Holy Cow! Women in Baseball Week Interview with Kat Williams

No Crying In Baseball

We celebrate the 4th annual Women in Baseball Week by talking to Dr. Kat Williams about her new book, Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban-American Baseball Star. Kat is a professor of American history at Marshall University, board president of the International Women’s Baseball Center, and author of The All-American Girls after the AAGPBL: How Playing Pro Ball Shaped Their Lives.

We examine what it means to view a life through the lens of sports identity. Through Kat’s telling of Lefty’s story, we learn the importance of baseball to Cuban history, and to a young girl growing up in the revolution. We travel with Lefty, barely a teenager at the time, as she plays ball with other women and girls across Latin America. We discuss the importance of having that one place where you feel safe and strong and everything is okay, and knowing that if everything is okay there, maybe it can be okay in other places too.

Kat tells us of the founding of the International Women’s Baseball Center over pizza and beer, and her dreams of young girls visiting the Center and understanding that they are ballplayers in a long, rich history of women ballplayers. She encourages us, one and all, to become part of that community too. Patti and the Pottymouth can’t wait until travel is again encouraged, so pizza and beer can be had with Kat and others from the IWBC, punctuated with an occasional “Holy f%*ng Cow!

Kat Williams can be found on Twitter at @tellagirlshecan and @drk1943, and on Facebook at tellagirlshecan.org. Learn more about the International Women’s Baseball Center http://www.internationalwomensbaseballcenter.org/ Get your copy of Isabel “Lefty” Alvarez: The Improbable Life of a Cuban-American Baseball Star!

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