a small interlude

There are spoilers for The Force Awakens below. Consider yourself warned.

I've always been a Star Wars fan in one form or another. My parents made sure I was properly introduced to the original series when I was young, before I saw any of the prequels - and while the prequels dimmed my fascination with the story, I can't tell you how many times my brother and I beat each other up in our back yard with cedar branches, imagining them to be lightsabers - and us, Jedi.

Of course, back then, I didn't really have a Jedi inspiration to look up to. There was Luke, who I loved, but was yet another in a long line of guys who had the kind of symbolic resonance I wanted.

I mean, Luke Skywalker being Luke didn't stop me from dreaming, and I know it didn't stop anyone of my or other generations. We imagined our way into being Jedi, whether through Halloween costumes or through convention cosplay or though fanfiction - both terrible and sublime. One of the earliest recorded pieces of my writing is some truly awful middle-school self-insert fanfic, where my friends and I fall into the Star Wars universe through a store-portal in a mall.

There was always, though, that sense of frustration. I had to turn to the extended universe for my girl Jedi, for my fierce women warriors, for lightsabers wielded by hands other than male.

I went into The Force Awakens with little to no proper expectations. In fact, it was only a feeling that I should probably avoid spoilers that prompted me to go on the day after it opened, and I certainly wasn't expecting to walk out wanting to both cry and jump for joy. Finally, finally, years after the first time I asked for and didn't receive a lightsaber for Christmas, I felt like I'd gotten one.

Not only was Rey the protagonist, the eventual wielder of a lightsaber filled with so much internal mythology, a clear new "Chosen One" for this new age, but she was so utterly human. She was strong, without that strength leading to coarseness. She cried, but it didn't make her weak. She ran away from the call, but that didn't condemn her. She didn't lose half her outfit conveniently to a torture-porn style slash across the back - and her outfit wasn't sexualized to begin with. She didn't lose her agency in the name of plot.

She was everything I'd never known I needed to see in a movie, and in a Star Wars movie, no less. In a year that saw both the great (Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out) and the terrible (50 Shades of Grey, The Avengers: Age of Ultron,  ) for women in lead roles, The Force Awakens provided the shining bookend - and it wasn't just about Rey.

There are women pilots, women grounds-crew, women Stormtroopers, women commanders, women in power and women without, women scavengers, women existing in ways that the imagination can pick them up and carry them along - no need to invent these characters because they're already there.

Now, we come to my point: How important is this? I'm 24. I know the world, I know how I move in it, how I exist in it, how I can try to make changes in it. I don't need a hero on the big screen to show me that anything is possible - but it's a lesson I might have learned so much earlier than now if there had been.

Rey, and Rey's story, is so important because - because I would need extra fingers to count the number of times I've been told that a friend's daughter, a friend's cousin, a friend of a friend's child - their four-year-old, their ten-year-old, their young-enough-to-be-impressionable child - fell in love with Rey. How many pictures I've seen of these girls, the future, dressed in a costume that didn't have to be altered to be un-sexy on a seven-year-old. Dressed in a costume that maybe makes them feel braver, maybe makes them feel stronger, maybe makes them feel like they can take on anything.

I'm to an age where I don't need a lightsaber in my hand, a costume to remind me that I can be brave. It really doesn't hurt, though.

end of year (2015)

I've started this post a good half-dozen times, taking different tacks on breaking down a year that has felt like three - from the trite to the overly-serious to the profanity-filled. 

Nothing really works, because, man, trying to describe this year is fairly futile. Broken down simply, I -

• Got a job
• Left that job
• Got another job
• Presented at a conference
• Wrote an essay that will be published in a real, live, buy-at-Barnes-and-Noble book
• Joined two other "jobs." 
• Realized that my dream job is maybe achievable
• Fell in love with a movie
• Fell out of love with an idea
• Moved out of my parents' house
• Made friends
• Lost friends
• Went to Boston and New York
• Realized that writing lists is no real excuse for poor writing
• Started playing flute again and not hating it or myself.

Maybe in 2016 I'll write a proper post, something more in my normal style, that blend of high-falutin' and hard talk I think I've cultivated a fair amount over this previous year. For now, though, since I have errands to run, and a day job to do, and a hockey game to get to tonight, I'll just link all of you to the pieces I'm proudest of, and finish off with some sincere words. 

I'm proud to have written on what the Baylor sexual assault case means to me as an alumna - in all its shades and complications. I'm proud to have talked about women in sports - hiring, self-promoting, and mentoring - and why we're not faking it. I'm proud to have talked about mental health, and my own struggles with creating. 

I'm proud to have written about the Cole Hamels trade, one of my better pieces of baseball work in the year. I'm proud to admit I was wrong about Nick Williams! 

For Baseball Prospectus, I was proud to write about failure and Daniel Murphy. I also wrote about Matt Harvey being okay, and with two of my favorite people, I wrote about the stupid outfield things every team should have. 

I wasn't as productive in 2015 as I was in 2014. A lot of that can be chalked up to being employed, but some of that is a fault of my own fear - fear that I couldn't write the way people expected me to, a fear that paralyzed my brain and has kept me from trying, because if I don't try, I don't fail. In 2016, I resolve, I promise, that I will not let this keep me down. I'm going to write, and some of it will be crap, but I'm going to write anyway. I'm going to write about baseball, and I'm going to write about life, and I may even write fiction for the fun of it. 

In the end, we are what we choose to be, and I choose to write. 

Love, 

Kate

Particular thanks and love to: Jen Man Ramos, Kailen Nourse, Graham Jenkins, Jarrett, Michael Baumann, Patrick Dubuque, Sam Miller, Harry Pavlidis, Russell Carleton, Mike Gianella, the people of EDSBS, Katy Clarke, Levi Weaver, Or Moyal, and my collegiate sister Sara. 

on words, onwards

As we come towards the end of this year, it's a natural time to stop and take stock of everything that's happened in the last block of human-designated time. It's also a time to look forward, perhaps more than we normally do, and attempt to make plans that surely time and providence will throw astray.

Being a writer is part of my identity. It's how I see myself, it's part of the lens through which I view the world. Sometimes, though, things happen that make me wonder if it's time to hang up the old inkwell, stop pretending to myself that I can do this, and take those tentative steps to finding out something else I am - a painful kind of freedom, perhaps.

I'm a baseball writer, or I was - a narrowing of the view, a specific set of talents. I worked hard and studied and drove and spent time I didn't really have to spend throwing myself into this world I wasn't born to, for a good portion of the time relishing my outsider status, using it as the fuel of the engine that drives me to be the best at something - the very best.

There comes a day, though, where you realize you aren't. You aren't the best female writer. You aren't the best female prospect evaluator. You aren't the best, at anything, and you never will be. Hell, you're barely more than mediocre in a lot of ways.

That hurts. It's a realization everyone but the most self-deluded has, but it hurts, particularly in a year when so many other things had gone wrong.

I haven't been able to really write, recently. Yes, there are these blog posts, and these rants, and the 500 words I spout on Twitter daily, but there has been no inspiration in me for big, life-changing works. It's even more difficult around this time of year, because (a) there's no baseball to look to, no commonly available source of even artificial inspiration and (b) I'm a sad jealous soul, who can never be content with what she has.

I finally crawl my way into an online newsletter, and I want to be in an end-of-year list. I have a position where I can write whatever comes into my head, as long as it is tangentially related, and I want to write non-tangentially related things (and I can't think of anything, at all, like my head is a radio tuned to an empty station.) I get a real job, I want a different one. I'm never content - which, sure, drives me to always want more, but is also exhausting.

If I give up writing, like something in my soul is clamoring for me to do - if I give up my position and my voice and crawl back into the hole so many wish I would - that's giving up. That's unacceptable to me, something I couldn't forgive myself for - but there's only so many more nights I can sit crying on my couch because my head is full of fog and I hate myself for claiming to be a writer.

Last year's end-of-year post was full of hope. Hope that I'd find a "real job." Hope that I'd write something incredible in 2015. Hope that things were finally turning around.

I wish I still had that much hope.

The "Columnist" Refuted

Every six months the clock turns over and it’s time for another writer to write a “comical,” “humorous,” “amusing,” “educational” piece on How To Be A Sports Fan Or How To Fake It As A Woman Because Clearly No Woman Is A Fan Of Sports.

Used to be that I’d get furious about this, get all up in a righteous froth about it, bang out a few hundred words on my personal blog, and move on. Now, however? I’m just tired, and a little bit sad.

This isn’t even truly a response to that article, because that article has been written at least a dozen times. You’ve seen it in Cosmo, you’ve heard it from your well-meaning but ill-advised friends, if you (as it seems 90% of the readers of this site are) are a male, you’ve probably benefited from its beliefs at one point or another in your life. Change yourself, fake it, because you need to even if you don’t want to.

I’m tired, because no matter how the situation improves for women in and around the sports community, it feels like there’s just one more thing, just one more thing that constantly proves that we’re not there yet.


If it’s not Dusty Baker spouting off about domestic violence in an uninformed way, it’s the reminder that Andrew Friedman knowingly employed a rapist for a considerable time, with little to no explanation other than he was valuable in a baseball way. It’s that femininity is demonized, and men die for fear of being called weak little girls. It’s walking into a press box and being told that you don’t belong there. It’s the constant stream of tweets, of being afraid to say what you actually mean. It’s this quote right here:

“Women have been pretending to like sports to snare husbands and fuck buddies for decades. This isn't anything new.”


This is how we’re erased. Painted into a corner, forgotten about, placated with “Groupie” shoes, “talent scout” tee-shirts, told our feelings, our thoughts, our opinions don’t matter. Our words, our bodies are only good enough to look at or laugh at, and certainly not respect. It’s funny to give a woman a “talent scout” tee-shirt, because heaven forbid she actually be scouting talent.


It’s funny how the assumption is that since only one thing is wanted from us, we only want one thing. It’s sad how that assumption can be taken as fact by the ones who it is assumed of.


Fake it ‘til you make it, girls, but also learn the blood type of the fourth coach of the team that was the spiritual predecessor to the current team that moved to your city from a different city ten years ago. Make yourself into their dream sporty girl, but also never forget that you’re not as good as they are at this thing.

Forget the “Girl’s Guide To Faking To Like Sports Because The Only Thing ‘Girls’ Want Or Need Is Men’s Approval And Desire.1” I need the “Women’s Guide To Surviving In This Awful World, Because I Dared To Love Something That Won’t Love Me Back.” Actually, even better: the “People’s Guide To Enjoying Something They Like In Various Situations, None Of Which Need To Be Connected To Anything More Than Enjoyment Of That Thing.”

Here’s my advice to any human on this earth wanting to learn more about sports, for any reason they see fit: Do it! Do it because you want to, not because you think or have been told you must. Go read the writing that’s out there, not because it’s going to get you a free drink. Ask questions, because you want to learn. Go to games because the team is hot. Go to games because the team is good. Go to games because it’s a good way to while away a summer’s afternoon.

Or don’t, because that’s completely valid, too. Just don’t do something you don’t want to because some misguided soul said you had to.

1) Please note the infantilizing “girls” in a piece aimed at women old enough to legally drink. Go get free beers at a bar, but don’t remind men that you’re a self-actualized adult capable of making your own decisions!

and then I do—

I'm a writer, but I don't know what kind of writer I am.

I tend towards the high-falutin', the introspective, the self-praising and self-pitying, because if you write what you know, then you write about yourself. I write about baseball in any number of ways, but none of them seem to really fit. I'm a writer who can go weeks without writing - cursing my inability to write while not bothering to put ink on virtual paper.

I'd like to be the best, but the distance marker keeps moving, and I wasn't going to make it there anyway, so what kind of writer am I? I want to have that fountain of ideas, thoughts pouring out my fingers like the benedictions of some blessed something or other, but I get blocked. I get blocked, and I get frustrated, and I write self-pitying lunacies that no one reads (and nor should they). I'm still not sure which side of the parenthesis to put the full stop on, as well.

I read so many great writers and good writers and writers of meaning and purpose and thought and weight and I wonder what am I doing here? All these filled niches and where do I belong? I can't be the best baseball writer, there are at least ten already out there. I can't be the best feminist-thought-sports-ramble writer, because there are so many stronger and smarter women out there being that before me. I just have this little blog, this little thing, this little voice, and when I'm afraid I'm losing it I don't speak out, I just let it shrivel up inside me, ineffectively breaking up my thoughts into 140-character missives that splash and sink, like pebbles in a pond.

Maybe, as writers, we were better off before page views. There is so much more to read now, which is both great and terrifying - what if I am good, but am lost in the noise of those who are better?

See, though, there comes in the Southern and (semi-)Evangelical and Female Upbringing - the immediate urge to quash the "I am good" beneath the "No, not really, don't ever think that I'd be willing to promote myself, I'm just nobody." Because I'm not good, not compared to the giants I look up to.

I don't know what I'm looking for, in writing, other than the fact that in so many ways, I'm looking for the terrible thing I've been looking for my entire life - someone to validate my existence in some way that sticks, that this comment or that one or this retweet will be the thing that finally tells my heart-sick soul that "You matter!" "You belong!" I think too much, though, and I know that it won't happen, so I don't write because inaction is better than failure.

and then I do—

I do write, and I make myself hit "publish" and I move on and I try.

I come not to praise, but to bury.

There's a thin line I walk, between being supportive and wanting to be the best.

I'm intensely competitive. I always have been, whether in music or in sports or in life. I want to be the best, or I'll be nothing. As I've matured, it's gotten easier, little by little, to moderate this driving urge, to take "the best" and turn it into "very good," to not let it get in between me and friendships, me and feminism, me and the right side of the line.

Every once in a while, though, it gets the better of me. Instead of being happy for someone, I get jealous. I let that little voice - the voice informed by experience and chaos - tell me that if she's going to get that, then I'm never going to. I wasn't first, so I'm not good enough. It's poison in my ears, and it's counterproductive.

I used to be one of those people who wanted to be the only. I wanted to be the only woman writing for a major site. I wanted to be the only woman "scouting" at Frisco games. I was incredibly lonely, and yet, educated by that societal pressure that tells women that there isn't enough room for them, I wanted to be alone. I've tried to grow up, tried to be a good person, tried to be supportive and helpful and mentoring, tried to turn my anger outward instead of inward, but sometimes...sometimes I'm just not strong enough. Sometimes I can't be happy when someone gets an opportunity I wanted, even if it means that another woman is carving out space for themselves in such a difficult landscape.

I'm not writing this for your pity, or your scorn. I'm writing this because I sat down to work on an important piece that is due sooner than I'd like, but couldn't, because my heart was sick and sad and jealous.

It's a journey, I know. It's not the most difficult journey, and I've got plenty to be happy with, but that's the curse of it. Right now, I'm not happy because I know I'm not the best, and I don't know if I will be happy because I won't ever be the best, but right now is not the future.

Some day, I'll be good enough for me, maybe. Some day, I'll be at peace with other's accomplishments. Today, though, I'm not good enough.

A Response

"You have to be your own best advocate." A charming thought, if applied incorrectly.

It should not be the responsibility of the underrepresented to claw and fight and create their own spaces. Many times it falls to them, through gross negligence or actual malevolence, but it should not be, and those in the underrepresented who point out that fact are not lazy, or underprepared, or unwilling to take up that task. Those who point out these facts are those who can see that it is not their "fault," or indeed, a "fault" at all that they are underrepresented. It is the fault of a society (in a microcosm, in baseball's case) that is weighted so heavily towards one group of people that not even a herd of elephants could begin to balance the scales.

Yes, it is irresponsible to sit on your own work and expect, magically, the world to open up and recognize you, but it is also irresponsible to declare that anyone who is marginalized through no fault of their own preparation simply "didn't want it enough." Both self-promotion and a general aid have to work hand-in-hand, with the elder, established generation helping the younger. Where we run into problems is that the elder generation only wishes to help those in similar status to themselves - in particular, writers of a certain demographic feeling that only writers of that same demographic are prepared and educated in such a way to make them the "best."

It can be difficult to find these underrepresented writers to fulfill your criteria, see, when your criteria are so written that only one human on earth fits them (suggesting, dear readers, that the criteria were created after the person was found, rather than the other way around). You can say that you made good-faith attempts to hire from the underrepresented populations, but without transparency of any kind, and actual change in the many-year history of any publication, that claim of good faith rings false.

I don't apply this only to the singular website that sparked today's discussion. I apply this to all websites, all forums, and all teams. If there were actual attempts this goal of diversity, surely it would have been achieved - or if not achieved, then still had progress made towards it.

To quote myself from earlier: "It's fun to say 'there are no women/minority writers!' but of course there aren't! The system is set up against them."

The answer to this is not to simply bury one's head in the sand and say "Well, this is how it is and it will never change." The answer is to, through candor and open development, open those doors and build ramps for those who want to walk through. You did not appear out of thin air, replete with all the knowledge you possess. You cannot expect anyone else too, as well - especially anyone starting at an already stated disadvantage! Instead of setting up impossible gates, use your position to break down those walls. Train the people you want to hire - you're not paying anyone, anyway, so what is there to lose?

I may have missed many things in this quickly written, fairly unimportant essay on some things I possibly covered better in 140 characters, but I can finish with this.

We on the outside can agitate for change, but the sad truth of reality is that no real change will happen without allies inside the room where it happens. All we want is to be treated with respect, and given the same opportunities.

And if it sounds like I'm writing about something more important than baseball, consider this: Everything is connected. This may be my hill to die on, but even I can see the deep cultural connection to sports.