When Ayami Sato takes to the mound at Toronto’s Christie Pits park on Sunday, her first pitch will make historical past.
Sato, 35, has come all the best way from Japan to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs, one in every of 9 groups within the Intercounty Baseball League (IBL) of southern Ontario. She’ll be the primary lady to affix knowledgeable males’s league in Canada.
The IBL is greater than 100 years previous and a few of its gamers hung out on Main League Baseball groups or in different elite leagues.
Sato is already thought of a legend in girls’s worldwide baseball. As a part of Japan’s nationwide crew, she helped her nation win world championships and took residence three MVP awards alongside the best way.
A lady is poised to make baseball historical past in Toronto on Sunday, pitching in knowledgeable males’s sport for the primary time in Canada. Japanese star Ayami Sato will take the mound with the Intercounty Baseball League’s Toronto Maple Leafs.
She instructed CBC Information in a current interview on the ball diamond that she’s honoured to be a Maple Leaf and to interrupt the gender barrier in Canadian baseball.
“I’m so comfortable, very excited,” Sato mentioned in English, with a lot of the remainder of the interview carried out by way of a translator.
Maple Leafs supervisor and former Toronto Blue Jay Rob Butler says Sato is taken into account the perfect pitcher ever in girls’s baseball, and the crew is comfortable to provide her the prospect to showcase her expertise.
“We’re excited to see one thing new, one thing completely different, one thing contemporary,” he mentioned. “We need to break some boundaries down and provides her a fantastic alternative.”
Butler says the Maple Leafs hope Sato, who’s introduced “an incredible curiosity to girls’s baseball” may also draw new followers to their video games this summer season, particularly girls.
Sato ‘in a league of her personal’
Ashley Stephenson, who performed towards Sato as a member of the Canadian nationwide crew, predicts she’ll simply earn the respect of followers in Canada.
“She’s an excellent pitcher, the perfect pitcher I ever confronted in worldwide competitors,” Stephenson mentioned in a video name from Florida the place she coaches with one of many Blue Jays’ minor league groups.
“She was in a league of her personal.”
However Stephenson, who’s a member of the Canadian Baseball Corridor of Fame, says she’s additionally unhappy that there is no skilled girls’s baseball league in Canada for gamers at Sato’s stage, particularly contemplating the current success of ladies’s skilled leagues in soccer, hockey and basketball.
“A part of me needs we had that for baseball, too,” she mentioned.
A brand new baseball ecosystem for girls
Keith Stein, a Toronto businessman who is likely one of the Maple Leafs homeowners, is engaged on granting Stephenson’s want.
He is presently constructing the Girls’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) with American baseball trailblazer Justine Siegal.
Stein instructed CBC Information that it is a “travesty” that there is no professional league for girls. For a very long time, he says, women had been pushed to play softball as a substitute of hardball, one thing he hopes the WPBL will assist to alter.
“We predict the WPBL goes to be the catalyst for the creation of an entire new baseball ecosystem and tradition for girls, not solely in the US however all through the world,” he mentioned.
Up to now, greater than 50 Canadian girls have utilized to check out for the league, which is able to begin with six U.S. groups in 2026, although Stein hopes to ultimately broaden it north in future seasons.
“There will probably be a franchise in Toronto,” he declared.
World-Sequence profitable Toronto Blue Jays supervisor Cito Gaston is an advisor to the league, and so is Sato. Stein hopes she’ll be a participant, too.
For now, the Japanese pitcher, who is aware of little about Canada apart from that it is chilly and hockey is extra fashionable than baseball, is gearing up for her first sport together with her teammates.
“They have been actually nice and I am trying ahead to taking part in with them,” Sato mentioned. At a current apply, the gamers had been giving her encouraging phrases, excessive fives and fist bumps.
‘Blaze a path for us’
It isn’t misplaced on Sato that she’s making historical past. She hopes taking part in in a males’s professional league demonstrates braveness to younger women and that they’re going to observe her instance of accepting new challenges.
“I hope that can encourage plenty of little women right here,” she mentioned.
Mission already completed, in accordance with the younger gamers participating in a Canadian Women Baseball League apply at a park not too removed from the place the Maple Leafs play.
“I’ve heard that she’s a legend,” mentioned Quinsey Jenkins, 12. “I am excited {that a} woman goes to be pitching amongst boys — and hopefully she will beat them.”
Her message to Sato: “Exit and make all the opposite women like me proud, and blaze a path for us so we are able to observe.”
Danielle Waserman thinks it is unfair there is no professional league for Sato and different girls in Canada. “It’s totally sturdy of her to play in a males’s league and I actually look as much as her,” mentioned the 10-year-old participant.
Sophia Bonder, whose uniform t-shirt reads “I am Altering the Sport,” is anxiously awaiting a girls’s league she will watch on TV.
For now, the 13-year-old is comfortable Sato is taking part in in her metropolis the place she will go cheer on a celebrity.
“I am glad she’s getting an opportunity to indicate her abilities to everybody else,” mentioned Bonder. “And I am proud.”
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