Japan's First Female Professional Baseball Player - First Woman Pro Ballplayer

16-Year-Old Eri Yoshida Breaks Baseball's Glass Ceiling With Her Knuckleball

Japan's first female professional baseball player was drafted earlier this week, shattering the glass ceiling of the baseball diamond in a country obsessed with the sport.

Eri Yoshida, a 16-year-old student at Kawasaki Kita High School in Yokohama, was selected in the 7th round by the Kobe 9 Cruise. Yoshida has become a pitching sensation because of her knuckleball, a pitch she was inspired to learn after watching videos of Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.

One of 33 players selected in the amateur draft, Yoshida will be playing in the four-team Kansai Independent league which formed in April of 2008. (Japan's two major leagues, the Central and the Pacific, dominate professional baseball in that country.)

As the Associated Press reports, Yoshida will be playing alongside male professional ballplayers although the Kobe 9 Cruise is not quite 'the big leagues':

Making the squad is more like earning a tentative slot on a farm team than warming up in the bullpen for the Red Sox. Even so, the 5-foot, 114-pound Yoshida has smashed the glass ceiling with her unorthodox, sidearm pitch in baseball-crazy Japan, where women normally are relegated to amateur, company-sponsored teams or to the sport of softball.

"I'm really happy I stuck with baseball," Yoshida said in a news conference...."I want to pitch against men."

Yoshida is hoping to find enough success to one day challenge the likes of the long-established Central and Pacific leagues, home to the best and brightest Japanese players and increasingly a fertile ground for talent headed to the majors in the United States

Yoshida began playing baseball in second grade, and by junior high school played first base on a boy's team. In high school she joined the school's baseball club. After quiting because of the rigors of training, she later joining a private club.

Some are critical of Yoshida and regard her pick as nothing more than an attention-getting ploy. According to the UK's Guardian newspaper:

Cynics accused Kobe - roughly equivalent to a lowly farm team in the US Major Leagues - of choosing Yoshida to generate publicity for the fledgling four-team league.

"I think her recruitment is partly about publicity," said Toshihiko Kasuga, director of the Women's Baseball Association of Japan. "It would be extremely hard for women to compete fairly against men in any sport."

Baseball is Japan's most popular sport, yet there is no professional league for women players. A women's professional baseball federation formed briefly in Japan from 1951-52. Since then, semi-professional women baseball players continued in the game until 1991, when Nippon Professional Baseball removed a clause that shut women out for medical reasons.

Yoshida may be the first Japanese woman to play professional baseball alongside men. But other women in the US have had their brief moments of glory on the mound according to the Associated Press:

Baseball history in the United States has occasional examples of women taking the field with men. While pitching for the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, Virne Beatrice "Jackie" Mitchell Gilbert struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in succession. In the last couple of decades, at least three women have pitched in independent minor leagues.

_{Sources:
McCurry, Justin. "16-year-old becomes first woman in Japan's all-male baseball league." Guardian.co.uk, 19 November 2008.
"Japan's 1st female pro baseball player." Nippon-sekai.com, 17 November 2008.
Talmadge, Eric. "Japanese girl makes her pitch for pro team." Associated Press, 19 November 2008.}