Game Day: First Inning. Warming up in the bullpen, I look out at Newman Outdoor Field. Good, everyone on the RedHawks is at his normal position—no pitchers in the outfield, as their manager, Doug Simunic, had threatened. But the lineup card shows that Darryl Motley isn’t playing. This is the guy who said on the radio he would not play against me. Motley, who used to play in the majors, is on a six-game hitting streak, and I wish he were in. I want to compete against the best they have.
I’m glad to be pitching against the RedHawks’ number one starter, Blaise Isley, tied for most wins in the league. The game is sold out, and the stands are filled with five thousand fans in home-team red T-shirts. It’s pennant night, so the fans are waving RedHawks flags. Newman Field reminds me of the diamond in the movie Field of Dreams, as if it emerged in some magical way out of the North Dakota prairie. Actually it’s on the edge of the campus of North Dakota State University and is a beautiful new brick ballpark: the ironwork and seats are painted forest green, and the field kind of sits up instead of being sunk down. Unlike Midway Stadium in St. Paul last year, Newman is more of a pitcher’s ballpark, because it has lots of foul ground and the prevailing winds don’t turn fly balls into home runs, so I feel free to pitch the way I want to. Funny, the dimensions are the same as those of Yankee Stadium—a tribute to a Fargo native named Roger Maris, who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961.
By the time I finish throwing, the sweat is dripping off me. And then comes the announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and remove your hats for the singing of our national anthem.”
I take off my cap, which I vainly hate to do because when I sweat my hair turns pouffy, wipe the salt from my eyes, stand tall, and place the cap over my heart. I can feel my heartbeat through my jersey. As the music begins, the words fill my heart and send a thrill throughout my body. I love this moment. “Land of the free and the home of the brave.” The words remind me that this is where I belong, on the field. After the closing notes I head for the dugout, where everything begins to blur. Players and coaches are moving around me but in slow motion. Fans are yelling and pointing at me, smiling, waving, but I just hear my breathing. They are talking to me, their lips are moving, but I don’t really hear them, focused as I am on the game.
The Dukes score a run in the top of the first, thanks to an RBI double by Big Papa, also known as Anthony Lewis, one of my biggest supporters. With the third out, I get ready to run to the mound when Dave Glick grabs my arm. He knows that’s the only way to get my attention when I’m about to pitch. He looks me in the eye and says, “You’ve got this, Ila.”
I grin at him and think to myself, Just do what you did last week when you notched that win. As I jog to the mound, the crowd erupts with cheers and boos. I see the lips of my catcher, Javier Rodriguez, move as he calls my name, but the noise from the stands is so loud that I can’t hear his voice. Great to hear the love, but it’s the boos that will drive me now. I grab the ball from behind the mound, rubbing it to get the last bit of gloss off and get the feel of the ball. I take my place on the rubber. The mound feels right, and I feel comfortable. Mounds are subject to regulation, but there are nuances. From mound to mound, the rubber doesn’t always sit in the exact same place; in Fargo the dirt has more clay in it and feels more stable. After my eighth warmup pitch, I bend low as Javier throws the ball to second, who underhands it to Luis Brito, our shortstop, who throws it back to me. Luis points his mitt at me, as if to say, “Let’s go.” I scrape the dirt off my cleats on the edge of the rubber, take a deep breath, and push it out.
The RedHawks are intimidating, not just because they’re in first place but because they’re so damned big. They’re also damned good: three of the first four hitters I’ll face are batting more than .350 against us. All we have for big is our first baseman, Ozzie Canseco, six feet two inches tall, 220 pounds—and he’s not even playing today because he’s serving a three-game suspension from last night’s game against the Winnipeg Goldeyes. That’s because umpires don’t like to be spit on. It’s true that Ozzie has a temper, but despite his machismo he’s always been respectful toward me and goes out of his way to offer tips.
Everyone on the RedHawks seems as big as Ozzie. No surprise, then, that they are a fastball hitting team. So I’ll have to pitch backwards—get ahead with off-speed pitches for strikes, place the two-seam fastball on the outside corner of the plate running away, and spot the four-seamer high and tight to keep them from sitting on the outside pitches. I plan to hit the corners, frustrate them with junk, put a lot of movement on the ball, and put the ball in play. For that I need good defense behind me. Because I’m not a strikeout pitcher, the guys know they are going to be busy in the field.
“Song 2” by Blur is playing over the public address system. First up is shortstop Chad Akers, a right-handed batter with wheels. He’s a first-pitch hitter, so I start him off with a screwball on the outside corner. He begins to move on it but decides to lay off. Strike one. To keep Akers honest and make my fastball look faster than it is, I throw the next pitch inside and straight. But it’s high and tight. He takes it for ball one. Baseball’s a game not just of inches but also of microseconds, and pitchers vary their speed to keep batters off balance. I figure he’s a little anxious and looking for a fastball away. My next pitch is a slower screwball away. Akers bites and hits a slow nubber to third base. Briller is slow to get to the ball but fields it cleanly and fires to first. Too late. Akers’s speed gets him an infield single. Shit, I say to myself. Off the field I don’t cuss much, but when I pitch I am as foul-mouthed as they come. I grab the toss from Lewis, our first baseman, and think, Don’t panic, just throw a double play ball and keep this guy close. As I wait for the next batter, I can feel the first base coach and Akers watching me. I don’t have to look into the RedHawks dugout to feel Simunic staring my way. I’m aware that there are four people in the league who despise my presence: Hal Lanier, the manager of the Winnipeg Goldeyes; Ed Nottle, the manager of the Sioux City Explorers (who called me “that thing” in a radio interview last year); Larry See, who is playing out his minor league career with the Thunder Bay Whiskey Jacks; and Simunic, who likes to spit on the ground whenever he catches my eye.
As Steve Hine comes to the plate, Ozzie Osborne’s “Crazy Train” plays. Always liked that song. Hine doesn’t bother to look down to third for a sign but gets in the batter’s box like he owns the plate. Maybe he does—he’s hitting .385 against us this season. Last night, with two out in the bottom of the ninth, he hit a walk-off double to beat the Madison Black Wolf. Digging in, spraying lots of dirt around, making holes, Hine reminds me of a dog that just took a crap and now he’s trying to cover it. I say to myself, Fuck you, asshole, you are going down.
Over at first I see to my surprise that Chad Akers hasn’t taken much of a lead. So I slide step toward home and throw the ball hard—chin music. I don’t want to hit Hine and give him first base, but I want to send a message: You better fucking not dig in on me. The fastball also gives my catcher a chance of throwing Akers out if he tries to steal second and, if it’s a hit-and-run, doesn’t give Hine much chance to get a solid piece of the ball. Hine returns the message with a glare. Ball one. I keep the same cadence on the next pitch but throw to first, not a great pick-off move but just to say, I know you’re there. When I get the ball back, I hold it until Hine steps out of the box. Baseball is considered a slow game, but there is so much going on that most spectators don’t see—trying to break the batter’s rhythm and timing, get his legs heavy, and not letting a runner get a good jump.
At the plate, Hine hasn’t dug in, and I know he’ll be anxious. I slide step fast just after coming to a complete stop and throw one fine screwball. It’s a bit faster than the others, and the bottom falls out of it, like it’s a sinker, but it’s also moving away. He swings and lofts a fly ball to right for the first out. The path he takes back to the dugout brings him right by the mound—maybe he’s testing me to see if I’ll talk crap to him. I do not.
Third baseman Johnny Knott is up. He’s hitting .412 against us, but he’s kept his mouth shut during the pregame hollering and shouting about me pitching. He comes across as quiet and all business. I’m still hoping for a ground ball, a quick double play, and getting out of the inning on the fewest pitches possible. I turn and point my glove to Brito at short, the message being, If I get a comebacker, get ready for the throw. Brito points back: We’re good. Akins hasn’t budged from first, and I concentrate on Knott, who strikes out on a screwball away. Holy crap, I think. My stuff is really breaking today. Two down.
Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” blares as Marc Fink strolls to the plate. Well, he can afford to stroll—he’s hitting .421 against us. At six feet three, 220 pounds, Fink is another of the RedHawks’ power hitters, a lefty. He’s a loudmouthed, in-your-face type of guy. With two out and the number four hitter up, Akers is likely to try to steal second. If he gets thrown out, no big deal because the RedHawks get to start off the next inning with Fink’s power. And better yet, if Akers steals second, Fink has a chance to even the score with a base hit. I think about keeping Akers close and not giving anything good to Fink. I throw to first base twice in a row, both better pick-off moves but not my best. I hold the ball as long as I can before testing Fink with a straight change-up. He swings so hard I’m surprised the bat doesn’t break when it hits the ball. He catches only a piece of the ball—if he had connected, it would have landed on the highway behind the stadium. Instead he skies a deep fly ball, and I turn and watch our center fielder glove it. Cool. So far, no drama. No runs, one hit, no errors, one left on base.
As we head for the dugout, the guys coming in behind me slap my back instead of my butt because people are looking, though I wouldn’t care if they treated me just like any other player. They’re saying, “Good job.” I find a place far down the bench, put on my jacket, and focus on the game. Fans wonder why pitchers sit alone, unlike the position players, who interact on the bench. I have a bias about this: A hitter can go three-for-ten and be a success. But if a pitcher makes a costly mistake on two out of a hundred pitches, that can mean failure. To get a better edge, while I’m on the bench I analyze the batters for any clue to their weaknesses. When I’m pitching I am on the verge of insanity, taking the stress and converting it into energy and a laser focus. I’ve been honing these habits since age eleven in the Little League playoffs, but in truth I have been this way ever since I first played ball in my family’s front yard. I look down at the splinter that’s worked its way into my thigh through my uniform. It reminds me that you always have to watch your moves, a smart choice when your first diamond’s second base was a lemon tree, with its thorny trunk.
1980, La Mirada, California. Beginnings. The first time I left home for baseball, I was about five years old. It was a short trip. When you walked into our front yard you saw that where other families had a garden, Dad had staked out a baseball diamond. First base was a tree with an old tire hanging from a branch, where we liked to swing when we weren’t playing ball. Second base was the lemon tree; and another tree served as third. To be safe you had to grab the tree trunks and hold on (like the stakes used in the nineteenth-century game of town ball). But home plate was real—I don’t know where Dad found it—with six-inch metal spikes that he hammered into the ground, like he meant it to stay there forever.
We lived in La Mirada, a hilly suburb southeast of Los Angeles that was paradise for kids’ sports. All the kids in the neighborhood showed up to play ball in our yard. We’d play until it was dark, and sometimes the next morning you would see aluminum bats and leather mitts scattered on our grass, left out from yesterday’s game. If we got hungry we grabbed an instant snack: the best tangerines you’ve ever tasted from one of the trees in our yard. In our family, we kids were not allowed to stay indoors unless it was raining—and hey, it hardly ever rains in Southern California.
Our porch was littered with empty Budweiser cans, usually crushed, as if Dad had squeezed out the last drop of brew. When he first courted Mom, he arrived to pick her up in a red Corvette. Dad sat there, waiting for her to come out of the house and jump in. This had concerned Mom’s conservative parents, as she was a very naïve seventeen, and so they walked her out to the car. When they looked into the Corvette, I expect that they saw the stuff of a semipro ballplayer: gym bag, sweaty towels, faded baseball caps, and empty beer cans.
Dad was my first and best baseball coach. I think the idea to help me develop my skills began early: when I was an infant, he noticed that I was struggling to feed myself with a spoon—until I picked up the spoon with the other hand, my left hand. Dad said that he immediately thought, Well, left-handed pitchers don’t grow on trees. After I broke a few windows batting on our front-yard diamond, he started taking me to Behringer Athletic Park to work on the fundamentals. Could not have cared less that I was a girl—he worked on my pitching and hitting and fielding as if I were headed to the major leagues. So it felt like a natural move from our front-yard field onto an organized team. I began playing Little Miss Softball at age six and did well. In my second season I was invited to play on an all-star traveling team. That meant weekend tournaments and playing year-round. Being on the field became my second home, but something was missing, and I knew what it was.
When I was eight years old, Dad took me to a ball game at Dodger Stadium. I saw one of the African American players—I want to say it was Dusty Baker, the Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder in 1983—go long, and it sparked something in me. That same summer I was tossing a baseball around in our front yard when I looked—I mean really looked—at the ball in my hand. It was smaller and harder than the one we used in girls’ softball. Besides, pitching underhand, like we did in softball, had never felt quite right. I wanted to pitch overhand, like they did in the big leagues. At night I began to dream of playing in the major leagues. And so began my campaign with Dad to put me into baseball so I could pitch. Finally he said, “Okay. But if you’re going to play with the boys, you are going to wear your hair long, so everyone knows you’re a girl.”
I will always be thankful that he was far ahead of his time in his attitudes toward girls on the diamond. The likely reason for his encouragement goes back to his childhood, given this story he liked to tell: When Dad was in grade school he knew a girl named Judy Emmett. She was always his first pick when he was captain of the team, because Judy happened to be an unbelievably good baseball player. “She helped us to win ballgames. That’s what it was all about,” Dad said. “Winning the game.”
So Dad saw nothing wrong with a girl playing baseball. And he didn’t care what people thought about my playing ball; he just supported my love for the game. Mom felt the same. When I was ten years old, she and I went down to the La Mirada Little League sign-ups at Behringer Park, where we joined a line of about fifty people. A lady came up to us and said, “This is the baseball line. Softball sign-ups are at Los Coyotes Park.”
Mom smiled. “I know,” she said. “I’m here to sign my daughter up for baseball.”
You should have seen this woman’s face. It was like she found a roach in her soup. Then she caught herself, gave a fake smile, and said, “Okay, well, if you come back tomorrow at this time, the line will not be as long.”
Mom, being sweet but naïve, said, “Okay, we’ll come back tomorrow when you open. Thank you.”
That night I slept with my mitt under my pillow. But when we showed up at the park the following day, no one was there. Finally we ran into the vice president of the league, who told us that the last day for sign-ups was yesterday. We explained what happened. He was very sorry, but all the teams were filled. I would have to go on a waiting list. Even though I was young, I knew what they had done. I was pissed, and so was Dad. He said he would fix it. He could be a bulldog when he had a mission.
Uh-oh, I thought. What’s he going to do? Dad grew up in the era when, if you had a problem, you duked it out. But after a week went by without a call from the league, he said to me, “Get your stuff. You’re going for a tryout today.”
I grabbed my bat, mitt, and cap and was ready to go in three minutes. Dad hated to wait, and no way was I going to make him mad today. We went down to the field where the minor A division Twins were practicing.
While the players fielded grounders, took batting practice, and ran the bases, he reasoned with the coach, “Hey, I know you guys have an opening, and my child is next on the waiting list. Can she try out for you?”
The coach said, “She?” A couple of other girls were already playing in La Mirada Little League this season, and Dad recalls the coach saying, “Aw, no. Not another one.” This despite the fact that Little League had been open to girls since 1974, the year before I was born.
“Yep,” Dad replied. “Let my daughter take some cuts and pitch for you, and if you’re not blown away by what she can do, then we’ll walk away.”
“Okay,” came the answer. “Let’s see this.”
Dad looked at me. “You’re up. Take some hacks and throw the ball like you do. Go for it.”
I stepped up to the plate, got five pitches, and nailed all of them. After that I pitched and struck out four kids in a row. Right then and there the coach signed me to his team, and I learned my first lesson in how to succeed in baseball: persevere in the face of those who would deny me the chance to play; then be so good that they could not say no. Dad put it this way: “Don’t push your way in, win your way in.”
In my first Little League at bat, I blasted the ball off the center-field fence and, with my long hair flying, steamed into second. Dad remembers that one of the major division coaches on the sidelines wondered aloud who the hippie was that hit that double.
I pitched and played first base and shortstop the whole season. And yeah, I made a lot of trips to first base on pitches that found me rather than the strike zone. What I didn’t know how to protect myself against was the opposition in the stands. Little League parents, especially the moms, absolutely hated to see me strike out their sons, and they didn’t hold back their feelings. The Twins finished the season by winning the La Mirada Little League minor division title. The upper division (the majors), which usually had only eleven- and twelve-year olds, still had two games left. The White Sox of that division called and asked me—aged ten-and-a-half—to move up to their team. Their next game was against the undefeated first-place Pirates. In my first at bat I faced the MVP of the division, a big twelve-year-old right-hander. His first pitch was a fastball to my head. No way was he going to let a girl get a hit off him, so he plunked me. Nowadays parents go nuts when something like this happens, but back then all Dad said was, “Take your base.”
He knew the kid meant to hit me but saw it as a lesson I would have to learn. As I ran to first, I thought, I’m gonna remember that kid.
In my next at bat, same pitcher—smack. I nailed his first pitch, an outside fastball, down the right-field line. I ran my ass off and got a triple. The guys in our dugout were going nuts, jumping up and down and shaking the chain-link fence. The pitcher slammed his mitt down on the mound. We beat the Pirates that day, and on the way home, Dad gave me a few more pearls of advice: “Never let them see that they got to you,” he told me. And don’t ever retaliate by hitting a batter in the head. Hit ’em in the ribs, where they have no protection.”
He was half-kidding, I think. But his message was clear: if you’re going to play hardball with the boys, you better learn how to take the knocks and know how to fight back. He knew from his time playing semipro baseball what it would take for me to survive in the game.
I am surprised Dad wasn’t a drill sergeant in the military, because he raised me like a soldier. When I was ten, he taught how to shoot a BB gun. Our town was still pretty rural back then, and it became a family tradition to sit out by the pool at dusk and shoot BBs at the rats that walked on the power line that led to our roof.
As with baseball, order and neatness were preparation for the game of life. No TV unless it was Friday night and Dallas or Los Angeles Lakers basketball was on. It wasn’t until I was ten that I was allowed to watch baseball on TV. I couldn’t play ball until the chores were done. Dad was big on chores. From the age of five on, my Saturday morning chores involved mowing the front lawn, side lawn, and backyard, sweeping the carport, picking up after our German shepherd, Timber, and raking the leaves on our half-acre lot. I had two hours to get everything done, and he timed me. At our house it often felt like we lived on military time.
Dad’s discipline was harsh. As a child, he had been beaten with a belt, so that’s all he knew. So I was either hit, though never on my throwing arm, or had dog poop shoved into my face if I was not done in time, had not done it right, or had broken something around the house. As a kid I couldn’t put words to why he acted this way. It would take me years to understand what alcohol can do to a person. To this day Dad feels horrible about his treatment and has asked my forgiveness many times. Eventually I was able to forgive, though I still struggle to not expect others to give 110 percent all the time. I am even thankful for the discipline I learned, but growing up, never knowing when Dad would flip his angry switch, life could be tough.
Looking back I can see why Dad might have been short on patience. He loved playing baseball—besides pitching he possessed a good bat and good speed. During their courtship, Mom remembers driving with him throughout Southern California and as far north as Visalia, in the San Joaquin Valley, to his Sunday afternoon games. But he was coming off an arm injury, and the next year he was married with a brand-new baby, me. He was twenty years old. He never complained about giving up any dreams he had of continuing in baseball for family life, but I wonder. By the time he was twenty-six, he was the father of three. My sister, Leah, was born when I was five; my brother, Phillip, arrived when I was six.
Another reason for Dad’s harsh discipline came, I think, from his religion. He had been raised Southern Baptist in the “spare the rod, spoil the child” tradition. On Sundays he took me to Calvary Baptist Church in Bellflower, where he had attended services as a child. I did not attend Sunday school there; it was just Dad and me, sitting in the pew together. Week after week I heard the hellfire and brimstone sermons. I learned early on that Dad valued outward appearances, which I’ve come to believe is a common quality among people with a fundamentalist faith. In public Dad was downright charismatic. If I was mowing the yard when a neighbor stopped by, he’d grab the lawnmower and hold it, as if he were doing the work. After the neighbor left, I was back on the job. This ticked me off because I felt that he wasn’t being truthful to who he really was. Meanwhile, Mom stayed home with my brother and sister. She had been raised Roman Catholic and lived her faith in a quiet way that I admired, though she never preached. Her open-door policy with the neighborhood kids drew them to her whenever they had a problem. She was safe to be with.
I dearly wanted to be a credit to God, but the God of my childhood Southern Baptist church seemed like an angry Old Testament one, bent on punishment. Even when we sang the old hymn “Amazing Grace” the words did not seem to apply to me. I knew I could never measure up. In kindergarten I first sensed that I was different when I developed a serious crush on my female teacher. I also sensed that this sort of feeling was unacceptable at Calvary Baptist Church. So I always tried to stay close to the kindlier Jesus, though for many years it would be the game of baseball that was my god.
Dad’s temper played out on the field. He was always supportive of my playing, though in the hard-nosed way he knew. Every Saturday and Sunday he took me out to Behringer Park to practice. Mom often went along to shag balls in the outfield. We’d start at eight o’clock in the morning and play for hours. In the movie about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s and ’50s, A League of Their Own, there’s a classic scene where the manager, played by Tom Hanks, yells at a player who has made an error. When she breaks into tears, he gets mad. “No crying,” he yells in her face. “No crying! Everyone knows—there’s no crying in baseball!”
That could have been Dad. He was big on keeping my head in the game. “Never let ’em see you sweat,” he liked to say. “If someone hits a home run off you, Show No Emotion. If one of your teammates drops a fly ball, Show No Emotion. Later in the game, he could be the one who saves your sorry ass.”
So for me there definitely was no crying in baseball—though there definitely was swearing in baseball. Despite our faithful attendance at Calvary Baptist Church, Dad cussed, and I cussed, and it seemed a normal way to let go of the emotions that streamed through me during a game.
By age eleven I had become obsessed with hitting more home runs. In my first season of Little League, I had hit a couple, but they hadn’t cleared the fence—so to me they did not really count. I kept begging Dad to pitch batting practice so I could perfect a mighty home run swing. One afternoon we went to Behringer Park. After what seemed like hours into it, I had no success. I kept making the same mistakes—late on my swing and late getting my hands through. Despite the batting glove on my left hand, both hands began to blister. On one swing, the ball hit my left hand—I was too tired to get the bat around on an inside pitch. I broke down and cried. Dad yelled, “Get back in the box.”
When I said I couldn’t, he replied, “We’re not going home until you stop crying. Now step in the batter’s box and take another swing.”
I did but once again couldn’t get the bat around on an inside pitch, and the ball hit my hand again. My knuckles were swelling and bloody. Something turned inside me, something I had never felt before. I stepped into the box in a rage without tears, determined to hit the ball right back at him. I wanted to hurt him. I hit a line drive off his foot. It did not faze him—or me. On the next pitch I wanted to hit the ball right at his head. I swung as hard as I could, and, for the first time, hit the ball out of the park. Suddenly the rage turned to joy. In the years to come, there would be plenty of injustices to rage about, and I would remember that afternoon when I learned to channel and control my emotions on the field. Bloody hands and all, I hit for fifteen more minutes, now belting the ball deep. I felt invincible, like I could do anything. Afterward Dad shook my hand and, for the first time, as far as I could remember, gave me a hug. “Ila, that’s what makes a winner,” he said. “Someone who never gives up, works hard, and is determined. Congrats, you did it.”
For me, the joy I found in the game would always be mixed with pain. But in that moment at Behringer Park, I knew what it took to excel in baseball and would take that energy into my next two years in Little League. Dad was a great coach. He knew he would not always be there to cover me as I went deeper into baseball, and over the next few years, he would test me to get me ready to deal with the adversity as well as the glare of attention coming my way.
“It’s up to you,” he told me. “But if you want to be successful you have to start working out twice as hard and twice as long as the guys. The injury to his pitching arm years ago had prompted him to research conditioning—exercises, elastic bands to build strength. He believed in being proactive. “For starters,” he told me, “to keep your arm healthy do your exercises three times a day, and run.”
My dream of making it to the major leagues did not waver, but I was beginning to understand the obstacles Dad talked about. For the most part, the guys I played ball with were fine with me. I could get guys out, so they wanted me on their team. At age eleven, I learned to hit the curve ball, a skill that is the great divider between players who continue in the game and those who fall away. “Read the seams,” Dad would say. “Keep your head still and watch the seams as the ball approaches the plate, to see which way it’s gonna go. Read the seams.”
In this way I lost my fear of getting hit by the ball.
To keep my bat in the lineup, my coaches played me at short and first base when I was not pitching. Opposing pitchers, though, still sometimes threw at me—not exactly up to the youth baseball code, but that’s how it was. As the teams got used to me, though, the opposition began to fade. Yet I still heard the catcalls from the stands. It was the Little League mothers and fathers who were the angriest. During a game, a Little League mother said to Mom: “How can you let your daughter play a boy’s sport?”
Dad recalls a Little League father confronting him: “What are we supposed to do, put dresses on our boys and send them to school?”
As the jeers continued—and because she had two young kids at home—Mom stopped going to my games. Sometimes I felt like I was out there on my own, trying to perform while I shook off the insults being thrown at me. I knew it was hard for Dad to not clobber the critics. One day I saw him fume while a parent screamed at us as we left the field. Dad didn’t blow up, he just kept walking to the car. I asked why he didn’t say anything back and shut the guy up, and he repeated his mantra about winning: “Some people will never understand or accept your dream, no matter what you do. So don’t give them any reason to stop you. Stay out of trouble, turn the other cheek, and just perform. People want to be with winners. So win.”
In my first full season of Little League, I showed that I was there to stay. Few home runs are hit in the majors, and the elite players usually hit the few balls that do go over the fences. Players can win the home run title with just a couple. I hit my first one, a solo shot over the centerfield fence, as Dad watched. Rounding second, I caught his eye and waved. I hit one more that season, but one of my teammates on the White Sox, Stephen Pereira, won the home run title with three. That year I was named to the all-star team.
We went on a roll, rallying against Metropolitan of Norwalk to win 11–6, beating the same team again 2–1. Pitching against Eastside of Norwalk, I threw a one-hitter, with eleven strikeouts and five walks. My friend Mike Moschetti’s two-run homer was the only score of the game. The next day Mike matched my one-hitter for another 2–0 win. In the third round of the tournament I had a no-hitter going for four and two-thirds innings before giving up a hit. I drove in the only two runs we scored with an RBI single and a home run. We’d made it to the semifinals but were losing 4–2 until we rallied with four runs in the third inning and four more runs in the fourth. We played Metropolitan again for the tournament championship and won a nail-biter, 2–1. For the first time in ten years, the La Mirada major division all-stars had won the district 29 tournament. If it’s possible to be high on baseball, I was. We went on to the Big League sectional tournament in Long Beach to compete for the western division district 3 championship. But our ride ended there.
My record should have convinced any remaining critics that I was for real. After all, they couldn’t argue with my stats, but some coaches’ and parents’ thinking was stuck in the past. I was able to compete in Little League because of the girls and their parents who fought for their right to play in the 1950s and ’60s. Little League spent nearly $2 million defending lawsuits in fifteen states to keep girls out, which I will never understand. I am so gosh-darn grateful for those girls and for the New Jersey judge who ruled in 1974 that a girl from Hoboken, New Jersey, named Maria Pepe could play. By then, Maria was in high school, too old for Little League, but she and the others who would not take no for an answer made all the difference for those of us who followed. In response Little League immediately launched a division for softball, which has become the organization’s de facto sport for girls.
In spite of the dramas that played out on my Little League diamonds—or maybe because of them—by age eleven I had grown into a confident daredevil. If there was a challenge I was all over it, ready to squash the idea that it could not be done. Borrowing the next-door boy’s Honda 125 dirt bike and popping wheelies all the way up our driveway was a favorite stunt. These boys were older than me and could not do it, so of course I had to try. What made me successful was that I didn’t even think about the pain of falling. Mom knew this about me, and it worried her terribly. I especially enjoyed riding my bike off the roof of our house and trying to land correctly on the Bermuda grass lawn or, even better, into the backyard pool, with an audience of Leah, Phillip, and the neighbor kids. One day, with only Leah watching, I rode my bike down the shake shingles of our roof as usual and lifted off. This time I overshot the grass and hit the asphalt. My chin went numb, and I could feel blood running down my chest. Leah started to scream, and I remember thinking, Oh, no. Mom is going to freak out, and Dad is going to kill me. My crying days were behind me, and I walked into the kitchen to show Mom the bad news. I remember her eyes opening wide, like she had seen a ghost. “Your bone is showing,” she said, and we were off to the emergency room.
Fourteen stitches later, I faced Dad. To my surprise there was no beating that day; he just took away my bike. I am grateful that Mom did not put me on meds for hyperactivity, but I know that I drove her nuts with my energy and shrank her wallet by breaking our windows with baseballs. And always, I tried to fix things before Dad got home.
After my second year in Little League, I took Dad’s advice and began my own daily workouts. He never had to wake me up in the morning on school days, because I was already out of bed, doing my arm exercises; after school I ran, then did my second round of arm exercises; and right before bed I did the last round. I also ran whenever I could—I actually loved it because my hero at the time was Madonna, who liked to run. I saw the increase in my strength, the feel of solid muscle.
If I was a local celebrity on the field, by fifth grade I was also becoming known as the local rebel. In school, I had often gotten into minor trouble—from hitting the tetherball too hard at recess to playing with unauthorized worms in class. Seeing someone pick on an underdog made me really angry, and I would jump in to defend the victim. If Mom had put a bumper sticker on her car it could have read, “My kid beat up the bully that was picking on your kids.” I became known as the “good bully” of Dulles Elementary School.
I was also sneaking out of the house at night with my friend, Alyse Issac. I think that lots of people grow up with a friend like Alyse, who’s always up for anything. When we met in second grade, we quickly saw we would be partners in mischief. At night, we’d meet up down the hill to play football with some older kids. We also liked to ride around town with a girl named Janine Lindemulder, a softball star at La Mirada High School, where I planned to go one day. Alyse’s older brother had a crush on Janine—well, a lot of the boys did—and Alyse, who was into softball, really looked up to her.
On another night, I was riding around town in the back of a pickup truck crowded with older boys and girls when they started pairing off to make out. I was not afraid of a good fight, but this scared me badly. I had a crush on the sister of a guy I was playing with. All I wanted to do was be with her and kiss her. She liked hanging out with me, but when she fell for a guy named Kevin, my heart broke. And that’s the way it went over the next few years: one crush after another would find a boyfriend, and my imaginary romance would be over. I tried everything in my power to make my feelings for girls go away. I prayed, and when that didn’t work, I prayed harder. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I came to believe there was something terribly wrong with me, like there was an evil spirit lurking within. To keep it at bay, I accepted Christ into my heart and was baptized at age twelve. I was born again and awaited the transformation to “normal,” but it didn’t come. I continued to get crushes on girls, I continued to swear, and I continued to fight with other kids.
Looking back, I think fighting was the only way I could show my anger. At home Dad was the only one allowed to get angry, and on the diamond he had taught me to keep my emotions in check. With Leah, Phillip, and even Mom afraid to stand up to Dad, I appointed myself the defender of the family. I expanded that role by beating up on the neighborhood kids who teased others who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back. As fifth grade wound down that spring, I had two fights: one with a girl who had been picking on another girl, the other with a boy named Jason who had been picking on one of my friends. For some reason, he had a Halloween mask with him, and I grabbed it and beat him with it. The good bully had gone too far. Parents of other kids showed up at our house. Conversations were held. I knew that my parents did not like the path I was on, sneaking out at night, running around with older kids, some of them troubled, and beating up on people. With Mom pregnant again, I felt guilty for causing her grief. My parents weren’t the only ones worried. I worried about what was coming next—in our family and inside my own confused self as I approached puberty. Could I will myself to like boys? Would I still have a place in baseball when they grew taller and stronger than me?
Given my behavior, it should not have been a surprise when my parents told me that for sixth grade I would not be returning to Dulles Elementary School, where I had been confident of my place in kid society. I had never doubted that I was accepted for who I was—a loud, feisty, athletic girl with a big heart. Instead I spent sixth grade at the local Christian elementary school, where I knew no one. I went from being popular to not fitting in. I didn’t even fit into my own body. I was developing breasts and took to wearing sweatshirts to hide them. I call it the lost year. The great bright spot came early in December, when my brother Randall was born. The afternoon Mom brought him home from the hospital, I sat with him in my arms. It was the beginning of a lifelong bond.
Baseball became my sanctuary from all that went on at home and at school. Dad showed me how to use our isometrics machine to strengthen my rotator cuff, which I think helped me avoid shoulder injuries later in my career. When Little League season began again, I threw myself into the games. Early one Saturday morning, Dad brought me down to Behringer Park. He put a baseball in my hand and showed me how to throw a one-fingered curve, a pitch that the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Sutton had taught him. He arranged my fingers on the ball, and said, “Throw it like a fastball. I don’t care where it goes; just get used to the feel of throwing it.”
What was great about this pitch is that it didn’t add strain to my elbow because it’s thrown like a fastball. Most kids my age couldn’t do that yet, but I had really large hands, which helped me master it. It would prove to be a good pitch to master because I never did develop the elbow injuries that plagued other Little Leaguers who had started throwing the traditional curve at this age. At that time and place Little League had no rule against throwing curveballs or, for that matter, the number of pitches a player could throw in a game.
At age twelve, I had a golden season with the La Mirada White Sox, throwing two perfect games and three no-hitters. Sportscaster Rick Lozano of KABC’s Eyewitness News showed up to film me pitching. What I remember most from that game is the sixth and final inning. I had struck out all fifteen batters I’d faced and was going to move heaven and earth to get the last three. I got the first guy, but the next batter came up and tried to bunt, just so he wouldn’t strike out. His bunt went foul, and I remember my fury that he’d tried to avoid a strikeout. I threw the ball as hard as I could. Another K, or strikeout, and then the final one.
I was hearing sweet music from my coaches. My regular season coach, Patrick Van Horn, told a reporter, “You don’t get many 12-year-olds who can throw the ball with the speed and consistency that she can. . . . Last summer she was clocked in the 68 mph range. . . . Even for a 12-year-old boy that is unheard of.”
As the head of the sports program for the city of South Gate, Joe Moschetti had seen many athletes. So it meant a lot to me that as my all-star coach, Mr. Moschetti, liked my style. As he told my coauthor:
At twelve, her fundamentals were just so good. Nobody could touch her; she was dominant. She was one of the most competitive youngsters I’ve ever seen—and I ran a sports program for twenty years. I always felt that when Ila pitched, we were going to win. . . . This girl could hit the ball farther than most boys, including one home run that I figure went close to 300 feet. She was by far in the best shape of anyone on the team. I used to see her running in the park—this was before regular practice—and I didn’t see the other guys or my son, Mike, doing that, and he was a pretty good athlete. I think she knew she was going to have to try harder to play ball. I think she knew what she was up against, much like Jackie Robinson [did].
Yeah, Mike Moschetti was more than a “pretty good athlete”—the Oakland A’s drafted him out of high school in the second round of the 1993 MLB June Amateur Draft, and he played three seasons of minor league ball.
Over the sixty innings I threw that season I gave up a total of ten walks while averaging about ten strikeouts per game. I ended the season with a 9-1 record and a 0.75 ERA. At the plate, I hit .500 and struck out six times in fifty-six at bats. The home runs so dear to my heart had started coming, too: I led the league with eight.
I was named to the La Mirada major division all-stars, and we made it to the western division district 3 championship game, one step farther than last year. I poured everything I had into that game, going the maximum innings allowed. I struck out seventeen, giving up two hits and two walks. At the plate I doubled and scored on Mike Moschetti’s double, and I repeated the feat in the ninth. I got three of the team’s eleven hits and figured in both runs scored. But in the thirteenth inning, we lost 4–2. Our season was over, yet I knew I had again proven myself. The city of La Mirada awarded me a certificate of appreciation. Many of the critics in the stands had quieted down. Dad had been right: I had to win my way into acceptance. Then I read that my hometown newspaper, the La Mirada Lamplighter, questioned how much longer I could play. And I learned that the father of one of my Little League teammates told Dad, “Soon as Ila becomes a teenager and puts on lipstick, she won’t make it.”
So it would come down to this. Would my baseball dreams be defined by lipstick?