No Laughing Matter : Silver Bullets Show They Can Brawl With the Guys

Kim Braatz-Voisard held her temper in check. Even after she was hit by a pitch, the Colorado Silver Bullet outfielder stayed calm. Then the pitcher laughed at her, and she lost it--prompting an all-out brawl.

“If they were playing with guys, the same thing would have happened,” teammate Tamara Ivie said. “We just didn’t want to say, ‘Well, we’re girls . . . .’ ”

It was inevitable.

After four years of trying to show that they can play baseball just like the men, the Silver Bullets women’s team showed they can brawl like them too.

The bench-clearing melee came Wednesday night in Albany as Colorado trailed, 10-6, with two outs and nobody on in the ninth inning against the Americus Travelers, the state champions in the Georgia Recreation and Parks 18-and-under league.

“Their catcher was mouthing off the whole game,” Braatz-Voisard said Friday. “After the second pitch in the last inning, I turned to him and told him to be quiet and play the game.

“The very next pitch hit me. I thought it was pretty obvious what had happened,” she said. “I was angry and frustrated and stepped to walk toward first base. I looked at the pitcher [Greg Dominy] and he started laughing at me. That’s when I lost it.”

As she headed for the mound, players from both team weren’t far behind.

“It’s not something we wanted to do, it was something that happened,” Ivie said. “If you compare it to the major leagues, when a player gets hit, it’s like almost an everyday thing. It doesn’t get blown out of proportion.”