Pretty cool article about

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...e=friend/050720

Before there was a Jennie Finch, there was an Amanda Whurlitzer.

Back in '76. Threw a spitball and a Vaseline ball. Sold maps-to-the-stars on days she didn't pitch. Went on to marry John McEnroe.

Amanda was the first of her kind. She broke the Little League gender barrier. She threw down postgame beers with her manager. She pitched a title game against the Yankees on no-days' rest. Could barely lift her elbow. Fortunately for her, she had a great center fielder/right fielder/left fielder/infielder behind her: Kelly Leak.

Bad news for anyone who picks up a bat: Sammi isn't afraid to throw inside.

Her team was called the Bears. They were Bad News. They had a fat boy playing catcher, a runt playing short, a Lupus in left and a manager with a hangover. It might have been fiction and Amanda (Tatum O'Neal) might have needed a stunt double, but it taught everybody a great lesson: It isn't whether you win or lose; it's whether you win or lose with a girl on the hill.

Thirty years later, we apparently need some reminding of that. Billy Bob Thornton and the writers of "Bad Santa" have remade "Bad News Bears" (opens nationwide on Friday); and when they went looking for an Amanda Whurlitzer, they found ? a real Amanda Whurlitzer.

Her name is Sammi Kane Kraft, and she actually quit her Little League team because of good old-fashioned discrimination. I thought we were beyond that. I thought a 12-year-old-girl in upstate New York just pitched a perfect game in May, striking out all 18 boys she faced. But Sammi says her Little League coaches in Toluca Lake, Calif., took one look at her pigtails and refused to give her the ball.

"They never let me pitch,'' she says. "Like, I was the relief pitcher after that relief pitcher after that relief pitcher. And then maybe I'd get to pitch one inning. Or one out. And that was it.

"So I said, 'Screw you.' And switched to softball.''

Those coaches must've been nuts. This girl can throw two-seam and four-seam fastballs. And a changeup. And a curve. And a slurve.

"And she's not afraid to throw inside,'' says her dad, Sheldon Kraft. "Because I taught her to.''

But the Little League coaches simply sent her to right field/Siberia.

"Because they wanted their sons to pitch,'' Sammi says. "Every dad who's a coach lets their son pitch, no matter how bad they are.''

So that appeared to be that. She switched to softball. And rather than pitch underhanded, she became a catcher.

"Because she was one of the only girls who could get it down to second base,'' her dad says.

She still preferred baseball, but nobody wanted a pitcher in pink sneakers. And it was the coaches who were blackballing her, not the boys. A classmate invited her to play with his team one day, and his genius coach said, "Come on, she's a girl.'' The classmate said, "She's OK; you might want to give her a chance.'' And the coach finally relented.

He batted her last. His reason: They were facing a 12-year-old power pitcher. Sammi laughed when she saw the batting order. She told her mom, LuLu, "I can hit anything.'' The game began; and one by one, the boys in front of her struck out. Then, she got up and tripled. The place was abuzz.

Around that time, word got out about the "Bad News Bears" remake. The casting directors were looking for a girl, any girl, who excelled at baseball. Someone who witnessed her triple gave her name and phone number to Paramount.

Paramount then called and asked for a head shot.

"We didn't have one,'' says Sammi's dad. "So we submitted her baseball card.''

Sammi Kraft and Billy Bob Thornton

With a manager like Billy Bob, who needs Joe Torre?

Intrigued, Paramount had her over for a reading. She brought a ball and a glove, and they had her pitch to the film's director, Richard Linklater.

"I made sure to watch the director's face when she started pitching,'' says Sheldon, "because she can pitch from the stretch, and she can pitch from a full windup. And she has a pickoff move. So there she is out there, straddling the rubber and looking around. She's spitting seeds. You should've seen his face.''

Says Sammi's mom: "Well, she's a ballplayer. A beautiful ballplayer.''

And that was the clincher. She was blonde like Amanda Whurlitzer, and cute like Amanda Whurlitzer, and had the trash mouth like Amanda Whurlitzer.

"She's more rude to boys than they are to her,'' her dad says.

In the end, the director, Linklater, held a half-hour pitching session with his four girl finalists, and eventually had Sammi play catch with Billy Bob, who plays Buttermaker, the Bears' coach.

"Being a pitcher myself, I tried to take it easy on her at first,'' says Thornton, who claims that as a 19-year-old, he attended a Kansas City Royals tryout camp. "But after a while, I realized this kid can catch the ball, throw the ball, you don't have to hold back. Now it's like I'm throwing to one of my buddies.''

The rest is history. Linklater chose Sammi, and now she's a baseball player again, starting Friday in theaters near you.

What a great lesson for everybody: It's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you've got an SAG card.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine.