Sports

9-year-old sends MLB scrambling over sexist game

A 9-year-old softball player in suburban Chicago has successfully muted a sexist arcade game after calling out Chuck E. Cheese, the game manufacturers and Major League Baseball.

Marie Marcum was attending a school fundraiser at Chuck E. Cheese when she stepped up to an MLB-licensed throwing game to show off her throwing skills. But after missing one of the targets the game taunted her by saying, “Hey, there’s always softball!”

Marcum, who’s been playing softball since she was four, did not take the comment lightly.

“I was really mad,” she told ESPN. “It made me feel like they think softball is a bad sport and girls shouldn’t play softball. I just started throwing balls at the game as hard as I could. I thought it was rude.”





Marcum’s mother, Lisa, who teaches high school, heard her daughter’s frustrations and suggested she write a letter to Innovative Concepts in Entertainment (ICE), the game’s manufacturer.

“Here we are at Chuck E. Cheese, a place with so many impressionable little kids and we’re saying you throw like a girl or hit like a girl or whatever,” said Lisa. “I thought we had moved past that.”

Marcum’s uncle then suggested that, since the game was covered in MLB logos, she should also write a letter to the league.

On February 17, Marcum wrote both letters, and her mom posted a photo on Facebook.

Though MLB said it hadn’t yet received the letter, it released a statement on Wednesday: “MLB does not support the message conveyed in the game and we are reaching out to the company to share our concerns about it.”





The league added how much it appreciated Marcum’s passion for softball and that growing its youth softball program is as much a priority as youth baseball.

Also on Wednesday, the president of ICE, Joe Coppola, said the company manufactured the game in 2009 and 2010 through a licensing agreement with the MLB. He added that this was the first complaint the company has received.

“I completely understand where she is coming from,” Coppola said. “I get it. There is probably a greater sensitivity today than there was 10 or 15 years ago. It’s something we all need to pay attention to.”

Coppola said it would be easy to remove the audio clip from the game. In the meantime, Chuck E. Cheese has already muted the game in all its arcades.





“I’m just so proud of her,” Lisa said. “The one thing I hope she remembers from this is if there is something she feels strongly about in the future, she will remember that people want to hear her. If nothing else, this will encourage her to speak up.”

Marcum is currently waiting for spring when her 10U season with the Plainfield Twisters begins. But until then, she hopes to hit more home runs.

“I’m starting to wonder if there are other games like this that are rude or upsetting,” she said. “I might need to write some more letters.”





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