DUBLIN — It wasn’t Oracle Park, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park or even the crumbling Coliseum.
Instead, it was Fallon Sports Park, where the Dublin Leprechauns are in their third season in the Pecos League. Dead center field is 375 feet away with the field surrounded by a chain link fence adorned by advertisements for an independent league team and a hundred or so people in attendance.
It’s grassroots baseball. There is no affiliation with Major League Baseball and compensation is minimal. Some players are chasing fading big league dreams. Others are playing for the love of the game until life and age take them in a different direction.
Yet it couldn’t have been any more exciting for Marika Lyszczyk if it were before 40,000 fans in San Francisco, the Bronx, Boston or Oakland.
“I will remember this for the rest of my life,” Lyszczyk said after achieving her goal of pitching in a professional baseball game. “I was super nervous coming into this because it meant so much for me to be part of something so much bigger than myself.”
Lyszczyk, 24, pitched the seventh and eighth innings for Dublin last Tuesday against the San Rafael Pacifics, giving up a solo home run to John Bicos, the second batter she faced, and retiring the other six hitters. She got no decision, with the Leprechauns (14-13) rallying to beat the Pacifics (21-7 and first place in the Pacific Division) with three runs in the ninth and another in the 10th.
With the game getting in just under a city-imposed curfew, Lyszczyk was almost giddy as she described the experience and even found something positive about giving up a home run.
“I couldn’t have drawn it up better other than the tank,” Lyszczyk said on the field before the lights were cut off at 10:30 p.m. “But that happens. You’re not a pro pitcher until you get a tank off you.”
The Pecos League has no designated hitter, so Lyszczyk also got an at-bat and looked comfortable at the plate in grounding out to second base. A native of Vancouver, British Columbia, Lyszczyk played baseball and softball as a youth before giving up softball before she turned 12.
A catcher, Lyszczyk became the first woman to play the position in an NCAA game for Division III Rivier University in New Hampshire. She reinvented herself as a pitcher, and on a trip out west met with Sonoma State coach John Goelz.
“She was looking for a place to play. She and her mother came and visited me,” Goelz said. “She’s a wonderful person and her family is incredible. I thought she was incredibly courageous. With all the stuff you have to go through to play men’s baseball, to be a woman and do it is pretty impressive.”
Like Kelsie Whitmore, who pitched in 13 games for the Oakland Ballers of the independent Pioneer League last summer, Lyszczyk is challenged in terms of velocity. But she pitched an inning on three occasions for Sonoma State and didn’t give up a run. She was included on some road trips, rooming with a female scorekeeper.
Lysczcyk throws three pitches — fastball, slider and change-up. Two of her outs Tuesday night came against former Sonoma State teammates playing for San Rafael.
“It’s pretty nerve-wracking because they know how I throw, how I pitch,” Lyszczyk said. “I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, but once I got out there and got that first strike the nerves just disappeared.
Goelz coached his last season at Sonoma State in 2024. He and Dolf Hes, a longtime pitching coach for the Seawolves before the school eliminated its Division II sports program because of budget cuts, made the drive from Rohnert Park to see Lyszczyk’s Dublin debut.
Both rose from the concrete bench that serves as seating and moved up to the backstop to record the event on their smartphones.
How did Lyszczyk fit in at Sonoma State?
“She was one of the hardest workers we had and knew what she had to do to compete,” Hes said. “She knew she wasn’t going to throw it by anybody and was trying to get ground outs and popups and the thing she did was throw strikes.”
Goelz laid down the law regarding inappropriate comments and the like before Lyszczyk arrived. It turned out it wasn’t necessary.
“All the guys were great, our team was great to her and they wound up loving her and I think she loved playing with them,” Goelz said.
The first time Lyszczyk met her Dublin teammates was the night before her debut at a team outing at a local bowling center, then at a team breakfast the following day.
“They’re amazing. You never know what you’re going to get, especially in pro ball,” Lyszczyk said. “All these guys are grinding and I was here only one day and to accept me and support me the way they did is incredible.”
Lyszczyk will play a select number of games for Dublin, on loan in a sense from Momentum, a sports apparel company where she’s a content creator and social media influencer with an Instagram account with more than 90,000 followers. She’s been a motivational speaker, has thrown out a first pitch at a Toronto Blue Jays game in 2023 and served as a coach for a girls Pony League team in an international tournament in Japan.
When asked about her end game, Lyszczyk said she’s not sure what the future will bring.
“It’s funny. I spent my whole life thinking college and maybe pro ball if I get the opportunity and I’m honestly not sure what’s next,” Lyszczyk said. “But this was the highlight of my baseball career. Since I was a little girl, I always wanted to play professional baseball. Everybody told me I’d never make it but somehow I did.”
She then signed a few autographs for girls who had come to see her pitch.
Lyszczyk is happy to be a small part in the rise of women’s sports, as evidenced by the local popularity of the WNBA’s expansion Golden State Valkyries. The recently completed softball Women’s World Series actually had better ratings than the men’s College World Series across ESPN platforms.
“My biggest goal is to open doors for other girls who want a future in baseball and just sports in general,” Lyszczyk said. “We’ve made so many strides. I’m proud to be a part of that and hope girls of any age will see this and just follow a dream and show it’s possible to do it.”