Baseball for All founder Justine Siegal had no problems playing the sport she loved when she was young.
Then, she turned 13. And she suddenly couldn’t play baseball anymore.
“I had a wonderful time playing baseball until I was about 13,” Siegal said. “Then, I got a new coach and he told me that he didn’t want me on his team, and that I should quit because girls play softball. But I decided I’d play forever.”
Siegal was determined to achieve her dream of becoming a college baseball coach, and she took it one step further.
Siegal was an assistant baseball coach for Springfield College in Massachusetts while she worked toward a Ph.D. in Sports Psychology. She became the first-ever woman to coach in an MLB organization with the Oakland Athletics in 2015, serving in an instructional role during spring training.
“It was great to be here with the A’s,” Siegal said from Hohokam Stadium, the Oakland Athletics’ spring training site in Mesa. “I was here instructionally. It wasn’t a long time, but it took my whole life to get there, so it was incredibly satisfying and I really enjoyed my time with the A’s.”
Siegal’s Athletics jersey now sits in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
While Siegal was pursuing her coaching dreams, she also wanted to make sure girls got an opportunity to play baseball without being ridiculed. She founded Baseball for All, an organization focused on giving girls the opportunity to play and coach baseball, in 2010.
“Too many girls are being told to quit baseball,” Siegal said. “To me, that’s a social justice issue. Girls deserve to have as many opportunities in baseball as the boys do.”
Siegal said she frequently runs into issues of people assuming baseball and softball are the same sport, and girls shouldn’t play baseball when softball is an option.
Shelby O’Donnal, 15, plays for the Arizona Peaches, a 16-team girls baseball league in the Valley, during her summers. O’Donnal played softball during her freshman year of high school and rejected the idea that softball and baseball are the same sport.
“It’s definitely different, I 100% percent prefer baseball more,” O’Donnal said. “It feels more like me. Softball feels like a foreign sport to me. I found out what a riseball (in softball) was and they’re crazy. I don’t know how people hit those. I’d rather hit a ball coming down than rising.”
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Baseball for All is hosting its seventh annual national tournament in Mesa this weekend at Bell Bank Park and Fitch Stadium. Over 400 girls from teams all over the country between the ages of 6-18 compete in the four-day tournament.
The Baseball for All national tournament held its opening ceremonies on Wednesday night at Hohokam Stadium. The Athletics, Arizona Diamondbacks and Major League Baseball are sponsors of Baseball for All and Siegal’s fight to increase girls’ presence in the sport.
“It’s phenomenal to have MLB teams supporting us, but specifically the Diamondbacks,” Siegal said. “The girls are so excited to go to a game (on Sunday) and get to go on the field like big leaguers, it’s exciting. And, of course, the A’s are my heart, they helped me break the barrier.”
Siegal said that since she started Baseball for All, she’s seen exponential growth in girls coming out to play the male-dominated sport. The goal, Siegal said, is to both grow girls’ baseball to the college level and support co-ed teams that already exist.
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O’Donnal started playing t-ball when she was 4 years old with Chandler Youth Baseball. Now, she plays year-round on a boys’ club team, but she said she connects better with the Arizona Peaches.
“Boys don’t care as much,” O’Donnal said. “They’re just weird, I guess. I’m a lot closer with the girls I play with than the guys I play with, even though I’ve played with the guys a lot more years than I’ve played with (Peaches).”
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People have assumed O’Donnal and girls’ baseball teams aren’t as good as boys’ teams simply because of their gender, O’Donnal said. Usually, that changes after people see the girls play.
“I think, at first, it’s like, ‘Oh, they’re a boy, they’re more athletic, they’re better,’” O’Donnal said. “But then they see you play, and they realize, ‘Oh, you’re actually good, you’re not bad.’”
