Didn’t know we had pro softball here, but it’s cool that we do.
The new sports franchise debuting here this summer is appropriately named: the Houston Scrap Yard Dawgs.
After an eight-year absence, professional women’s fastpitch softball is coming back to Houston and will be based at an 82-acre complex that is erecting a 4,000-seat stadium near The Woodlands.
Yet two stars of the sport, Cat Osterman and Christa Willams-Yates – both University of Texas standouts and gold-medal Olympians from the Houston area – know the players on this team will have to be scrappers to succeed.
Williams-Yates, 37, who now coaches at Friendswood ISD, was a pitcher with a windmill arm that used to send the ball flying across the plate for the last pro-team based here, the Texas Thunder.
This franchise played three years in League City until its base operations were moved to Rockport, Ill., in 2007.
“I had a great experience playing in the pros,” said Williams-Yates, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, originally from Pasadena. “It was always a challenge. You are playing against the best players in the world. In college, they’re spread out, but now they’re concentrated together.”
Nonetheless, she won the pitcher’s triple crown in 2005 for her wins, strikeouts and earned run average while playing in the National Pro Fastpitch league. She quit after her team relocated to Illinois.
“The lack of media attention killed us in Houston. Nobody knew about us. I can count on one hand in my three years on the team that there was anything in the news about us,” Yates said.
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But while the National Pro Fastpitch league has struggled with rebrandings under two other names since its launching in 2004, Osterman and Willams-Yates believe the best years are ahead for this league.
They say the league has a new weapon: national TV coverage.
“We had consistent coverage this past year of our games. They were shown every Monday and Tuesday on the CBS sports network,” she said. “You could count on finding it there, which has helped grow awareness of the kind of excitement the game can generate.”
Men ages 35-55 are the primary audience for the NCAA world series in softball on ESPN, said the Scrap Yard’s general manager, Kevin Shelton.
I’m in that demographic. I enjoy watching the Women’s College World Series. It’s sort of like baseball, but very different in ways that make it really interesting to watch. I’m intrigued by a pro league in Houston, though having it out by The Woodlands dampens my enthusiasm a bit. I’m glad to see more opportunities for female professional athletes, and I wish the Scrap Yard Dawgs lots of success.
One of my daughters plays softball for northland. So obviously I am a fan and hope they do well.