Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

merlin401 t1_ixfkwdb wrote

Reply to comment by nowhereman136 in Olivia Pichardo is the first woman to make the roster of Division I baseball team by AmethystOrator

That is irrelevant. Think of peak physical athletic ability has a normal curve distribution. The one for men is shifted significantly up from that of womens curve. There’s TONS of overlap but the only professional athletes are in the extreme extreme outlier of that curve. The top .001% men outliers are always going to be shifted further ahead of the women outliers on the their curve.

Also the original comment saying “men are better” at sports is kind of disingenuous. Physically there’s just no comparison. A smaller woman (or man for that matter) can be incredibly skilled and tactically sound but the physical limitation just makes it impossible to compete with a larger stronger faster human, even if that person is a worse student of the game

1

Bayoris t1_ixh0o6h wrote

If baseball was a pure test of strength then women would not be able to compete. 100%. But it isn’t. Baseball pitchers rely on unpredictability. If you can throw a sinker or a knuckleball or a curveball then you don’t need a fastball.

1

merlin401 t1_ixujoid wrote

I did say in another comment that maybe the one chance there is is for a woman to make it as a specialized pitcher known exclusively for a trick pitch (of which a knuckleball would be a good example). Sinker is not (which is essentially a fastball btw) and curve is not because traditional breaking pitches rely heavily on a complimentary fastball to set them up. Fastballs are essential to keeping people from sitting on the predictable motion of your breaking pitches and keeping people off balance. Knuckleballs are distinct because they have no predictable motion. But knuckleballs are super hard to throw: look how many men can master them, almost none.

Also pitchers are in a different way the worst example to pick. Pitchers have the highest rate of injury and catastrophic injury of any position in all of sports due to how much stress every pitchers puts on their elbow and shoulder. Knuckleballs may look easy on the body, but throwing pitches from 60 feet away on an elevated mound is hard and these pitches are included (they only look easy since we are used to seeing pitchers throw 90+ which virtually no one you or I know could even accomplish on flat ground, man or especially woman!

1

MikeGolfsPoorly t1_ixi3fqz wrote

Which is why the only people drafted to be hockey goalies are sumo wrestlers. They're larger and stronger than most people, so even though they are worse students of the game, they obviously have no physical comparison, and it's impossible for anyone else to compete.

−1

merlin401 t1_ixuirut wrote

I mean this is such a stupid comment. Obviously, as you know, hockey goalies need massive amounts of agility and quickness that a sumo wrestler would not have, which is why teams aren’t stupid and this doesn’t happen. Similarly teams aren’t stupid and it’s why men are virtually exclusively drafted into mens sports even though anyone is free to be drafted

1

MikeGolfsPoorly t1_ixwbdye wrote

> A smaller woman (or man for that matter) can be incredibly skilled and tactically sound but the physical limitation just makes it impossible to compete with a larger stronger faster human, even if that person is a worse student of the game

1

Arete108 t1_ixg5522 wrote

Not necessarily. There was talk of Cheryl Miller as a potential NBA player before her health ruled that out.

−6

HarrySanderson t1_ixggklc wrote

That is absolutely ridiculous.. you are living in a total fantasy land if you think there is even a shred of a slither of a slice of truth to that

3