By Addison Gernenz | Copy Editor
For the first time since 1954, women are playing professional baseball.
All four teams — the New York Heights, Los Angeles Queens, Boston Hunters, and San Francisco Firebells — do not forget that. Each team pays homage to a historical woman who were pioneered their fields.
The Heights recognize Dorothy Height, a civil rights and women’s rights leader who focused on issues of Foundational Black American women. The Queens honor Lizzie Murphy, the first woman to play against major league players and is nicknamed “the Queen of the Diamond.” the Hunters commemorate Harriot K. Hunt, the first woman to apply to Harvard Medical School and establish a successful medical practice in the U.S. and the Firebells celebrate Lillie Hitchcock Coit, a champion of San Francisco’s volunteer firefighters and a large part of San Francisco’s history.
The Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) comes from decades of hard work by women fighting for their place on the diamond.
In 1931, teenage Jackie Mitchell of the Chattanooga Lookouts struck out New York Yankees Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game. One week later, the MLB commissioner Kennesaw Landis voided Mitchell’s contract and banned women from playing professional baseball, which lasted until 1993.
Still, women have played baseball. In 1943, there were concerns about the impact World War II was having on baseball. In response, Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley, the son of the namesake of the historic field in the North Side of Chicago, founded the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).
The AAGPBL played for twelve seasons from 1943 to 1954, ending as the men returned from the war and attention shifted back to men’s sports, causing a decline in revenue, ticket sales and promotion. Women’s baseball faded into the background once more.
Maybelle Blair, former baseball player for the AAGPBL, is the WPBL’s mascot and threw out the first pitch on opening day at the age of 99.
Currently, girls are allowed to play Little League, and 25 of them have competed in the Little League World Series since 1984. Los Angeles Queens’ Mo’ne Davis was one of these girls, making a statement at 13 by being the first girl to pitch a shutout and the first African American girl to play in the LLWS in 2014.
Women are also legally allowed to try out and play on men’s teams at the high school and college level, under Title IX and federal anti-discrimination laws.
Los Angeles Queens’ Ashton Lansdell played on boys’ competitive travel teams from age 9 until she was recruited by Georgia Highlands College at 18, playing with them for a year before leaving to play softball for Ole Miss. Lansdell is an infielder for the Party Animals and the USA Women’s baseball team and was awarded the ‘most outstanding player’ award in the 2026 Women’s Baseball World Cup.
“We’re finally going to have a platform to step into where we feel welcome right away,” New York’s Denae Benites said on The WPBL Podcast hosted by Lansdell in early March. “We don’t have to fight for being the only girl on the field or in the league, we’re all the same. We all love the game of baseball; we’re all women that fell in love with this game, and now we just get to experience that together without having to earn our spot on the field because we’re a girl.”
Benites captained the Heights and finished the regular season with 11 homers, tying Firebells captain Kelsie Whitmore for the league-high.
Whitmore is another huge name in women’s baseball, possibly the largest.
Whitmore made history in 2022, entering a Staten Island FerryHawks game as a pinch-runner in the 9th inning and becoming the first woman to play professional baseball in an MLB partner league and, later on, the first woman to pitch in an MLB partner league. She went on to be a pitcher and outfielder for the Savannah Bananas.
Three years after her professional baseball debut, Whitmore made history once again as the first name called in the WPBL inaugural draft.
Whitmore led her team to become the WPBL’s first regular-season champion with 10 wins and five losses. On Sept. 9, San Francisco hosted the Boston Hunters for the first game of the WPBL Semifinals.
“This game is bigger than the wins and bigger than the numbers, the stats, all of it,” Whitmore told the fans Sunday night after the Firebells’ final regular season game. “It’s all about us being able to fulfill our dreams and be here today to live it out.”
This is what the Women’s Professional Baseball League is about.
For decades, baseball has been a “boys’ club.” Women and girls have been kept out of teams and leagues or encouraged to play softball — an entirely different sport — instead. We have been quizzed on players’ names, accused of being bandwagon fans, and questioned for wearing jerseys (No, I am not wearing an Ian Happ Cubs jersey as a fashion statement).
It seems so difficult for people to believe that women can enjoy baseball independent of a man, and yet statistics show that 41% of Major League Baseball fans are women, and history shows that women have been playing baseball nearly as long as men have, despite the obstacles that have stood in our way.
It holds to official baseball guidelines, with three exceptions: the women are permitted to use aluminum bats, the games are only seven innings long, and the fences are a shorter distance.
With the WPBL, women once again have a league of their own.
The WPBL continues its playoff season at 6:00 p.m. CT on Sept. 10. Games can be watched on ESPN+.
