A 34-year-old feminine pitcher has damaged by baseball’s gender barrier by signing with an impartial males’s league staff, turning into the primary girl to play Canadian professional baseball.
“The Toronto Maple Leafs are honoured to announce the signing of Ayami Sato, one of the best pitchers in the world, who will make history as the first woman to play professional baseball in Canada!” the Maple Leafs introduced on social media.
Sato will take the mound for Toronto when the brand new Intercounty Baseball League (IBL) season kicks off in Might. The appropriate-hander will attempt to enhance on the 17-25 document the Maple Leafs completed with earlier this yr.
Sato beforehand led Japan to 5 Ladies’s Baseball World Cup titles between 2010 and 2018 and is arguably the highest feminine pitcher on the planet. She led Japan’s Ladies’s Baseball League in strikeouts in three of its final 4 seasons earlier than operations have been suspended in 2021, in keeping with the CBC.
Sato known as signing with the Maple Leafs “a dream come true.” She’ll be a part of a roster that features former skilled gamers from the U.S in addition to top-tier athletes from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
The phrases of Sato’s contract weren’t reported.
