Baseball: Breaking down barriers, one pitch at a time

By Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports Feb 21, 2011

Justine Siegal delivered pitches to the Indians and her message to the baseball world. (photo)
----
GOODYEAR, Ariz. – The girl on the field spent her 13th birthday last week attending the Justin Bieber movie. She wears multi-colored sneakers with mismatched laces. And she once tried to be serious about baseball, only to discover a diamond was a more wonderful place to chase butterflies and sketch infield pictures with the toe of one of those sneakers.

While Cleveland Indians hitters launched baseballs into an empty outfield, the girl on the field sat cross-legged and pushed her cap back on her head and fiddled with her iPhone, wondering just how long she’d have to be here.

Every few minutes she’d lift her head, study the scene on Field 2, then drift away again.

Her mom was throwing batting practice, something no woman had done before in a major league setting, as far as anyone knew.

“Yeah, I’m proud,” Jasmine Siegal said. “Thing is, I can see her pitch any time.”

Thirty-one years since she first held a baseball with some kind of intent and almost 20 since giving up her dream of becoming the next Orel Hershiser, Justine Siegal, 36, continued her fight Monday to persuade and allow girls of any age to play the game she loves. The game they love.

Just like the boys.

Or, as the case may be, to pursue butterflies.

Just like the boys.

She calls her ideal (and her website) Baseball for All. And after spending her prime stubbornly refusing to go away, Justine Siegal rolled her baseball pants to her knees, rubber-banded her hair into pigtails, stood on a back field, palmed three balls in her left hand and aimed, in her words, “To throw a four-seam fastball straight over the top and right over the plate.”

The Indians, the team of her youth and her father and her grandfather’s youths, were kind enough to grant her the stage, a platform behind an L screen maybe 50 feet from home plate. She wore a dark blue jersey, No. 15, for the day in February her daughter, Jaz, was born. The team had committed to a kind of tryout, allowing Siegal to give it a go against a handful of minor leaguers in shorts and T-shirts.

Turned out she did, indeed, throw like a girl. Like a strong, loose-armed, athletic girl who’d been doing this forever. Half hour later, she was re-warming in a game of catch with Indians manager Manny Acta and then pitching to big leaguers, throwing strikes and getting hammered like any good BP pitcher should.

As she strode to the mound, Indians general manager Chris Antonetti said to outfielder Chad Huffman(notes), “She was good earlier.”

“She was?” Huffman said.

“Yeah, she was good.”

“That’s great. I love it. Got a little swagger to her, too.”

Minutes later, catcher Paul Phillips(notes) stepped from the batting cage and said, “Is it bad when you’re going into a round of BP and you’re thinking, ‘Don’t strike out?’ ”

The goal was to hit as many bats as possible. The mission is larger, borne of Siegal’s own experiences growing up in the Cleveland suburb of Cleveland Heights, for years pitching (and occasionally playing third) for whomever would give her the ball, then as a coach for male teams, both for Springfield (Mass.) College and later the independent Brockton Rox.
----
Justine Siegal says, "If you tell a girl she can't play baseball, what else is she going to believe she can't do?" (photo)
----
Her organization is non-profit. Her message is about choices, and the freedom to make them. Whether her own Jaz ever caught the baseball bug or not, whether any girl did, Siegal believes they should have a place to play, a team around them and a way to earn it, regardless of gender.

“What I want is girls’ baseball across America,” she said between batting practices. “So when I throw, now all of a sudden we have a dialogue [about] how much girls and women love baseball and how they want to be a part of it.”

Beyond that, she said, “I think it’s fairly simple. If you tell a girl she can’t play baseball, what else is she going to believe she can’t do?”

To her uniform sleeve, Siegal had duct-taped a patch honoring Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl killed in last month’s Tucson shooting. Green was the only girl on her Canyon Del Oro Little League team.

As Siegal pitched, she calmed her nerves and dried her palms by singing to herself, a song by U2 called, “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own.” And she thought of all the people who should have been on the mound beside her: Grandfather Alvin, who’d turned her on to the Indians of Municipal Stadium, father Michael, who loved the game like she did, and Jaz, whose precociousness, well, had to come from somewhere.

“At the same time,” Siegal said, “I feel all those people who told me ‘no’ are with me, too.”

She’ll throw more batting practice Wednesday, for the Oakland Athletics. In the meantime, Justine and Jaz almost certainly will find other things to do. On a rainy Sunday, they’d spotted a rainbow over Scottsdale, and through the puddles chased the end of it in their rented Volkswagen bug.

They got close enough for Jaz to take a picture on her iPhone, which she held up with a grin, her brown eyes sparkling.

There’d be time for baseball later.

“We should do and be whatever we want to be,” her mom said. “If baseball’s it, then go for it.”

Tim Brown is a national baseball writer for Yahoo! Sports. Follow him on Twitter. Send Tim a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.

Aroldis Chapman throws fastest pitch ever recorded 09 Sep 2010 By Steve Henson, Yahoo! Sports

SAN DIEGO – Aroldis Chapman(notes) was summoned from the bullpen one batter too late to make a difference in the game. No matter. The 22-year-old Cincinnati Reds left-hander made do by making history Friday night, throwing the fastest pitch recorded in a major league game, a 105-mph fastball.

Ardolis Chapman's 25 pitches on Friday night (each registering 100 mph or faster, including his record-breaking 105 mph heater) must have been a blur to Padres batters.
(Christopher Hanewinckel/US Presswire)

The blazing pitch pushed a white-hot pennant race to the back burner. Yes, the San Diego Padres won the game 4-3 to pull ahead of the Atlanta Braves in the National League wild-card race. Sure, the San Francisco Giants all but buried the Colorado Rockies thanks to a dominant performance by Tim Lincecum(notes).

But the lingering memory was of a now-you-see-it, did-I-actually-see-it fastball to Tony Gwynn(notes) in the eighth inning. The pitch was not a fluke: Chapman threw 25 pitches in his 1 1/3 innings of relief, and every one was at least 100 mph. He didn’t throw a slider. He didn’t throw a changeup. Why would he?

From Walter Johnson to Bob Feller to Steve Dalkowski to J.R. Richard to Nolan Ryan to Stephen Strasburg, blistering velocity is etched forever in baseball lore. Rush Chapman to the head of the list. Has anybody in the history of the game had a comparable 25-pitch sequence?

“I didn’t see it until the ball was behind me,” Gwynn said. “I was trying not to look at the radar reading because I’d be intimidated. I saw how hard he was throwing and just tried to be slow and work my hands.”

The 105-mph pitch was inside for a ball and evened the count at 2-2. Gwynn had fouled off the previous two pitches and fouled off the next before striking out. He ought to be pleased with his effort, forcing Chapman to make seven pitches, the slowest of which was 102 mph.

Gwynn’s father, Tony, a Hall-of-Famer and one of baseball greatest hitters, never saw a pitch as fast as the one Chapman threw. Maybe nobody else has, either. Since radar guns were introduced in the 1980s, the fastest pitch recorded was 104.8 mph by Joel Zumaya(notes) of the Detroit Tigers in a playoff game Oct. 10, 2006. Chapman, who defected from the Cuban national team in 2009, was clocked at 104 on Sept. 1 in his second major league appearance and also hit 105 mph with a pitch for Triple-A Louisville earlier this season.

Chapman, speaking through an interpreter with bags of ice strapped across his arm, credited his stepped-up velocity Friday to the fact that he’d pitched only once in the last week. He didn’t allow an earned run in his first eight relief appearances after being promoted Aug. 31, but the Astros nicked him for two runs a week ago. He pitched a scoreless inning on Monday against the Brewers, then had three more days off.

“My arm had been a little sore and the rest helped,” he said. “I felt as good as I did a couple weeks ago. Not the best I’ve ever felt, but I felt good.”

Reds manager Dusty Baker appreciated the moment, but the loss grated on him. Chapman was warming up in the bullpen when Miguel Tejada(notes) delivered a bases-loaded, two-out single in the seventh against Nick Masset(notes) that drove in the Padres’ third and fourth runs. Chapman came in and struck out Adrian Gonzalez(notes) on three fastballs that registered 101, 102 and 103 mph.

Baker had been reluctant to summon Chapman to face Tejada with the bases loaded and the Reds holding a one-run lead, envisioning a wild pitch or a walk.

“A guy throwing that hard, looking back you can say I should have brought him in earlier, but he can’t pitch against everybody all the time,” Baker said.

Asked if that was the hardest he has seen Chapman throw by a small degree, Baker replied, “By a big degree.”

Fastest Recorded MLB Pitches
Name	Team	Year	MPH
Aroldis Chapman	Reds	2010	105
Joel Zumaya	Tigers	2006	104.8
Aroldis Chapman	Reds	2010	104
Mark Wohlers	Braves	1995	103
Armando Benitez	Giants	2002	102
Jonathan Broxton	Dodgers	2009	102
Neftali Feliz	Rangers	2010	102
Bobby Jenks	White Sox	2005	102
Randy Johnson	Diamondbacks	2004	102
Matt Lindstrom	Marlins	2007	102
Robb Nen	Marlins	1997	102
Justin Verlander	Tigers	2007	102

Padres officials said the stadium radar gun is not known for inordinately high readings, unlike the Fox TV gun that recorded Zumaya at 104.8. Chapman had three other pitches Friday clocked at 104 mph.

This wasn’t the first time Chapman had pitched at Petco Park. He started for the Cuban team in the World Baseball Classic in the spring of 2009 and was knocked out of the game in the third inning against Japan and took the loss. His fastest pitch was 101 mph.

“I’ve grown up and improved so much since then,” he said. “I remember that night and losing my composure a little. I couldn’t find the strike zone. That seems like a long time ago.”

After defecting during a tournament in the Netherlands in July 2009, Chapman signed a six-year, $30.25 million deal with the Reds in January. It was widely predicted that he would sign a much more lucrative deal with a deep-pocket team such as the Yankees or Red Sox, but some teams backed off because of concerns about his maturity.

“We’ve got to make bold moves sometimes,” Reds GM Walt Jocketty said at the time.

Now the signing looks genius. And maybe by the time the playoffs begin, Baker will go to Chapman earlier, even with the bases loaded.

“When a guy is throwing that hard, you feel sort of helpless,” Gwynn said. “We’re just glad we had enough runs to win before he came in the game.”

Steve Henson is the MLB editor for Yahoo! Sports. Follow him on Twitter.
Send Steve a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.