Isn’t the stereotype that women are supposed to have longer legs than men (I do myself)? Or else why are long legs a sexually desirable characteristic in women?
I believe the lower centre of gravity thing is true though, because distribution of fat around the butt and thighs.
Well, for best distance you need to throw the ball at a considerable angle above horizontal.
Ignoring air resistance (obviously unrealistic) yields an optimum angle of 45 degrees. With air resistance the optimum angle is a bit under 40 degrees (varies with air density, spin, etc.).
I think that if all that mattered was throwing things over and over, then I wouldn’t still throw “like a girl.” I threw balls a lot. I never was able to do it well. The idea of using my whole body never even occurred to me. I always thought my problem was that I was letting go of the ball at the wrong time.
I eventually started throwing the ball underhand, which would go further.
Actually no as I understand it; it’s bone. Women have proportionally smaller arms & torsos and bigger hips and longer legs, and hip & leg bones are some of the biggest and heaviest in the body. Fat’s not actually all that heavy, lighter than water; it’s bone that’s the really heavy part of the body.
Yeah, I have no idea what AB is talking about. I just tried that and by the time my hand gets lower than my knee I start to topple forward. There is no way I could touch the ground in that position without falling over.
It is not just demonstration. Anyone who has raised kids and paid any attention to reality knows that the supposed conflict between nature and nurture is not a dichotomy. Both have an influence, neither is completely preeminent.
I have two sons: currently 6 and 2 1/2 y/o. We never watch sports. They have almost never seen anyone of either gender throwing things. When I started throwing balls to them, I did it underhanded so they would have a better chance of catching or doing anything with it. Both of them threw “like boys” from the first few times they threw anything. The girls they played with at roughly equivalent ages did not throw the same way.
My father did not teach me how to throw. The first time I played “catch” — as in with a baseball and a glove — was about midway through elementary school. We often didn’t do sports activities for PE at most of the schools I attended (we moved several times). I was complete shit at baseball and other team sports, but I didn’t throw “like a girl”. I threw side-arm because that’s what I’d figured out when I was messing around by myself in the woods when I was a younger kid.
Aside from anecdotes like mine, there’s actual science:
They also attempted to correct for cultural and gender biases, and found differences suggesting that regardless of skill development, women are probably not physically capable of throwing as fast or as far as men.
I know there are some elite women in sports like softball who throw far better than the average man, but outliers are outliers.
Throw like a girl ad campaign
Agree with this.
My Dad taught me to throw a baseball when I was about 5 or 6. When my younger sister got to be 5 or 6, he taught her too. It is, as RickJay says, a full-body experience. Both Sis and I learned that from our Dad.
Sis, today, is in her 50s. But she can still throw a baseball, not “like a girl,” and with deadly accuracy. So can I, for that matter.
Thanks, Dad, for the throwing lessons!
That’s because they throw more.
There is a very visible difference in throwing skill between a man who has played a lot of baseball, softball or other throwing games, and one who has not. My best friend has essentially no baseball experience and his throwing is not fantastic, to say the least.
I agree some people pick this up more naturally than others but as I have seen boys who did not seem to have an innate skill for it and girls who do, I doubt it’s a universal gender-specific truth.
Of course men are much stronger and can throw balls FASTER, on average. You’re not going to find any women who can throw a ball as hard as Aroldis Chapman; there is a reason Major League Baseball has no women pitching. The ability to throw a ball with correct mechanics is, however, quite within the capabilities of any woman with working arms and legs. Believe me, I’ve played ball with them.
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Actually, I think it has to do with women tending to have longer backs in proportion to their legs.
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Ron Cey, the great third baseman, has such a long torso and short legs he was called “The Penguin.” But he could throw (all third basemen can throw, it’s one of the hardest positions to play in terms of throwing.)
The variance amongst men and women in terms of body size and proportions is vast and does not obviously lend itself to a complete ability or inability to throw. Cey was very short-legged and threw fine. Vladimir Guerrero had weird long legs and arms and threw fine. Ichiro Suzuki is short, and throws fine. Dave Winfield was tall, and threw fine. Kirby Puckett was kind of round and stubby, and threw fine.
Actually and at least in my case, the trigger for that carry was called “my tits are coming out and they HURT”. I could see my classmates start doing the shield carry as their own curves started to come out, months to years after I had. Once the sisters stop hurting, the carry becomes less pronounced but it’s still a defensive one for a very long time. For some reason, a lot of guys think the reason for that carry is modesty; I’d like to see how would they carry things if their balls went from “nonexistant” to “about a handful” in a matter of weeks.
While some joints differ by sex, the elbow is not one of them.
Not entirely true.
Study Of Carrying Angle And Its Correlation With Various Parameters
and
Increased carrying angle is a risk factor for nontraumatic ulnar neuropathy at the elbow.
Both were looking at carrying angle for clinical diagnosis reasons and found that 1) Carrying angle differs in males and females, 2) Increased carrying angle (more prevalent in females) has a higher incidence of certain elbow injuries.
Carrying loads with a straight arm vs. cradling would put more strain on an elbow joint with a higher joint angle (in the old days when I was in college, this was called a “carrying curve”), so I would expect more women than men to cradle simply because it’s more comfortable for the actual joint, regardless of the other body proportions involved.
ETA: I missed the post above…what he said.
Well it seems there has been something of a pile-on against you on this point, but actually there is a difference between the elbow joints of the genders, and women’s arms extend outward somewhat at the elbow.
It’s the reason why women often use crossed over arms to remove a sweater, for example, something most guys find difficult to do.
I too suspect that this could be a big factor in throwing powerfully. Not the only factor, but a big factor. An arm that is straighter along the X plane has got to be an advantage for this function.
When I was in elementary school way back in the early 60s, a kid from the UK enrolled in our school. He’d only played soccer (football) there – not cricket. He “threw like a girl.” He’d never had to throw while playing sports and didn’t just naturally have the aptitude.
ISTM her only real problem that made her ‘throw like a girl’ is that she didn’t follow through. Her hand stops right at the top so she’s just sort of pushing the ball and arching her back to get more out of it when she realizes there isn’t enough power in her arm (because she’s not going to follow through).
I think pretty much everyone that throws a ball the first few minutes does exactly this and it looks exactly the same which is why little boys are said to ‘throw like a girl’ and older girls throw like that. The boys are learning how to throw and as stated up thread, a lot of girls just don’t have a lot of throwing experience. Bodily mechanics aside.
5 minutes in the bull pen or even a few minutes of catch with a friend and her form would have been just fine. The ball might not have made it the entire way, but she would have looked like she’d been throwing one her whole life.
And to make it fair, if I asked a random one of you guys to do the ceremonial first fast pitch at a softball game in front of a stadium full of people you’d probably launch it up 30 feet over the batter and into the crowd (while making fun of the girl that only threw the baseball halfway to the plate).
TLDR; practice.
Are we related? LOL. I’m 5’8," and my husband is just over 6’. Hadn’t noticed this until a few weeks ago when we went on a roller coaster deemed inappropriate for people over 6’2" or so. He fit in just fine, I was very cramped. Sitting on a bench after, I noticed that my shoulders, seated, were a good 3" higher than his!! I always knew I had a long torso, but now I’m wondering if I don’t have a few extra vertebrae. Those comments about ladies having “legs that go clear up to their necks,” well, they weren’t talking about me. I can hardly find shirts to cover my waistband, let alone tuck in, unless I buy menswear or something marked “tunic.” And I’m busty, and have grandma upper arms, so that makes it even worse…
Back to the topic, although I played softball for a few years, I’m pretty sure I “throw like a girl.” However, 9 times out of ten, I can lob a diaper into a wastebasket, seated, from across a room without really trying. That’s gotta count for something, right? 
Heck, if you ask me, lobbing a diaper into the wastebasket is a lot more practical than tossing a baseball over the plate. Of course, I’m not sports minded myself.
This reminds me of an incident when I worked at a fairly nice restaurant.
There was this hostess who worked there and man, she was gorgeous from top to bottom. She was all dolled-out for her job and she was a real girly-girl in general.
Well the conversation somehow got around to this whole idea of “throwing like a girl” and she informed me that she, in fact, could throw just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Well, I wasn’t stupid enough to not believe her but I was intrigued so I said, “Show me.”
So we went out back and along the way she plucked a big potato from the prep table. Out in the alley, she wound up full blast and damn did that potato sail. I swear, it went the better part of a city block and then ‘blam’! it bounced off a condo.
I’ll never forget it: This model in her dress, heels, and flowing hair just sending it downtown.
“I think I love you.”
Well, heck, watch ceremonial first pitches at MLB games when it’s a man. Sometimes they “throw like a girl” because they didn’t play ball.
Only on this message board would someone be willing to accept a 10% chance of splattering the contents of a soiled diaper all over their floor for a 90% chance of not having to get up and walk a few steps to dispose of it properly.
We have this thread every few years. The short answer: boys generally spend their childhood throwing things; girls generally don’t. The Atlantic had a great article on this several years ago: Throwing Like a Girl. You don’t realize how fantastically complicated the act of throwing is–and therefore how much practice it takes to get good at it:
Incidentally, I had an experience similar to carrps. I used to teach at the American University of Beirut. Once an Arab-American kid from New York brought a football to throw around on the lawn. He threw a beautiful spiral, but the Arab boys who had grown up playing soccer threw like girls. It was terrible to watch.