Copyright 2009, The Republican Company. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

12-yr-old Mackenzie Brown, first girl to throw a perfect little league game

Springfield College sophomore Danielle Sabinski grew up watching her older brother and dad throwing a baseball around in the backyard.  “Oh, I want to try that,” she remembered saying.

Sabinski was one of 24 women representing 10 different colleges who played in [the] Friendship Game in the rain at Berry-Allen Field.  It is believed to be the first baseball game played entirely by college women in more than 100 years.

Justine Siegal, the game’s organizer and associate baseball coach for Springfield College’s junior varsity men’s team, has a clear long-term goal with yesterday’s exhibition just the first step.

My goal is to start college baseball for women.

Siegel, 34, said that she’s been playing baseball for nearly 30 years.  She runs an organization called Baseball for All, and has played and coached baseball on five continents.

We have 250,000 girls playing baseball in this country alone, and we want to give them a place to keep playing.  Most of them quit because they don’t have a place to play, not because they don’t want to play anymore.

Siegal said she doesn’t think that girls playing baseball will take away anything from softball.

Baseball and softball are separate sports, the NCAA recognizes that,

said Siegal, who hails from Cleveland and had a promising player alongside her in 11-year-old daughter Jasmine.

The International Baseball Federation recently announced that women’s baseball would be added to their bid for reinstatement to the Olympic program for 2016.  Over 30 nations around the world offer some level of baseball for women.  Siegal said

We have to keep the talent pool up if we’re going to compete internationally.  They have college baseball in Japan, they have college baseball in India.

Over 30 nations have some level of baseball competition for women.

The short-term goal would be for schools regionally to start a club program, which Springfield College is in the process of doing, and then eventually go varsity.

One of the goals of [the Friendship] game was to inspire [the] players to take that idea back to their schools.  Colleges represented yesterday included Tufts, Salem State, Boston University, the University of New Haven, Daniel Webster, U Mass, Mount Ida, Brown, and SC.  Siegel said

I’m hoping this game will jump-start an intercollegiate fall tournament for next year, so instead of these kids coming from all over, they’ll come as a team.  It doesn’t interfere with the men’s program because the men are only on the field so many times in the fall.

Sabinski, from Rotterdam, N.Y., tried playing softball at Springfield in her freshman year, and just didn’t like it.

I played for boys’ baseball teams for 14 years, and I’ve always wanted the opportunity to play with women because with women, it’s kind of like a completely different game, but it’s still baseball, and there are not a lot of women’s teams to play for.  It would be great to get a club team going for all the colleges around here, and hopefully bring it to the NCAA level.