‘Leveling the playing field’
Spring-area pro softball team makes sports history with pitcher’s $1 million contract
About two miles east of Interstate 45 in south Montgomery County, past some modest suburban neighborhoods and grazing horses, Houston’s new professional softball team is making history.
The Scrap Yard Dawgs, the sixth team to join the National Pro Fastpitch League, and the first to offer a female athlete in American team sports a million-dollar contract, kicked off its first season in early June.
The Dawgs signed lefty pitcher Monica Abbott to a sixyear contract, to be paid up to $1 million including bonuses, over that time.
Abbott is considered by many to have the best windmill pitch in the game. She’s an Olympic gold medalist, has played professionally in Japan, has helped win about a
dozen championships and has shattered records for strikeouts and speed.
So, what does Abbott’s contract mean?
“For us, it puts us in a position to contend right off the bat,” said Connie May, the Dawgs’ general manager. “If she’s on the mound, you have a high chance of winning.”
But the significance of the record-breaking contract stretches beyond the Dawgs’ chances at the Cowles Cup (the softball equivalent of the World Series), and speaks to a broader issue in professional female sports: inequality.
“You have professional athletes making minimum wage,” May said of most pro softball players. “Abbott is leveling the playing field.”
Aside from Abbott, all the other players on the Scrap Yard Dawgs have other jobs during the offseason, many working as teachers or coaches in order to have the summer off, May said.
Abbott’s “million-dollar arm” has garnered national attention not long after some of the stars of the world champion U.S. women’s national soccer team made headlines for filing a complaint against the U.S. Soccer Federation for pay discrimination. The women argued that they only received a fraction of what the men earned, in spite of outperforming them, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Soccer’s done a really nice job of bringing attention to it,” May said. Now it’s softball’s turn. “To take this and make it news, to gain that national attention…,” she said. “More people know about fast pitch softball than ever before. I think it’s extremely important to the sport.”
On the Thursday before the Scrap Yard Dawgs’ home opener, crews and staff were scrambling with final preparations throughout the sports complex.
A freshly-paved driveway dropped off onto a pebble-covered parking lot and dirt piles dominated a portion of the land.
After the record rainfall this spring, construction on the Dawgs’ new stadium is postponed indefinitely, but the rest of the 82-acre sports complex is still getting a makeover in time for its first pro season, complete with ball-parkstyle seats to fit 2,000 fans, sunken dugouts, a full-service concessions restaurant and restrooms that are “the Buc-ees of baseball,” as May says.
The complex boasts 10 rain-out-proof, synthetic turf fields with removable pitching mounds and fences to make the fields adaptable for any non-contact sport, from softball and baseball to field hockey and soccer. This summer, high school athletes will be playing on fields right next to the professionals.
May is hoping that this will help boost attendance and interest in the team, since young athletes and their families will already be at the complex. She also believes that basing the team in the north Houston/Spring area will generate excitement from the community, as it is already a hotbed for youth softball.
Breaking barriers
Even as the Scrap Yard Dawgs are working to change the perception of women’s sports now, they are also working toward breaking down further barriers in the future. The Scrap Yard Dawgs are breaking the general policy that professional teams don’t let their athletes play for Team USA in the Olympics and will be sending four of their own to compete for the gold. May is also hoping to establish a partnership with Major League Baseball.
Next season, two more expansion teams are expected to join the National Pro Fastpitch League, bringing the total to eight and signaling the momentum the sport is picking up.
“We’re trying to change the game and grow the female athlete,” May said.