Monica Abbott - The Million Dollar Baby
SOFTBALL - PITCHER - TEAM USA -
NATIONAL PRO FASTPITCH - SCRAP YARD DAWGS
ARCHETYPE: THE MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Day 67/135
Athletic Accomplishments
From high school to college through her pro career, Monica Abbott has been the most dominant pitcher in softball.
In high school, she averaged more than 300 strikeouts per season, leading her team to three division titles and winning countless individual state, conference, county, and section MVP awards.
At the University of Tennessee, Abbott truly dominated—a four-time All-American who set NCAA Division I records for wins (189), strikeouts (2,440), shutouts (112), and innings pitched (1,448).
She holds the single season record for strikeouts, ringing up 724 batters in her senior season, where she also threw 23 no-hitters and 6 perfect games. For her remarkable 2007 season, she won the USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year, the Honda Award, and the Women's Sports Foundation Sportswoman of the Year award for Team Sports athletes.
As a pro, Abbott is living up to the hype and having one helluva career.
6× Japan Softball League Champion
5× Japan Softball League MVP
2008 Olympic Silver Medalist
3× World Champion Gold Medalist
2× Pan American Gold Medalist
5× National Pro Fastpitch Champion
4× NPF MVP
5× NPF Pitcher of the Year
9x All-NPF Selection
Oh, AND Abbott is the first person to ever pitch a perfect game in Olympic History. I mean, come on. It’s madness.
But just for fun, let’s throw in her Guinness Book of Records fastest softball pitch of all time at 77mph…
By comparison, making contact with a 77mph pitch from a softball pitcher’s mound (43 feet) would require faster reaction time than a 100mph fastball from a baseball pitcher’s mound (60 feet, 6 inches). So, yeah. She’s throwing heat.
Character Archetype: The Million Dollar Baby
The National Pro Fastpitch league has a paltry $150,000 salary cap… not just for one player… but to allocate across an entire 18-person team.
But when a player has a golden arm like four-time NPF MVP Monica Abbott—throwing the fastest pitch ever recorded, pitching perfect games, and straight DEALING—you get a little creative.
That’s how the Scrap Yard Dawgs signed Abbott to the first $1 million deal in NPF history. Like Abbott’s screaming hot fastball, the 2016 deal was designed to grab attention, and to challenge what is possible within women’s sports. In 1979, Nolan Ryan was the first million dollar player in the majors, and would ya just look at those big fat MLB contracts now?
Everything is impossible until it isn’t.