of the year," McKesson said proudly.

Her teammates shook her hand, patted her on the back and congratulated her. Later, they presented her with the game ball.

Two weeks later, McKesson's first season was over. She went 1-1 with three earned runs allowed in six innings for a 4.50 ERA.

In an end-of-the-season meeting, Goodwin told her he was proud of her and she was welcome back next year.

She left for the summer, his final words playing over and over in her head:

"You proved them wrong."

On the wall in his office, Goodwin long ago posted a message he picked up from a preacher on one of those busy Sundays when he had no choice but to get his religion from the television.

It says: "Did you grow up to be what you were supposed to be?"

Thanks to a few true believers, McKesson can say yes. "I'm not trying to be the first girl or first anything. I'm just playing baseball," McKesson said. "I think I won my team over with my work ethic. Coach told me a couple of them at first were skeptical because they never saw a girl play baseball.

"By the end of the season, I hope I proved I wasn't just there for a joke or for the publicity."

It's her second appearance of the season, and McKesson is trying to keep her team in a game that is slowly slipping away. She gets a strike then two balls and another strike. The batter digs in to protect the plate.

Fifty yards away, behind a set of empty aluminum bleachers, a girl plays catch with a boy. For her, it's just a game to pass this bitterly cold Memphis afternoon and a way to keep warm while her parents watch a baseball game. For her, these days of playing catch will end. For her, what is happening on the big field means nothing.

For McKesson, it means everything.

Her chess match with the batter ends with a walk. A new batter steps in, and the pieces are reset. Cameras are clicking. All eyes are on her, and she must decide: changeup or split-finger fastball against the hulking batter hoping to knock it over the fence?

No one watches the girl, who takes a running start and with all her might, lets the ball fly overhanded to the boy 30 feet away.

LIZZIE MURPHY: On Aug. 14, 1922, she played first base for an American League All-Star team in an exhibition game against the Red Sox at Fenway Park. It was the first time a woman played for a major-league team. Known as the "Queen of Baseball," she played on amateur teams throughout Rhode Island before earning a spot on the semipro Providence Independents, a New England barnstorming team.

MARGARET GISOLO: She played American Legion Junior Baseball in 1928. But the next year, the American Legion banned women from playing, and girls were increasingly discouraged from playing organized baseball.

JACKIE MITCHELL: As a 17-year-old, she created a stir when she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig during an exhibition game between the Chattanooga Lookouts and the Yankees on April 2, 1931. She gained media attention for her performance, but major-league commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was not amused. He had Mitchell's contract with Chattanooga voided and banned women from pro baseball.

ALL-AMERICAN GIRLS BASEBALL LEAGUE: Chicago Cubs owner Phillip Wrigley started this league in 1943 during the World War II because he was worried about baseball being canceled. He suggested a women's league that started out with softball rules and gradually developed into baseball by 1948. Four teams - Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles, Rockford Peaches and South Bend Blue Sox - played the first season. The league grew to 10 teams by 1948 before folding after the 1954 season. It was the basis for the movie A League of Their Own.

KATHRYN "TUBBY" JOHNSTON: In the summer of 1950, the 12-year-old became the first girl to play for a Little League team. She cut her hair short, took on the name Tubby (after a character in the Little Lulu comic strip) and made the King's Dairy team in Corning, N.Y. She let her coach in on the secret two weeks into the season, and he left her on the team. The next year, Williamsport banned girls from playing Little League baseball.

MARIA PEPE: Twenty-two years after Johnston, Pepe was playing for the Young Democrats in the Hoboken, N.J., Little League. Opponents protested to Williamsport, and Pepe quit the team to save its charter. The local chapter of the National Organization for Women represented Pepe in a lawsuit against Little League. In 1974, the New Jersey Superior Court ruled Little League must allow girls to play. But by then, Pepe was too old.

JULIE CROTEAU: In 1989, she became the first woman to play NCAA baseball when she made the Division II team at St. Mary's College in Maryland. she had sued for the right to play in high school, but lost. In 1995, she became the first female assistant coach for a Division I baseball program when she was hired by UMass. ILA BORDERS: The left-hander was the first woman to pitch in a men's college game when she took the mound for Southern California College in 1994. Encountering resistance at SCC, she was forced to transfer to Whittier College for her senior year and went 4-5. In 1998, she became the first woman to start a minor-league game when she pitched for the Duluth-Superior Dukes against Sioux City in the Northern League. She later pitched in the Western League and retired in 2000.

Compiled by Times staff writer John C. Cotey with information from the Associated Press, the Hartford Courant, baseballglory.com, and Baseball & Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter's Box.

[Last modified May 15, 2005, 07:18:24]