As I watched a nailbiter Championship Game at the Fifth Annual Diamond Classic hosted by the Eastern Women's Baseball Conference in Joe Cannon Stadium, Maryland, I pondered the current state of women in the National Pastime. The good news, the bad.

Tiffany Brooks, who had been signed temporarily to the Big Bend Cowboys in Texas, did not make the cut, and, although she had been referred to other clubs, she went home without a season contract.

On the other hand, 18-year-old Eri Yoshida, dubbed "The Knuckle Princess" made her pitching debut in the United States for the Chico Outlaws of Chico, California. Not only was she the first woman to pitch on a professional United States baseball team since Ila Borders more than a decade ago, she was the first woman to gain an RBI in baseball since the All American Girls. (Yes, they played baseball, not softball, especially in the 1950s.) She also was the first to pitch baseball for teams from two different countries.

http://www.goldenbaseball.com/chico/ArDisplay.aspx?ID=5382&SecID=200

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/sports/baseball/31pitcher.html

http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2010/05/30/at-age-18-eri-yoshida-doesnt-knuckle-under-in-her-pro-debut/

Meanwhile, our Kristin Mills Caldwell of Delaware, a former Team USA baseball player, was pitching a great game, but Marti Sementelli, also a Team USA member, was better. Sementelli, a member of the New England Women's Red Sox team, came all the way from Sherman Oaks, CA, for the tournament. She would throw a one-hit shutout, and the Red Sox would defeat the Philadelphia Women's Baseball League Independence, 1-0. Along with excellent pitching, the game featured some spectacular defensive plays and a bit of good "small ball" on both sides.

I am encouraged with the growing number of people who are willing to watch these games, with the growing number of women who are willing to sacrifice their holiday weekends to play a game that most people in this country don't believe they play, with the growing number of fathers who are not afraid to put a baseball in their little girls' hands. However, I am chagrined as well, when I see young women left on the bench when they are capable of playing, when I see publicity "cutsies" like Eri Yoshida's nickname, when I cannot find a single young woman on a college baseball roster like I did when I found Molly McKesson (Christian Brothers University) and Christal Fitzgerald (Daniel Webster College) a few years back. I am concerned because my own league is having its struggles to keep going and because other women's leagues have faltered.

Yet we persist:

http://www.buckslocalnews.com/articles/2010/05/13/bristol_pilot/sports/doc4bec3fd6e9ebc966605625.txt

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/sports/nm-girl-makes-prep-baseball-history

http://www.kval.com/sports/94709384.html

http://www.fanhouse.com/2010/05/03/joe-niekros-knuckler-lives-through-arm-of-12-year-old-girl/

Most of those references were provided by http://girlsplaybasebal.wordpress.com, a site started by a father whose daughter loves baseball.

So, yeah, discrimination against girls and women playing baseball will be eliminated on the fields, in the media, and in the psyche of the American, and I hope it will be soon.