Women’s soccer may be in it’s infancy, but you need to be much more than reasonably fit and into soccer to play for a professional women’s team. Just to give you an example, the best women soccer player I know is more than reasonably fit (i.e. consistently the best girl in different sports at school and competed at (English) county championships for athletics) and passionate about soccer, but played several leagues below professional level.
The idea that if you are some kind of “uber-athelete” you can just pick and choose your sport is simply not true. It may be true for some sports, but certainly not for sports like golf, soccer, tennis and basketball which are all very technical.
Darren Campbell would be a classic example: he won an Olympic gold 4x100 m and Olympic silver 200m after he failed to get a contract with the low-level professional soccer teams he had trials for. At about the same time as Campbell was trying to find a team, an overweight, injury-ravaged Paul Gascogine was making the team of the tournament at the European Championship. Darren Campbell was 100 times a better athlete than Paul Gascoigne, but Paul Gascoigne existed on a different planet to him as a soccer player because of his skill.
At the end of the season, when teams like the Marlins are giving away tickets for free in the hope of making some money off hot dog sales instead of leaving the seats empty, I can see someone like this showing up as a gimmick to drive attendance. If not in the majors, at least in some minor league.
I have no trouble believing that a great woman or a high school player can have the defensive skills to play shortstop at the MLB level. Like the great high school player, a woman will have problems at the plate against MLB pitching – and I don’t mean “problems hitting .250” I mean “problems ever putting the bat on the ball at all.”
I don’t believe in wasting roster spots on “late inning defensive replacements,” but some managers do. Especially if it’s done by a team out of contention that’s just trying to get some people to buy tickets, who knows what might happen.
Getting back to soccer, I haven’t watched any of the WWC. But sloppy passing strikes me as an example of not competing against the best. I mean unless it’s your position that women simply can’t pass or shoot as accurately as men–which seems unlikely–it means that they are getting away with it because they don’t have to do better. Soccer strikes me as the most likely place a woman could break into the pros, because it’s the least dependent on upper-body strength. I think a woman who COULD pass accurately and has good game instincts could take the field in some league–we already know women have the stamina to run up and down the field for 90 minutes. But how is she going to get that good? She would probably have to be a prodigy as a child, so good that a pro team would be willing to try her in the academy. The trouble is that there’s no incentive for any team to do so, because there are so many talented boys.
I agree with you that Roger would likely dominate that match, but I’m not convinced that the 100th or 300th-ranked man in the world would do the same. I’d pay good money to see it, frankly. Serena, however, is in very rare territory when it comes to women who generate a goodly amount of pace to go with the other skills needed to play top-level tennis. Looking over the rest of the current top 10 women, I don’t think there’s anyone else in that group who would be able to compete.
My position is that the women who currently play (or formally played) soccer cannot pass or shoot as accurately, and there is no reason to think better competition would significantly mitigate those differences
In fact, soccer is one of the sports where you see the greatest differences between men and women. The USWNT at their height with Mia Hamm played often lost to U-15 boys teams. Those women were undoubtably some of the best to ever play women’s soccer globally speaking, and they lost to Amerixan boys who were marginal on a global level. Women are just far too slow, weak, and unskilled relative to men on a professional level that the chance a women could play professional soccer with men is laughable.
Why would you think that woman could pass or shoot as accurately? They can’t. Upper body strength isn’t the only difference between men and women.
They also can’t run as fast or jump as high. They’re not as tall or as strong in upper or lower body. They can’t turn as fast or kick as hard. They are worse at literally every aspect of the game.
Lets say you assemble a world all-star team of women. Take them in their peak from any time period. I could find a dozen teams within walking distance that would demolish them. That’s in the ~20th best soccer country in the world. Women just can’t physically compete. Even if they were 100% equal in all the skill areas (they’re not), they’d still be at a phenomenal disadvantage. Losing every 50/50 ball every game would turn Chelsea into Stoke.
Maybe second base…I don’t think they’d do that well, but it wouldn’t be an automatic “everyone bunt in that direction and win 100-0” situation. It would still be, at most, a gimmick/stunt done in the last game of the year by a team far out of contention.
I 100% agree. There are some pros I’ve seen, usually big men, that look to me like they have worse shooting fundamentals than someone like Taurasi. But it’s an unimportant point ultimately - we have no disagreement here on Taurasi’s ability to play in the NBA. It is an utter impossibility, as I thought I had made clear above.
No, I am not. What I meant is that at a High School level being slower and relatively undersized can be at least partially compensated by having “good skills.” When you make the jump to college that becomes much, much harder to do for men AND women. When you make the jump to the pros, vastly harder yet.
The difference between athletic ability between top women and top men is like the difference between high school students ( the very best males of which are probably easily competitive with WNBA players ) and the pros.
Not me ( IMHO ). I think it is very large indeed. I still enjoy women’s basketball for its own merits, but like I said I consider it basically a different sport.
I hadn’t realized how many “Battle of the Sexes” tennis matches there had been. It seems fairly clear that the women are generally outmatched at that level though.
Mid 70s is quite fast enough to play MLB shortstop. Major league infielders get along quite well throwing in the mid 70s. A very, very strong armed shortstop like Cal Ripken might be throwing in the low 80s, and Ripken was absolutely zinging it.
I’ve told the story before but I once played co-ed softball, playing first base, with a woman third baseman maybe 5’5", 130 pounds tops, whose throws were so hard they hurt my hand. She was bringing it with some serious heat, I’d say at least 70-75, and that’s a softball; I have no doubt she could have thrown a baseball closer to 80. I know I can throw a softball around 63-65 off level ground, and she was unquestionably faster than me by a substantial degree. Velocity is as much technique as it is strength - Pedro Martinez was a little guy and could throw a ball through a tank.
Now, can you find a woman who can bring it 70 MPH AND field capably enough to make that matter AND hit MLB pitching? My 5’5" teammate probably could not hit a ball 220 feet on her best day. So she’s out. But there is no particular reason a woman could not, in theory, develop the skills to play MLB ball; unlike NHL hockey or NBA basketball, baseball is a sport where one’s ability is essentially determined by your ability to manipulate the ball itself, not manipulate other players. Being the weakest or smallest person on the field is not the crushing disadvantage it is in other sports; Willie Mays wasn’t very big and you may recall Willie did okay.
I don’t think Melissa Mayeux is ever going to play MLB ball (of course I will cheerfully say that of any 16-year-old on this planet) but why, theoretically, could she not? She throws hard enough to play second base if not short. She has demonstrated, allegedly, the ability to make solid contact on a 91-MPH fastball. Watching the video, her mechanics look okay. My concern would be that she looked small - it’s hard to tell but to my eyes she looked maybe 120, 130 pounds. I’d be more confident in someone with the physique of Jennie Finch (6 feet, maybe 150-155 pounds) or Hayley Wickenheiser (5’10", about 165) who’d have the muscle and mass to at least have gap power.
Well, my other concern would be that she’s in France, where there isn’t a vast array of top coaches to develop her talent. If she wants to continue playing competitive ball her best move would be to literally have her family move to California and get on a top high school squad.
Almost all MLB shortstops can throw it 90+ to first base. Here is a list of the top high school players’ infield velocity in 2012.
The top HS seniors are throwing 90 - 95 on the infield. The top HS sophomores’ velocity is up to 88. This is just data from one scouting service. An average grade throwing velocity for a high school SS with hopes of playing in college is around 85mph.
Don’t know about Cal, but I remember hearing that Shawon Dunston was clocked over 100 from SS. Couldn’t find that anywhere online. Mid 70s is not going to get it done at SS in MLB.
The record for fastest softball pitch was throwing underhanded, though. You can throw harder overhand, and it’s easier to grip a baseball. I have no trouble believing though that women could never throw as hard as the hardest throwers, and in general pitchers have to throw hard these days, but Pat Venditte doesn’t throw very hard from either side. I don’t think we know enough to say a woman pitcher of this type couldn’t be competitive, and we’ll never find out because the only woman who might be given a chance would throw 95, and such a woman doesn’t exist. Could a woman throw hard enough to play second base? Perhaps, but she’d have to be pretty slick because it’s doubtful she could catch up to a heater at the plate.
I don’t understand the objection to women playing soccer. The objection seems to be that the do not have the dexterity, skill, ability to develop themselves that men do. I’ll agree on strength, but if women were really so deficient in these areas compared to men we’d see them struggling to sign their names or drive cars–which we don’t. It is possible that women can’t play at the level of men, but I think it more likely that they could approach that level more closely if the level of competition were higher.
After all, the USMNT is handicapped by the fact that many of its players compete in MLS, which is clearly inferior to the top leagues in other countries. It’s why Klinsmann keeps banging on about players going to Europe to get experience, and improving the quality of MLS.
Unless American men are just naturally deficient in the physical abilities necessary to play top-flight soccer…