She’s 5’4” and just 13 years old. Competitors fear her, pro ball players praise her, teammates idolize her. Her walk-up song is Beyoncé’s “Run the World,” and she’s got more dragons than Daenerys, but that’s not enough for star Little League pitcher Mo’Ne Davis. After throwing a historic three-hit shutout on Sunday and securing her team the Philadelphia Dragons a place at the world series, the pint-sized pitcher told the Today Show: “I’ll probably either be the first female in the MLB or in the NBA.” Just one or the other, you know.
If you’re more sports-oriented than most of The Mary Sue staff (unless chess counts, of course) you’ve probably been hearing a lot about Davis the past few days. The only girl on her little league team, Davis’ incredible 70 mph fastball helped her pitch a historic shutout on Sunday that will take the Dragons to the Little League World Championship next week. Again, for non-sports people, a shutout is the equivalent of 30 Rock‘s Reaganing. Somewhere, Jack Donaghy is weeping.
When the World Series starts this Thursday, Davis will be the first girl in her age division to play in the 68-year-old tournament in the past decade, and only the 18th girl to compete ever. The Dragons’ competitors better brace themselves: Davis’ arm is faster than other players in the almost-exclusively male 11-13-year-old division, and according to her coach Steve Bandura, playing “Run the World” as she walks to the mound serves as a warning: “A lot of the time opposing players don’t realize it’s a girl; they assume it’s a boy with long hair.”
Teammate Jack Rice says that competitors inclined to take Davis less seriously because she’s a girl soon learn their lesson: “Once the game is done, they know who Mo’Ne is and they know she’s the real deal.”
Davis’ passion is baseball, but she wishes she wasn’t the only female player bringing the competition to its knees:
No matter who you are, you should be able to do what you like to do and what you’ve always dreamed of doing. I would actually really like to see how it is to play against another girl in baseball because I never have. I actually want to see how it feels to be a person on the other team.
If you’d like a little more inspiration before going about your day, here are some videos of Davis casually doing her thing. The Dragons will be competing in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania this week—let’s all watch, so we can say we knew her when.
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