Clik here to view.
It’s an easy mistake to make, because the notion has been drilled into us for decades: Boys play baseball, girls play softball.
One sport for each gender. Males often gravitated to slow-pitch softball as adults, but women of any age were discouraged or prevented from crossing the line to baseball.
Until now.
The issue came up last summer in northern Minnesota, when a documentary crew accompanying the U.S. national women’s baseball team (yes, there is such a thing) stopped at a Canadian border crossing on its way to the Women’s World Cup Championship in Thunder Bay, Ontario. As filmmaker Jean Fruth tells it, when passport control asked what brought them to Canada, the concept of women’s baseball seemed, well, foreign. Fruth recalled the conversation this way:
“We’re going to shoot women playing baseball in a tournament.”
“Oh, you mean softball?”
“No, baseball.”
The confusion isn’t surprising. Flip on ESPNU or the Big Ten Network over the next two months, and you’ll see college baseball for men and college softball for women. Swing by most high school and park fields and you’ll find the same breakdown.
But things are changing. That’s evidenced in “See Her Be Her,” the documentary co-produced by Fruth, a talented sports photographer, and former National Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson, that’s streaming on Amazon Prime. Billie Jean King is an executive producer.
Twenty-five countries now field women’s national teams, among them the U.S., Canada and Japan. The documentary, partially shot in Minneapolis, highlights seven women from North America, Asia and Africa as they struggle for success and acceptance in their sport. A 12-city screening tour includes an Oct. 4 stop at the AMC Rosedale 14 in Roseville.
The hardcover book accompanying the film, also titled “See Her Be Her,” features hundreds of Fruth’s stunning photos. The film debuted on the MLB Network during last fall’s World Series.
“Making a book for the women is great, but it doesn’t move the needle like the film already is doing,” Furth said in a telephone interview from Northern California, where she lives. “The visibility is bigger, and the hope is the visibility leads to more opportunities for them. And we’re starting at such a low bar for these women, because so many people don’t know women play baseball.”
The title, of course, reflects the not-so-old adage, “If you see her, you can be her,” adopted by an entire generation of women shattering glass ceilings left and right. It’s the first foray into film by Furth, who along with Idelson co-founded Grassroots Baseball, a non-profit devoted to promoting the amateur game.
Clik here to view.
Furth and Idelson collaborated on two previous books in the Grassroots series. The first featured baseball Hall of Famers, tapping Idelson’s baseball connections. The second highlighted amateur ball along Route 66, the historic highway that runs from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean.
In the latter, Furth and Idelson encountered random girls playing on boys’ teams and decided to explore that further. After consulting with Justine Siegal, founder of Baseball for All, which promotes women’s baseball in the U.S. and beyond, they committed to a book and film project.
“When we were finishing the Route 66 project, we realized we didn’t have much for girls in the book at all,” Fruth said. “We had this one girl on a Little League team here, and that’s kind of the experience we had with girls before this project. We’d go to shoot a game and it’s like, oh, there’s a girl on the team, the girl’s going to pitch, make sure you get a shot of the girl.
“Then we heard about Baseball for All and asked if they had any all-girls games going on along Route 66, and they set us up with a game in Santa Monica at the end of Route 66. It was the first time I shot an all-girls baseball game, and it was quite an experience. They were all athletes, playing at a high level, and they were just as strong as the boys were. It was such a positive, exciting experience.
“When girls get to play with other girls, it’s something magical. They’re not isolated, they’re comfortable, they’re just athletics. That really set us off.”
Most people aren’t aware of the long history of American women pulling on stirrups and tapping dust from their spikes. In the late 19th Century, a handful of Northeast colleges fielded women’s teams. Penny Marshall’s iconic film, “A League of Their Own” spotlighted the All American Girls Professional Baseball League from the 1940s and ‘50s. St. Paul’s Toni Stone played second base in the Negro American League in 1953-54. And locally, Ila Borders pitched for the independent St. Paul Saints in 1998.
“See Her Be Her” focuses on one player each from the U.S, Canada, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Japan, Korea and Uganda. The American, pitcher-outfielder Kelsie Whitmore, played pro ball in three men’s leagues, most recently last summer for the Oakland Ballers in the Pioneer League.
Though they come from different backgrounds and cultures, all share a dogged perseverance and drive for excellence. Many train around full-time jobs or school, like Canadian pitcher-outfielder Alli Schroder (a firefighter) and Korean pitcher Soyeon Park (studying to be a pilot). Team USA is shown practicing at the University of Minnesota’s Jane Sage Cowles Stadium and visiting A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis before heading to the World Cup finals in Thunder Bay.
Clik here to view.
Several Hall of Famers and recent stars who support women’s sports appear in the film as well. Cal Ripken Jr. talks at length about his sister Elly, an outstanding all-around athlete with a powerful arm who never got the chance to play baseball. Japan’s Ichiro Suzuki is shown pitching — yes, pitching — against a girls high school all-star team in the Tokyo Dome.
As the project grew, so did the cost. Sony signed on as a sponsor, which helped. But Fruth said she and Idelson invested more of their own money than they expected, especially after deciding to accompany four Team USA players to Uganda for a baseball clinic.
“You don’t say no to that,” Fruth said. “And Uganda became a great ‘See Her Be Her’ moment. I do believe they’ll have a national team one day. They have big financial hurdles, but they have raw talent there.”
Cutting 500 hours of footage down to two also proved a challenge for the first-time filmmaker.
“It was a big transition, and we made a lot of mistakes and took a longer road to get there than if we had more experience,” Fruth said. “The next one will be a lot easier.”
The film’s release coincides with the current rise in visibility and investment in women’s sports, spurred by Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and the WNBA. It may take the emergence of a Clark or Reese-like personality and rivalry to boost women’s baseball into the mainstream. Fruth believes it’s coming.
“That day hasn’t presented itself, but I think it’s going to present itself really, really soon, because the (talent) level is getting higher,” Fruth said.
Clik here to view.
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