I agree with you 100% that at that age girls are quite often bigger than boys and baseball is not rugby - but that this kind of socialized in thinking is very pervasive. I've got a story in my drafts about women and strength, in fact, bc I've had several discussions with men who insist on asserting that men are just stronger than women, even though there are all kinds of exceptions to that - particularly now that more women are having access to the sort of training that men do.

One guy, when I mentioned that long history of women soldiers tried to say that they only acted as archers and didn't carry swords. Uh nope, sorry bud, that is not the least bit true. On average, males do have greater upper body strength, but that doesn't mean that Rhonda Rousey couldn't take you in a fight and that centuries of women didn't fight using the same weapons as men. I just find it odd to realize how baked in these beliefs are, although for at least some of those men, I think it was coming from a place of "Don't take away my inherent superiority. There's got to be some place where I'm just "naturally better" than women. 🙄