As part of my endless quest to "do something" despite the fact that it's winter, I went to a baseball clinic run by a local amateur men's league over the weekend. It was a blast. Guys just play sports so much more seriously than girls. Sorry, but it's true. And the added pressure of working hard not to be the worst player was actually kind of welcome.
One...situation...though. The guy who was running the clinic was obviously quite worried that we (I and three female teammates) were going to get killed. He insisted on turning the pitching machine down when our turn came to bat (to be fair, he did point out that we would only see slower pitching come summertime...okay.), literally fretted about the fact that there weren't enough of us to run our own infield practice (perhaps just *watching* the boys throw would be dangerous), and hit more softly to us when we came up in the drills (none of the other hitters did this. at all.).
So this seems almost laughably sexist, right? I mean, I was offended (but really only in an eye-rolling sort of way as opposed to a steam out of the ears kind of way) at first, but then I had to admit that I could follow his reasoning. Find a guy and a girl on the street who show some interest in playing baseball. Based solely on odds, who is more likely to get hurt by a blistering ground ball? Being protected is mildly offensive, but it's not entirely wrong.
Here's what I realized though, while watching a few of the outfielders blow it repeatedly: he assumed they were able to fend for themselves. Because they were male. Even though they were much more likely to get hurt than I was.
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