Mo'ne Davis made history in 2014 for pitching a shutout in the Little League World Series. The Disney Channel is developing a movie about her called, Throw Like Mo. In March 2015, a Bloomsburg University baseball player tweeted about the movie, calling her a “slut”. Roxanne Jones, (founding editor of ESPN Magazine and former vice president at ESPN) wrote an op-ed about the incident for CNN:
Slut, ho, hussy, heifer, bitch -- long before I ever heard those words flow in a rap song, I heard them first in my own home, my own neighborhood. And too many times, they were directed toward me or one of my grade-school girlfriends.
You see, for generations, black girls have been so conditioned to being called these over-sexualized names -- first by our slave masters, then our mothers, sisters, friends and eventually the world -- that today many times we don't even take offense.
In 1996, in The Atlantic, James Fallows wrote an article about Throwing Like a Girl —
On opening day, April 4, Bill Clinton went to Cleveland and, like many Presidents before him, threw out a ceremonial first pitch. That same day Hillary Rodham Clinton went to Chicago and, like no First Lady before her, also threw out a first ball, at a Cubs game in Wrigley Field.
The next day photos of the Clintons in action appeared in newspapers around the country… Hillary Clinton was pictured wearing a dark jacket, a scarf, and an oversized Cubs hat… As the picture was taken, she was in the middle of an action that can only be described as throwing like a girl.
Fallows acknowledges how stereotypes can hurt, since he belongs to the "dancing like a white man" group. But seeing those two different Clintonian pitches, he started wondering: Why, exactly, do so many women throw "like a girl"? (if anyone could change it, certainly Hillary could!). There are no structural differences that cause women to throw differently than men—
SO what is it, then? Since Hillary Clinton's ceremonial visit to Wrigley Field, I have asked men and women how they learned to throw, or didn't. Why did I care? My impetus was the knowledge that eventually my sons would be grown and gone. If my wife, in all other ways a talented athlete, could learn how to throw, I would still have someone to play catch with. My research left some women, including my wife, thinking that I am some kind of obsessed lout, but it has led me to the solution to the mystery.
It was a tennis coach, Vic Braden, who was able to analyze and describe the “kinetic chain” involved in throwing a baseball.
The implication of Braden's analysis is that throwing is a perfectly natural action (millions and millions of people can do it), but not at all innate. A successful throw involves an intricate series of actions coordinated among muscle groups, as each link of the chain is timed to interact with the next. Like bike riding or skating, it can be learned by anyone—male or female. No one starts out knowing how to ride a bike or throw a ball. Everyone has to learn.
After learning how to bat and throw left-handed to play Babe Ruth, John Goodman said, "I'll never say something like 'He throws like a girl' again. It's not easy to learn how to throw."
This brings us back to the roots of the "throwing like a girl" phenomenon. The crucial factor is not that males and females are put together differently but that they typically spend their early years in different ways.
. . .
"For young boys it is culturally acceptable and politically correct to develop these skills," says Linda Wells, of the Arizona State softball team. "They are mentored and networked. Usually girls are not coached at all, or are coached by Mom—or if it's by Dad, he may not be much of an athlete. Girls are often stuck with the bottom of the male talent pool as examples. I would argue that rather than learning to 'throw like a girl,' they learn to throw like poor male athletes. I say that a bad throw is 'throwing like an old man.' This is not gender, it's acculturation."
Fallows provides two tips for anyone wanting to learn how to throw a baseball. One, play catch while on one knee — that’ll get your elbow in the right position. Two—
The other is to play catch with a person who can throw like an athlete but is using his or her off hand. The typical adult woman hates to play catch with the typical adult man. She is well aware that she's not looking graceful, and reacts murderously to the condescending tone in his voice ("That's more like it, honey!"). Forcing a right-handed man to throw left-handed is the great equalizer. He suddenly concentrates his attention on what it takes to get hips, shoulder, and elbow working together. He is suddenly aware of the strength of character needed to ignore the snickers of onlookers while learning new motor skills. He can no longer be condescending. He may even be nervous, wondering what he'll do if his partner makes the breakthrough first and he's the one still throwing like a girl.