@Mr E - You just hit the nail on the head. There have been other trans women playing but none of y’all knew because they aren’t my size.

Science behind HRT says that once you’ve been on hormones for about 12 months you’ve lost almost all the advantage in strength you had from going through puberty as a male.

If I was 5’7 and 160 lbs, nobody would say a word. And at 6’1 and noneofyourbusiness lbs, I don’t hit it the hardest. I don’t hit it the furthest. I don’t play an impact position on defense.

People are upset about me being an above average womens player because I’m trans. They don’t see that Megan Baltzell is five times a better hitter than I am. She has 30+ home runs already. She’s incredible. Fi hits the ball better than I do. Brittany Cox does. CD did (miss her tons and tons), and the list goes on and on.

Not to mention, a lot of us play coed. It’s not like these girls aren’t playing against Conference level men (according to one commenter above) who hit the ball way harder and more consistently than I do.

Look, I’m not a scientist. I don’t know all this stuff from researching it and doing lab tests, etc.

What I can say is my strength is no where near what it was before I transitioned. My bench was 225 lbs for reps. Now it’s 135 lbs. my leg press was seven plates on each side - now it’s four. Five on a great day.

I’m an old, washed up athlete who just wants to compete. The rules for me to compete in slowpitch were that I had to have the F gender marker on my license. I didn’t have to go do anything because I’ve had the F on my license since before I played softball.

I go above and beyond what USSSA requires for me to compete because that’s how I feel best in my body. As someone above said, I take a testosterone blocker once a day, a female hormone replacement once a day, and an injection of estrogen once a week. This is what it would take to compete in the Olympics or the NCAA.

@Mr E - Thanks for the quality conversation and ask. I understand some people aren’t fans of the rules, but by the same token, I wouldn’t be a story if I wasn’t such a big human. And I still shouldn’t be a story because, as ive said above, I’m not dominating this sport. I’m not out here hitting nukes every AB or pissing middle.

People just need something to talk about and this week it’s me. That’s fine. It happens a couple times a year.

If everyone cares about womens ball so much, maybe we can get some of y’all out to watch these incredible athletes play in the tournaments and have some fans rather than just typing away on a keyboard acting like y’all actually care.

TheOldScout.com shares the brackets every tournament. For free. Don’t even have to pay for them. Maybe y’all could find your way over to the womens field and show them some love and allow them to play in front of more than 15 people and 3 concession stand employees.

Lastly, I’m not gonna reply to the majority of y’all because, yawn. But, Sonny, TM60, CPA, DJ19, MrE, and a few more - Y’all set a standard for me and made me where we didn’t have to agree (or you had my back) and we still had a reasonable discussion about it. Like I said before, we don’t have to agree in order to be respectful. Seems like a lot of our fellow citizens have forgotten that fact and has allowed the media in this country to further divide us rather than allow us to act like Americans used to where we could disagree and go about our day.

Best wishes, y’all.

- Jamie Neal