There are more than a few ways in which Allyson Fournier is unlike any pitcher you're likely to come across this summer, but let's start with the hangdog look on her face when she stood in the pitching circle and realized that Lauren Chamberlain would not stand 43 feet away from her with a bat in her hands and extra bases on her mind.
Yes, as a rookie pitcher with the Pennsylvania Rebellion of National Pro Fastpitch, Fournier was disappointed when a lineup change by the USSSA Pride meant college softball's all-time home run leader didn't step into the batter's box against her. Not that the NPF offers many easy outs (Chamberlain's replacement in the game, for example, was another former college All-American), but what undrafted rookie wouldn't breathe easier if given a reprieve from facing the No. 1 overall pick?
There but for the grace of God and all that.
That would seem especially true of most rookies who did not play Division I college softball, except that it is difficult to make the group plural. A product of Tufts University, a Division III school in Boston, Fournier is the only American pitcher in the NPF this season who did not play at the highest level of the college game. Yet she was crestfallen when a substitution cost her the showdown against Chamberlain in a game between the Rebellion and Pride. Not in the sense that she was deprived some ego-stroking opportunity to beat the baddest bat on the block, but in being denied the chance to live a fantasy, as if Charlie Bucket had watched the golden ticket drift away in the wind.
"I think I would have been laughing the whole at-bat," Fournier said of the encounter that wasn't. "I wouldn't have really cared if she got a hit or not; I just wanted to throw to her."
So like a great many fans in stadiums across the league this summer, Fournier approached Chamberlain after the game and asked for a picture. She posted the resulting image of them together, with all the necessary exclamation marks and emojis, not to mention a smile about as wide as the letters on the front of her jersey, to her Instagram account.
"Playing [Division III], you watch the people that play [Division I] on TV and you think they're like heroes or something," Fournier said. "My whole team has been following Oklahoma softball for four years, and she was one of my favorite people to watch.
"We think she's really cool."
It turns out that even without the chance to pitch to one idol, Fournier's NPF rookie season already resembled a visit to Willy Wonka's factory. She met Jennie Finch. She not only pitched for a time against Cat Osterman in the same game in which Chamberlain was replaced but at one point hung out in the same room as the left-handed legend. She experienced what most who play, including at Tufts, understand is a world other than their own. While the Rebellion may miss the playoffs, Fournier won the summer.
What shouldn't be doubted is that she belonged there in the first place.
Look again at the picture of Fournier and Chamberlain. There are thousands of similar versions floating around social media of people with star-struck smiles standing next to the Pride's popular rookie. Fournier may be the only one who can trade accolade for accolade, gaudy statistic for gaudy statistic.
Sure, Chamberlain's home run record is arguably the most significant in softball, particularly when it comes to hitting marks. It is similarly easy to argue that the former Oklahoma All-American is the biggest star of her generation. Yet Chamberlain wasn't the driving force behind back-to-back-to-back national championships, a feat that until this spring hadn't been accomplished in any of the three divisions of NCAA softball since 1990, when far fewer schools sponsored the sport, and never by a school from beyond the sport's spiritual home in California. Fournier celebrated with the trophy in each of the past three years.
And while the Oklahoma team that won a championship with Chamberlain among its stars will forever have supporters as the best college team of all time, neither she nor anyone who ever played NCAA softball was part of an undefeated championship team.
At least until Tufts went 51-0 this past season to win its third consecutive championship.
The ace of that team, Fournier went 35-0 with a 0.20 ERA. She struck out 422 batters in 210 2/3 innings and allowed an average of barely two hits per seven innings pitched.
Fournier's perfect record broke the Division III record for best single-season winning percentage by a pitcher, a record she previously shared after going 28-1 as a junior.
She won 111 games in four seasons. She lost five games.
Naturally, signed to a 10-day contract by the Rebellion that put her on the field five days after her final college game, she earned a win in her first NPF appearance.
Signed for the balance of the season after that initial tryout, she entered the final three days of the regular season sixth in the league with a 1.87 ERA. That mark admittedly came in limited work, 30 innings spread across mostly relief appearances. Like a lot of rookies, even those who pitched against teams from the SEC and Pac-12 rather than MIT, her strikeout rate dropped against professional hitters. Games no longer bend to her will. Still, the numbers hardly suggest someone overwhelmed by the surroundings.
Acquired as a franchise building block prior to the season from the Pride, for whom she frequently caught Osterman, veteran Kristyn Sandberg found someone who throws hard and has the side-to-side movement and poise to adjust. She found a pretty good pitcher, in other words.
"The biggest thing about her is she just gets on the mound and she throws," Sandberg said. "She doesn't think very much. She trusts what she's doing out there. She gets the signal and she steps on and throws it. She just goes right after hitters.
"She's just like any one of us, coming from different programs trying to fit in. She's brought a great attitude here. She knows her role and steps in and does it when asked."
That Fournier's first paycheck out of college came for throwing a softball (and, yes, you better believe she posted a picture of that paycheck to Snapchat) is not without irony. A Connecticut native who wanted to stay in the Northeast for school, she chose Tufts from a list that also included Cornell and Williams, because it was a powerhouse not in softball but academics. She chose to major in chemical engineering because it interested her but also because, as long as she was willing to put up with some survival C's instead of the easy A's to which she was accustomed, it promised good employment prospects in the real world. She planned for a life in which she knew the clock was ticking on softball.
As if her pitching feats at Tufts weren't enough, she also swam competitively for the school her first two years. The pull the water has on her goes beyond competition. In addition to pitching for the Stratford Brakettes a summer ago, the tradition-rich amateur team on the Connecticut coast with one of the more remarkable alumni lists in all of sports, she interned with a company that specializes in hydrography, in its case software to facilitate underwater land surveying. Whatever she does in the future, there is a good chance it won't be on land. But when she gave up the swim team, it was in part because there is no place she would rather be than the landlocked pitching circle.
"I love being in the water," Fournier said. "[Swimming is] one of my favorite things. I do it all the time. Even now, I go in the pool every single day pretty much. So that was just kind of something I loved to do as a hobby. But softball, I love the feeling of striking somebody out. That's my favorite thing in the world.
"Ask my friends, they know. They tell me to stop hogging all the strikeouts."
She isn't sure what she will be doing a few weeks from now, let alone when the next NPF season rolls around. The downside of Division III, with its lack of scholarships, is that she has some substantial student loans that need paying off. For that alone, she needs to look for a job with better financial prospects than professional softball. Few of those offer summers off. She wouldn't be the first person to find a way to delay the real world long enough for a second or third season. She also wouldn't be the first to spend just a single summer in the league.
"Am I ready to walk away from the game?" Fournier asked herself. "I don't know because I've never not played before. That's something that is hard to think about."
It's safe to say she won't soon forget the summer she almost pitched to Chamberlain.