Softball has been and continues to be a large part of my life. In more ways than one it helped me develop through my childhood into adolescence. Softball to me and many other players who grew up on a baseball diamond, it was a means of secondary socialization and anticipatory socialization. Secondary socialization and anticipatory socialization are institutions and situations that help to learn skills and behaviours that will help as one progresses through life ((T. Davidson, personal communications, Softball helps players to learn and become a new member of a society and a community, we learn to become members of a team. Teamwork is a valuable skill to learn as a child and it is sometimes difficult to accept and to pick up on. As an agent of socialization, school is usually the place where children learn to work with others and develop their teamwork skills. Playing on a team gives an advantage to those who play because you learn quickly how to work as a team to achieve a common goal. This …show more content…
Dominant gender schemas and emphasized femininity was a large part of what made the game difficult to play on occasion. Softball is seen as a step down from baseball, an easier sport for women because baseball is a man’s sport and is too difficult for women to play. As a young girl I had grown up hearing and accepting that women are emotional, fragile, and weak, and that men are strong, and independant. These were part of the dominant gender schema and were something that even from a young age I never agreed with. Softball is considered a woman’s sport, though many men play in softball leagues too. The only difference between softball and baseball are the dynamics of the pitching and a few rules here and there. It is still a sport and there should be no differentiation between a sport for men and women because of stereotypes about the physical and mental capabilities of two
The big question for people who don’t play this question is really, what is softball? Softball is a little bit more modified version of baseball but softball is played on a smaller field,with a larger ball, played with 7 innings instead of 9 and with underarm pitch in a circular motion. Now that we know what the basic part of softball is let’s talk about the equipment. The equipment used to play softball is a bat about waist level give or
Though the practices performed within softball literacy do not immediately seem as if they should be considered a literacy practice, according to two of the six propositions about the nature of literacy, it is. Not only does it involve the physical performance from a play, but also includes formal writings, new rules and regulations, and offer different rules in different countries. I think softball should be counted as a literacy practice because it appeals to Barton and Hamilton’s propositions and includes artifacts that make it a community and artifacts that provide the players with essential people skills.
A person that would like to play professional ball will choose baseball because there is a professional big league, such as the St. Louis Cardinals, but in softball that opportunity is not available. Baseball is played on more levels than softball. It is played on the professional, international, Olympic, college, high school, and little league levels. If a player is fortunate enough to make it to the professional level, he can make millions of dollars.
I have played softball for four years, Softball has always come to me naturally. It was my third year playing when I moved to Friendswood, I was new to everything. During this year I met a girl named Shaye Brockwell. She was really nice to me and we hung out many times. Then her dad started coaching and I got on their team the next year and everything changed.
Many women have taken up the positions of engineers, factory workers and many more jobs normally occupied by men. Many women that wanted to help with the war effort had worked, bought war bonds, donated clothing and foods and anything else needed to help and support our troops. Some women now had the opportuinty to play baseball and still help promote help for the war. However the idea of women playing baseball and acting like men was completely absurd during that day and age. That year of attendance of The AAGPBL approached one million, with the players completely defined the image of a respectable lady, the girls played ball with a new baseball of fast pitching, stolen bases and injuries, epically skin abrasions from sliding to bases in short skirts. Though the female ball players were skilled and athletic, their required uniform were one piece dresses and had to wear makeup at all times so that it was a reminder to the spectators that these were indeed women playing in the field( ). No player was allowed to drink, smoke, date, cut their hair short or be seen in public with slacks or shorts. Every player were required to join and had to endure “charm schools” where they were obligated to learn ladylike behavior. Though there were many limitations and requirements for the female players this new form of
Women don’t receive the spotlight in sports very often. Usually, the men in baseball, football, basketball, and soccer have higher salaries and are paid attention to more. This wasn’t the case with a special league of female baseball players. These ladies sparked a thought in peoples’ heads in the mid 20th-century. Could women really play a professional sport instead of staying home to do the housework? From 1943-1954, women in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League helped to change the rights women were believed to have in society and in the workplace as they began playing a professional sport as a form of entertainment. Men, who would usually fulfill this role, were drafted into the military with the responsibility to serve during the war. The AAGPBL quickly became a world-winning group of women athletes and kept baseball and peoples' hopes alive during a time of weakness in American history.
I tried out and made my highschool team. While playing on my highschool team I joined a travel team for the Brooklyn Cyclones while still playing for my church’s high school team. My passion for softball could not be taken away from me. Even when I failed, I did not give up on my dream. Giving up on my dream of being successful in softball would be equivalent to letting down my past self who was just a little girl who fell in love with softball. Playing softball was my parents way of wearing me out, but it was my way of getting away from the problems of the real world and into a world of my own. Between two white chalk lines nothing else mattered, but playing the game I fell in love with when I was only ten years old. On the field, I was able to feel pure bliss. Playing softball for seven years has not only given me joy, but it has also taught me life skills that I use from day to day. I learned to work as a team to achieve a common goal, to communicate with others better, I have learned to cherish my wins while accepting my losses and I have learned no matter what happens in life, you always have to put your heart and soul into everything you
I spend six days per week for twelve months straight practicing catching, throwing, and hitting a softball. My friends call me crazy when I have to leave their house at ten o’clock on a Friday night to go play in a midnight madness softball tournament. They think I am insane for travelling to away, out-of-state tournaments each weekend. However, ten years of competitive, travel softball and nearly nine hundred games have molded me into the person I am today. Many people do not understand why I spend the majority of my time playing competitive softball, and they fail to recognize that my entire identity is a result of this sport. However, I am aware that I would not be who I am without it.
Softball is a game that was invented in 1887 in Chicago by a group of women. It is derived from baseball but has a few difference from baseball in that it is played with a larger ball and on a smaller field. Other differences between the two sports is that the ball must be pitched underhand from 46 ft. and 43 ft. for men and women as opposed to what it is in baseball which is 60.5 ft.; there are seven innings in softball and in baseball there are nine innings. The governing body for softball in the US is the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) and in the world it is the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). The sport is spread worldwide with 110 countries playing the sport.
In May 1932, Fanny noticed that there was no actual league for softball, unlike her male counterparts. So she helped to create the Provincial Women’s Softball Union of Québec, she served as the president. This league is a huge deal, currently many softball players in Quebec and Ontario alike have played under them, either on a team or a tournament. This league was revolutionary at its time, it allowed many girls from all over Quebec to finally participate in softball. The PWSUQ was one way Fanny established herself in the community of sport. Another way was her journalism career for the globe and mail through her column “Sports Reel” she was able to defend women’s sports. It wasn’t uncommon for male writers to write in and express negative opinions of women in sport. Fanny was witty and always had something to say back to them. As insignificant this may seem it was actually a very important event. Through her column Bobbie was able to change the perspectives of many men and women alike of women in
Baseball has been a part of me for quite a while now. I have done something baseball related each week for the past several years. It has really changed what I like to do in my spare time, and it also had changed my priorities. This was the first sport I would have played, and I haven’t played a different sport since the start of me playing Baseball. There were and still are so many ways baseball has changed my life.
It has taken many years for women to gain a semblance of equality in sports. Throughout history, women have been both excluded from playing sports and discriminated against in sports. Men’s sports have always dominated the college athletic field, but women were finally given a fighting chance after Title IX was passed. Title IX, among other things, requires scholarships to be equally proportioned between men and women’s sports. Although this was a huge gain for women, gender inequality still exists in sports today. An example of this persisting inequality can be seen when looking at men’s baseball and women’s softball. In college, baseball and softball are both major NCAA sports. It is widely accepted throughout today’s society that baseball is a man’s sport, and softball is a woman’s sport. Very few people question why the two sexes are separated into two different sports, or wonder why women play softball instead of baseball. Fewer people know that women have been essentially excluded from playing baseball for a long time. This paper will focus on why softball has not changed the way women’s basketball has, why women continue to play softball, the possibilities and dynamics of women playing baseball with and without men, and the most discriminating aspect of women being banned from playing professional baseball.
Many people don't understand the point in playing baseball. Why would someone swing a stick, hit a ball, and try to get back to where they started before the ball returns? What pleasure is there in that? Why not participate in a sport like wrestling or track where there is an obvious level of individual improvement and therefore pleasure. Well, I play baseball because of the love I have for the sport, and because of the feeling that overwhelms me every time I walk onto a baseball field. When I walk onto a field I am given the desire to better myself not only as an athlete, but also as a person. The thoughts and feelings I get drive me to work hard towards my goals and to be a better person. The most relevant example of these feelings is when I stepped on the field at Runyon Complex in Pueblo, Colorado during our high school state playoffs in 2003. This baseball field will always be an important place to me.
Gender in sports has been a controversial issue ever since sports were invented. In the early years, sports were played only by the men, and the women were to sit on the sidelines and watch. This was another area of life exemplifying the sexism of people in which women were not allowed to do something that men could. However, over the last century in particular, things have begun to change.
For many years, baseball has been a male dominated sport and still is today by the limited amount of female baseball players and the nonexistence of women’s league in the MLB. Women are categorized into a similar game to baseball known as softball, thus arguing that women do not have the same physical ability as men. During the rare times you would notice a female baseball player or any female athlete, society is very quick on labeling these females as lesbians, dutch or dyke. This exemplifies the inequality of gender roles within the sport culture as society struggles with the acceptance of female athletes because they are portrayed to be weak and pristine. It is also argued that baseball has been stereotypically represented to be more of a “father and son” game since at most events, it is more likely to see a male individual bring other male friends for a guy’s night out watching the game of baseball and drinking beer. Rarely would you ever see a father bringing their daughter to these games mainly because of the stereotype of sports being a manly thing in which creates the stereotype of women to be interested in less aggressive activities such as dance. Thus, it is proven that Sports revolve around men causing them to be interpreted as masculine activities in which women should not participate in due to their feminine qualities that are perceived as