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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Felix White

‘There just weren’t women playing’ – Kelsie Whitmore, baseball trailblazer

Kelsie Whitmore sits in the dugout in front of a Staten Island Ferryhawks sign.
Kelsie Whitmore: ‘If you want to play this game, the first thing to know is you’re going to fail’. Photograph: Bebeto Matthews/AP

Kelsie Whitmore is one of three figures on the baseball diamond at the Staten Island Community Park. The stands of the ballpark are empty, give or take a few hotdog sellers opening their kiosks in the concourses. Her coach, Nelson Figueroa, is hitting balls at her, which she waits on before reading the angle it will arrive, motioning towards the ball, then receiving it in her mitt with her left hand and throwing back with her right.

Next to her, a girl is watching and then doing the same. She is much smaller than Whitmore. Her throws do not comfortingly thud back into Figueroa’s mitt like Whitmore’s do, but die halfway before bouncing back along the ground. She looks towards Whitmore after each, who nods, shadows the action and then turns to receive.

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