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Sports Outside the Beltway

12-year-old girl throws Little League perfect game

Mackenzie Brown will get to throw out the first pitch at a New York Met game this weekend. From AP-

On the pitcher’s mound, a 12-year-old girl from New Jersey is perfect.

Mackenzie Brown is the first girl in Bayonne Little League history to throw a perfect game. She retired all 18 boys she faced on Tuesday.

There are no official records of how many perfect games are thrown per season. Little League Baseball in Williamsport, Pa., estimates only 50 to 60 occur each year. No one knows how many have been thrown by girls.

Brown says she knew she had something special going in the fourth inning and just tried not to mess up.

She’ll get to throw out the first pitch at Citi Field on Saturday when the New York Mets host the Washington Nationals.

Is there another Eri Yoshida in the making but on this side of the Pacific? Tune back in about 5-10 years from now.

Could a woman play professional baseball one day? I think so. The most likely way for one to make it, would be as a Knuckleball pitch. That pitch doesn’t require much velocity to drive hitters insane. The trouble is, few coaches know how to teach throwing it and pro baseball scouts and coaches have are prejudiced towards power pitchers, with good reason. BTW, Eri Yoshida’s specialty pitch is the Knuckleball.

 

Life imitates Dash Parr

From the Incredibles.
Dash: You always say ‘Do your best’, but you don’t really mean it. Why can’t I do the best that I can do?

Outside the Beltway links to a story about a little league pitcher who’s too good.

Nine-year-old Jericho Scott is a good baseball player — too good, it turns out. The right-hander has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven [Connecticut] told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more.

Eugene Volokh though says that the problem is not that he’s too good for his age, but that he ought to be allowed to compete against older boys, who are at his level of talent.

Players who excel far beyond their age group should of course still be playing. They just should be playing against others who are roughly their equals in ability. It sounds like the other players in New Haven Youth Baseball are out of Scott’s league (in a more literal way than usual for that phrase) — and they should indeed be in different leagues. (If the next higher league doesn’t allow Scott because he’s too young, even if he’s good enough, then that should be the target of criticism, it seems to me, and not the actions of the Youth Baseball league.)

(h/t Instapundit)

Yes, let him compete against a higher level of competition. But I think MLB is a little much. Even the Orioles.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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