Stop pretending that playing little league makes a girl a badass because she doesn't play stupid girlie softball. It just means that yet again, women's sports are being denigrated in favor of a sport traditionally played by men. We have a site for that, it's called Deadspin.

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Not knocking softball. Softball is just as badass.

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I'm a big fan of the game, played fastpitch up until I graduated from high school, and now play tons of coed and women's slowpitch in my free time. I've encountered plenty of discrimination playing slowpitch softball. There are a lot of men out there who play men's slowpitch and are Very Very Serious about it. (There's a lot of baseball glory day reliving going on. It's sad and hilarious to observe.) They openly discuss playing coed "just to get to look at more pitches" and regard women as filler in the lineup and not much else. I played in a tournament two weeks ago with a left-center fielder (slowpitch has four outfielders) who wouldn't help out or call the ball because "he had trouble playing with and yelling at women." Dude, yelling is part of the game. It's a fucking safety issue, because I'm going to be going after those hit balls as hard as you are and you'd better call me off if you've got a better line on the play. He then told me I should arrange the lineup with a man leading off so that "we'd know we could get somebody on base." Our offense proceeded to fall apart and we got beat by a team we shouldn't have. Fortunately, I've found a new coed team to play for. The male manager regards the women on his team as equal contributors and not stand-ins. It's amazing how much better the women play when they know they're valued.

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@SunburnedCounsel: Therein lies the rub, I think. Little girls are basically made to play softball a lot of the time while simultaneously being led to believe it is a sport for lesser athletes (which could not be farther from the truth). Of course it makes girls feel like they should not actively want to play softball! It's like being told that you suck automatically, and therefore you have to play a "weak" version of the sport, when in fact you probably could beat the butts of a lot of boys and it isn't weak at all!

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There are also equipment differences in slowpitch too, depending on if you're playing ASA, USSSA, or ISF rules. I prefer the "cooler" bats and balls of ASA if I'm playing infield, because I am not fast enough to effectively field screaming grounders.

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Also, wtf is up with this "girls aren't as good as Tennis" shit. I thought Billy Jean King took care of this a few decades ago.

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