In a nail-biting pitcher’s duel today, it took the US softball team extra innings to defeat Japan.
If you follow softball, you can probably name some players on the team. If you don’t, you might be able to name one.
Jennie Finch may be the face of women’s softball but it is U.S. team mate Crystl Bustos whose heart provides the beat for the most dominating team at the Beijing Games.
While Finch and many of her team mates look as if they just walked out of swimsuit photo shoot (Finch turned down an offer to pose for Playboy), Bustos’s allure is on the baseball diamond and she makes no apologies for it. (Guardian)
So if Jennie Finch is the face, Crystl Bustos is the body, right? Well, no, because they not-so-subtly suggest here that it’s her teammates (not her) that look like they could pose in swimsuits. And why would she apologize for doing her thing on the field?
Looking as if she could bench press any one of her team mates with her thick tattooed arms, Bustos admits she was well known to local police growing up in California and was a regular visitor to the principal’s office for fighting.
So…she’s scary and mean and therefore a bad role model and that’s why she can’t be the face of softball?
But the woman Sport Illustrated as labelled the Babe Ruth of softball, is by all accounts a slugger with a heart of gold.
“She is probably the most giving, caring person I have ever met in this game,” U.S. coach Mike Candrea told Reuters. “She gives back much more than she ever takes from this game.
Oh. Well, hmm…she really seems to be the total package on and off the field. What’s stopping Bustos from being the next face of USA softball?
See if you can guess from the following tidbits:
With her bruising physique and pulverizing swing, she’s been called softball’s Babe Ruth — with a braided ponytail. (NBC Olympics)
Bustos was born to hit, and no woman in the history of softball has ever hit home runs like she has. A skinny, left-handed slap hitter as a kid, Bustos made herself a power hitter through hard work. (NBC Olympics)
And on a team of women with sculpted bodies and refined features, the robust, 5-foot-7 Bustos stands out — and not just because of her tattoos. She’s the center on a squad of quarterbacks and running backs. (NBC Olympics)
For years, she has been painted in one dimension, as a bruising basher, the Babe Ruth of softball, a top-heavy woman wielding a wicked stick. She is an attention grabber, mostly because of her towering home runs and partly because she stands out among teammates that generally look as if they could have belonged to the same sorority. (NY Times)
Okay, and this one probably gives it away:
If you’ve seen even a moment of softball highlights, you’ve probably noticed Bustos, who is listed at 225 pounds, appears to weigh significantly more than that, and packs serious power at the plate. (Fanhouse)
These articles don’t exactly dance around the fact that Bustos isn’t skinny. They do this by talking about her strong arms, a physical feature that most softball players have. They use words like “thick,” “bruising,” and “robust.” They compare her to her teammates. They compare them in such a way that insults all involved, by focusing on their physical characteristics and reducing most of them to just “pretty faces,” rather than the world-class athletes that they are.
Crystl Bustos is the best example of an Olympian that there is, as evidenced by the praise of her teammates and her performance on the field. She comes through in clutch moments and is the epitome of a professional athlete. She will do more for softball off the field, by reaching out to kids and being herself, than any swimsuit spread could do. The fans that are drawn in my the photo spread don’t stick around; they move on to the next trendy “face of the game.” Real sports fans know that it isn’t faces that win games, it’s hearts.
Photo by Elaine Thompson/Associated Press
Noticing the Gap 