Local women in Pan Ams’ baseball debut | SanDiegoUnionTribune.com – The San Diego Union-Tribune

As a self-described “athletic nerd” at O’Farrell Middle School, eighth-grader Malaika Underwood was determined enough to write letters to specific coaches at San Diego high schools she could attend the following year. With those letters, effectively, she already was playing hardball.

Underwood was an up-and-coming talent in both volleyball and basketball, but her letters had to do with a third sport, and it wasn’t a ball pitched underhanded.

“I wrote, “I’m a baseball player,’ “ said Underwood. “I think I even included my stats from Little League. I said, “I don’t want special treatment. I just want to know I’m going to get a fair shot to play baseball, the opportunity to game that I love.’ If that meant playing baseball with boys in high school, I was gonna give that a shot.“

That was 1995.

Twenty years later, Underwood is the veteran, undisputed leader of the first U.S. women’s national baseball team to play in the Pan American Games, the multi-sport event that’s already underway in Toronto. A two-time varsity baseball player at La Jolla High who starred in Division-I volleyball at North Carolina, the 34-year-old Underwood is on her seventh national women’s baseball team, itself an unprecedented feat.

When the Americans open Pan Am baseball competition against Venezuela on July 20, too, there will be two players from the San Diego area on the U.S. roster. Lakeside’s Nicole Rivera, who played softball at Granite Hills and North Dakota State University, is primarily a third baseman on the national squad that’s a sort of modern rendition of “A League of Their Own.”

Underwood and Rivera got to Team USA from the same city, but on entirely different paths, basepaths of different lengths in games that are far more different than they might seem.

Like most of the players on the American squad, Underwood is a lifetime baseball player, a lifetime spent as the female whose gender might’ve caused more attention than her considerable talent in a sport played almost exclusively by males.

“I was just so passionate about baseball,” said Underwood, now a resident of Atlanta who works in sports marketing. “Certainly, there were people, even close friends, who said “You should switch over to softball,’ if only for the opportunities it offered girls. Fortunately for me, I had basketball and volleyball opening doors so the pressure I felt to switch wasn’t so great.”

O’Farrell was a magnet school, Underwood a highly accomplished student, so she had a handful of choices of high schools in which to enroll. Hence, the letter-writing campaign.

“Some of the responses I got said, “Look, we’ve got a softball team and we’d prefer you play softball — if you’re good enough to make the team,” said Underwood. “La Jolla was one of the schools that said it would give me a fair shot. Coach (Bob) Allen said, “Yeah, if you’re good enough, you can play baseball for us.’ “

Underwood, who was all-everything as a La Jolla volleyball player and three-time all-league selection in basketball, played second base (and pitched) two years of JV ball and two years with the Vikings varsity.

Understandably, she figured she’d left baseball behind when heading off to play volleyball at Carolina, where she became a Tar Heels team captain and Most Valuable Player of the ACC tournament. (Also among her honors as a UNC senior was tournament MVP at the University of San Diego Invitational.) With no real chance to play baseball, Underwood got her fix in the game by coaching Little League for a couple years in Chapel Hill.

By happenstance, though, USA Baseball decided 11 years ago to establish a Women’s National Team. Underwood’s in her ninth season with the program.

“Malaika Underwood is the ageless wonder,” said WNT manager Jonathan Pollard. He added, “She’s like an extension to the coaching staff at this point. She plays the game the right way, leads by example and she knows when to step in and be a vocal leader. She’s the face of women’s baseball.”

Rivera is one of the newcomers, to say the least. Admittedly, she had barely ever held a baseball before last January, and she hadn’t played fast-pitch softball since college. Her coach at NDSU pitched Rivera’s name to a USA Baseball official putting together tryouts for the national women’s baseball team in Houston.

Making an impression in tryouts with her infield skills and switch-hitting, Rivera survived a second cut to join Team USA in a March tournament in the Dominican Republic, which is where the Americans qualified for the first Pan Am Games to include women’s baseball.

The U.S. defeated Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the host D.R., Puerto Rico, Cuba and Venezuela again for the tourney title. The latter, along with Puerto Rico, Cuba and Canada, also will be playing in Toronto.

“From the stories I’ve been hearing from the veteran girls, the Pan Ams are so much more than the tournaments they’ve played,” said Rivera, 24, who’s an assistant softball coach at Valhalla High. “It’s like the Olympics in the way they have an athletes village and so many other sports to see.”

In preparation for the Pan Ams, Team USA has been training and playing exhibitions in Cooperstown, N.Y., but the squad did take a side-trip to New York City for on-field introductions at Yankee Stadium.