Pitcher strikes out stereotypes
Niagara teen showing opposing batters she’s a pitcher, not a ‘girl’ pitcher
The American Pastime has become one young Canadian’s passion.
Carly Elcich first picked up a baseball when she was four, and it’s been holding onto her ever since.
Nowadays there isn’t much about the game that the 14-year-old daughter of John and Lynne Elcich doesn’t love.
When she’s pitching for bantam team, the Beamsville Stingers, she loves getting opposing hitters to put the ball harmlessly in play almost as much as loves striking them with a two-seam fastball. When the roles are flipped and Elcich is the one in the batter's box, she loves parlaying her knowledge of the strike zone into a hit.
Elcich loves the ah-ha moments of “getting it” when she practises pitching with one-time Canadian-American Association player Jason Pilkington and fielding with former National Leaguer Scott Bullett.
She loves winning a lot more than losing and the camaraderie of being part of — and belonging to — a team. The one thing the soon-to-be Grade 9 student at E.L. Crossley Secondary School loathes about baseball is when people — opposing players, especially — feel the need to use an adjective to describe her place on the diamond and spot in the rotation.
Elcich doesn't regard herself as a “girl” pitcher. She is just a pitcher who like all hurlers graduating to bantam is adjusting to the plate being 60 feet, six inches from the mound.
She has become used to being the only girl on her team. In fact, the last time she wasn’t was in rookie ball when the split between genders was about 50-50.
“I fit in, it doesn’t bug me,” she said. “They treat me like everyone else.”
That wasn’t always the case. Lynne Elcich remembers her daughter attending a pitch, catch and throw event in St. Catharines that was sanctioned by Major League Baseball.
Instead of a baseball, she was handed a softball and told to throw at the outline of a strike zone attached to a fence.
“It was a giant, grapefruit ball!” Elcich recalled. To put it mildly, Elcich, who prides herself as being a baseball player, not a girl baseball player, didn't react mildly at all to the slight.
“I thought she was going to throw that ball through the chain-link face, she was so mad,” her mother said. “It wasn’t right what they did, even her team said so.”
Cold shoulders from teammates and chirping from opposing dugouts are used by Elcich to harden her resolve and as motivation to prove her nay-sayers wrong. “Sometimes, I walk it off, but most of the time I use it to motivate me,” she said. “You have to play harder to be equal to the boys.”
Other times, when Elcich is on the mound and control of the game is in her grip, she enjoys having the last word without saying anything at all.
“There’s nothing better for a dad than watching your kid strike out a batter,” John Elcich said with a smile.
Acceptance wouldn’t be an issue for the couple’s only child if she played house league on a girls team rather at than at the rep level with a co-ed team.
“She doesn’t want to play house league,” Lynne Elcich said. “It’s more fun, it’s not as competitive, but she wouldn’t have fun." Carly’s “ultimate goal” is playing for Team Canada representing her country against the best women baseball players in the world.
She will be taking one stop toward that next month as a member of Team Ontario competing
‘‘ “There’s nothing better for a dad than watching your
kid strike out a batter.”
JOHN ELCICH
at the 16U Girls National Baseball Championship.
Players from as far east as Rockland, as far north as Sudbury and as far west as Leamington will be playing for the province at a tournament taking place Aug. 21-27 in Bedford, N.S.
Since pitch counts are strictly enforced, as they are at the bantam level, Elcich expects to see action at second base as well as in the outfield when she’s not pitching for Team Ontario.
Ontario is seeking its sixth gold medal at nationals and first since 2016. The province has taken five silver medals at the Canadian championships in the past 13 years. Carly sees competing for a world title in her future, but she isn’t as optimistic about a girl going on to play in the big leagues. “The chances of women playing Major League Baseball are pretty slim,” she said.
Fourteen-year-old Carly Elcich of Fenwick this summer is pitching for the co-ed Beamsville Stingers.