#dove is a garbage ass coach is also a sub-thesis of this post. and i need the world to know

[suchacomet]

exactly all of this! just to add on

re: forkball, this is a little bit of mashing real history with the fictional show so this could be a little bit of a stretch but bear with me.

so first off, let’s talk baseball vs. softball in the context of the AAGPBL. there’s quite a few key differences between the two sports that i won’t go into here (but i could go on for HOURS), but the largest differences are 1) pitching style and 2) ball size. actually, despite being advertised as playing baseball, for the first year the AAGPBL pitched underhand.

obviously, the players are pitching overhand in ALOTO, so we know we’re not 100% historically accurate here, but there is something important to note:

they’re playing with softballs, not baseballs.

i don’t know how easy it is to tell for people who aren’t familiar, but that ball in lupe’s glove is WAY too big to be a regulation size baseball.

and here, you can see that lupe is using a three-finger grip on the ball, partially because she’s pitching a fastball, but also because you need three fingers to get a good grip on a ball that size.

and just to confirm, the AAGPBL wiki says:

for visual reference, this is the size difference between a baseball and a softball:

i grew up playing softball, while my brother played baseball, and any time we played catch with each other we fought about which ball we would throw. because throwing a baseball vs. a softball isn’t just about the weight. the size difference and the different grips completely change how you have to throw the ball.

what does this have to do with lupe and dove?

well, dove played baseball. men’s professional baseball. which means that he was throwing a regulation size, 9″ circumference baseball. this fact isn’t established in the show, dove never makes a comment about ball sizes or base distances or any difference between the game he played and the game the AAGPBL is playing, so i’ll admit i’m stretching text-based analysis a little bit here. however:

bottom left of this image is a forkball grip on a baseball. now look at dove teaching lupe the grip on the ball she’s been pitching with - a 12″ diameter ball

even when he’s showing her the grip, he can’t hold it the way you’re supposed to, with the ball snug at the base of your fingers. because you can’t fit a ball that size there. and anyone who could would be straining hard. i don’t think there’s a good shot comparing the hand sizes between dove and lupe, but given their height difference i think it’s safe to say that lupe’s hand would be smaller than dove’s, even if only slightly.

sorry for the blurry screenshots but LOOK! she physically can’t get the proper grip on the ball! there’s no way she could hold the ball in a way to get the forkball grip right because the ball is too big. like @donteatthefishtacos​ said above, the fact that she’s able to get the ball across the plate with a flimsy slippery grip like that says more about her fucking powerhouse arm than anything else

also, can you even imagine the strain that grip would put on your tendons, especially in your forearm? especially between your wrist and your elbow? no wonder lupe tweaked her elbow, she was being set up by dove with a form that could only ever be harmful.

that’s what i meant when i said the forkball was never going to work for lupe. even if she practiced the pitch every day until she mastered the technique, the mere physics of the size of the ball relative to her fingers means that she would never be able to pitch it properly.

aside from this dynamic setting up lupe’s early dynamic on the team re: carson and dove, the main reason i choose to treat this as canon is because it offers a delicious metaphor for dove and lupe.

dove obviously sees taking lupe under his wing as his last shot at having a legacy, and he sees that being tied up in the forkball. but that doesn’t mean he respects lupe, or even sees her as a full person. we see that in the scene where they’re being interviewed by the press, but really it’s dove talking about himself, giving lupe racist nicknames, and referring to her like she’s a cute little pet he’s training or something.

then, when lupe is unable to throw the forkball (which she is in all likelihood physically unable to ever do), dove keeps pushing her, telling her to try over and over again instead of doing what a coach should to and play to her strength - her goddamn zinger of a fastball.

(also side note, but baseball in general is a sport where you get in your head really easily, and it’s especially bad for pitchers. carson talked about getting the yips, a mental block where pitchers can’t seem to get a ball across the plate, and they’re fucking real. the last thing you ever want to do as a coach is to keep having your pitcher throw a pitch that isn’t working. not only are you gonna keep getting hit on, you’re gonna cause your pitcher to spiral further and further until... well)

and then, in a moment of self-advocacy and care for her body that should be respected in an athlete, lupe tells dove her elbow is tweaked, probably from the forkball - and he dismisses and belittles her pain. maybe because he thinks as a woman she’s being hysterical, maybe because he sees women of color’s pain as unimportant/holds the racist notion that people of color have higher pain tolerances, or maybe because he’s just a self-centered asshole who cares more about his legacy than the health of the person he ostensibly chose to carry it on.

either way, dove pushes lupe too hard. lupe, because she’s been cherry-picked by dove and ostracized by the rest of the team, has no choice but to keep throwing the pitch that’s fucking up her arm (read @moghedien s excellent post here about lupe’s position on the team and her relationship with dove, i agree 100%)

and then, and fucking then, dove gets to go coach the orioles, leaving lupe high and dry while she’s benched from an injury that, for all intents and purposes, dove gave her. it’s a perfect representation of dove as a white man using lupe, a mexican-american masc-presenting woman to re-bolster his career, almost entirely at her expense, and giving her nothing in return but pain. it’s fucking infuriating. it makes me so outraged on lupe’s behalf, and for me at least adds a lot of context to lupe’s emotional state surrounding her conflict and eventual fight with carson. it’s unspoken and systemically engrained, the way that misogyny and racism often is. and even if this wasn’t intentional on the writers’ parts, the fact that something so mundane as a difference in the size of the ball having such a strong but subtle impact on lupe and her story is so good from a storytelling standpoint

this also leads into why the fastball signal moment between lupe and carson in the last episode means so much to me, but this post is already stupid long so i’ll talk about that somewhere else.

sorry not to flex my jock privilege but some of the tags y’all are leaving on my aloto posts are making me laugh. wdym y’all don’t know anything about baseball do you realize how much you’re missing? did you get that dove’s forkball was never gonna work for lupe? did you miss the beautiful moment of lupe asking carson for a sign in the final game and carson giving a one? do you get how fucking much it reveals about lupe that she’s a phenomenal pitcher AND a good hitter?