In a league full of stars, the AUSL's Sis Bates shines bright

ROSEMONT, Ill. -- The glove never goes into her equipment bag. That’s Sis Bates’ first rule of glove love.

“I never smush it,” the excitable shortstop of the Volts in the startup Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) said during the league’s media day. “I will never throw my glove, and I oil it every day.”

A new season in a new league comes with a new glove for Bates, who recently signed a deal with Marucci that brought her a new model with its own carrying case.

“It’s like a little lunchbox,” she said with a laugh.

After an acclaimed career at the University of Washington, where she was the Softball America Defensive Player of the Year three straight seasons from 2019-21 and named the greatest softball shortstop of all time in a 2020 ESPN fan vote, the 27-year-old Bates is now one of the bright stars in a bold softball venture with MLB backing.

• The AUSL takes the field this weekend: Meet the Volts

That means a new audience is going to be treated to the talent of this human vacuum, whose range, glove flips and pirouettes have wowed softball fans for years.

Bates might best be described as softball’s Ozzie Smith, both for her great glove and her outgoing nature.

“Her spirit stands out,” said infielder Ali Aguilar of the AUSL’s Talons, who was Bates’ double-play partner at Washington. “She's incredibly positive and just a fun teammate to be around. She's always got something funny and spunky to say, and it really just brings up the mood.”

From growing up playing Wiffle ball in Ceres, Calif., with her older brother Jimmy (that’s how the woman born Nicole Bates came to be known as “Sis”) to starring for the Huskies, Team USA and in recent AU Pro Softball Championship seasons (an individual competition within a team dynamic, now renamed the AUSL All-Star Cup), Bates has earned a reputation for lifting people up.

“I feel like I just want to show up the same every day for the people around me,” Bates said. “And sometimes that's hard if you're having a bad day. Everybody has bad days. But I just try to pour all of myself into others, and sometimes you get really tired at the end of the day because you did it all day. But I just know that those teammates were always my favorite, the ones that poured themselves into everybody else. So I try to do that as much as I can.”

And of course, Bates pours herself into her defense. She’s a terrific hitter, having set a hits record at Washington, but it’s what she can do at shortstop that truly sets her apart -- and always has.

“Me and my brother and other boys in our neighborhood would play and compete, and that was always fun for me,” she said. “Like, I wanted to be better than all the boys. So I kind of started loving defense and figuring those things out. And I think it really turned into love in college. J.T. D’Amico was my infield coach, and he kind of, like, opened my eyes to how awesome and skillful defense is.”

Fast feet and agility are important to Bates, but so is having a relationship with the teammates on each side of her.

“A lot of defense is knowing the people around you and knowing their strength,” she said. “To have a connection with my third baseman and know where they're at, even if I'm not looking at them.”

Because previous iterations of AU’s professional softball ventures were individual competitions in which players bounced around from various “teams,” playing a more traditional format -- a real team dynamic in a 24-game season -- suits Bates’ skills well.

She’s still breaking in that new glove. As of media day, she had not yet given it a name (yes, she names her gloves). But Bates has already made a name for herself in the softball world, and now a wider audience will get to see what she can do with that glove.

“I just think to when I was a little girl watching MLB players, because that was the only visibility there was,” Bates said. “There wasn't pro softball on TV. So how awesome that now we have an opportunity to build that visibility for young little girls that can watch softball and see people that look like them and can aspire to do that one day.”