Breaking the Gender Line in Baseball
Norine Rathbone is the Joan of Arc of women trying to break the gender line in MLB baseball. She may be mad, but she ain't crazy.

Jill ADLER & Brian ROSS
for

When you wish upon a star, you just get a bunch of crap, or so says Las Vegas resident Norine Rathbone, a fifty-year-old woman who wants to be the female Jackie Robinson, to break the gender line and play in Major League Baseball.

It is a big dream, but the dreamer dreaming it may be the most determined women to play the game.

Rathbone, the Little League coach’s daughter, became an outstanding baseball player, but Little League rules back then dictated that she had to be a son to play.

So she did what all girls who love baseball and can’t play it are forced to do. She played softball through high school and college.

The dream did not die there, though. Rathbone seized an opportunity to play baseball on a Las Vegas men’s team in January 2000. She became not only a player, but a base coach on a team that had never seen a woman player before.

“Men don’t know what it means to be tough,” Rathbone said. “You go around with some of the...

Continued...

<<BACK | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next>>