Yasiel Puig is used to signing autographs, but when Mo’ne Davis comes to town, he becomes the autograph seeker. pic.twitter.com/htTrhy6nrc
— ESPN (@espn) September 3, 2014
Unless you’ve been under a rock, or just hate sports, you know about Mo’ne.
Mo’ne Ikea Davis (born c. 2001) is a female Little League Baseball pitcher from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is one of two girls in the 2014 Little League World Series and is the first girl to earn a win and to pitch a shutout in Little League World Series history. She is the 18th girl overall to play, the sixth to get a hit, and the fourth American girl to play in the Little League World Series. She is also the first Little League baseball player to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a Little League player.
It’s pretty cool to pitch a shutout as a professional pitcher, so Mo’ne’s damn awesome for that.
I love that she makes the traditional funny looking pitcher face, too.
The kid pitches at 70mph, which does worry me a little for her elbow and shoulder’s long term sustainability (if you really want to be horrified, look into the Koshien and how those kids work), but at the same time I like seeing that baseball is baseball, and gender doesn’t really matter all that much. Sure, men can have bigger upper bodies, but hitting a home run is less about your mass and more about your ability to torque. Besides, I’ve never been all that into the home run crap. Seeing people pound a ball into the upper decks never impresses me as much as that perfect bunt down the 3rd base line that rolls to a stop before the pitcher expects it, forcing him to hustle and whip the ball over to 1st (or worse, spin around to throw it to third, and pray the third baseman did his job and stayed there, or that short is covering like he’s supposed to).
Small ball is a thing of beauty.
Rock on Mo’ne.