Chapter 1

My Dad, Harold Jones, Hal to his friends, was a jock. There was just no other way to phrase it. I guess that was why it seemed so odd for him to be such a successful CPA. He had played the three popular male sports, baseball, basketball, and football almost from the time he could walk—well, let's say from the time he could get on a team. He even had hopes of becoming a pro athlete, but a football accident his senior year put an end to those thoughts. That was before the wonders of modern medicine, so he wound up with a permanently damaged left knee.

However, that did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm for sports or his plans for his son to do the things that he could not do. Then I came along as the first child. Something happened to Mom when I was born, and several doctors recommended that she not have any more children. That was devastating to both of my parents, but they learned to live with me as being their only progeny. Therefore, I was both pampered and pushed as each parent expressed her or his personality upon me.

Sure, Dad had wanted a son, but it only took a very little thought to realize that girls, too, could be athletes. We of my gender just had to specialize within our natural assets. Dad considered pushing me toward tennis or golf or something like that, but his heart was just not in it. He decided that I stood no chance of making it in football, so that was dropped immediately. For him, that left baseball or basketball.

As I grew, he had me shooting hoops to test and condition me for a possible career in basketball, but he decided that I was just too short to become a star basketball player. That may have been because he was looking at things from the NBA point of view and not considering the requirements of the WNBA. We both knew that he was the victim of gender bias, but we got over that, too.

In any case, the result was that Dad decided that I should pursue baseball. Softball was ruled out as not paying enough, and he thought that I could break into men's pro baseball if I was careful in choosing my specialty. Dad's rational was that the current social situation would force MLB to accept women players if we were good enough to beat men at their own game.

Further thought pushed him toward grooming me as a pitcher. I did not have the upper body strength to be a power hitter, so he rejected the idea of having me become an outfielder. He believed that I did not have the arm strength to become a catcher, third baseman, or shortstop, but I could be a second baseman without too much strain. He also concluded that I was not tall enough for a first baseman. Therefore, he concentrated on me becoming a pitcher or second baseman.

It turned out that I had above normal hand-eye coordination, so I could hit a baseball that was anywhere near the strike zone. Sure, I was not going to hit many homeruns, but I sure could hit singles and doubles, and I was fast enough on my feet to bunt like crazy. Therefore, I could do well as a leadoff hitter. That now became the family game plan. Mom was kind of submissive and went along with anything Dad wanted to do.

Dad found a local man who could teach me to pitch, and Dad hired him to be my personal coach. Mr. Johnson taught me how to throw a fastball, but he refused to allow me to throw a curve until I was older. His point was that throwing a curve before my arm was fully developed could damage it, and Dad was all for that idea. A good fastball was fine for kids' games, but it was death to a pro career if it was my only pitch.

It happened that Mr. Johnson was a master of the knuckleball which he liked to call the "flutterball." He asserted that the reason so many males had trouble throwing the flutterball was because they tried to throw it too hard. He insisted that a flutterball thrown too hard was just a lousy fastball. Fortunately, early on in my development, my hand was large enough to hold a baseball properly for the knuckleball. Thus, I concentrated on learning the proper techniques for throwing the flutterball and the fastball.

By the time I reached the age of 9 and was eligible for Little League, I had mastered the fastball and the flutterball. In fact, I was so good at throwing the flutterball that the fastball became my change-up pitch. Let me tell you, that confused the batters no end.

I was not the only girl to show up for tryouts for a Little League team, but the coaches were all men, and they didn't want to bother with girls. I was the exception. I could hit better than 90% of the boys who wanted to play, I was very good at second base, and I could pitch like none of the other candidates. Still, most of the coaches didn't want to bother with me and what they anticipated as the problems of having a girl on the team. Fortunately, one coach, Mr. Forbes, could see my potential as a winner, and that matched his personality. Mr. Forbes wanted to win the city championship, a feat he had never before had the team to do.

Fortunately, Mr. Forbes had a fair team to begin with, and he had some spots left to fill. Those spots were two pitchers, a catcher, a second baseman, and a right fielder. I was very lucky in that the catcher didn't know what a flutterball was, so he did not mind trying to catch it. Tommy Craft and I were the same age, so we would be eligible for the team for the same three years. That was going to make things easier for me in several ways.

Our league used the DH (Designated Hitter), and that became my position whenever I was not playing second base. Normally, the DH substituted as batter for the weakest hitter on the team so that I got to play in every game. With only two six-inning games a week, that was not too much of a load to put on me. I was anxious to play at every chance because I had inherited my Dad's compulsion to compete and excel. The League officials were not too happy with so much of a load being put on me, especially as I was a girl, but Mr. Forbes pointed out that other teams had been doing this for years, so he won the argument.

We didn't say anything to anybody about it, but Tommy and I met for a couple of hours every day for practice with the flutterball. The ball I threw did flutter unpredictably all over the place, so it was very difficult to catch. However, with practice, Tommy got very good and rarely surrendered a passed ball. Mr. Forbes did do a bit of gamesmanship and have the backstop moved as close to home plate as the rules would allow so that Tommy had less space to chase those few missed balls. His argument to the League was that the position of catcher was hard enough to play, and this should put less strain on young bodies. He won that argument, too.

Originally, I was going to be a relief pitcher, since that was the traditional job of a knuckleball pitcher. Our first game was a disaster for the first two innings. Our pitcher, a second-year boy just could not get the ball over the plate. He walked six batters in the first inning and gave up a double and a homerun. Only some outstanding infield play got us out of the inning. We were down 7-0 before we ever came to bat. The major problem was the "mercy rule" in which a game was called if one team managed to get a 10 run lead.

Well, we managed to get the bases loaded in our half of the inning and to hit a triple to push the score to 7-3. That took some of the pressure off, but our starting pitcher gave up three more runs to cancel out those that we had managed to get in our half of the first inning. It looked like we were doomed, but Mr. Forbes was not about to give up. He put me in to pitch with nobody out in the second inning and a runner on third base. Mr. Forbes ordered me to throw nothing but fastballs because he was afraid of a passed ball if I used the flutterball.

I did manage to strike out the side with my fastball because the batters were just not used to seeing a pitch moving that fast. I had been timed a 63 MPH (Miles Per Hour) during practice, and that was much faster than the common Little League pitch. My flutterball ran about 45 MPH, which was usual for our league. Okay, we got out of that inning with the opposition runner dying on third base.

I was congratulated by everyone on the team except the pulled pitcher. He was off by himself crying because of his terrible performance. He was sure that he was going to be thrown off the team. I tried to reassure him, but I didn't have much luck.

I was batting second in this inning because it was traditional for the pitcher to be the last batter. I was the DH for the pitcher, so nothing changed on that count. Our first batter hit a single so there was a base runner in front of me. Well, I figured that the other team was expecting a double play—the runner had to stay on the base until the batter actually hit the ball or until the ball crossed the plate.