Meet Eri Yoshida, Knuckleball Princess

If someone comes up to you and tells you they watched a knuckleballer pitch side-arm, you'd probably laugh. Then they proceed to tell you they're an 18-year old girl. You laugh again. Then they tell you she's playing professional baseball. They stop dead in their tracks.

Meet Eri Yoshida. Standing just above five feet tall, she's considered short by any league's standard. Her fastball non-chalantly clocks in at 65 MPH, a hitter's dream. Lucky for her, she's not a flamethrower. She's a knuckleballer.

In all my years of baseball, I never imagined a woman would have made it in pro-ball as a pitcher. I told myself over and over again, how could someone who physically is unable to throw heat going to succeed? I secretly hoped there would be a female eephus specialist, but that still hasn't happened. What I can say is, watching her play was a fantastic experience.

The Chico Outlaws were in town to battle my local Calgary Vipers on an overcast sunday afternoon. At first, it felt like we were never going to see Eri pitch. The Outlaws kept scoring, and the starting pitcher for the Vipers just couldn't hit the strike zone. Run after run, and sooner or later, Yoshida came up to bat. Now, my understanding is she is actually a quality hitter - but there were runners on first and second, so she was asked to bunt. She almost beat out the throw, too.

It felt like we were never going to see Eri pitch. Chico ended up scoring 11 runs in the first inning, 10 of which were before an out was even recorded. What felt like hours later, we finally were going to get our chance.

The crowd went wild with excitement as she threw her warm-up pitches. Her knuckleball constantly came in at 53-56 MPH. The ball wasn't dying off as it neared the plate as much as a knuckleball should, and she seemed to be getting more rotation on it than she wanted. Finally, it was her turn to face live batters.

The first batter came to the plate. The crowd of 1,759 clapped loudly in anticipation of the first pitch.

Unfortunately for Eri Yoshida, things did not go as planned. Batter after batter, sharp line drives were hit into the outfield. There was a couple defensive miscues that could have been avoided, and the ball wasn't launched too much outside of one home run, so there were some good things to note in her performance.

Whether you view her as a gimmick or not, it's absolutely exciting to see a woman play baseball. Not for the sake of being progressive, but simply to see a barrier being broken. She might not be Jackie Robinson, but she's still breaking ground. Her stuff is more than likely nowhere near good enough to be in the major leagues - but maybe one day, this will open up the door for someone else to do it.

And when that day comes - she better be an Eephus specialist.