Girls' baseball participation growing, but hopes for St. Paul tournament fall short

Sally Schmidt, 11, was eager and ready to go. So were nearly 100 other young baseball players who had signed up for Minnesota's first all-girls baseball tournament to be held Saturday and Sunday at Toni Stone Field in St. Paul.

Trouble is, the Minnesota Twins needed to register twice that many girls to pull it off, illustrating the continuing challenges to getting more girls to play baseball.

"We wanted to make a splash. We wanted to do something we've never done before," said Chelsey Falzone, the Twins' Youth Engagement Manager and herself a baseball player growing up in the Stillwater area. "Next year."

Between being regularly diverted into playing softball or continuing to be blocked by coaches, baseball-loving girls still face obstacles to playing the game, said Justine Siegal, founder of Baseball For All.

"Girls have been playing baseball since before they could vote. To me, too many girls are being told they can't play baseball. To me, this is a social justice issue," said Siegal, whose organization works to change that. Baseball For All started with one all-girls team playing against boys in Cooperstown in 2010 and now touts players in more than 40 states and five countries competing in tournaments.

It held its first national girls' baseball tournament in 2015.

The Twins were partnering with Siegal to host the "Baseball For All Toni Stone Invitational Powered by the Minnesota Twins" at Dunning Sports Complex in St. Paul this weekend. The plan: Divide into multiple teams, ages 8-and-under to 14-and-under.

Instead, plans changed. Girls will now participate in drills, enjoy a pizza lunch and do some scrimmaging in the afternoon, Falzone said. The sign-up numbers might have been hampered by the high school state softball tournament being held this week, she said. But the tournament was scheduled to coincide with Major League Baseball's "Play Ball Weekend."

Siegal said she appreciates the Twins' support, nonetheless. An estimated 100,000 girls play baseball in the U.S., according to the World Baseball Softball Confederation, Siegal said. But most drop out of the sport at 11 or 12 years old.

Many are told they should quit. Others are pressed to switch to softball. Some are outright blocked from continuing, she said.

"We have girls who know they are the best and coaches who are sitting them waiting for them to quit," Siegal said.

Still, they persist.

Siegal did. Despite being dropped from a "no-cut" college program that used running out of uniforms as an excuse, she continued to stay involved in the game, becoming a college baseball coach before moving to professional baseball and becoming the first woman to coach for a Major League Baseball organization — the Oakland Athletics in 2015.

So did Falzone, who started playing on her twin brother's baseball team when it needed an extra and she was wearing a red T-shirt that matched its red jerseys. She played baseball until 12th grade, despite being the only "ponytail player" at every level she played.

Falzone said she really hoped to pull off this tournament in honor of Toni Stone, a former Negro Leagues player who was "not a girl just trying to be good at baseball. She was an incredible baseball player." Nevertheless, Stone often pretended to be a man just so she'd be accepted as a player, Falzone said.

Sally Schmidt hasn't faced pushback, her mom, Nicky, said, despite being the only girl playing in the Buffalo Baseball Association. For the most part, she has the support of her male teammates and coaches, Nicky Schmidt said.

She tried softball. But the girl who started tagging along to the diamond with her older brother when she was only 3 plans to keep playing baseball through high school.

"She just loves the game, and is very competitive," her mother said. "She's heard very little negative."

Sally, who likes to pitch but plays all over the infield, is a little disappointed she won't be competing in a full tournament against other girls, Nicky Schmidt said. But she plans to dive into the Saturday clinic. And she plans to come back next year — to play.

"It's sad, but you have to start somewhere," Nicky Schmidt said. "The more awareness that we get out — that you don't have to play softball — the better. We're proud of the movement."