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Graham HaysESPN.com
This isn’t the easiest year to be the newest professional sports league in American sports, but Athletes Unlimited launched a new era in softball on time and on schedule this past weekend.
After the Women’s College World Series and Olympics were shelved by the coronavirus earlier this year, six games in three days in the Chicago area represented the biggest concentration of high-level softball in quite some time. In addition to a return for the sport, the opening games in the five-week season also marked the debut of a new format that features weekly drafts and an individual champion instead of a team champion at the end of the season.
Here’s a look at the biggest takeaways from the start of something new.
First came the choice to play
Athletes Unlimited marked the second attempt at professional softball this summer. The first was the monthlong series between the independent USSSA Pride and Scrap Yard Dawgs that led to the dissolution of Scrap Yard after a single game when players — presaging events to come months later across sports — walked out in protest. Still fresh in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in police custody, players felt their voices had been co-opted for political purposes.
Fast forward to last week. After police shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 23, athletes in the NBA, WNBA and other leagues protested by putting games on hold. That left the players of Athletes Unlimited with a decision to make as their opening day approached Saturday.
Jazmyn Jackson, a member of the league’s player executive committee, said there were conversations about the actions by athletes in other leagues. But she and other players also said the idea of not playing the league’s opening weekend wasn’t a viable consideration.
“For us, it really wasn’t a question of if we’re playing or not,” Jackson said. “We don’t make enough money — we’re not going to hurt pockets if we’re not playing, unfortunately. But because this is going to be something that people are watching because nobody is playing, we were like, ‘OK, let’s take advantage of this and let’s support what we feel is right.'”
So all 56 players, including more than a dozen women of color and 10 players who were part of This Is Us, the team that emerged from the remnants of Scrap Yard, took the field Saturday. Athletes Unlimited has promoted itself since launch as an entity in which players are partners whose voices matter, including an initiative through which each player chooses a charitable cause that receives donations from the league based on the player’s bonus earnings. And in this instance, Jackson said the staff was proactive asking players what they wanted to do.
Players ultimately felt the best way to be heard was by playing.
“It has to be addressed also, the gender inequality that we deal with as female athletes,” Jackson said. “So we decided to play and use our platform and wear our [Black Lives Matter] masks, have some stuff going on on the field that really highlights what we stand for as players and what Athletes Unlimited is allowing us to put out in this space.”
Some things never change
Cat Osterman didn’t allow a run in the 12 innings she pitched during the opening weekend.
The rest of the league’s pool of pitchers allowed 61 runs.
New league, same story. A league that emphasizes the individual with its scoring system has also done its best to reassure fans that team success remains the cornerstone of everything that happens. And it couldn’t have asked for a better scenario to show that it can walk that fine line than what unfolded this week. Two teams that proved themselves superior over the first two days met in the final game of the week. And the biggest star in the league put on a show.
Pitching seven innings for what she said was the first time in more than a year, after both Team USA’s pre-Olympic tour and the summer independent series were cut short by coronavirus concerns, Osterman threw a two-hit, 12-strikeout shutout against Team Wagner. That not only allowed Team Warren to finish the week undefeated, but also allowed Osterman to race past Team Wagner’s Samantha Show and clinch the overall points lead through the first week.
“The mindset part is there. It’s just the physicality, I haven’t been in that situation in a while,” Osterman said. “But I’ve had so much fun in this league so far. I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed playing for my entire career, but these have been some of the most fun weeks I’ve had in a long time. I’m just glad to kind of find that love again — not the passion for competing but the enjoyment of the game.”
It was a timeless performance, the league’s oldest player making hitters look foolish chasing her drop ball and leaving them frozen in place with her curve. Show entered the finale with six hits in seven at-bats on the weekend, including two home runs and two doubles. Even she could manage only a walk while striking out twice against the best player on the field.
For all of that, Osterman only won the week because she was on the best team. She won because Team Warren beat Team Pendley 10-2 on Sunday without Osterman throwing a pitch (thereby earning her the points for the win that proved the difference in the race with Show).
“We decided to play and use our platform and wear our [Black Lives Matter] masks, have some stuff going on on the field that really highlights what we stand for as players …” Jazmyn Jackson
Show actually led the league in points earned purely through individual statistics, 214 to Osterman’s 144. Meanwhile, Sam Fischer and Sahvanna Jaquish, who ranked third and fourth, respectively, in points from individual statistics, ranked just 18th and 35th overall because their teams struggled to win innings or games.
Now, Team Warren’s success will be its own demise, with Victoria Hayward and Aleshia Ocasio joining Osterman as captains and guaranteeing a thorough roster reshuffling for Week 2.
“I think it tears at our hearts a little bit, but we’re also super proud for each other,” Osterman said. “I know I can speak for all three of us that this first team we were on will probably go down — we’ll all hold it very close to our hearts for the rest of time, I think, but definitely the rest of the time here.”
Every inning really does matter
The in-game experience didn’t look all that different from the norm for fans watching at home. The broadcasts Athletes Unlimited helps produce didn’t highlight individual points in many graphics. An occasional golf-style leaderboard was one of the few visual cues that this wasn’t just business as usual with seven innings of runs, hits and errors. It felt, well, familiar.
“It’s such a different type of league — I think fans might think it’s a lot more individual than it actually is,” Jackson said, noting also the camaraderie among players. “It’s such a team game — it’s the most team-oriented I’ve actually ever played.”
To her point, by far the most omnipresent innovation was the emphasis on each inning as its own separate mini-game between teams. Outscore the opponent in an inning and every player gets 10 points. Those points roll over, so if the first two innings go by scoreless, the third inning is suddenly worth 30 points per player. Points aren’t all that are at stake; it literally pays to win.
While there are individual monetary awards based on the leaderboard at the end of the season, the only bonuses available week to week are tied to team performance. Each player on a team earns an extra $220 if the team wins a game. But each inning win is also worth $40 per player. And again, those bonuses roll over.
Monday’s game between Team Fagan and Team Pendley pitted two winless teams that had little chance by then of producing a captain for Week 2. But when Team Pendley scored with two outs in the bottom of the third to match Team Fagan’s run in the top of the inning, thus rolling over the inning bonuses for the second inning in a row, there was legitimate competitive drama. By the time Sam Fisher hit a three-run home run in the fifth inning to end the string of tied innings, it was worth $160 and 40 points for each player on her team.
As Fisher said afterward, there is a degree to which “win the inning” is a phrase players have heard most of their softball lives. Having the extra stakes here doesn’t necessarily create a new mindset. But it can’t help but sharpen focus, both for fans and those involved on the field.
“I think we’re all conscious of it,” Osterman said of the innings incentives. “It’s nice to be the home team because we know that no matter what happens we can have a chance to come back and score. When runners get on — for one, I’ve always been a stickler trying not to allow runs, but obviously not losing innings right now is a priority as well. … I can say we’re all pretty conscious of that, to make sure we’re winning innings. Which actually is helping in the long run, too, because you can’t zone out, even when you score a lot of runs.”
