LOCALS ONLY: ERIKA PIANCASTELLI
I hate it when I’m at a home game and our team is
Down-defeat imminent- and the crowd starts to pan out. As if they’re too good to witness a loss, as if traffic isn’t going to be any better. As if their love is truly only conditional. I always wish to shout at them, tell them to stand up, cheer louder, stay in it. Our opponents are on our territory, in our hive. We should still hum for them. When we win, we don’t just celebrate the success of overcoming our opponent but for all our past selves that had to survive the many lessons in order to reach this moment. Winners are winners because they are relentless. Today, I spoke with Olympian softball player Erika Piancastelli.
*air horn*
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*Fan cam*
Piancastelli is a Titan by blood and spirit. Her parents are professional baseball and softball athletes, and in 2020 they followed in her mother’s- Loredana Auletta- footsteps by representing their home country, Italy, at the Tokyo Olympics. Born to splice the wind, Piancastelli’s stats redefine playing ball “like a girl.”
Last Spring, I was able to connect with the professional athlete over Zoom in between her downtime playing for the Japanese women’s softball team, The Galaxy Stars, in Kyoto, Japan. For Locals Only, Piancastelli blesses us with her wisdom about the game of failures, the fate of women’s sports and messages from the Softball Gods.
Photo courtesy from the Federazione Italiana Baseball Softball (FIBS)
CJ:Could you give more insight as to where your career started and where it is today?
EP: Yeah. So softball has always been in my family. My mom played softball and my dad played baseball in Italy. My mom actually went to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney for the Italian national team. So a lot of people just say it was destined for me to play this sport. I started playing at the age of seven when we moved to California. And I just fell in love with it right away. My parents were my coaches for my first couple of teams. So they taught me everything I know. And then I just started playing. I met all my friends through softball and it was just a very fun outlet for me to just enjoy the game, hang out with my friends and just like let loose when I was a kid. And it didn't really hit me that I could play or that I was good until I got to high school and travel ball. I had the talent that everyone talked about in our sport, but for me, it was still just a game. I was just having fun. I didn't really think about the future. I just wanted to hang out with my friends every weekend and play softball. And then in high school, we would start playing tournaments where college coaches came out and I started to understand that I could take this to the next level and I can get my school paid for and I can just keep playing softball. That's all I really wanted to do was just to keep playing. I ended up getting a Fulbright scholarship to McNeese State University in Lake Charles. And that's, I think, where my whole career changed. That's when I really started to understand myself as an athlete. I started to really understand my body and what I could do with it in my game and mentally like my mental toughness. I learned everything from college and my coach really just pushed me and just kept telling me there's so much out there that you could do with this sport. And I think that's when I really just was all in. I was like, yeah, this is all I want to do. I just want to play. I want to travel the world and I want to play at the highest level. I started playing on the national team, the Italian national team in 2015.
CJ: What followed after that?
EP: I became the captain of the national team in 2017 and we qualified for the Olympics in 2019. It was always a dream of mine to go to the Olympics, obviously, ever since my mom went and all the stories I heard from her. So I was like, I really want to follow in your footsteps. It wasn't possible- I don't know if you knew this, but softball was actually taken out of the Olympics from 2008 until 2020. So 2020 was the first time. So 2020 was the first time it was back. And for me, it was like, ‘I want to follow my mom's footsteps’, but I knew I was very limited.Once the Olympics came back, I was like, ‘this is my chance to do it.’ So we went to the Olympics in 2021. And I started my career in Japan right after the Olympics.
““In order to be great, you have to fail.””
CJ: What’s it like playing in Japan?
EP: I got the offer to go play overseas in Japan. And Japan is the highest level of softball as of right now, because the United States doesn't really have a professional league, a traditional professional league. Japan is the highest level, but hopefully in the future with women's sports, we can make a professional league in the States and that could be the highest level as well. But I've been playing in Japan for three years now. This is my third season and yeah, still playing softball. That's my job. That's what I do. And I really, really love everything that I have become because of this sport.
CJ: I think that is just so amazing. And I actually would like to get back to the point of, I just want to have fun. I just want to play this and be with my friends. Was there a particular experience that came up when you realized that this could be an actual career? Like when did that switch go off in your head?
EP: My freshman year, I went off as to say, I started breaking a lot of records my freshman year and I was just really enjoying the process of what it took to be a student athlete. And once I kind of acknowledged the numbers that I was having and then kind of understanding the numbers that I could have if I just kept going and kept going, then I realized, OK, if I really dedicate my time to this, there's so many things I could do outside of college with this sport. I have always been traveling ever since I was a young kid, obviously Italy and the US. For me, going to play overseas was never an issue. It was always like, yeah, of course, I don't think twice about it. So knowing that there wasn't a league in the States didn't really stop me. But I think, yeah, it was in college, just right after my freshman year, that I was like, OK, I'm actually pretty good and I can do a lot with this. So just I kind of bought in, not really knowing what the future would hold.
CJ: How is it with your family now that you are a professional athlete, you have a gold medal under your belt and you're playing in the number one country for softball. Does that change the family dynamic a little bit?
EP: No, I think my parents are just really, really proud of me and my mom -my parents- still play to this day. They play slow pitch, so they're just like never ending softball fanatics. But they're just living through me now. And I think you can just tell how proud they are. And they were actually just here in Japan last week watching my game. So I think they just really enjoy the process that I'm on in the journey that I'm on. And I think deep down, they always knew that I could get here with softball, even though they never pressured me to, I think just deep down, they knew that this was going to be a sport that I would love on my own terms.I think them doing that really allowed me to, to become the player that I am without feeling all this pressure or without burning out, so to speak, as a child, when you're just being hammered with all these practices, and you have to do this, it's expensive, your parents are doing this for you. I think it being on my terms is what allowed me to really just have that goal and that motivation by myself without having the pressure from the outside.
CJ: I think it's interesting that with your career that you've been able to play for United States, you represent Italy in the Olympics. And now you're off playing in Japan. What are some differences between the fandoms between here, Europe and Japan?
EP: In Japan, baseball is really, really big. Baseball [in Japan] is pretty even to the MLB level with fan on the fan base.
Softball is really, really well known in Japan. But the fans are still iffy, it depends where you're playing and who you're playing against. In Europe, it's the complete opposite softball is almost not talked about. It's a sport that you have to really dumb it down to people for them to understand what you're talking about. Even if you say, oh, it's baseball, but for females, they still don't really understand that as well.
Because in Italy, I think the culture is just soccer. Soccer is the biggest sport. Then you got volleyball and basketball, and that's it. Nothing else really matters. I think us going to the Olympics kind of changed that mentality. In the States, softball is really big. I think at the college level, it's you see all over Instagram, all games are sold out. The College Women's World Series is breaking records on attendance every single year. College World Series games have more viewership than baseball games than men's sports. I think right now in the US, there's this movement with female sports that are just phenomenal right now, and softball, thankfully, is a part of that.
CJ: Right now, I'm here in Cleveland for the NCAA Women's Championship Finals for basketball. I remember as a little girl, my family went to see the WNBA’s Charlotte Rockets. And you know, I also remember what the audience was like, it was small. Now, it is a wild contrast. I was watching the game and just watching everyone react to the sound of the stadium. It was so unique to this experience, seeing crowds of people excited to support women’s sports. It was really exciting. It’s hard not to be excited for the future, because I felt like people were starting to feel comfortable with rooting for women.
EP: I agree. I mean, I think you said it exactly, when you said comfortable. I think in the past, it has been a very uncomfortable topic to even talk about. Why would anyone ever think that a woman would be better than a man? Or that a woman is being acknowledged for playing sports or making this a career. They make jokes about it, but we've always been known to just be home, taking care of the kids, trying to find that relationship, and then just taking care of other people. I think that's what women are known for. And so being proud to cheering for a woman was just a very uncomfortable thing that a lot of people I think didn't want to do. And I think now that with social media, and it almost becoming a trend, not taking anything away from the female athletes, but there is a big movement right now. So the thing to do is cheer for women's sports. I think a lot of people are finally becoming more comfortable with talking about it and not being scared that they're going to get hate from it. I think women's sports has always been good; there have always been women athletes that needed to be talked about, it was just more a society mindset of ‘it wouldn't make sense for a woman to be on the big screen, the newspaper.’ But now it's like, no, because they're women. The stats are out there, there's proof they're doing better than the men's sports. They're getting more viewers, they're just as good as the men if not better in breaking records. Now, with the men are stepping up, giving credit to the women, people are understanding, ‘okay, there's a mutual respect, and women are at the same level, and on the same stage as the men.’ Finally in 2024, getting to that mindset of that's okay, and that's normal.CJ: Thinking about Big Fun, much of the store is filled with artifacts that have now been digitized (like the app store) or are completely absent.
“I just stand with women’s sports, obviously, because I’m in it, but all those hate comments and everything everyone says to try to bring women down, at the end of the day, it’s what’s driving us to keep going.”
CJ: As an athlete, though, oh, my God-you do need a certain mindset. Like these things can't make it out on the field. And I feel like baseball and softball have those waiting periods, there's a lot of moments in which you have to take a pause. How do you maintain a good, a healthy mindset when you're on the field and off the field?
EP: It's tough. I think our sport is mental toughness base. I think I always tell the young kids is softball and baseball, it’s 80% mental ,20% physical. It's a lot of things go on in your head during the game, because we have a lot of downtime. And because there's a lot of times when you're not hitting or you're not playing defense, or you have a big game break, there's so much time to get into your in your head and get in your own way. I think growing up with the experiences that I have, I've learned to kind of separate every game. I've been able to understand through trial and error. Obviously, I failed multiple times, I failed a lot of times. But in that failure, I've learned that our sport is a game of failure. And I have to fail in order to get better. And I have to fail in order to understand what that feels like so that then I can appreciate when I do succeed. And so it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of experience. And again, it takes a lot of failure to understand that. But once you do understand that it's, it gets so easy now to separate games and separate innings and separate errors and be like, ‘Okay, just because that happened once that doesn't mean it's gonna happen again.’ Or ‘just because I went over three on Saturday doesn't mean I'm gonna go over three on Sunday.’ Actually, I could totally flip it and have the best game of my life the next day! You just have to be able to separate and know that every day is a new day, every game is a new game. And honestly, you can even bring it down to every pitch, something can happen, something different can happen, you can get more opportunities or just another chance to try again. That's what makes it tough. That's what separates people from getting to the big love, like the big stage and the highest level for our game is the mental toughness. Athletes accept the failure in order to succeed.If you can't, then you kind of get cut off from going into the highest level because you just you cannot, like you cannot make it just because. That’s how hard it is mentally.
EP: Thank you for that. I've been feeling a little bit more conscious to the sport leading up to this interview. And that was one thing that I've noticed is how emotional the sport is compared to others. Like you could really see how a player feels about the way they bat or how they pitched. It's not as fast paced as I would say, basketball, or soccer. There really is no time to wallow and I'm just like, ‘man, you really have to like pick up yourself as soon as you can, to stay in the game,’ because you could just, you could really hurt the entire team just thinking about, you know, like yourself. In our game, a lot of times, our coaches would say, like, ‘once you make an error, you have five seconds to think about it, and then you have to forget and move on because that's how fast the next pitch is coming. Five seconds later. You have to be ready.
CJ: What happens when you're not letting go?
EP: We always say like the Softball Gods know when you're being hesitant, and you'll get a ball right then and there. When you're not able to let it go, you're going to just make the same mistake again, just because your head is so flustered, you're overthinking you're in your head about everything. So really learning from a young age to just let it go. And I think what really helped me was understanding how much failure actually happens in our sport and understanding how normal that is.
CJ: How often?
EP: So for for hitters, a really good hitter usually hits 350 or 400. That's like a really elite hitter if that's their stat. And in order for them to do that, they only get four hits out of 10. So they failed six times. And so when you start to understand that, in order to be great, you have to fail, then every failure doesn't hurt as much, then you start realizing, ‘okay, I have to fail.’ And then you start understanding like, ‘Okay, why did I fail this time? Oh, it's something as simple as this, or it's maybe I just was in my head, or I just stuttered a little bit.’ Then you just move on. And you try again. That's when it clicked to me was when I understood that this game was a game of failure. And once I accepted that it's a game of failure, I accepted that I can fail multiple times before I succeed. I realized like, ‘Okay, I'm good.’ It's accepting that part of optimism too. Because it is a game about percentages.
CJ: I did want to get into just something that we spent some time on before, which was just women's sports in general.
Is there anyone in softball right now that you would like to give your flowers to?
EP: I think in our sport, I have a huge appreciation right now for all the female head coaches, there are so many female head coaches in college right now, and a lot of them are ex players. I think they're bringing the knowledge that they had, and they're starting to change the culture around sports. And I've noticed just how much more comfortable women coaches are now on the field and they're taking control and they're fighting for their players and they're standing up for what's right. I think I'm starting to just see them a lot more comfortable on the field. And you can automatically just see the change that's happening with the players. Also, just want to give my flowers obviously to the coaches that have been doing it for the longest time. Coach Patrick Murphy from Alabama, we have the Oklahoma coach [Patty Gasso], there's so many coaches that have just been dedicated to softball for 20 plus years.
CJ: What would you like to see change?
EP: I mean, I just, first of all, we [The United States] don't even have a league, a traditional league that pays us enough to be committed to softball. I think right now, the leagues that we have is a very short term and pays you the bare, bare, bare minimum for a summer. And a lot of the times, girls that graduate from college, they have to make a decision of do I want to keep playing? Do I love this sport so much, do I want to keep playing? Or do I need to just end my career and commit to a nine to five job? Because that's the only way I'll survive. Because softball is not giving you that freedom to just stay committed to softball unless you go play overseas.
So because I play overseas, I can commit 100% to softball, I don't need to find a job, I can commit to my training and like softball is my job. In the States, softball is still something you do in the summer, but then you have to find a nine to five or you have to find something else, another form of income in the 10 months that you're waiting to play again. I think like we just deserve-like the numbers show that we we can play at the same level as the men- that we have the fans we have like the high level is there, we deserve to be able to make it a career and be committed to that career full time and not have to worry about anything else. I think that's like, the biggest thing I want to see is just us getting a league that we deserve.
CJ: I also wonder if there's a little bit of a prejudice when someone admits that their job is their their dream job. Many people feel forced to give those dreams up (or what is meant for them) mainly due to financial reasons, family, whatever obligation. So if they were to hear someone has their passion job full time, it may seem that they must be privileged to be in that position and it must be like an extreme luxury.
EP: And not considering that training is a part of the job like you have to have a good trainer, you have to have certain resources and be able to be healthy. I would assume that like culturally, we would have to adjust and how we embrace that people do have different skill sets and purposes. You are a part of the workforce as an athlete.
CJ: Exactly.
EP: Yeah. I think I've been very blessed and again, I've tried not to get in my head about being a female athlete. I try to not really make that an excuse for myself. Like two years ago, I started training at a high level performance gym in Arizona where all the MLB players trained in their off-season and this gym was specific to certain sports. So they have NFL, MLB, they have a WNBA and NBA, all the high level sports, but they didn't have softball. So I was like, ‘okay, I'm just going to join the MLB group.’ I was the only female in the MLB group. I’ve lived my whole life with ‘Oh, I don't care that I'm a female athlete.’ It's still the same. And then I get there. I'm like, ‘I am the only female here.’ I am kind of treated a little bit differently. They don't know how to act around me. And like, I'm starting to really see the differences. And then, and I'll always get those like-and I know none of none of the players do it on purpose-But you get those side comments, like, ‘Oh, like, wow, you can really swing’ or ‘you have a really strong arm.’ And I'm like, ‘Well, what do you mean? I do this, Like-.’ This is what I do. And so I, you know, you just kind of have to laugh it off a little bit. But that is what drives me. And especially now that I've experienced it, I want to keep playing at a high level. And I want to keep training and put myself in these uncomfortable situations. Because I know that once I do, the people around me will start to notice that it's really not that different. Still to this day, when people ask what I do, and I tell them I play professionally in Japan, the first thing they say is, ‘Oh, is your partner okay with that?’ Okay?
CJ: Oh, my God!
EP: (Laughs) Right. And I'm like, ‘Wait, what do you mean?’ Because if the roles were reversed, you wouldn't have even asked. No, your question actually would probably have been like, ‘Oh, you're not going to go live with him overseas?’ Like, ‘you're not going to move your whole life with him?’ Because he's the professional athlete. I know people don't do it out of ill intent. We're just not acknowledged. And we're not promoted as much and we're not talked about as much. And yeah, it's just comments like that, that just keep driving me to keep playing and try to make it better for the future generation so that they don't have to go through these things and they don't have to choose whether they want to continue their career or go work in an office. So they don't have to choose whether they have to retire and start a family. I want them to have the option that they can still play AND start a family. That they can still play and start a business. That they can still play and do everything else that they want to do. You know, for the men, it's not even a question.
CJ: Exactly. I’m really excited for this conversation. We’re at the end now, is there anything else that you’d like to add ? Anything you would like to let the readers know?
EP: Just to keep supporting women's sports. Obviously, my number one sport would be softball. But any women's sport. I know right now, the trend is to talk about it and to talk about it, but actually showing up and supporting them is I think what is making the difference. It’s the sold out games and people buying the merch and all this stuff. I think taking action and supporting women and not just talking about it and not just being like, ‘Oh, I turned on a game last week,’ like, if you have the chance to actually go to the game, if you have the chance to go to a pep rally, or you have a chance to go and listen to them speak and following them on Instagram, commenting, like just supporting them in all ways possible is what's going to make the difference right now. And yeah, I just stand with women's sports, obviously, because I'm in it, but all those hate comments and everything everyone says to try to bring women down, at the end of the day, it's what's driving us to keep going. So I think just for all the women that are listening to this or reading this, to understand how important it is for us to keep going and to keep breaking down the walls and to keep doing what we love and not having anyone take that away from us, especially not right now.
CJ: Thank you so much, Erica. That was great. Thank you. This was fun.
EP: Thank you for thinking of me. I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation + really get to know our sport because I know not a lot of people know, or have done the research to what softball really is and the level that it's gotten to. So just the fact that you are so excited to even talk.
