It’s been almost seven many years since girls within the U.S. have had a league of their very own.
By summer time of 2026, nevertheless, the organizers of the newly introduced Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) hope to have six groups of ladies in caps and cleats, competing on diamonds which have been used virtually solely by males for almost a century and half.
The explosive development of ladies’s faculty and professional basketball, alongside with the now-decadeslong reputation of girls’s soccer, performed a task in boosting baseball at this second in sports activities historical past, WPBL co-founder Justine Siegal instructed NBC News on Friday.
“This is certainly a good time for ladies’s sports activities and professional sports activities as males and others have lastly found out how nice girls are as athletes,” stated Siegal, who was the primary lady to educate a Major League Baseball staff when she joined the Oakland Athletics group in 2015 and now runs Baseball for All, a nonprofit that promotes baseball for ladies.
“So it’s simply nice time to showcase our baseball gamers,” Siegal stated.
The Ruthian job of securing franchise homeowners, six Northeastern cities, stadiums and sponsors would possibly pale compared to the league’s most elementary want: gamers with expertise in America’s pastime.
No state provides ladies baseball as a highschool sport, in line with representatives on the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). The NCAA and the NAIA have softball for ladies however not hardball.
Still, there have been 1,372 highschool ladies who performed on boys baseball groups throughout America final tutorial yr, in line with NFHS knowledge.
That surprisingly giant quantity nonetheless pales compared to the 471,761 boys who performed baseball and the 345,607 ladies who whipped softballs across the diamond this previous spring.
Siegal insisted these 1,372 ladies don’t precisely replicate the true expertise pool of women and younger girls taking part in hardball outdoors of college campuses.
“There are ladies taking part in baseball and native leagues across the nation proper now,” Siegal stated.
“The baseball neighborhood has already moved ahead, rising the game for ladies,” she added, “and the WPBL goes to have the ability to give a pipeline for ladies who’re being instructed they need to stop when now they know that they’ve a spot that they may play in.”
Ila Borders, the Nineties faculty and skilled baseball trailblazer, stated she fully backs this effort to determine massive league ball for ladies, however is stunned this bid is unfolding with out a deeper novice expertise pool.
“I assumed it will come that manner [with more] highschool [players] after which it will go faculty. And I felt prefer it was making an attempt to take that route after which go professional,” stated Borders, now a coaching captain for the Clackamas Fire District in Oregon. “But it looks as if what they’re making an attempt to do now’s, ‘Hey, let’s go professional with these six groups,’ develop individuals, after which perhaps it’s a trickle-down impact.”
The U.S. girls’s nationwide baseball staff is a mixture of girls who performed high faculty softball or suited up alongside males on lower-division hardball groups.
In the gold-medal sport of the WBSC Women’s Baseball World Cup this summer time, which Team USA misplaced to Japan, softball gamers had a pivotal function.
The beginning pitcher was Jillian Albayati, who performs each softball and baseball for Cal State San Marcos; the leadoff hitter was Florida International University softball infielder Ashton Lansdell, who scored two runs that day; and the No. 2 hitter was former University of Georgia softball star Alex Hugo, who drove in three runs.
Toronto lawyer and businessman Keith Stein, Siegal’s accomplice on this enterprise, stated he expects softball gamers, comparatively new to baseball, will seemingly play a “vital function” on the rosters of these 2026 groups.
“It’s laborious for me to crystal-ball that one, however I believe there’s going to be a major factor of that, sure,” he stated.
A pipeline for ladies
The path to Major League Baseball is a simple run for boys and younger males: journey ball and Little League of their youth; highschool and American Legion ball as teenagers; being drafted after highschool or following three years of school; after which enduring the lengthy bus rides of the minor leagues earlier than reaching the present.
Stein stated he hopes the success of this new league will create the same baseball pipeline for ladies and younger girls within the not-too-distant future.
“We need to give younger gamers one thing to aspire in direction of. We we wish an acceptable baseball pipeline and infrastructure for feminine gamers to develop within the United States,” he stated. “So that’s a vital a part of our imaginative and prescient.”
The idea of ladies taking part in baseball isn’t in any respect international to informal American sports activities followers, moviegoers and TV watchers.
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League supplied girls a discipline to play on throughout World War II and thru the Korean War.
The league was fictionalized within the beloved 1992 movie “A League of Their Own,” with Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell, Madonna and director Penny Marshall.
And Fox drama “Pitch” — that includes Kylie Bunbury as the primary feminine MLB participant and Mark-Paul Gosselaar, greatest identified for his function in “Saved by the Bell” — was properly obtained throughout its quick run in 2016-17.
Siegal and Stein stated they nonetheless have many selections to make earlier than their league takes the sector in 2026, however they’ve outlined a number of key objectives for its growth:
- A participant draft in November of subsequent yr.
- With the prevalence of two-way gamers, the roster will seemingly be far lower than 26, the quantity usually suited up for an MLB sport.
- The league goals to play roughly 40 video games from May to August in faculty or minor league stadiums with the capability for about 2,500 to five,000 followers.
- Siegal stated she’s leaning towards a seven-inning sport, which is the usual for ladies’s worldwide baseball.
- The organizers are mulling over the extra intricate guidelines of the present MLB play, such as a pitch clock, shift bans and the common designated hitter.
Virtually any selections about guidelines, Stein stated, will seemingly be pushed by how these decisions have an effect on the sport’s look on tv or streaming platforms.
“If we don’t have the absolute best TV product,” he stated, “we’re simply not doing our job.”