Leftfielder Amanda Ardinger has been playing softball for so long, she cannot remember the exact number of years. When she received an e-mail from her coach announcing that the Pittsburgh Pirates were looking for ball girls, she applied, interviewed and they hired her on the spot.Ardinger, along with two other girls from the Point Park University softball team, will be working as ball girls at Pirates games this summer, tossing foul balls into the crowd and working the home run wall.“I never thought I would be on the same field as them,” Ardinger, a freshman elementary education major, said.This is the first time Pittsburgh’s baseball team has had ball girls in about 30 years.  The Pirates used to employ ball girls, but did away with them in 1985.When the call was sent out to local college softball teams, they received about 40 applications and hired 12 girls, three of whom are Point Park students.Sophomore sport, arts and entertainment management major Abbie Heigel worked for the first time at the home opener. She was on TV at the home run wall after Pirate Garrett Jones smacked a ball into the Allegheny River to tie the game.“It is just unreal. This is the coolest job I’ve ever had,” Heigel, a pitcher for the lady Pioneers, said.Ardinger worked the April 7 game against the L.A. Dodgers along with sophomore center fielder Zoe Hughes. Both were introduced on the scoreboard before the game.
“A little girl came up to me and was like ‘So, what are you doing?’” Hughes, an intelligence and national security major, said.Hughes explained