Kara McCall can throw a fastball more than 60 mph, although she has never been clocked officially.

The right-hander has a big, bending curveball, and she is trying to learn the knuckleball to further baffle the hitters she faces.

McCall is a baseball junkie. Softball, while a curiosity to the Union HighSchool graduate, has never been a serious part of her thoughts.

That is partly out of circumstance. Union doesn't have a softball program, so McCall played baseball with boys on the varsity team.

"Playing with the guys helped me," said McCall, who is now a sophomore at the Venango campus of Clarion University. "It taught me a lot of stuff. It taught me how to put up with a lot of things. It motivated me to do better."

McCall, 19, started playing baseball when she was 6 and never stopped. She rose through the Little League ranks, holding her own against the boys at each stop.

So when she entered high school, baseball was a no-brainer.

More than five years later, she is still a baseball player — long after she thought her career would be over.

McCall will be a member of the United States team at the Women's International Baseball AssociationWorld Series inOctober.

The series is held at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Fla., and teams from Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Chinese Taipei, India and Canada also will compete.

"I'm really excited," McCall said. "I'm probably out every day playing with my dad."

McCall recently played for a women's team called the Toronto (Canada) Misfits in a tournament in Baltimore.

She played several different positions and also pitched a few innings for Toronto, which won four out of five games to place second in the tournament.

It was the first time McCall played against another all-female baseball team.

"It was great," she said. "It's more my level. I liked playing against the guys, but I felt more comfortable playing against women on a more equal playing field."

McCall toyed with the idea of playing softball atClarion University. She went so far as to talk to the coach about trying out, but she didn't follow through.

"It's a totally different sport," McCall said. "The coach told me that, and I realized it is. I don't think I could pitch. I can't throw the ball underhanded like that."

Instead, McCall searched for ways to keep playing baseball.She scoured the Internet for any opportunity and eventually stumbled upon the Toronto team and the tournament inBaltimore.

Three of her Toronto teammates will play on the U.S. team when the tournament begins Oct. 6.

"It should be a much tougher tournament," McCall said. "There are going to be some good hitters and pitchers there."

McCall is looking beyond that tournament as well.

Women's baseball, which famously started in 1943 with the all-American Girls Professional Baseball League that tried to fill the baseball void left when many major leaguers went off to fight in World War II, is growing again in the United States.

Several leagues are popping up all over the country, including one as close as Philadelphia.

McCall has pondered a possible future in a similar league. She has even thought about forming a league of her own in Butler County.

"It will be tough. There's a lot of traveling involved and money," said McCall, who is majoring in nursing at Clarion. "I'm thinking a lot about it."