A later profile identifies July 9, 1998, as the game in which Borders started, pitching five innings and allowing three earned runs.
According to a detailed retrospective profile, July 9, 1998, is identified as the date of a professional start by Ila Borders in men's independent league baseball, during which she pitched five innings and allowed three earned runs.
This account appears in later journalism examining Borders' 1998 season milestones, and it is worth noting alongside the July 7, 1998 date given by other sources for her historic first start. The discrepancy likely reflects differing methods of record-keeping or the compression of a season's worth of milestones into shorthand summaries by different writers years after the fact.
Regardless of which date marks her literal first start, both dates fall within the same short window in July 1998 and are part of the broader narrative of Borders' developing role as a starting pitcher in men's professional baseball—a role that had never before been filled by a woman. Her ability to log innings as a starter, rather than simply appear in relief, demonstrated her legitimacy as a competitive professional athlete and set the stage for her landmark win later that month on July 24, 1998.
Historians and archivists continue to cross-reference box scores from the 1998 Duluth-Superior Dukes and St. Paul Saints seasons to fully reconcile these dates.