Have you been keeping up with the upcoming baseball players that are on track to change the game? Little League is becoming more and more popular every year, with over 34,000 fans attending the Pennsylvania-Nevada game in Williamsport and over 1 million others watching the game at home.
The name everyone is taking away from this year’s Little League World Series is Mo’ne Davis, pitcher for the Philadelphia Taney Dragons, for her unbelievable arm. She became the first female pitcher to throw a shutout in the Little League post season with 8 strikeouts, leading her team to victory. According to her stepfather in an interview with NPR, “She was pitching one day and someone hit a home run off of her, so she felt she needed to work on it more. And from there, it got to this point.”
The fascination with Davis from the media is not just because of her accomplishments on the field, but also due in part to the fact that she is an inspiration to all the girls out there who want to break into sports that are typically male-dominated. Her grit and determination to be the best at what she does, and continually remind the media that her teammates are a large part of the reason she was at the World Series at all, is wowing not just the sports community, but young girls, parents and other people who have dealt with naysayers.
In an interview with some parents attending the game, ESPN asked parents how they feel about girls in baseball and most parents found it empowering for girls to be seen as just as good as boys. Yolanda Washington said, “I am excited that as an African-American girl, (my daughter) sees another African-American girl doing something so unique and positive.”
Davis has no doubt encountered people who didn’t believe in her skill – such as Lou Cammisa, coach of a 10 and under Taney club, who noticed her name as the pitcher his team was up against and thought it was odd a girl would be pitching, “Guess they don’t think much of our team,” Cammisa thought to himself, according to an interview with Yahoo Sports. Later having to regroup his team to up their game, he admitted that he was impressed.
Mo’ne Davis just keeps playing her game and getting much better at it; she’s so good that she just became the first Little League player to ever grace the cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine.
It’s motivating to see someone so young take on the role as a breakthrough for many young women who are constantly told they ‘run like a girl’ or ‘can’t hang with the boys’. Mo’ne Davis is proving that ‘throwing like a girl’ is her best asset, and she isn’t afraid to do it.
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