With a mighty Instagram and imposing bat, Lauren Chamberlain's still got it
By Graham Hays | Aug 18, 2017
espnW.com
BATON ROUGE, La. -- One of the first things players learn in National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) is that they sign autographs. Win or lose, three home runs or three errors, they work the fence along the foul line or the concourse cement after games. They sign their names and smile in selfies.
Lauren Chamberlain was about to fulfill that duty after a particularly forgettable night at the plate during her rookie season when USSSA Pride teammate Kelly Kretschman offered a few words of advice. A veteran of two Olympics, double-digit professional seasons and more autograph lines than it is worth counting, Kretschman could sense Chamberlain's frustration. She told the rookie to ask the next girl waiting for an autograph what Chamberlain did at the plate that night.
"They're not going to have a clue what you did," Kretschman recalled telling her. "They're probably going to think you hit two home runs because you're Lauren Chamberlain."
As a professional athlete, Chamberlain has had to accept the challenges and opportunities that come with being Lauren Chamberlain.
What Chamberlain accomplished in college softball was beyond difficult. She is, after all, the NCAA's all-time home run leader -- the only player to ever hit 95 career home runs. It is even more difficult to be a great hitter in the NPF. Now, nearing the end of her third season, she is gaining traction on that count.
It is also more difficult to be a star in the NPF, removed from the rabid fan bases and television lights typical of the college game. But as Kretschman said, Chamberlain arrived as a star. And independent of performance, she remains one within the confines of her world.
That exposure, the largest Instagram following in the league one indication of a social media presence that predated her professional debut, is invaluable -- to her and to a league still looking to introduce itself to even some softball fans more than a decade into its existence.
Along with the bat speed, Chamberlain's brand is an asset to cultivate.
"It's literally sometimes more important to the outside world than what I'm doing on the field," Chamberlain said. "Especially the state that our league is in and being a female athlete. I think female athletes have to worry about their brand a hundred times more than a male athlete does because they don't have to showcase their personality. Their talent is on display. They're getting paid for their talent. You're getting paid for your athletic ability here, but what's going to sell products? What's going to further your income?
"A lot of that is putting yourself out there and marketing yourself as a female athlete because the sponsorships have a ton more money than the teams sometimes."
Salaries in the NPF, a six-team league that plays its entire season between Memorial Day and Labor Day, rarely reach into five figures. For many, to call it part-time employment is generous. Some fare better, with a team like the Pride supplementing in-season salaries with offseason work, but Chamberlain still estimated her income from sponsorships with companies like Rawlings and Blast Motion equals that from the team. Her reach may not equal that of peers in other sports, such as Elena Delle Donne, Katie Ledecky, Mallory Pugh and Mikaela Shiffrin, all of whom have participated in the Olympics, but it sets the standard for softball at the moment.
"Lauren is one of those people, one of those humans, that gets it," NPF commissioner Cheri Kempf said. "She understands that her social media following is more than just telling people that she has a dentist appointment. It's about educating people about something that means a lot to her, which is this game. She leverages her position, which we need them to do. I'm a fan of Lauren Chamberlain as a marketing person and someone who is savvy."
She has remained one of the league's biggest stars through some growing pains on the field.
Chamberlain's rookie season, which came immediately on the heels of a senior season at the University of Oklahoma in which she played through the attention of the home run chase, ended with a .200 batting average and limited power numbers. Her average climbed modestly a summer ago, but her on-base and slugging percentages rose significantly. She was a more-productive hitter with a full offseason at her disposal. And while not the run-production cornerstone for the regular-season champions this season, her professional-best .871 OPS fit right in among the likes of Chelsea Goodacre, Kretschman, Shelby Pendley, Sierra Romero and Megan Wiggins in a truly fearsome lineup. The Pride beat Chicago 4-1 Thursday in their playoff opener.
"In college, obviously there are tons of great pitchers, but there would be certain matchups you would look forward to throughout the season -- and they were on weekends and they were spread out," Chamberlain said. "Now you've got three months of every night playing the best of the best. So mindset, it was just turning my competitive drive back on and getting after it. I was able to be a lot more patient in college. Now it's like they're coming at you, no problem. No one is really pitching around you, unless you're hot."
Outside of Kretschman, who hit .500 this season to win the batting title by more than 100 points, failure is a fact of life for players who didn't have to deal with much of it in college or at any other level of the sport. That was all the more acute for the most anticipated No. 1 overall pick since Cat Osterman.
"She was probably about ready to jump off a mountain, if I had to take a guess," Kretschman said of Chamberlain's rookie season. "The amount of pressure she came into this league with, I can't even imagine. I never had to experience that or even remotely think about it. So she put so much on herself. What I tried to talk to her about that year was you're going to get picked apart [by experienced pitchers]. ...
"The NPF and what we're doing is bigger than just us performing, hitting .400. At the end of the day, the kids we're trying to grow the sport for won't care. They just love you for you."
Although she is most comfortable quietly going about her work between the lines, Kretschman is a holdover from a generation that provided many of the sport's biggest stars. The combination of the Olympic spotlight and the Women's College World Series as a television success produced a generation that included, among others, Monica Abbott, Jennie Finch, Jessica Mendoza, Osterman and Natasha Watley. Like Kretschman at the plate, the Scrap Yard Dawgs' Abbott continues to singularly dominate from the circle, but the rest are retired. The NPF is full of talent, perhaps more than at any point in its past, but it needs stars from this generation.
Chamberlain isn't alone, even on her own team. Romero has in short order cultivated a similarly large following. So, too, has Haylie McCleney of both the NPF's Texas Charge and Team USA. Through opportunities on the field (becoming softball's first Rawlings Gold Glove winner) and off the field (including a recent appearance in ESPN The Magazine's annual Body Issue) Akron's A.J. Andrews has bolstered her profile as much as any player based solely on a post-college resume. Softball's Olympic return, at least for 2020 in Tokyo, will also change the dynamic and potentially catapult someone like current University of Florida pitcher Kelly Barnhill to stardom.
Always comfortable with herself and letting her extroverted personality show -- whether the response is positive or negative -- Chamberlain is a model of how to turn success on softball's most visible platform, the college game, into lasting resonance in a post-college world. That is a puzzle few have solved.
"They get their Women's College World Series atmosphere their junior or senior years, and they show out and they're a stud," Chamberlain said. "But they're finally able to show people who they are, and then it's like the lights are [turned] off. Now what? We even deal with that here. We're not on TV. So how do you keep things rolling?"
An event like the playoffs currently unfolding in Baton Rouge may one day provide that kind of spotlight. For now, the league needs players who bring the spotlight with them.
Graham Hays covers college sports for espnW, including softball and soccer. Hays began with ESPN in 1999.
