Female Pitcher’s Debut Is a Big Winner : Baseball: Ila Borders takes shutout into eighth as first woman to pitch in collegiate game.

The young woman walked across the grass and construction workers in a nearby lot stopped their hammering and began to gawk.

The young woman walked to the top of a small slope, paused, looked around and threw the small object she was carrying in her left hand.

Curveball low to Gabe Rosenthal, ball one.

Ila Borders took a deep breath, reared back and threw again.

Called strike, on the outside corner.

“Attagirl!” rang a voice from the crowd milling around, a crowd of nearly 300, and Ila Borders threw one more time.

CLANK!

A high fly ball to center field, a routine fly, a can of corn, a piece of cake. Ken Turner, the Southern California College center fielder, squeezed it and history had been made at Costa Mesa.

Ila Borders, the first woman to pitch in an NCAA baseball game, had retired the first man she faced.

It was an amazing moment--amazing just to see Borders out there, in her blue and white pin-striped cap, surrounded by eight male teammates and decades of tradition that held that this was a man’s game, no girls allowed, shouldn’t you be keeping score or something?

But it would soon be eclipsed by another amazing moment, and another, through nine innings and 104 pitches and 27 outs and the incredible final score:

Southern California College 12, Claremont-Mudd 1.

Winning pitcher: Borders (1-0). That’s what it will say in the box score, now and forever, a simple notation that will stand as one of the greater understatements.

Yes, on the afternoon of Tuesday, Feb. 15, 1994, Ila Borders pitched and won. She also retired the first 10 batters she faced, took a shutout into the eighth inning, threw a complete game and restricted Claremont-Mudd to a meager total of nine baserunners--five hits, three walks, one error.

And, two strikeouts.

She gave up one home run.

“She’s a good pitcher,” Rosenthal said of the 5-10, 165-pounder. “She threw a lot of junk . . . (but) she’s always around the dish. “I think she’ll do well. She’ll win again.”

Winning once made SCC, a small Christian college in Costa Mesa that competes on the NAIA level, a media hub for one day.

“I definitely feel like this is a beginning for me,” she said. “I don’t know where my ability is going to level off. I don’t know who will give me the chance to pitch in the pros. But I am not going to look back when I’m 60 and say, ‘I wish I would have tried.’ ”