For the first time, women will wear Major League Baseball jerseys in the long-running hit video game “MLB The Show.”
MLB The Show 24 debuts the option to create and play as a female player in Road to the Show, a reinvented version of the game's career mode. In this mode, the gamer custom promotes his character from minor to major his league. The game's developer, Sony San Diego Studios, announced the new mode on Tuesday.
The game, which will be released on March 19th, will feature a new career mode called “Road to the Show: Women Pave Their Way.” According to Sony San Diego Studios, the film will include a storyline that follows two women as they enter the major leagues and touches on the unique challenges they face.
MLB The Show joins other high-profile sports video game franchises aiming to include women, including FIFA (now EA Sports FC) and NBA 2K. However, gender relations in baseball are much more complex, as most women and girls play softball instead.
Some hoped that MLB The Show 24 would help change that.
“I think especially in the United States, we've been brainwashed into thinking that boys play baseball and girls play softball, when in reality both exist in both worlds.” said Veronica Alvarez, head coach of the women's national baseball team. I will be participating in this year's Women's Baseball World Cup.
Alvarez, a former national team player herself, and several of her players provided Sony with input on the game's development.
Women playing baseball is nothing new. Toni Stone is believed to have been the first woman to play alongside men in the Negro Leagues, but women's baseball leagues have come and gone over the years in the United States. The movie “A League of Their Own” popularized the women's professional league, which was created during World War II.
Despite society's expectations to pursue softball, women are asserting greater rights in baseball, a male-dominated sport.
Although there are no women in Major League Baseball, more and more women are playing in the sport, either alongside men or even on all-female teams. Several players also play on men's college teams.
Some, like Alvarez, have found careers coaching minor league teams. In 2020, Kim Ng became the first general manager of the Major League team.
The Atlantic League, an independent minor league affiliated with Major League Baseball, recently welcomed its first female player, 25-year-old pitcher Kelsey Whitmore. Her personal story is told in Road to the Show: Women Paving Their Way.
“It's becoming more and more common for women to be in sports,” said Olivia Pichardo, 20, who last year became the first female to play NCAA Division I college baseball.
Pichardo, who grew up watching MLB The Show and shared personal experiences with the developers, hoped the show would encourage young girls to see baseball as a viable option.
Lisa Fernandez, a UCLA coach and softball pitcher who was inducted into the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame with three gold medals, said the representation of women in baseball video games has changed since Title IX opened the door to the world. He said it shows how far they have come. Their performance in college sports in 1972.
Fernandez noted that women still have a long way to go to have the same professional opportunities as men, whether they play baseball, softball or other sports. I think that's the argument.”
Alvarez, 40, said the only example of women in baseball she can remember from her childhood was the Colorado Silver Bullets, a women's professional team that briefly competed against men in the 1990s.
“I once saw a game on TV, and that was the only person I ever saw growing up, and obviously the only other girl or woman playing baseball other than me, and the only person in the Little League that I played in. It was a girl,” she said. . Alvarez said.
She didn't know about the women's national team until she was an adult, but when she searched for “Silver Bullets” on Google, the team happened to pop up. “And that's what led me to USA Baseball, where I ended up playing eight more years and extending my career,” Alvarez said. “It shows how important it is to watch the people playing.”
More inclusive video games also have that power.
Jillian Albayati, 19, a baseball pitcher and member of the national team, said MLB The Show is very popular among young players. She said this is one of her few video games she has played.
“It lets you see how far you can really go,” Albayati said, imagining what she would have thought if she had seen the women in the game as a child. She said: “It gives me even bigger dreams that I already have.
“It makes me believe they can come true.”
Sealag McNeil contributed to research.
