Always an Outlier, Kelsie Whitmore Just Wants to Play Baseball

Scott Whitmore stood alongside the concourse on a current spring evening watching the ultimate inning of a Staten Island FerryHawks dwelling sport wind down when a New York Metropolis police officer approached him from the third-base aspect.

“After the sport,” the officer stated sheepishly, “you suppose I can get your daughter’s autograph?”

Certain, Whitmore chuckled, although he knew the receiving line can be lengthy. Outdoors of a handful of Yankees and Mets stars, probably the most well-known ballplayer in New York this summer season may effectively be Staten Island’s pioneering two-way participant, Kelsie Whitmore.

Standing 5 ft 6 inches, with darkish chestnut hair that unfurls previous her uniform quantity, she is unimaginable to mistake within the FerryHawks’ dugout, warming up on the sector or signing autographs. She is an uncommon sight even in a league recognized for taking probabilities and pushing buttons.

The Atlantic League of Skilled Baseball, extensively thought of the very best degree amongst baseball’s impartial minor leagues, has hosted the previous All-Stars Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco and Rickey Henderson. However a lady had by no means began an Atlantic League sport, nor pitched in a single, till Whitmore, who has performed each. She’s the primary lady to play in a league partnered with Main League Baseball since Lee Anne Ketcham and Julie Croteau joined the Maui Stingrays of the Hawaii Winter Baseball league in 1994.

That league was concerning the equal of Class A ball, whereas the Atlantic is regarded as nearer to Class AAA, one step under the massive leagues. At 24, Whitmore, a former Cal State Fullerton softball star, is making a run at sticking in skilled baseball.

For Whitmore, that represents a return to regular. She performed softball as a result of it was the one means she might earn a school scholarship. However she is — all the time has been — a baseball participant, and she or he shares most of the telltale traits. She wears her cap pulled low, swings a 32.5-ounce bat, curses impulsively and spits reflexively.

The tattoos on her left forearm include Filipino imagery — a homage to her mom’s heritage — together with a string of crocodile enamel, representing an aggressive hunter lurking beneath a quiet, tranquil facade.

“It symbolizes me,” she stated, “as an individual and a participant.”

Whitmore has been stunning unsuspecting baseball males since she was an adolescent. She was the one lady on the varsity baseball staff at Temecula Valley Excessive Faculty in Southern California, and at 17 was considered one of two who have been signed to play professionally for the Sonoma Stompers of the Pacific Affiliation, an impartial league.

Now, she is on her personal in a league full of former main leaguers, on a staff managed by a former Mets participant, Edgardo Alfonzo.

There are different girls carving paths in baseball, a male-dominated sport. This spring, Rachel Balkovec of the Tampa Tarpons turned the primary lady to handle in affiliated baseball. In March, Alexis Hopkins was drafted by the Atlantic League’s Kentucky Wild Well being Genomes to function the staff’s bullpen catcher.

However Whitmore, who has twice began in left area and made 4 appearances on the mound, is making her case that she belongs on knowledgeable baseball diamond as a participant.

“That’s a groundbreaking occasion for us,” M.L.B. Commissioner Rob Manfred stated of Whitmore. “It provides you an honest-to-God, real-life instance of what we’ve been saying for years, aspirationally: Sometime, we’re going to have girls taking part in professionally for us.”

A Ponytail Protest

After a current evening sport was postponed due to climate, Whitmore was on the stadium with some teammates figuring out and negotiating who was going to make the run for chop cheese sandwiches — a bodega specialty that has turn out to be an obsession within the FerryHawks’ clubhouse.

She immediately stopped strolling to determine how you can leap throughout a roughly eight-foot-wide puddle that had shaped on the concrete, which she cleared with ease. “I did lengthy bounce in highschool,” Whitmore stated with a shrug.

Her athletic profession has additionally included soccer, lacrosse, flag soccer and volleyball. She will be able to clear 280 yards together with her driver and useless lifts 400 kilos.

Was there any sport she hasn’t tried?

“Cheer,” Whitmore stated.

Scott Whitmore, a physical-education trainer, stated baseball was his daughter’s past love. At age 6, he introduced Kelsie to register for Little League, however she refused. She was content material taking part in catch and taking swings within the yard.

“Lastly I stated, ‘Why don’t you need to play with youngsters your individual age?’” Scott Whitmore stated.

It was as a result of she thought she must put on her hair in a ponytail. She most popular to go away it lengthy.

Her father laughed and informed her she might put on her hair nevertheless she wished. It has remained down ever since.

“I suppose a part of me was like, if I do have it up, I’ll simply be like all the opposite ladies,” Whitmore stated. “It wasn’t comfy. It wasn’t me.”

It’s not unusual for women to play Little League. But it surely didn’t take lengthy earlier than Whitmore started to acknowledge simply how gendered the constructs have been for baseball (boys) and softball (ladies).

“You’d hear the doubters,” Scott Whitmore stated. “‘Hey, the boys are going to get stronger, and she or he’s not going to have the ability to grasp with them.’ They stated that at age 12, and it by no means occurred.”

Justine Siegal first noticed Whitmore pitch when she was 15. Siegal, who was the primary lady to teach for a serious league group, based the nonprofit Baseball for All to advertise gender equality in baseball and supply alternatives to ladies who need to play on youth groups.

From that first introduction, Siegal saved tabs on Whitmore, pondering maybe she may very well be the one to interrupt by means of and advance additional in skilled baseball than any lady in a long time.

“She had one thing particular,” Siegal stated of Whitmore. “It was clear she had the bodily talents to compete.”

However in highschool, Whitmore puzzled if she had the psychological stamina to press on.

“I began to get that feeling of, am I not alleged to be right here?” Whitmore stated. “Do I not belong right here? Folks hold asking me why I’m right here, individuals are questioning, outsiders are attempting to push me towards a unique route. It began to mess with my head.”

Loneliness turned an element, too. At all times the one lady, the standout, the outlier. It turned draining emotionally, she stated.

“You simply need to know that feeling of what it’s to slot in,” Whitmore stated.

Unable to safe a baseball scholarship, she entered a softball recruiting showcase regardless of restricted expertise with the sport. Her athleticism and her baseball instincts proved sufficient to draw a flood of affords from coaches who thought, inside time, they might mould her right into a star.

She used to recoil on the considered switching to softball. “It simply wasn’t what I wished to do,” Whitmore stated. “The highschool softball staff wished me to play for them. To be trustworthy, that’s like telling me to go play soccer. In my head, it’s a completely totally different sport.”

But school softball regarded extra interesting as Whitmore thought of that the highlight won’t be so centered on her.

“I assumed, if I’m going play on a staff full of ladies, I’ll know that feeling of not being the one everyone seems to be all the time taking a look at or wanting to vary,” Whitmore stated. “Once I stepped on a softball area, I used to be like, ‘OK, cool, I’m lastly part of them.’”

‘The Factor’

She was nonetheless totally different.

She moved like a baseball participant, wore a hat, wore baseball pants. She needed to relearn how you can hit, how you can decide fly balls, how you can swipe luggage. Even the environment within the dugout was international to her — a roster of ladies interacted in another way from guys.

After video games, she would slip into the batting cages to take cuts towards overhand pitchers. In the summertime, after the Fullerton season was over, she pitched for the U.S. girls’s nationwide baseball staff. “I informed myself, that is simply non permanent,” Whitmore stated of softball.

She additionally reached out to Joe Beimel, a former big-league reliever who opened a coaching facility in Torrance, Calif., that helps pitchers construct velocity. When Whitmore arrived, her fastball maxed out a little bit over 70 miles per hour.

“We wanted to get her no less than into the 80s,” Beimel stated in a telephone interview. However he was impressed with the motion on her pitches.

Whitmore’s pitching arsenal consists of a two-seamer, four-seamer, slider, curve — and one thing else solely. “It’s this bizarre knuckleball-changeup she throws,” Beimel stated.

Whitmore calls it “the Factor,” and the pitch has turn out to be a supply of fascination on the FerryHawks. A former teammate, Julio Teheran, who pitched for the Atlanta Braves, the Los Angeles Angels and the Detroit Tigers, had been learning her grip earlier than he just lately left for the Mexican League.

Whitmore won’t ever blow skilled hitters away (she now throws within the higher 70s), however Eddie Medina, the FerryHawks’ director of operations who pushed to signal her, felt Whitmore might hold hitters off-balance.

Her pitching coach, the previous main leaguer Nelson Figueroa, succeeded regardless of an absence of velocity, and he has helped Whitmore adapt. In her second pitching look of the season, she allowed six runs in two-thirds of an inning throughout a blowout loss. She notched a scoreless inning in a current look on June 5.

Regardless of the blended outcomes, followers cheer her identify and present as much as see her. Life in baseball means dressing in her personal locker room and showering in a facility utilized by the staff’s coaches.

However she calls her teammates her “massive brothers,” they usually have reciprocated the embrace.

She additionally has her father round as a supply of consolation and laughter. Scott Whitmore retired in late Could, packed the automobile and drove throughout the nation.

He didn’t intend to overlook a sport. “I’m going to spend your entire summer season watching my daughter play baseball.”