Most professional sports if not all to this date are usually not co-ed. Especially with baseball. Softball for women, baseball for men. It’s been that way forever. But something is changing. We have an anomaly in college baseball. And her name is Olivia Pichardo. Olivia is the first female baseball player in history to be on an active Division I roster. And she hasn’t just been stuck in one position either. Since her making the Brown University Bears roster, the 18-year-old has played anywhere from middle infield, outfielder, and even pitcher. How amazing! Pichardo has participated in multiple MLB youth programs throughout her young career and she’s really making a name for herself and young female athletes that want to compete at a high level. Her fastball can reach up to 82 miles per hour!
Women revolution
That’s pretty fast for a teenage girl! While 16 women of all time have played college baseball before, she is the first to play at the highest level of them all, Division I. From being an intern at the New York Mets to throwing the first pitch at one of their games as a current celebrity is a pretty cool sight and it will be neat to see as the years go by if more women start to advance their physical capabilities and try to compete in the same competitive sports as men. Brittney Grinner, who is now currently incarcerated, was probably the nearest woman to competing in pro men’s basketball for her physical attributes and how talented she literally is. Sports always seem to amaze me.
Offseason
With the offseason comes a lot of factors. Starting from top to bottom. As we’ve ever seen from the Houston Astros after winning a World Series, firing their manager and assistant manager, nobody is safe. With no word on who they will hire next, it will be interesting to see what they choose to do in the coming months. And how about free agents? Well, they range from new guys to big-league tickets. Currently, the hot topic is this Japanese prospect Kodai Senga. Senga recording a 1.94 in Nippon’s Professional Baseball, is a savvy high, velocity pitching future asset to a team that could really add depth to contenders pitching roster. How about the hitters? Aaron Judge, Carlos Correa, Mitch Haniger, and Anthony Rizzo are all getting a plethora of speculative offers to kick off the offseason. Where will these sluggers go? Hard to tell at this point in time. Will they bolster already stacked rosters? Or will they decide to start their own legacy with a middle-of-the-pack franchise? The unlimited salary cap really makes that choice relatively easy and is something in my opinion, that needs to change. And yes, while the Houston Astros were not the highest-paying salary team in the league, they definitely were nowhere near the lowest. The current cap is driving not the highest market teams out of business, leaving stands empty, and making the league very committed to only powerhouses. Not only do I think this ruins the growth of the MLB as a whole, but I think it limits the reach of the next generation to witness the sport at the highest level.
A fan in Oakland will never get to truly enjoy a baseball game most of the time, if ever for that franchise due to the lack of extreme hundreds of millions of dollars in funding that competing Cali MLB franchises have to offer. And look at Los Angeles Angels for example. Having two big fish players in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani and still not being enough for them to reach the postseason is pathetic. While something that does really stand out about the Astros is their farming process, and how they were able to cultivate and scout years ago a team that will be long remembered and written about in the MLB history books. The team that swept the MLB Yankees. Unfortunately, like the special word I used earlier in this article, that is an anomaly, and I think the MLB should further look into creating some sort of “cap limit” somewhat relative to what their other American competitors of the MLB and NFL are currently implementing.
