A Softball Team's Tweet to Trump Leads Players to Quit Mid-Series
The players said they did not want a photo of them standing during the national anthem to be used for political purposes.
Cat Osterman warming up before a Team USA game in February. Osterman and other players quit a professional team this week after its general manager politicized a picture of them during the national anthem.Credit...Octavio Jones/Tampa Bay Times, via Associated Press
By Natalie Weiner
June 24, 2020
For a few hours this week, softball had a shot at something it has pursued for decades: the spotlight. The USSSA Pride and Scrap Yard Fast Pitch, two independent professional softball teams that feature some of the top players in the world, began what was supposed to be a seven-game series in Melbourne, Fla., facing little competition from other live sports.
Instead, the first day of the series ended with all 18 players for Scrap Yard Fast Pitch cleaning out their lockers and pledging to never play again for the organization, after its general manager bragged to President Trump on Twitter during the game that the team was standing during the national anthem.
Link to tweet
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The players spent an hour discussing the issue in the locker room, and decided that they could no longer play under the Scrap Yard name. “The more we talked about it, the angrier I got, and I finally just said, ‘I’m done, I’m not going to wear this jersey,’” Osterman said. “We were used as pawns in a political post, and that’s not OK.”
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The players said they felt confident in their decision despite the fact that Scrap Yard is one of very few organizations sponsoring top-tier professional softball teams.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/sports/scrap-yard-softball-anthem-tweet.html
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-Laelth
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I was a high school & college athlete "back in the day" when the only sports a woman could play professionally was either tennis or golf. What these young women did was extraordinary. THIS is a display of ethics that we rarely see these days. A lot of knuckle draggers, who tend to wear MAGA hats, will undoubtedly think "so what, it's girl's softball." I coach high school JV softball...love to watch the development! Sports are great for girls for all the same reasons they're great for boys.
But there was never anywhere to take your talents after high school or college for girls. Now there is. These women reached the pinnacle of their sport, are the best in the world, and just turned their backs on it because of their principles.
And I defy any Trump supporter who has that "it's girl's softball" attitude to stand in the batter's box against Cat. Nothing like a lefty delivering that windmill pitch.
Bunk that propaganda!
