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Posted 06.13.03
Are Diamonds Really A Girl's Best Friend?
MLB teams up with NPF to launch exhibition season of fastpitch softball

By Julie Leupold

Outfielder Michael A. Ballard went last round in the Major League Baseball draft to the Minnesota Twins, a team that was in danger of folding until last year's strike negotiations saved it from extinction. He makes the league minimum of $300,000 for sitting on the bench. He'll be a millionaire in less than four years.

First Team All-Big 10 and 1998 Second Team All-American hitter, Monica Amendarez went first round into the Women's Pro Softball League and ended a three-year career in 2001 with the Akron Racers. Making the team's maximum salary of $10,000, it took her two years to cross the poverty line.

Cheers to parity in sports.

But National Pro Fastpitch President and CEO Rich Levine says it's a start. Chairing the fledgling league, which joined with Major League Baseball in November to bring talented women into the field and even more into the stands, Levine maintains an air of optimism for the new girls' with gloves league. But with WNBA on life support and Title IX under dangerous reconstruction, this summer's exhibition tour puts fastpitch up against serious pressure to prove that the female version of major league sports has any chance of pulling the same revenues as its male counterparts.

"Fastpitch is the female version of our 'national pastime,'" Levine said. "It's three strikes, homeruns, double plays, diving catches, collisions at the plate. It was 'father to son' and now it's also 'father and/or mother to daughter.' Merging with MLB puts our league squarely within the mainstream of professional sports, and that is very gratifying."

This merger makes MLB an official partner with fastpitch in a marketing move to capitalize on the large female consumer base. Research shows that women control 81 percent of family consumer purchases, 76 percent of household purchases and 58 percent of leisure activities. By planning Girl's Night Out theme days at games, providing women-only skills clinics and manufacturing corresponding feminine sports paraphernalia, MLB is interested in making more of an economic partnership than a political one.

But the increased visibility that MLB can offer fastpitch may be just what the league needs to get off the ground running. The first official women's softball league fizzled out in 1980 after just four seasons due to lack of funds, high travel costs and inadequate facilities. It took 17 years of planning and research to reopen the league under the name Women's Pro Fastpitch, later the Women's Pro Softball League, in 1998. Play was suspended again four years later for restructuring into what is now National Pro Fastpitch.

"The fact that baseball, our national pastime, recognizes the significance of females in diamond sports gives us credibility and greater awareness among the broader sports category and the general public," said Sandy Biestek, vice president of National Pro Fastpitch. "Fastpitch players, fans, coaches, know it's a great game, having MLB's endorsement takes it to another level. This is helping us solicit sponsors, team owners, and media."

Biestek believes the league has addressed the problems of its predeccesors by contracting "successful businessmen who understand their markets" as team owners and constructing their own new stadium facilities "so that in five to ten years our games will be played in spiffy new arenas."

Even with the corrected marketing campaign, sports enthusiasts aren't jumping on the "League of Their Own Bandwagon."

"I don't see a pro softball league having a huge national following but it might make it at a certain modest level," said Steve Wilstein, sports writer for the Associate Press. "The problem is there are already too many sports, too much competition for fans and TV viewers and space in newspapers. Women's figure skating, tennis and golf draw the biggest audiences and get the most attention among women's sports, and I don't see that changing anytime soon."

The league will start exhibition games this June in existing major league fields across the country before starting regular league play for the 2004 season. The 2003 Fastpitch Festival Tour is the centerpiece of a long-term sales, marketing and promotional campaign. The idea is to provide each of the league's expansion team owners with the tools to lay the groundwork in their marketplace for the official launch of league play in 2004. Each of the proposed eight teams will have a MLB club backing it financial to prevent the previous economic dry out. Tryouts for the tour were suspended last fall after fastpitch executives decided that current WPSL should anchor the tour's roster.

Supporters of this merger forecast its ultimate triumph latching onto the success of the U.S. Olympic women's fastpitch team and the increasing demand for more female sports opportunities, resulted in a 67.3 percent increase in the number of female softball players at the high school level from 1980 to 2001, according to the National Federation of High School Sports.

However, skeptics like Tampa Tribune's sports columnist Rozel Lee don't see the increased partcipation in high school sports translating into the kind of economic windfall that the league is hawking. Even with the support of MLB, the future for professional women's sports looks grim. The WNBA, which wowed crowds last year in the women's Final Four, needed a $12 million lifeline from the NBA this year to stay afloat after attendance fell to an average 9,000 per game.

"Over the past decade...there has been an increase in players, yes. But spectators, no," Lee said. "Maybe the alliance with baseball will give the women's league more credibility. But they are swatting at air if they think baseball will do for fastpitch softball what the NBA has done for WNBA. The audience just isn't there."

The Associated Press is in the middle of a demographical study about the nature of audiences at sporting events. According to Wilstein the preliminary data and past research "has shown little interest in women's pro basketball, soccer or other sports -- most notably by women fans. Last time we checked, men were more interested in women's basketball than women."

Even at the high school and college level, more women show up in the game than in the stands. This notable jump in athletic participation has a lot to due with Title IX, one the education amendments passed in 1972, that requires schools and colleges receiving any kind of federal funds to provide equal athletic opportunities for men and women. Over the last 30 years, women's participation in intercollegiate sports increased more than 400 percent and almost 850 percent in high school varsity sports.

"I believe that Title IX paved the way for much of what has been accomplished in the sport of fastpitch," Levine said. "Women play this game at over 1,700 college facilities, and about 45 percent of all diamond sports participants in high schools are girls. That 45 percent figure is very telling."

Even though Title IX has increased participation in sports to a seeming parity between the sexes, men still receive 36 percent more money in athletic scholarships a year. In trying to even out this number and free up extra funds, smaller athletics like wrestling and men's gymnastics have been cut in universities across the country, prompting the National Coaches Wrestling Association to sue TKTK over the way Title IX is enforced. Emerging from this lawsuit was a proposed addendum to Title IX that Secretary of Education Rod Paige is submitting to President George W. Bush. It requires schools to survey incoming female students about their interest in playing sports at all, thus determining in theory if equality in athletic opportunities and funds is even necessary.

Olympic gold medalists Donna de Varona and Julie Foudy issued a minority report against changing Title IX saying the interest surveys force female athletes to "prove their right to equal opportunity" and will only uphold the stereotype that "women are inherently less interested in sports than men."

"Propelled by Title IX, women's sports have grown from nearly non-existent 30 years ago to a significant force in the sports world," Wilstein said. "Female athletes have gotten better at a faster rate than male athletes, closing the gap between them a bit. Women athletes and sports still have a long way to go. Let's hope there are no setbacks in Title IX that would derail them."

So a lot rests on the metaphorical shoulders of the National Pro Fastpitch league. In a three-month exhibition tour, four teams will have to prove that women do belong in major league baseball and are an economically viable investment. They will also have to prove that the defenders of Title IX aren't wasting their breath. Let's hope for their sake that diamonds really are a girl's best friend.