Loving Softball Is Easier Than Living It ROSEMONT, Ill. - At 26, Amber Patton is in the prime of her softball career, a top player on a leading professional team that just played for its league championship. But she broke down in tears recently as she explained that she is considering walking away from the game, not because she has lost her love for it or her ability to play it at the highest level. Patton is thinking of quitting because she is not sure she can afford to play softball anymore. "I just really, really hope that this league takes off and people aren't faced with this decision," she said after her team, the Chicago Bandits, recently lost in the decisive game of the National Pro Fastpitch championships. It's tough, but you have to make a living. The obstacles that Patton and other pro softball players face as they balance ambition and economics are different from the ones that rule in major men's sports, where talent is often the only barrier to professional and financial success. Patton said she was contemplating trading her promising career as a third baseman for one in her off-season occupation, sales. Her Bandits teammate Megan Wiggins, 24, is heading to Japan, which has a 12-team pro softball league that plays in the spring and fall and pays elite American players far more than they can make at home. Elite softball players are not the only top female athletes leaving the United States to secure bigger paychecks. After the Indiana Fever won the W.N.B.A. title last year, nearly every member of the team immediately departed for more lucrative gigs in Israel, Turkey, China, Russia and elsewhere. And for years, members of the United States women's soccer team have split their time among foreign clubs and a variety of American pro leagues. Wiggins is one of the few Americans able to make a living playing pro softball. National Pro Fastpitch, the top American league, has four teams, based in cities as diverse as Chicago; Akron, Ohio; and Kissimmee, Fla. A fourth club, the New York-New Jersey Comets, played at four home fields this year, including one in Pennsylvania. Franchises have rosters of up to 20 players - many of them former college players, including a number of former Olympians who continue to play even though the sport was dropped from the Games - but they have a $150,000 salary cap. Most players make $5,000 to $20,000 for the season, a 48-game summer schedule followed by a championship tournament like the one that ended Aug. 24 outside Chicago. The top players can supplement their income by playing in Japan's pro league, where American stars can command $60,000 or more playing for corporate-sponsored teams. But only the best players draw offers. The players" reliance on foreign income led to an embarrassing conclusion to last year's National Pro Fastpitch championship series, which was disrupted by rain and then canceled without crowning a champion. One factor in the decision was that important players on both teams were scheduled to leave for the start of the second half of the Japanese season. Despite better luck at this year's series, which ended with the Florida-based U.S.S.S.A. Pride beating Chicago in perfect weather before a capacity crowd of 2,000, team owners said their franchises still struggled to break even. Cheri Kempf, the league commissioner, acknowledged that N.P.F. had no nonsoftball-related sponsors. "Corporate America has a standoffish attitude toward women's professional sports," she said. If we had half the exposure that M.L.B. gets, our sport would be huge, but we don't get the exposure. It also does not produce the ratings. National Pro Fastpitch pays ESPN to broadcast its games, Kempf said, but the final produced a rating of 0.1. Even the lowest-rated major league baseball games draw 10 times as many viewers. As a result, Joey Arrietta, the owner of the Akron Racers, acknowledged that her goal of turning a profit "wasn't in the cards for now." Bill Sokolis, who owns a construction company and the Chicago franchise, said he bought the team because female athletes "don't get a fair shake." "The men make ugly amounts of money, and they don't exert even half the effort our players put forth," he said. The action over the final weekend backed up his point. Over 27 hours, the Pride's star pitcher, Cat Osterman, threw two complete games, then two and a third innings of scoreless relief to clinch the title. Fans seemed to enjoy the loose, family-friendly atmosphere. Parking was free at Rosemont Field, where tickets cost as little as $5. After losing in an elimination game, several members of the Akron team milled around with bats poking out of their backpacks, mingling with fans. After the Pride sealed the championship, hundreds of fans lined up to get autographs. But few players could afford to stay long. Natasha Watley, the Pride's 31-year-old shortstop, plays for a Toyota-sponsored team in Japan. Ayumi Karino, a Japanese outfielder who played for Akron, works an office job for her Japanese team's sponsor six days a week. "I hate my job; I wish I could just play softball," she said through an interpreter. But if you're good at softball, your performance in the office doesn't matter. The unending cycle of international travel, training and games can take a personal toll. "It's hard to establish a relationship, it's hard to maintain a relationship, it's hard to even meet people," Watley said. That's why I've thought about retirement. I'd like to have kids and start a family. If I was a man at 31, I could do that and keep playing, but as a woman, you can't do that. Wiggins said that despite the difficulties, she wanted to keep playing because softball still beat having a "real job." Her mother has told her that this is the last season she will care for her two pit bulls while she is in Japan, but Wiggins said even that would not drive her out of the game. Patton just doesn't want to say goodbye. "I'm still a kid on the field - I don't want to grow up," she said. But it's getting to that point where it's one or the other.