Women in Baseball: The Decision Between Collegiate Baseball or Softball

Baseball is both a site of struggle for women as they actively resist gender norms and rebel against the gendered institution of baseball as an exclusively male space, and a place to find community and form identities playing the game they love. This dichotomy underlies the choice female baseball players make to continue down their chosen path or conform to societal expectations and switch to softball. However, the factors that contribute to this decision are underexplored. Therefore, an investigation into female baseball players and why they ultimately choose to play the “girls” (softball) or “boys” (baseball) version of a sport in college provides a unique opportunity to link various fields of sociological work (sports, gender, higher education) together to better understand how sports are a site for the reproduction and breaking of gender roles and inequalities. This was accomplished through semi-structured interviews with 10 female college baseball players and 11 female college softball players who are also involved in women’s baseball. Through this study, I find that women collegiate ball players are motivated by childhood dreams and long-term goals, the critical role of visibility and representation in encouraging more women to play baseball, male role models frequently get credited with encouraging baseball participation while female role models often suggest softball as a more practical alternative for players, and, finally, that playing collegiate softball was at times a strategic choice for players, rather than what based off of love of the game.