Women have long since proven that they can be successful in baseball. But what Kim Ng has achieved has never before been performed by a woman. She became the first female boss in the men’s baseball league. With that, she smashed the invisible glass ceiling that still prevents many women from pursuing a career in male-dominated industries. Her success made history. Her order comes as no surprise. After all, she has long proven that she knows a lot about baseball. Now she received the appropriate reward at the MLB in Miami.
When it comes to the bat weight, it is often assumed that the stronger the player, the heavier the bat should be. That is not necessarily the case. Accelerating the heavy bat will be harder than a lighter one, which means the point at which the bat will have the most force will be at the end of your swing.
Choosing a baseball bat might not seem like a big deal. After all, a bat is a bat, right? Well, you will be surprised by the variety of bats on the market in terms of material, and the guidelines by which a bat is to be chosen. It is very much a numbers game, and pretty much the same principles apply to women as to men. Your age, your height, your weight, and your league all matter in this process. Let’s break down the process in simple terms.
Guide to Choosing the Right Baseball Bat
Throughout the history of baseball, the physics of the game have been explored in detail. On that basis, baseball has created a system by which a bat is chosen. One of the things that will surprise you is that there is no “standard” bat in terms of length. In fact, the length of the bat is chosen individually to each player, and players cannot simply swap bats and expect similar results. There is a system, for example, that allows you to choose the right length of bat for you. You need to know your height and your weight. You can find multiple charts online that help you calculate the ideal bat length for your specific weight-to-height ratio. With this information you can go to the store and ask for a specific length right away. However, it is always worth double checking if the bat you are buying is the right size. There are two ways to do it. One way is to put the bat down along your leg with the barrel end touching the ground. If you can easily rest your hand on the knob of the bat, then it is the right size. Another way is to put the knob of the bat on your chest along your arm. If, from this position, you can easily grab the barrel of the bat, then it is the right fit for you. Similar charts exist for child players, but expect to have to change bats as they grow up. In girls, this change will be more gradual, but will come earlier. The general rule is that a kid will need a larger size bat for every 10 centimeters of growth in height.
Another aspect to consider is the weight. Things are not straightforward in this regard either, as the net weight of the bat in pounds isn’t useful information. The weight of the bat is always looked at in terms of the relationship between the length and the weight, otherwise known as the drop. Basically, you need to take the length of the bat in inches and subtract from it the weight of the bat in ounces. That way a 29 in bat that weighs 20 ounces has a -9 drop. This means that the bigger the drop of the bat, the lighter the bat is for it’s length. Most adult bats will have a drop of no more than -3. Drops for kids’ bats go much greater and decrease with increasing age and league of the player.
Baseball is no different from any other sport in that it is a zero sum game. You know full well your team will lose, and sometimes that loss will be a wipeout, and sometimes the victory will be snatched away at the last second.
Decades of competition have indisputably proven that women can compete in baseball on par with men. But equality does not mean homogeneity, and women carry many important psychological differences into baseball and sport in general. If the goal is to train the next generation of professional female baseball athletes, then all psychological factors must be taken into consideration when coaching girls and young women. There is research-based information that can be actionable on the diamond, which coaches should take on board. This is not to say that there is a universal method for all women – the research findings are a generalisation which allows for general guidelines in women’s baseball coaching. This should not be done at the expense of accounting for individual differences of each team member.
This is an interesting time for women in sports, including baseball. Some consider this time somewhere between the worst being behind, but the best having yet to arrive.
In 1942 the world was at war, and in the young
men of the US starting from 18 years of age were taken into the army. Because
of this, the sports leagues, specifically the Major League Baseball Parks
across the country were on the brink of collapse. They were trying to find a
way to keep baseball leagues up and running. During that time Philip Wrigley, a
chewing-gum businessman, whose father passed on the Chicago Cubs to his son,
tried to come up with a solution to solve this dilemma. After long
conversations with the baseball committee, it has been decided that the girls’
softball league is to be established to keep the fans coming to the games.
Being a woman in the sport that is believed to
be a male-only sport, can be tough. Yet, since the beginning of female baseball
teams, young girls had proved they deserve to be remembered and acknowledged
for their athletic achievements. Here are just a few famous female baseball players who shaped
the history of female baseball.
