This item was in Marcus Thompson's column in The Athletic. I'd never heard of Tamara Holmes before and thought you folks might enjoy it:
To this day, people try to correct Tamara Holmes. Even as they hear about her two gold medals with Team USA, even as they learn she played the outfield at Fenway Park, even as they get to know her home run milestones, they often stop her cold.
"You mean softball,'' they'll say.
No. She does not.
Holmes played baseball the hard stuff as early as Albany Little League, where she was an All-Star in 1986. Years later she hit the first home run in the history of the Colorado Silver Bullets, the barnstorming all-women's baseball team that played against mostly men's teams from 1994-97.
Holmes, a switch-hitter, hit that team's first homer in style. It was an inside-the-park grand slam on May 15, 1996, to spark a comeback victory at the University of Georgia's Foley Field. Later in that '96 season, she homered again, this time of the over-the-fence variety.
Nothing soft about that.
"Those were amazing days,'' the Berkeley High graduate and former Cal volleyball player recalled during an interview at her fire station long before the pandemic. "You're a professional player I got paid to play baseball. I got $20,000 a season. We got a per diem, free Coors Light and we got to play in major league baseball parks and just travel the world."
Holmes is now a captain at Oakland Fire Station #3. A documentary released last fall, and now available on Amazon Prime, means Holmes won't have to correct people so often.
"Hardball: The Girls of Summer," by director Matthew Temple, focuses on the U.S. Women's National Team as it chases a gold medal at the 2014 World Cup.
Baseball Prospectus, in its review of the film, called it "a love letter to women's baseball an educational and compelling look at the state of the game in the late 2010s." Their favorite scene is the one in which Team Japan salutes the retiring Holmes by lifting her up on their shoulders to give her a proper career sendoff.
While much of the film focuses on the struggles for female ballplayers, Holmes said in our interview that she had no such hurdles in the East Bay. When she went out for Albany Little League, she said, "there was no pushback. It was 'yes.' And at the time I don't even think I was the only girl."
Holmes didn't make the all-boys team at Albany High, but she doesn't blame sexism. "Being an idiot, I went out for a position I don't normally play,'' Holmes said. "It was almost like this self-conscious self-sabotage. I should have gone out for outfield."
After switching to Berkeley High, she played basketball and volleyball. But her career legacy allowed her to leave a mark. "Baseball for All,'' an organization that promotes baseball for girls, organized games in Albany last summer. They called it the Tamara Holmes Tournament.
In her speech to the players, Holmes told them: "Do you know how far this has come for you to look around and see an all-girls tournament?"
The movie has been out for a while, but if you need a sports fix....
https://theathletic.com/1818801/2020/05/17/quarantine-randomness-jimmie-ward-is-one-element-shy-of-joining-a-49ers-legacy/
