The Glory of Women's Softball

Washington's Winning Fast-Pitch Team Is Having a Ball, and So Are Its Fans

Finally: a non-mediocre, consistently victorious professional sports team in town!

The Washington Glory, an unassuming professional women's fast pitch softball team that plays its home games at George Mason University, is taking names and kicking stats. In its inaugural year, the Glory is perched atop the six-team National Pro Fastpitch League. The team has the best win-loss record; the winningest pitcher in the league and a shortstop who leads in batting average, home runs and runs batted in.

The Glory is 28-9 coming into tonight's second game of the final, four-game homestand of the season, against the second-place Rockford Thunder. The team won last night, 3-2, in extra innings.

"I look for ladies who are dedicated to helping the community and to having fun with the fans," says team owner Paul Wilson when asked how he has built a winning squad. "I want a pro-sports franchise with a fun, family, minor-league atmosphere."

He adds, "We have young people in the stands who don't understand softball, but they do understand having fun."

In this regrettable era of steroidal sluggers, gambling referees and whining millionaire superstars, the Glory is a welcome breeze from the outfield bleachers.

The women play with ardor and elan, mixing inspiration and entertainment. Fans holler at the players; players hobnob with the fans. On one hand, you feel as if you are seeing a game played the way it used to be -- before runaway salaries and sports celeb scandals; on the other, you are seeing something entirely new -- professional female softballers.

To most folks, softball -- like curling, table shuffleboard, darts -- is just a flimsy excuse for getting together with sweaty friends and drinking beer from sweaty cans. It's a lazy, laid-back antidote to the hardball game of life. Most recreational softball is slow pitch, full of home runs and high scores.

Fast pitch, on the other hand, is a speedier thing. A game often boils down to a pitching duel. Underhand pitches come across the plate at blistering speeds, sometimes more than 70 miles an hour.

The professional version of the game, says Glory coach Carie Dever-Boaz, is also "a much different sport from baseball. It's faster-paced." The field is smaller. The pitcher's circle (there is no mound) is closer to home plate than in baseball. Bases are closer together. Runners are not allowed to take leads off base when they plan to steal, so pitchers have no chance to pick them off and therefore do not take forever between pitches.

The seven-inning, two-hour game does move swiftly.

Jenna Edwards, a 10-year-old pitcher on the Springfield Stingrays softball team, is in the stands on a recent weeknight for a home game against the Philadelphia Force. She wears a ponytail, lime green Crocs and a gray tee that reads: "Good Girls Steal."