Women's professional baseball returned to the field this month for the first time since the 1950s, as the new Women's Pro Baseball League opened its inaugural season at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois. Four founding franchises — the Los Angeles Queens, New York Heights, Boston Hunters and San Francisco Firebells — are playing the entire six-week regular season at the same 5,200-seat ballpark, a neutral-site format the league adopted for year one rather than sending teams to build stadiums in their namesake cities.
The Queens beat the Heights in the league's first game, part of an opening weekend that drew more than 4,000 fans despite rain, according to coverage of the launch. Springfield was chosen in part for its central location roughly equidistant from the four coastal and Northeastern markets the teams represent, and organizers have leaned into the city's own baseball history in marketing the season.
Built on Familiar Names
Each franchise takes its name from a trailblazing woman with ties to its home city rather than a traditional mascot: the Queens honor Lizzie Murphy, who in 1922 became the first woman to play against major league players in an exhibition game; the Heights are named for civil rights leader Dorothy Height; the Hunters for physician and women's-health advocate Harriot Kezia Hunt; and the Firebells for 19th-century San Francisco volunteer firefighter Lillie "Firebelle Lil" Hitchcock Coit.
The league, founded in 2024 by former MLB coach Justine Siegal and team owner Keith Stein, drafted 60 players from 11 countries to fill its four rosters. Kelsie Whitmore, long one of the most prominent women playing men's independent professional baseball, was the draft's No. 1 overall pick and headlines the Firebells; Los Angeles selected former Little League World Series star Mo'ne Davis 10th overall. Games are played over seven innings with aluminum bats, and ESPN is streaming the full schedule, with select games simulcast on Scripps Sports Network.
A League Aware of Its Own History
Organizers built ceremony into opening weekend: 99-year-old Maybelle Blair, who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s and '50s, threw a ceremonial first pitch, directly linking the new league to the wartime circuit dramatized in "A League of Their Own." Whitmore told Just Women's Sports that competing in men's leagues had often meant players "shrink ourselves," but that once the WPBL's teams took the field together, "the walls let down." Davis said of the moment: "It's really cool to play in this league, just to play with other women, especially the women whose names got called and whose names will get called."
The launch arrives amid a broader run of new investment in women's professional sports. The Professional Women's Hockey League, which dropped its first puck in January 2024, drew more than one million fans across its third season and has since added expansion markets in Seattle and Vancouver, while women's basketball has spawned its own new venture in the 3-on-3 Unrivaled league. The WPBL's founders are betting a similar appetite exists for baseball, a sport women have been formally excluded from playing professionally in the United States for decades even as softball absorbed many top athletes. Whether a single shared stadium and a six-week season can build the same following remains the open question as the league's first playoff race takes shape ahead of its September championship.
