Jennie Finch
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Jennie Lynn Finch, or, occasionally using her married name, Jennie Daigle, (born September 3, 1980) is an American athlete and as of 2004 a pitcher for USA Softball, and was one of the pitchers on the team that won the gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
Born in La Mirada, California, Jennie has been playing softball since she was 5 and has been pitching since she was 8. She played softball for The University of Arizona. She was a three-time All-American p/1b and Honda Award winner for the player of the year as a member of the Wildcat softball team.
She married Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Casey Daigle on January 15, 2005 at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.
Jennie came to prominence when she defeated Anna Kournikova in an ESPN online poll as the most attractive female athlete. She has appeared on various talk shows promoting softball and the US Olympic Team, and also hosts a segment on This Week in Baseball. Her TWIB segment often features her pitching to major-league baseball players, using a softball and pitching from the same distance she would in a softball game. Finch usually strikes out the baseball players; her fastball of 71 mph is equivalent to a fastball of nearly 100 mph in baseball, where the pitcher's rubber is about 20 feet farther away than in softball.
Finch was offered a lucrative contract to appear naked for men's magazine Playboy, but commented to the press on August 14, 2004 that such an offer wasn't going to tempt her. She commented that she'd "rather be a role model for young girls." She said that "[m]uscles on women are beautiful, but my personal decision is to stay away from those things; to stay away from that."
External links
- The Official Jennie Finch Website (http://www.jenniefinch.net)
- ESPN.com: Who's Hottest? Finch vs. Anna (http://espn.go.com/page2/s/hottest/female/finals.html)