COOPERSTOWN — An 11-year-old girl who pitched a perfect Little League baseball game in May was honored Thursday afternoon at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Katie Brownell of Oakfield, a town between Buffalo and Rochester, is the only girl in her town’s Little League.
She struck out every batter she faced in a six-inning game May 14.
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After Katie donated her jersey, the Hall presented a forum and introduced Maria Pepe, a groundbreaking Little League player, and Lance Van Auken, a spokesman for Little League, to the audience.
Pepe said that when she 11 in 1971, she signed up to play Little League baseball in Hoboken, N.J.
"I played three games, but there was a lot of controversy" because she was a girl, she said.
She was asked to turn in her uniform and did so reluctantly. Members of the National Organization for Women heard of her situation and called her parents, she said.
Eventually, NOW worked to bring her case before New Jersey’s Division of Civil Rights, and a state court ruled in her favor in 1974, opening the door for girls to play in Little League, she said.
By then, she was too old to play, "but my father told me to think of all the girls who would come after me," she said.
Van Auken said Little League now has about 400,000 girls playing and about 2.3 million boys.
My younger sister was the first girl in my town to play Little League baseball. I think it was 1973. She was really good. There were fans (parents of other players) who heckled her!
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