These young girls are smashing the baseball patriarchy with their real-life “A League of Their Own”

We never totally understood the divide between baseball and softball for boys and girls. There’s nothing inherently “girly” about softball, and yet most young girls get pushed into the sport shortly after t-ball years. But the Girls Traveling Baseball team doesn’t want to be shoved into that box just because they are female.

Thanks to reporting by Bleacher Report, we learned that Girls Traveling Baseball, aka GTB, was started because two dads realized there wasn’t a lot of room for their baseball-loving daughters in the sport. Robert Saven proposed an all-girls baseball team to friend Josh DeVinny and GTB was born. Two years later, the team has 42 girls playing for three different teams in tournaments across the country.

The girls of GTB love baseball, and they needed a place where they could play.

GTB is the only all-girl youth travel baseball team in the country. And even though most girls get pushed out of baseball, these girls have big dreams. Aubrey Evans, a 13-year-old GTB player who’s been playing baseball since she was four, admits that she’s in this to break barriers.

Aubrey told Bleacher Report, "I want to make MLB. I know that's a big dream, but I know we can. We can do it."

We think they can do it too, and if they do, we’ll be SO happy to see our A League of Their Own dreams come true.

But smashing home runs and gender stereotypes comes with some difficulties.

Aubrey admitted that plenty of the all-boy teams have a definite reaction to seeing their girl power squad.

Aubrey said, "Everyone looks at us weird, and they're like, 'Oh, a bunch of girls. We can beat them.' Then once they see us actually beating them, they start to get scared."

Unfortunately, the girls are still facing an uphill battle in their quest to play. The girls saw three teams in one tournament drop out once they learned they were playing against girls, so the GTB coaches started submitting rosters with only the girls’ first initials, to hide their gender. The girls also feel like they face more unsportsmanlike conduct, like showboating or getting pitches thrown at them.

GTB has tried to create a pathway for girls onto the United States women’s national baseball team. And many girls who once saw high school or college ball as a pipe dream now have bigger plans than that. Kate Maston told her dad that she wants to play in the major leagues. Knowing how difficult that might be, he told her that no one had ever done that. Kate, like her friend Aubrey, didn’t let that deter her. She said, “Good. I’m going to be the first.”

And honestly, we hope she’s right. Because in breaking down barriers, these girls are all knocking it out of the park.