She is but 13 years old playing in a baseball championship with the eyes of the nation watching her every move and she had played brilliantly. Born in Philadelphia, Davis managed to capture the attention of the baseball world in the past week. She has done so by hurling strikeout after strikeout in a pair of tremendous complete game shutouts the first of which coming Sunday August 10th against Newark.
Playing in the Mid Atlantic Championship game that would send its winner to Williamsport to play in the Little League World Series, Pennsylvania's Taney Dragons sent their secret weapon in Davis to the mound. On cue, Davis chucked a complete game shutout that featured the striking out of 6 batters and just 2 hits allowed. Within just a few hours of the conclusion of the game, clips of the locally televised contest began to take social media outlets (especially Vine and Instagram) by storm fueling a national curiosity about this girl from greater Philadelphia. By the time she pitched again, this time as just the 18th girl in the history the Little League World Series, ESPN saw a huge rating boost that only strengthened as she began to work her way through another fairy-tale game.
In her second straight complete game, Mo'ne held Nashville to just 2 hits and 0 runs striking out a whopping 8 batters. Now she was more than just a whispered name in the world of sports. Mo'ne Davis had become a superstar.
Garnering tweets from greats like Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen and Clayton Kershaw, first lady Michelle Obama as well as interview requests from talk show hosts some of whom had nothing to do with the sports, Davis, in just 10 days’ time had transcended the game she played and become a role model. Beyond the fact that she was the first girl to win a game as a pitcher, beyond the fact that she was the first girl to throw back to back shutouts in the Little League Postseason, Mo'ne Davis was attracting attention to little league baseball and the prospect of more and more girls playing America's pastime alongside the boys. And yet she is but 13 years old.
Even Mo'ne is astounded by the attention she is getting even showing great humility in deflecting questions about her to the rest of her team. For those who look at her not as a girl tearing it up on the mound, but rather just a skilled baseball player doing so, they soon recognize a new found freedom to appreciate the other qualities to Mo'ne and her personality.
She is humble and humorous and judging by the words of her teammates and coaches is the kind of no "I" in team player that even MLB teams pay big money to write into their rosters. Her curve ball is sickening in its deceptive movement across a good portion of the strike zone and her fastball is of the sort that even beats those of her male counterparts in terms of speed and placement. At the plate she has hit safely in 3 out of 8 plate appearances through 3 games and in the field she has wielded a hot glove at both 1st and 3rd base.
For those who can look past her gender, Mo'ne Davis appears as a complete ballplayer and a model person. For those who can look past Davis' gender and have also dreamed of doing the same thing that she has, this Little Leaguer has helped pave a path to live that dream.
For so many years female presence in baseball, though existent has been very small. A female ball player has never made it past the single A minor league systems of the MLB and that is truly a problem. Now I would be foolish to say that women and men are on average equal in muscular strength because that is not true. The simple biology of male and female hormones create a natural discrepancy between the two genders when they attempt to compete in athletics. Yet that is not to say that that discrepancy cannot be somewhat easily overcome. There are some stunning female athletes across the spectrum of professional leagues. Take Brittney Griner for example. Weighing more than plenty male basketball players, the 6 foot 8 inch WNBA star is one of the best players in her sport. Could someone so strong muscularly not succeed in the NBA against men? If you don't believe that take hokey and its female pioneer, Manon Rhéaume. In 1992 she became the only female in any "big four" sport to play an exhibition game with a men's team when she started in net for the Tampa Bay Lightning in a preseason game. She is a perfect example how even without the musculature of a man a women could succeed in a sport and a position where good reflexes can almost fully make up for any lack in strength.
But who am I to even say that that should even be discussed? There are wonderfully strong women in the world who are all but equal to many men who play pro sports. When you look at some of the guys in baseball (JD Drew anyone) you then look at people like Mo'ne Davis and say, goodness gracious could she develop into someone who could be so much better.
All and all, Mo'ne Davis has joined a growing list of women who are standing up and showing that they can play with the boys. They are showing the world that there is nothing wrong with running, throwing or playing "like a girl". The more people who do this, the sooner people begin to stop judging people because of gender and rather just because of their raw talent and untarnished will to win.
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