women's sports problems Options

[brooklyneast05]

why are women's sports so stupid? i don't understand certain aspects of women's sports. my two biggest annoyances have to do with softball and basketball, but i'm sure there are other sports where women for some reason have arbitrary differnet rules.

why can women not play baseball? why do they have to play softball? i don't get why women aren't capable of hitting a ball that's smaller than a grape fruit. to add insult to injury, now most the softballs are florescent colors. not only can they not hit a normal sized ball, they cant even see it coming if it's not the shade of highlighter. i don't see what aspect of baseball women couldn't do though or why they only get to play softball.

as far as basketball, the biggest thing is again with ball size. why do women use a smaller lighter ball. i've never known a girl who played basketball that couldn't shoot a men's ball. most girl players i knew could palm a men's so if you can palm that then what's really the need to have a smaller ball for girls. i get that typically their hands are smaller but it's not like a men's size basketball is that huge to begin with. i don't see why they can't just use the same size.

[batman]

women do play baseball. it's just not as widely put out there.

Last year, the U.S. women's baseball team took the silver medal in the women's World Series, played in Japan. In the United States, the team's feat was barely noticed. Nor did the team's gold medal win last year in the World Cup in Canada garner much attention.

"Despite what they achieved, they never got the recognition they deserved," says Nicholas A. Lopardo, general manager of the 2004 USA Baseball Women's National Team. "We're still scratching our heads to figure out why."

Me, too. One of the first questions I asked while learning about baseball is this: Why do women play softball and men play baseball? I found that the question is one many female baseball players struggle with every day.

"People just assume that softball and baseball are the same thing or that it's an equivalent for women," says Robin Wallace, the executive director at the North American Women's Baseball League. Wallace was the first female athlete to play varsity high school baseball in her hometown of Mobile, Ala.

It turns out that women have played organized baseball nearly as long as American men.

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4675763