Ila Jane Borders (born February 18, 1975) is an American former left-handed pitcher in college and independent professional baseball player.
Borders was the first woman to play for The Canadian Collegiate Premier Wooden Bat League for the Swift Current Indians in the summer of 1995.
[2] Borders became one of the first female pitchers in integrated men's professional baseball (women such as Toni Stone had played in the Negro leagues) when in 1997 she was signed by Mike Veeck of the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League, playing in her first regular season game on May 31, 1997 against the Sioux Falls Canaries.
Her 1997 season totals were a 7.53 ERA, 15 appearances, 14 innings, allowing 24 hits and 9 walks while striking out 11 and with no decisions.
Her line score on that night was 5 innings pitched, 3 runs allowed (all earned), 5 hits, 2 walks, and 2 strikeouts.
She made further starts, and on July 24, 1998, she became one of the first female pitchers to record a win in pro men's baseball in a 3–1 home victory against the Sioux Falls Canaries.
Following that start, she suffered a severe bout of food poisoning that caused her to miss time, and most of the rest of her outings that season were poor.
Halfway into that season, disappointed with her performance so far that year (8.31 ERA, 5 games, 8 innings, 17 hits, 2 walks, 2 strikeouts) and with her inability in the preceding offseason to get a look from any clubs affiliated with the major leagues,[citation needed] she retired from baseball.
[citation needed] Borders worked in the Long Beach Fire Department for one and a half years before moving to Gilbert, Arizona in 2008.
[7] In 2017, her biography, Making My Pitch: A Woman's Baseball Odyssey, which she wrote with Jean Ardell, was published.