Meredith McFadden stuck with her first love, baseball, and achieved something no woman had before
By Anna Katherine Clemmons
At 13, growing up in southwest Charlotte, Meredith McFadden was ordering her baseball gear when she had an idea. Her Southwest Middle School teammates, all boys, had their last names stitched onto the backs of their team sweatshirts. Meredith chose something different: “The Girl.”
“I fully leaned into it,” Meredith says. “I was just ‘the girl.’”
It’s how people have identified Meredith, now 22, throughout her baseball career. In May, she graduated from the University of South Carolina Athletics, having accomplished a collegiate baseball landmark: Meredith was the first female bullpen catcher for a Power Five baseball team.
She didn’t take the diamond during games but practiced with the Gamecocks and was on the roster. She wants to stay in the game, too: Meredith has worked for an MLB team as a summer intern, attended MLB winter meetings, and narrowly missed making the Top 20 roster for the USA Baseball Women’s National team. As of this writing in May, she planned to try again in August.
She continues to play baseball, a men’s sport, at a time when interest soars for both amateur and professional women’s sports. Viewership of the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game surpassed that of the men’s final for the first time in history. The Women’s College World Series in softball drew 2.5 million viewers, 24% more than in 2023. The WNBA is more popular than at any time in its nearly 30-year history. All of that means advertising dollars: a record $244 million for women’s sports in 2024, a 139% increase from the previous year.
Yet Meredith, who recognizes the larger importance of what she’s done, says that’s not what drives her. “I’m not trying to do it for the headline, the attention, or to be ‘the girl doing the guy thing,’” Meredith says. “This is just what I want to do.”
Meredith’s first baseball memory was at the fields with her big brother. Colin began baseball in the Steele Creek Athletic Association, and Meredith, three years younger, tagged along. She idolized Colin; if he was playing baseball, that’s what she’d do. Meredith started T-ball at age 4; the next year, girls started switching to softball. Meredith didn’t. Says her mother, Heather: “She’s just always loved baseball.”
Meredith played with the same Little League program from age 5 through 17. Occasionally, she’d have a female teammate or face a girl on an opposing team. But it was rare.
Sometimes, other parents approached Meredith’s parents, Heather and Mike. They’d remind them that boys would start throwing harder and faster, and that it might be “dangerous” for Meredith. But her parents didn’t push her toward softball or ask her to quit.
Colin remembers a game when Meredith was 9 or 10. She was playing shortstop, and the opposing team had a runner on first. As he tried to steal second and the catcher threw the ball, Meredith covered second, caught the ball, and “tagged” the runner. “She clotheslined him like a quarterback getting sacked,” Colin says. The runner fell down and started crying. At the inning’s turnover, Meredith’s coaches suggested that she ease up.
Meredith played catcher and second base, and she suffered bruises from pitches that hit her. But she kept going. “I knew if I showed any weakness,” she says, “they’d be like, ‘that’s why she shouldn’t be here.’” She studied and analyzed the game—how pitchers pitched, how batters hit, the tactics and fundamentals.
When Meredith was 11, Heather saw a Facebook group organizing 100 girls nationwide for an all-girls baseball tournament. She signed Meredith up with a team from North and South Carolina: the Carolina Terminators. Meredith was hesitant. “I was like, ‘I know how to interact with boys on the baseball field,’” she says. “I’ve never played with other girls. I had no clue what to expect.” They traveled to Orlando, where the Terminators won the tournament.
Meredith played for Southwest Middle before she moved on to Olympic High School. She was 5-foot-4 and 105 pounds her freshman year and competed for a roster spot alongside boys who, in most instances, were taller, stronger, and faster.
he made the Junior Varsity team her freshman and sophomore years. The girls’ softball coach approached her, asking if she’d like to try out. No, thank you, she replied. Her sophomore year brought a new varsity head coach, Tommy Small. When he saw Meredith sitting amongst the players at his introductory meeting, Small thought, Awesome—we have a student manager already.
Then she participated in the team’s first workout. “I was like, ‘Holy cow, she’s a player—and she’s really good,’” Small said. She made the varsity squad. “She was the best defensive catcher I’ve ever had,” Small says, “as far as catching, receiving, and understanding the game.”
Charlie Warnke and Meredith were Olympic High teammates. “We all respected her, and we listened to her,” Warnke says. “There was no guy or girl—she was just one of the teammates.”
Still, she had difficult moments. Meredith was often alone in the women’s locker room while the boys were in the men’s. Sometimes, she could hear them through the wall, laughing and telling jokes. “It sucked, but it’s just a matter of, ‘This is what I signed up for,’” she says. By her junior year, she’d received interest from several Division II and III baseball programs. But Meredith had one school in mind.
Several of her family members attended USC, her dream school. She knew she likely wouldn’t make the playing roster. The first woman to play NCAA baseball (not Division I) was Susan Perabo at Webster University in 1987; the first to play at the Division I—but not Power Five—level was Olivia Pichardo, who pinch-hit for Brown University in March 2023. (The Power Five group of conferences has now dwindled to four with the effective collapse of the Pac-12.)
During a Zoom call in 2020 with an MLB Development initiative, a mentor suggested Meredith try out as a bullpen catcher, who catches the ball for pitchers to warm up during practice and before games. She emailed USC’s then-head baseball coach, Mark Kingston, a former UNC standout who played five seasons of professional baseball, with her playing resume and video clips. Kingston thanked her for her interest and asked her to keep in touch. The summer before her sophomore year, a member of the USC baseball staff sent a DM on Instagram. “Do you still want to be a bullpen catcher?” he asked. “If so, come to Founders Park in two days for tryouts.”
Meredith drove to Columbia the next day. Rumor had spread that a girl was trying out, and players and coaches showed up to watch. She was assigned to catch Jack Mahoney, now a pitcher in the Colorado Rockies organization, who threw in the 90-to-95-mph range. Later that day, she was offered a spot as one of the team’s three bullpen catchers.
That fall, Meredith says she tried to “lay low.” Still, when the 2023 season started, fans flocked to Founders Park to see “the girl.” Her family heard fans ask: “Is that a girl down there?”
“I don’t think people understand how much the odds are stacked against me,” Meredith says. “If a guy misses a ball, it’s ‘bad pitch.’ If I miss a ball, that’s it for me. I’m not trying to do it for any other reason besides, I love baseball, and I want to be a part of it.”
Paul Mainieri took over as USC’s head coach in June 2024. He met the team during his opening press conference. As he walked down the line of players, he reached McFadden. “Hi, I’m Meredith,” she told him, “and I’m a bullpen catcher.”
“I did a double-take,” Mainieri says. “I’ve had female student managers, but never a female bullpen catcher. I said to her, ‘You catch our pitchers?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I was like, ‘Wow.’”
When fall ball began, Mainieri watched her catch and throw long toss in the outfield. Her arm was strong, and her throws and catches were accurate. She didn’t flinch behind the plate. “I don’t really think of her as a female catching,” Mainieri says. “I just see her as a bullpen catcher who does a good job. She’s awesome.”
In addition to catching and warming up pitchers, Meredith kept track of line-ups and pitch counts. She set up the bullpen and helped with any task the team needed. “A few times, I’ve told her, ‘Meredith, you don’t have to do this,’” says USC pitching coach Terry Rooney. “But it’s just the way she is.”
Her impact has extended beyond the field. Young girls often asked her for autographs and photos. Old men approached the bullpen and told her they were proud. “That means so much because they probably have a traditional mindset,” Meredith says, “especially at a college program that’s so historic.”
Meredith hopes to work for an MLB team. She’s already made connections: Meredith met several Baltimore Orioles executives at the 2023 MLB winter meetings as part of the league’s Take the Field initiative, which is designed for women interested in front office and on-field careers in professional baseball. In June 2024, the Orioles director of player development, Anthony Villa, texted Meredith to ask about her summer plans.
The Orioles asked Meredith to work in their Dominican Republic Academy as a player development intern. Two days later, she flew to the DR. The academy had one bullpen catcher and 40 pitchers, so in addition to her other duties, Meredith, now 5-foot-6, became the second bullpen catcher. Initially, the players were scared to throw the ball hard. But once they saw her skills, they didn’t hold back. She was the first woman to hold an on-field position with the Orioles.
“It was pretty cool to be able to break that barrier,” Meredith says. Most of the Dominican players, she says, had trouble pronouncing “McFadden” or “Meredith.” They referred to her as “La Niña”: The Girl.