My Turn at Bat: Playing With The Boys

By Sara V. Buckwitz
Published on December 1, 2000

My Turn at Bat: Playing With The Boys,
Jodi Ayres, Elysian Fields Quarterly
All through
high school, Jodi Ayres proved to herself and to her peers that
she deserved her second-base position on the baseball team.
Ayres, a Minnesota librarian, writes in the literary sports
journal Elysian Fields Quarterly: ‘I hated
softball with a passion. It was a conspiracy, a menacing force
always lurking in the shadows trying to keep me from playing
baseball. A perversion of the game I loved. The big ball, the
underhand pitching, the small field–what was that? It surely
was not the game I fell in love with that first day my dad took
me to old Metropolitan Stadium, the game I dreamed about at
night, the game I breathed in like oxygen, the game that renewed
me every spring.’ That passion fed her till midway through her
junior year, when the jeers of a rival team finally got to her.
In a thoughtful essay, Ayres shares how her perspective of her
role as the only woman on an all-male team changed from one of
pride to embarrassment.
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–Sara V. Buckwitz
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