Does this Japanese baseball pitcher intimidate you?

Well she should because she is a good enough pitcher to become the first female drafted to play professional baseball anywhere:

A 16-year-old schoolgirl with a mean knuckleball has been selected as the first woman ever to play alongside the men in Japanese professional baseball.

Eri Yoshida was drafted for a new independent league that will launch in April, drawing attention for a side-armed knuckler that her future manager Yoshihiro Nakata said was a marvel.

“I never dreamed of getting drafted,” Yoshida told reporters Monday, a day after she was selected to play for the Kobe 9 Cruise.

“I have only just been picked by the team and have not achieved anything,” she said. “I want to play as a pro eventually in a higher league.”

Yoshida, 155 centimetres (five feet) tall and weighing 52 kilograms (114 pounds), says she wants to follow in the footsteps of the great Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.

A female professional baseball federation existed for a few years in the 1950s, but Yoshida will become Japan’s first-ever woman to play alongside professional male players.  [AFP]

Here is a picture of her at the press conference showing everyone her knuckleball grip:

She apparently attended on open try out for the league on November 4th and struck out the first batter she faced, walked the second, and got the next two out in her one inning of work.  It was impressive enough that she was drafted two weeks later.

Her fastball is only in the upper 60’s which means she must pretty much rely entirely on her knuckleball to get batters out.  I couldn’t find any video of her pitching to see how impressive her knuckleball is but judging from the above picture of her pitching, her submarine delivery of a knuckleball is definitely unusual.  It will be interesting to see how she will be used in the professional league once she is ready to play.