Britt Apgar quit college softball, hung up her cleats, and figured her playing days were over. Then, a social media post about a new Women's Professional Baseball League changed everything. Now, as she gears up for opening day, the baseballer — born without her right hand — is opening up about her whirlwind tryout, the athletes who shaped her game, and her viral DIY project called "Protect the Nub".

TOGETHXR: What was your introduction to baseball? What made you fall in love with the sport and pursue the WPBL? 

Britt Apgar (BA): I feel like I started loving baseball just the way any kid did. It's very sensory. As a kid, I just wore the glove at first, and it just itched my brain so right. I knew when I heard the pop [of the baseball hitting the glove] that I wanted to replicate that sound. So I just started playing catch with my dad in the backyard. I grew up in a town called Farmville, and there wasn’t much to do except play in fields. I wasn't the best at basketball — the dribbling just was not for me. I'm 5'4", so I’m vertically challenged as well. Baseball is more of a mental game than a physical game. So I was like, let's do that. Sign me up.

I played T-ball, rec ball, and then ended up moving up to the city when I was about a teenager and started playing travel ball. I ended up getting cut from my high school baseball team, and that was when I switched into softball. While I met some of my best friends playing softball, had great competition levels, and met some incredible athletes — at the end of the day, it’s not the same sport, you know? I didn't quite love it the way I loved baseball. 

In college, when I just didn't have a good experience with the softball coach, instead of transferring, I was like, ‘Nah, I'm good.’ I ended up quitting softball, hung up the cleats, and thought I was never gonna play again. I got a 9-to-7 job, working Monday through Saturday. I was a general manager of a gym. Terrible hours, just worked my life away, accepting that this was my normal life. I thought I could just watch sports from an outside perspective.

Then, I watched some of my old friends play at a tournament in Durham. It was an all-women tournament. As I sat in the bleachers, I had the worst FOMO of my life. I was so pissed. I was sitting there just gritting my teeth because I wanted to play so bad. They looked like they were having so much fun.

Then, lo and behold, a couple weeks later I saw a post on social media saying that the Women's Professional Baseball League was looking for players to try out, and they were going to pay the players. It was going to be a real, legit thing. I was like, ‘I don't have to work a 9-to-7 job anymore. This is my Willy Wonka golden ticket out.’

So I threw my email in there, kind of forgot about it. A couple months later, I got this email saying that I was invited to try out in Washington, D.C., at the Nationals field, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is real. This is legit.’ 

I knew that there were D1 athletes that were going to be trying out, Savannah Bananas players, international players, and professional players. I knew the competition was gonna be insane. I hadn't played competitive ball in four years—in baseball since I had been 15. So I was like, whatever it takes, I gotta do it. So I tried out, and here we are, about to start.

TOGETHXR:  You mentioned you've been away from the game for a little while. What was the tryout process like? What was it like to walk onto the field and see all these other athletes who also share the same dream? 

BA: The first day of tryouts was just incredible. Credit to my girlfriend for helping me keep my head on straight, because I was so stressed out. I was checking my email and making sure I didn't get cut every night. I couldn't even eat, really. She was like, ‘We're gonna go and have a nice dinner.’ I was like, ‘Yes, ma'am.’ It was just so fun. 

Then Friday came, and I walked from the car into the parking lot to get my number. I felt the energy of being there, and it wasn't like going and trying out for a men's team. I didn’t have to earn my role and prove that a woman belongs. We just had to try out. We were getting evaluated as baseball players — not as “women baseball players.” It was such an incredible feeling.

The women that tried out alongside me, I didn't meet a single one that was rude or disrespectful. Everybody was just like, ‘Oh my God, you did so good.’ Everybody was so uplifting. 

Getting to talk to and meet the international players and their translators was such an incredible feeling, knowing that baseball is such a universal language. We didn't even have to communicate on the field with spoken language. We could just point and call stuff out, and they knew exactly what was going on. It was incredible.

There were 640 people from all walks of the world. I've always dreamt of meeting that many people. I love diversity and individuality. I really think that other countries really nail that. It was just such a beautiful process, even though it was the most stressful process of my life at the same time.

TOGETHXR: A professional women’s league is obviously not something that was around when we were kids, so what athletes did you look up to growing up? 

BA: A mix of everything, honestly. I didn't even have internet in my house until high school, when COVID happened. So I didn't really idolize certain people, if that makes sense. I really respected certain players' games. I think Buster Posey was just an incredible mental, respectful player. They made rules about how you can't truck the catcher just because of how respectful he was. I idolized that — respectfulness.

Madison Bumgarner was just an amazing left-handed pitcher. I kind of modeled his pickoff move. If you can't tell, I was a big Giants fan growing up. I’m not from San Francisco, but I love the Giants.

Those are the main two that come to mind when I think about athletes I idolized. It was hard to find somebody that looked like me and who was me in sports. There were obviously disabled athletes growing up and women athletes growing up, but they weren't as mainstream. For someone who grew up with basically no internet, all I saw were people on the mainstream news — and they never looked like me.

TOGETHXR: We loved following the video series that you've been doing called ‘Protect the Nub’ on your social media. Give us a summary of what the series is about, and if you have any updates about finding a solution? 

BA: Yes, so ‘Protect the Nub’ started as a DIY, in-home remedy solution. I got invited to the Boston Red Sox spring training camp with the WPBL, and on the last day, we did an intra-squad scrimmage. The pitcher threw her pitch, and it was a good pitch — a nasty slider. It just broke to the outside, probably about 78 miles an hour. 

I caught it off the end of the bat, and that type of impact plus vibration—since I was born without my right hand, it split the skin around my nub, and I have a bone that is really close to the surface, so that impact just keeps making the bone stick out and split underneath. 

My immediate reaction was to run to the dugout, just try to hide it and stop the bleeding without telling anybody, just because it's a professional sport, you know? Anything can reduce your draft stock, and I want to be a valuable player to a team — not a liability. So my immediate reaction was like, ‘Oh God, if anybody finds out, they're not going to want to pick me.’ 

We had the all-white uniforms on, of course. So I had to use my socks, my belt, and my batting glove to try to stop the bleeding while I was just hiding from coaches hoping that they wouldn’t see.

After the games ended, I went home and tried to swing just off a tee, and it was just cracking and bleeding again. I can't really feel it, but it was looking like it was getting worse and worse. I started worrying about infection and X, Y, Z. About a month and a half went by, and it was still cracked and swollen. I realized that if I split this game one, day one, there's no way I'm going to be able to play the next day or the next series. I'd be out of commission in the first game of the season. That's really scary to me because I have already missed out on so much baseball that I could have played, and I can't miss out on any more. 

So, I started just experimenting with stuff around the house. I was talking with my dad, my friends, and my girlfriend about ways to protect it. I was thinking about the friends that I follow on social media, and I was like, ‘I have some really cool friends that have studied and have done some really cool things. I bet they’ve got some cool ideas.’ So I posted a video thinking that one of them would have a great idea, not knowing that it would just ride the algorithm wave. 

Then I found some really cool, helpful hints using stuff I had around the house. Non-Newtonian foam was one of the most recommended things that people commented. One of the investors in the WPBL, Jeff, prototyped non-Newtonian foam with a splint that I hollowed out from an old prosthetic.

While it's good, I haven't really had too much of an ability to test it. It's hard to find someone around here who throws 80 miles an hour that won't hit me in the head. I know some people that can chuck it, but I don't trust them to chuck it in the strike zone. I've been able to test it out on a couple of at-bats with MLB players, which has been really cool. But the issue is that, one, it's not breathable, so it sweats and gets soggy, and then it moves around too much. So I'm having to readjust it every single pitch, every single at-bat. 

So that leads me to the Hospital for Special Surgery, which is the number one orthopedic and prosthetic hospital in the world. Chrysta Irolla is the lead prosthetist of the department, and she got in touch with Jeff, who helped me make this prototype. She was like, ‘Listen, I will get her in as soon as possible, and we will make a prototype before the season, and she doesn't have to worry about insurance.’ 

They got me up to New York and took a bunch of molds of my nub, and they're gonna put together a prosthetic. I'm just waiting to hear back, and then I'm gonna go back up there to try them on. She told me that they're gonna break throughout the season, and I'm gonna send them back and tell her what I don't like, and she's just gonna keep tweaking it.

TOGETHXR: That's incredible. People always say, ‘What's the worst that could happen? Just post what you want to post and just go for it.’ And look how it turned out!

BA: It blows my mind. I really want to do an update because I think there's so much to say, especially now with how the project is divided into two sections. We started as a DIY project, and now we're getting professional prosthetic advice.

When Krista let me test out the prosthetic, it was the first time I ever had the sensation of holding a bat with two hands. So I started crying. I felt like a whole baseball player for once. It was crazy.

TOGETHXR: What are you most looking forward to for the opening day of the WPBL?

BA: It sounds cliché, but just playing — I never thought I'd be able to play baseball again. The fact that I get to not only play baseball again, but to actually compete is so fun. I love a men's beer league Saturday night game, but we're going there to see whose team is gonna come out on top, and that’s a different ball game. I'm excited to see how far we go.

RAPID FIRE

Your biggest pet peeve: Hearing somebody chew. I cannot stand it. I will start crying in the corner. I can't do it.

In baseball, it's when people start walking. I can't stand it when people don't want to be there. It really bugs me. I think you should practice the way you're gonna play because if you're not even wanting to practice or you’re upset when stuff starts getting hard, that shows when you're in a game setting. I'm not gonna pass the ball to you if there's a play. I don't trust you, you know?

Your number one recommendation right now: I just read a really good book. It's called The Silent Patient. It's one of those ones where you just can't put it down. If you haven't read it, give it a read. 

One piece of advice you have for other young athletes: Don't be scared to meet your teammates. As a kid, I was so worried about fitting in that I didn't realize that individuality is what makes you cool. It's what makes teams work. If every single person on that team was the exact same player, you'd have a team of home run hitters, or you'd have a team of bunters, and that doesn't win ball games, you know? I've met some of my best friends playing softball, playing baseball, walking in the park, and just doing random things at the gym. Don't be scared to meet people. It's why I keep playing sports. 

Shout out to a woman in sports: I feel like every time I talk about a woman in sports, it always relates back to Alysa Liu, the figure skater. I just think her story is so incredible. She was honestly one of the best up-and-coming figure skaters in America that the world had ever seen. Then she just didn't love it anymore. She felt too much pressure, and she said it wasn't good for her. So she stepped away for years. When she came back, the only reason she was doing it was that she loved doing it. She just wanted to do it and see how far she could go.

That reflected beautifully in her performance. I mean, her medaling—are you kidding me? It's something that I really relate to. I think that her individuality in her sport really brings a different perspective. She never addressed the way she looked or the way she acted. She just did it. The woman you are, queen.