Jennie Finch is to women's softball what Michael Jordan was to basketball or Wayne Gretzky to hockey.

They are all the faces of their respective sports and are credited with elevating those sports and the awareness of them worldwide.

Like Jordan and Gretzky, Finch will now have to continue her work off the field. She retired last week from professional softball after a career that produced unprecedented achievements.

Saturday, a day after turning 30 and less than a week after playing her final game, Finch was in Lancaster for a promotional appearance at the Barnstormers game.

"It doesn't feel real yet," she said. "We just came off a long summer and a long season."

"I'm at peace," she added. "I've been able to do so much and met so many amazing people. I'm OK with it. I'm only a week out, I'm sure I'm going to miss it."

Finch cited a desire to spend more time with her family as the main reason for her decision to walk away.

Her husband is Casey Daigle, a pitcher for the Round Rock Express, the Houston Astros' Class AAA affiliate in the Pacific Coast League. They have a four-year-old son, Ace.

They have a home in Arizona, but have not been there since January, leaving Finch to refer to it as their "climate-controlled storage."

"There's been a lot I've had to miss out on," Finch said of family life. "There are weeks that go by that we don't see each other."

"I would like to have more kids and I'm not getting any younger," she added.

Finch, who grew up in California with two older brothers, began playing softball at age 5, started pitching at age 8 and played on her first competitive, travel team at 10. That's when she says the light went off that this may be her thing.

Finch recalls two other moments that helped steer her career path as well as fuel her passion to play and to win.

The first came while she was playing in an under-14 national tournament, when she and her father were told by the coach that she "wasn't a championship pitcher."

Boy, was he wrong. She went on to become one of, if not the greatest female player to ever step into the pitcher's circle.

The second moment came when her parents took her to Atlanta in 1996 to see the U.S. women's softball team play in the Olympics.

When they left, Finch recalls telling her parents "that's what I want to do. I want to be an Olympian."

Eight years later she played with some of those same players from Atlanta and won a gold medal in Athens. She added a silver in 2008 in Beijing, but is leaving a game that is no longer an Olympic sport.

"Devastated," she said about the International Olympic Committee's decision. "Having that taken away was like a knife to the heart."

As for getting it back?

"It's a matter of the IOC admitting they made a mistake," she said. "It's going to be a long journey, but I'm going to do everything I can do."

Finch enjoyed a dominant collegiate career at the University of Arizona, where she was honored twice as the nation's top player and named All-America three times. She set an NCAA record for consecutive wins with 60, finishing with 119 victories and 1,028 career strikeouts.

Her arrival on the collegiate softball scene coincided with the national emergence of the game. In her freshman season, she recalls only one game of the Women's College World Series being televised on ESPN. By the end of her senior season in 2002 every game of the tournament was shown. Now, you can see the regional and super-regional tournaments as well.

"It's so incredibly popular and we've come so far," she said. "It has grown tremendously in the last 10-15 years. It's exciting to see it grow."

Finch entered the USA National team in 2001 at the Pan Am qualifier and was on team until she announced her retirement in July. Along with her gold meals, the 6-foot-1 pitcher is a three-time World Cup Champion, a three-time World Champion and a two-time Pan American champion.

Finch was also the top draw in the development of the National Pro Fastpitch League, where she spent the last six seasons playing for the Chicago Bandits.

There, she threw two perfect games, one in 2005 and another this season against Akron, which came 11 days before she announced she was retiring.

In 2005, she was named top pitcher in the league following a 14-0 season (0.88 ERA). In 2007, she allowed only one earned run all season in 66.2 innings. This summer, Finch was 5-4 with a 2.05 ERA and led the Bandits to the finals of the NPF, where they lost in the deciding game. She had 73 strikeouts in 59 innings.

"I've been so incredibly blessed to be able to do so much within the game," Finch said. "I'm blessed. I've lived way beyond my dreams. The awards are great, but really it's about touching lives and being an inspiration to younger girls."

Finch's popularity goes beyond the softball diamond. In 2004, she was named one of People Magazine's 50 most beautiful people and four years later was a member of the Celebrity Apprentice cast on NBC.

Now, in retirement, she hopes to use her "star" status to continue building the game she loves so dearly.

"I feel, in some ways, it will allow me to do more within the sport, as far as continue to help grow it all over the country and all over the world," she said. "Working with kids is my heart and passion. If I wasn't playing, I always said I would be a teacher."

She will continue to hold camps nationwide and will also spend time delivering her message to young girls, which is what she did in Lancaster when she spoke to hundreds prior to the Barnstormers game and told them "it's all about having dreams and goals. The sky's the limit, go after it."

And when asked if she would ever compete again?

"Never say never," she said.