Earlier this month, two teams from the Bay Sox, an all-girls baseball league overseen by the city’s Recreation and Parks department, left for Elizabethtown, Kentucky. The teams — an under-14 squad and an under-12 team — hoped to make their mark at the 2023 Baseball for All National tournament.
Over seven years, teams from San Francisco’s no-tryout, no-cut league had only ever won a single game at the annual five-day event. The goal had always been to make baseball more accessible and equitable.
But early last week, they returned home as champions. The Bay Sox’s under-14 team won a national division championship after a five-game run. The under-12s came in third.
“Winning the division championship was a validation of the past seven years of work that the players, coaches, families and department have invested in cementing girls’ place in San Francisco Baseball,” said Annie Jupiter-Jones, a mother and Rec and Parks commissioner.
It all started in 2016, with a group of parents involved in the city’s Youth Baseball League. Tempted to break away from co-ed baseball, they wanted a space that excluded obstacles their daughters had to face — obstacles that had nothing to do with their abilities, but everything to do with their gender.
“It’s tough. It’s isolating,” said Jupiter-Jones, who has three baseball-playing daughters. “There’s the micro-aggressions of everyone always asking, ‘Why not softball?’”
When Annie and Jandro Alcantar’s eldest daughter, Justice, was born, they knew she’d be a ballplayer. As Lowell High School’s baseball coach, Jandro Alcantar was a natural. “It’s just what he taught his kid to do.”
Justice began playing at Baseball for All, a national program that, in 2015, held an all-girls national baseball tournament in Orlando. The event inspired the idea of creating an all-girls league, a fixture that would exceed the brevity of a one-time tournament. The idea came from Rocky Henley, a standout on the Colorado Silver Bullets, an all-female professional baseball team that played from 1994 to 1997.
By the time 2015 rolled around, Henley was working at San Francisco Recreation and Parks. Inspired by the Orlando tournament, she pitched the idea to Phil Ginsburg, general manager of the department.
“Saying yes was a no-brainer for me,” Ginsburg said. “Not just as manager of Rec and Parks, but as a father of two daughters.”
With the support of Rec and Parks, Henley’s idea blossomed into an organization: The San Francisco Bay Sox Girls Baseball Program. Fully incorporated into San Francisco Youth Baseball for All, the all-girls division began to receive financial support from the city and grew while maintaining its mission: No tryouts, no team cuts. The only qualifier for girls wanting to be part of the Bay Sox: A love of the game.
Travel sports can be too expensive for many families, but as the only publicly supported baseball league in San Francisco, Bay Sox uses Rec and Parks’ funding to supplement its costs, eliminating yet another boundary in the world of sports as female athletes know it.
“Watching them compete, it becomes very obvious that our world is missing something on this,” Ginsburg said. “We’ve supported it with coaches, with funding, by amplifying their stories and their successes. And we’re just super proud that they are our program.”
Jupiter-Jones said she would continue to enroll her daughters in the Bay Sox. Her eldest, Justice Alcantar, now 22, has begun coaching the younger players. Havana and Rio, her sisters, plunged into the league and its values.
“It was the first time I had experienced camaraderie like that,” Justice Alcantar said as she reflected on her early years with the Bay Sox. “All the sports I had played before were male-dominated.”
The notion that girls should opt for softball, rather than baseball, is deeply misinformed, according to Jupiter-Jones. “That’s a fallacy. A falsehood,” she said. “There is no professional softball league.”
The need for a girl’s interest in baseball to correlate with her future plans, as it occurs to Jupiter-Jones, is a clear result of double standards. “The boys on the baseball teams, they don’t have parents coming up to them saying, ‘Well, what’s your endgame here?’ The girls do.”
Ginsburg believes that the lack of awareness surrounding girls’ baseball can be partly attributed to this double standard. “At a young age, over 100,000 girls [in America] play youth baseball,” he said. “But only a little over 1,000 girls continue playing baseball.”
To the Bay Sox members, the league’s most important values exist independently from future ballplaying aspirations.
“This is how kids learn about collaboration, accountability, risk-taking; they learn values about integrity, work ethic, all these things that are so important to youth development,” said Ginsburg. “Sometimes it’s the sport itself that is just the vehicle.”
For Simone Velger Aurelio, captain of the under-14 team, her experiences have transcended baseball. “I’ve been playing baseball for a really long time. My dad did it, so that’s something I’ve been carrying on for my family,” she said. “But also, it’s been a great way to make friendships that will last beyond the league.”
Alcantar made a significant observation while coaching from the dugout in Kentucky: “I didn’t notice that much of a difference from their excitement of leaving nationals with a championship, versus when they came in,” she said with a laugh. “They have the confidence knowing that, win or fail, they have our support.”
What started as a team of 12 hopefuls is now a league of more than 120 girls, attending annual workshops, clinics and games. And with a national championship in their trophy case, those numbers are only expected to grow.
“The one line that has stuck with me: Baseball is a game of failure. Even the best Giants player, even Buster Posey, was getting out seven times out of 10,” Alcantar said. “In life there are going to be failures, but then there are those three out of 10 times. That makes it all worth it.”
Great last quote. Overall fantastic reporting.
Loved this story!
Thank you so much for highlighting our girls’ hard work! Go Bay Sox!
All this from a dream, Rocky Henley is a champion of girls baseball. Congrats for your hard work