Baseball is where the boys and the girls are for the Matthew C. Perry Samurai this season. From left, team captain Neil Suther, Danielle Ortiz (top), Kjrsten Okland, Cynthia Ortiz, Lisa Garber, team captain Mike Menserado and Rebekka Claudio. Perry has five girls on its team this season. (Dave Ornauer / S&S)
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Runs piled up on the scoreboard as quickly as the weather deteriorated, but the Matthew C. Perry baseball team never showed signs of surrender despite losing the Japan Baseball League season opener to host Yokota 15-3 last Friday.
Anything good the team did — throw a strike, take a pitch for a ball, any little victory — brought an effusive reaction from the guys and gals in the Samurai dugout.
Guys and gals? Yep.
Last spring, Perry, with an enrollment of 125, fielded neither a baseball nor a softball team. So this spring, five former girls softball players donned stirrups and spikes — and the Samurai fielded the JBL’s most unusual team.
Never mind that the squad of mostly freshmen and sophomores lost all three weekend games by 10 runs or more. They say they’re having the time of their lives.
“We love the sport,” said sophomore outfielder Danielle Ortiz. “I grew up on baseball. It’s my life. ... such an adrenaline rush.”
“We want to show the boys that girls can play like the guys,” chimed in starting second baseman Cynthia Ortiz, a freshman.
Having the Samurai girls on the team “is great,” coach George Suther said. “They listen. They want to learn, get in there with the guys and take their licks just like them.”
The boy-girl roster is something new for Perry, which has had difficulties fielding teams in several sports. Injuries, ineligibility and a lack of experienced players caused the school’s football program to fold this fall, just months after being unable to field baseball and softball teams. The 2004 boys basketball team took just five players to the Far East Class A Tournament; the same number as the 2003 girls team.
Further shrinking the baseball player pool was the decision by three former players to switch to soccer.
“That drew us back at bit,” Suther said.
Of the five Samurai girls players, only the Ortiz sisters had touched a baseball bat or glove. But the team “needed help,” Cynthia said. So she, her sister and seniors Lisa Garber and Rebekka Claudio and freshman Kjrsten Oklund stepped in.
“Zama had a girls player,” Danielle recalled of four-year Zama American pitcher and outfielder Allison Amara, the league’s first female player. “All we needed was a female chaperone.”
The co-ed team faces growing pains. The weekend saw its share of dropped pop-ups, overthrows and batting and base-running mistakes.
“We’re working out the kinks,” said Danielle, who’s gone from playing fast-pitch softball in the United States to slow-pitch in Japan and now to baseball. “But we’re having fun.”
The Samurai didn’t criticize mistakes but cheered and supported each other from first pitch to last out.
“There will be other games,” said pitcher-first baseman Mike Menserado. “Win or lose, we’re out there to have fun.”
“I look at them as members of the team,” pitcher Neil Suther said. “Players who want to play and can play. Just like family.”
The girls have earned similar respect from Yokota senior pitcher Shawn Novak.
“They have good spirit,” he said. “I’m glad they want to play.”
But, Novak said, “I won’t let up or change anything I do. Baseball is baseball. Throw to the mitt, get the out.”
For now, the Samurai plan to take their lumps while working on everything from recognizing coaching signs to communicating in the field to execution.
“Once we get it together,” Neil Suther said, “we’ll be better than Yokota. Girls and all.”
