Claire Eccles' Leap to West Coast League Is a Giant Step for Women's Baseball​

A 19-year-old left-handed Canadian pitcher has made history.

Claire Eccles, who signed with the Victoria HarbourCats, will become the first woman to ever suit up in the West Coast League, an 11-team circuit that attracts top collegiate baseball players in North America along with several legitimate MLB prospects to its ranks each year. The summer league, which has teams in both the United States and Canada, has produced many noteworthy players, including Orioles slugger Chris Davis, Yankees outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, and Mariners pitcher James Paxton.

Eccles has a big challenge ahead of her in the competitive WCL without the overpowering stuff many of her teammates and rivals will surely possess. But what Eccles lacks in size—she stands 5'8" tall—and power, she makes up for between the ears, according to her collegiate head coach at the University of British Columbia Gord Collings.

"She trusts herself and her abilities. She's a great athlete. She has a competitive temperament that I feel will help her dramatically when she hits the mound. She's a competitor," Collings told VICE Sports.

"There hasn't ever been a female baseball player in Canada that is gonna face the challenges she will. She's tough and she's competitive and it will be great to watch."

Eccles, who is from Surrey, British Columbia, has excelled in collegiate softball at UBC as an outfielder while becoming one of the top hurlers with Canada's National Women's Baseball Team. At only 19 years old, she has already pitched in the last two Women's World Cups and also at the 2015 Pan Am Games, where she helped Canada earn a silver medal on home soil. She joined the National Team in 2014 as a 16-year-old, the minimum age allowed.

Though Eccles' is a multi-sport, dual-positional threat who can also hit, she'll be going to Victoria as a pitcher, with a fastball that runs in the low 70s that's complemented by her off-speed breaking stuff.

Her 'knuckleball,' which has garnered a lot of attention, is more of a knuckle-curve than a true knuckler like that of veteran Braves pitcher R.A. Dickey, and serves her well in keeping hitters honest, but it's not her primary pitch. According to Andre Lachance, head coach of the Canadian Women's National Team, she uses the knuckle-curve about 20 percent of the time, with a sharp curveball serving as Eccles' primary weapon.

"She's a control and location pitcher. She's very effective with her curveball. She's having success because she can throw the curveball in there, she can throw a fastball in there, or she can toss her knuckle-curve in there, too, and really keep the hitter off balance," Lachance told VICE Sports.

Despite coaching her as an outfielder in softball the past two seasons, Collings has seen what kind of impact Eccles can have with a hardball in her hand, even when just fooling around with her UBC teammates.

"She had a number of the girls intrigued when she was just messing around with a hardball at practice. And her ball dances, I mean it really dances around. I was watching her throw to some of the girls last season, she had them trying to catch her knuckleball, it was quite a sight," he said.

Eccles has done a lot in the game already, but becoming the first woman to play in the WCL was not something she had on her radar. She wasn't convinced it was actually happening when she first got the call, either.

"I was obviously a little skeptical," Eccles recently told the CBC. "You have to wonder: 'Is this just for their own publicity?' [HarbourCats general manager Brad Norris-Jones] said I'd get fair opportunities and it's not just for show."

Lachance is also adamant that this isn't a stunt in any way, saying he believes the young hurler will have an important role coming out of the HarbourCats' bullpen. The team feels she can be most effective when coming in the game after a pitcher with good velocity or against lefties who often have difficulty handling Eccles' curveball.

Whether or not this historic move will have an immediate or drastic impact on women's baseball as a whole is yet to be seen, but Lachance is hoping it will at least bring some more recognition to a sport that many, frankly, don't even know exists.

"People are still mixing up softball and baseball, even though we have a Women's National [Baseball] Team that's ranked second in the world right now. We want to create awareness around that—that's the main thing for us. We just want people to talk about the fact that women's baseball exists," Lachance said.

Eccles' chance to be the first woman to ever throw a pitch in the WCL could come as early as June 1, when the HarbourCats open their 54-game schedule against, ironically enough, the Lefties from Port Angeles in Washington.