Do Women really Love Basbeball?

By Chris Lezotte

This past summer, a small miracle happened in my hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Baseball came back. The success of the Tigers, after decades of futility, brought hope and excitement to a beleaguered city. It also brought thousands of fans to a beautiful new ballpark many had never seen, and reintroduced them to a pastime dormant for too many years. A good many of the fans that crowded the stands of Comerica Park this summer were women, young girls with their dads, teenagers with a gaggle of pals, and young adult women with partners or friends, all with no memory of Detroit's rich baseball heritage. There were also middle-aged women and women eligible for AARP cards who, remembering the glory days of Tigers baseball, returned to the game they always loved. In the summer of 2006, female fans old and new made their way to the stadium and raised the decibel level to a considerably higher pitch. Thousands of Detroit women discovered what millions of female fans all over the USA already knew: women are crazy about baseball.

Why do women love baseball? What is it about the sport that attracts so many female fans? What need does it fulfill in our lives? I am a former writer who is currently a graduate student in Women's Studies at Eastern Michigan University. I am putting together an article in which I hope to articulate the many reasons women are so passionate about this sport. For that, I need your help. Ivette Rico has generously offered this forum to post my request. I hope to hear from women of all age groups, as I believe each generation has a different reason for loving this game. I am looking for responses that are enthusiastic, nostalgic, honest, heartwarming or just plain crazy. If you have a passion for baseball and would like to take a few minutes to tell me why, please send an email to clezotte@emich.edu . I will send you a list of questions to get you started, and we can correspond through email or by phone, at your convenience.

I believe there are as many reasons for the love of baseball as there are female fans. As an aging baby boomer (OK, so I am an old graduate student), baseball takes me back to my childhood, when I took the city bus to the old Tiger Stadium with my brother and sister, or as a teenager, with my groupie girlfriends. A baseball game was a great way to get to know a guy without having to talk too much. It was also an appropriate way for a quiet person like me to let off a lot of steam. These days, keeping score helps to keep my mind sharp when other parts of my aging body are failing fast. And finally, I can't think of a better way to spend a summer day, surrounded by cheering fans, as happy to be in the ballpark as me.

But these are my reasons. Please send me yours. Thanks for your help, and keep counting the days until spring training.

Chris Lezotte

Ann Arbor MI

A Tigers Fan for over 50 years.

 

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