Let’s Play Ball New Llb Gives Another Generation Of Women A League Of Their Own

When Sue Long steps onto the field today for her first game in a brand-new women’s professional baseball league, she’s going to pause just a moment and say to herself: “Look, Dad, here I am!”

Long’s father was Dick Aylward, a Pacific Coast League catcher and short-time major leaguer with the Cleveland Indians who died in 1983.

“He once made ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not,”’ she said. “He beat a runner to first base for a putout when the pitcher and first baseman couldn’t get there in time. He wasn’t a fast runner, but I guess the other guy was slower.”

If “Ripley’s” were still around, Long might be a candidate for one of those believe-it-or-nots herself.

She’s a 39-year-old grandmother who just quit a very good brokerage-business job in San Diego to become a center fielder for the San Francisco Bay Sox in the fledgling Ladies League Baseball.

There are five teams in the circuit, including the Bay Sox and the San Jose Spitfire. The Bay Sox will open their season against the Los Angeles Legends today at the University of San Francisco’s Benedetti Diamond. Long Beach and Phoenix have the other two franchises.

Teams in the LLB, the brainchild of San Diego businessman Michael Ribant, will play 60-game schedules that end the third week in September.

A few of the women in the league are former Colorado Silver Bullets, but most are ex-fastpitch softball players in their early- to mid-20s, which makes Long even more of an anomaly.

She started in softball as a 9-year-old in San Diego’s Bobby Sox girls league and has played that sport most of her life. But, three years ago, she switched to baseball in a San Diego women’s league.

She doesn’t think her relatively advanced age will be a handicap.

“Coming out here with 24- and 25-year-olds isn’t the easiest thing to do,” she said, “but I try to keep my body healthy. I stay in shape, and I still have speed and range.”

Long wasn’t pining to become a pro baseball player. After a long brokerage career, six months ago she landed what she calls “an awesome job.”

But then a friend told her about LLB, sort of a 1990s version of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that was so successful in the Midwest during and after World War II.

The more Long thought about this new “League of Their Own,” the more she liked the idea.

“I wasn’t sure it would take off,” she said, “but it’s such a great opportunity.”

So she attended a tryout camp, made the cut, and - since San Diego doesn’t have a team, because no adequate fields were available - she decided to leave that “awesome” brokerage job and move to San Francisco.

“That was a very, very difficult decision,” she said. “My family and friends all said, ‘Oh, my god,’ but half of those friends said, ‘Go for it,’ and my family has been very supportive.”

That specifically includes Long’s mom, who lives in El Cajon, four sisters and one brother, and 19-year-old son Chad, whose own son, Tyler, just turned 1.

“There are no guarantees,” she said. “The salaries are not much money at all ($1,000 and under per month). But I’m not playing for the money. I’m playing to play - and to get to say I played pro ball. I think this is the chance of a lifetime.”