Taking a break from the Twins, I thought I'd articulate an idea I've been running around in my head for the last year or so.

Jackie Robinson, we all know that name -- the man who broke the color line in baseball, the man whose number was universaly retired, venerated even now and of course a damn good player. Baseball is my favorite sport, only soccer has the kind of international appeal that baseball has, and especially with the birth of the WBC (which I fully support) it's become a truly international game.

The barriers beside  talent and poor management skills are falling. There are increasing numbers of players coming over from Japan and Korea, from Europe and it's expanding in Central Asia as well hopefully displacing Crickett (boring to watch, and astonishingly, even MORE boring to play, sorry Crickett fans.)

The Women's College World Series just finished up in Oklahoma as well, Arizona swept Northwestern and the ladies took home another title putting them that much closer to UCLA's record of softball titles. I must confess, I was rooting for Northwestern because it was their first time.

So can you guess where I'm going now? Maybe. There is one line that baseball has yet to cross and if it did, it would be a blockbuster. That's right, the gender line. I still can't figure out how to make the extended entry work, but here goes.

Remember a cool baseball story from last year? A little league pitcher pitches a perfect game, with 18 strikeouts! The story garnered extra attention because the pitcher was a girl. Even if she wasn't a fluke, when she gets to highschool the coaches will politely ask her to play softball. While there are girls who play on highschool teams, it's still not common and nearly unheard of in college.

Why? I think it's because by the time of college (and maybe highschool) most girls are used to the softball system. I imagine it would be as difficult for a person to switch from softball to baseball as it would be the otherway around. It could eventually be done  but not without a lot of work. Of course there's also an argument that highschool boys would sexually harass any girl on their team or that it would break team unity, but I for one, would not have been threatned if girls had been added to my highschool sports teams so its difficult for me to understand that particular objection.

One of the (few) things I liked about Moneyball, was that the use of the SABR system was a new way to evaluate players and find value in some players the traditional system overlooked.

This could be an untapped reservoir of talent, and I for one, wonder if MLB teams could exploit it. If some organization, either one that needed to generate publicity (say, like Tampa Bay) or one with budget constraints (hint hint, Twins!) quietly began to construct a system to draft females along with males...

Of course, you'd need a solid baseball programs at the highschool level (at the least) to be able to find women with the talent to be selected to minor league teams, but as something that might pay dividends it's something that I would rally behind and there IS the American Women's Baseball Federation and the Women's International Baseball Association. In recent years these organizations have been actively increasing the numbers of female ball players. Perhaps some offers could be made to some of the better players there to place them in minor league systems.

I understand that this would be a huge opening to criticism. "Why are you wasting team resources buiilding a farm system for girls? What if you can't sign some great start because you spent all this money on that? What can you hope to accomplish?"

Due to physical differences I don't think women will approach parity to men in baseball, but I don't see why a solid minority couldn't hold their own with occasional stars. I guess in the end, I'm aruging for "let 'em play and see what happens!"