NEW YORK — Every athlete’s playing days have to come to an end eventually.
Some are lucky enough to make it all the way to the professional ranks, collecting a fortune along the way. Others max out in college, while an overwhelming majority give up their game during childhood, the iron curtain of adulthood separating them from competitive sports once and for all.
For Olivia Pichardo, a freshman walk-on at Brown University who last month became the first woman ever named to an active NCAA Division I varsity baseball roster, even some of the people who watched her closest thought that she’d reached the end of her rope in high school.
