Chelsea Baker can strike your son out

This is over a week old but I totally missed it. It’s ESPN’s E:60 story about the person who may be the best little league pitcher in the country:

She registered another perfect pitching record this year, 12-0, for her Little League team.

She threw her second perfect game -- and predicted this one just hours before she did it.

Her fastball hits the mid-60s, and she can send opponents to the bench in tears, embarrassing them with a knuckleball she learned from former major league knuckleball legend Joe Niekro.

Meet Chelsea Baker, a girl pitcher in a boys’ league.

The story is OK, the video that accompanies it is just wonderful. Except for the revelation that opponents’ parents taunt her for pitching in “a boy’s game” which, as the father of a girl who can do any damn thing she wants to, makes me want to commit heinous murder. But that aside . . .

Baker is 5'4" and 117 pounds, so (a) she likely has a size advantage over a lot of her later-blooming competition; and (b) she may be done growing, but if the radar gun is accurate and she’s really throwing 65, she could totally play at higher levels as a knuckleballer. All she’d probably need is a few more miles per hour for those get-me-over “fastballs” on days the knuckler isn’t fluttering, and that may be doable via training.

But even if that doesn’t pan out Baker’s is a great story.

(thanks to El Bonte for the heads up)