Looking Ahead to the Women's Professional Baseball League (WPBL) in 2026

The Women’s National Basketball Association has been around for years but last year in 2024 it took a mercurial rise to worldwide notoriety with the assistance of budding star Caitlin Clark. The WNBA is drawing great crowds in arenas around the world and has become the face of women’s professional sports.

Still, there are women competing in the LPGA (pro golf tour), in pro boxing, and they have made a major impact on Mixed Martial Arts especially in the UFC. There is a women’s tackle football league (Women’s Football Alliance), and a pro hockey league for the ladies, the PWHL. Of course Olympic sports is riddled with female athletes and that leaves us with baseball.

There is no professional baseball league for women, not since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League disbanded in 1954. That was 71 years ago and the premise for the movie “A League of Their Own” starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, and Rosie O’Donnell.

Now the women are back with a new league set to take place and take the diamonds around America and will be called the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL). Simple enough. The new league has two founders, Justine Siegal who sports a resume featuring a coaching position in Major League Baseball. She joins Keith Stein who works professionally as a lawyer and businessman.

The new league will begin with six franchises with a schedule that will have games played from Thursdays to Sundays with two games per week for each team. Following the conclusion of the inaugural season, there will be an all-star competition as well as a playoff run that will last two weeks. Tryouts for the six teams begin this month (August) and will be held at Nationals Park and the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy.

Thus far 600 women have registered for a tryout and of those only 150 will be chosen for a draft to be held in the fall. Coming in from Japan is Ayami Sato who was a pitcher in their major leagues, and well known American player Cito Gaston both of whom will serve as special advisors to the WPBL. While the WPBL is in its early stages the word is that each player in the league will be provided with accommodations, meals on gamedays, and a portion of the revenue that is generated from sponsors as well as whatever they negotiate as their base salary. Reportedly, the salaries will be comparable to minor league baseball.

Rosters will be limited to 15-25 players in the new league and it will have a salary cap of $95,000. Whether or not the new Women’s Professional Baseball League can survive its first season and go on playing in future years remains to be seen but where other sports leagues have sprung up and went away, the WPBL has the intrigue of possibly making it through the first attempt and keep running towards future seasons.

The World Football League, the XFL, and the USFL all failed to sustain success and continue operating. But this isn’t football and baseball after all has always been knowns as “America’s favorite pastime.” The only other women’s baseball league was the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League as indicated earlier with the movie A League of Their Own bringing attention to what once was.

The A-A GPBL as it was known came about mostly came about because of the player shortage in Major League Baseball caused by World War II. Several of the founders of the league were Philip Wrigley (thus Wrigley Field), Branch Rickey (of one baseball’s most historic figures), and Paul Harper. A sign of the times, no African-American women were provided a tryout. May 30, 1943 saw the first game played. The women stopped taking to the diamonds in 1954 when the war had ended and the male counterparts who were pro players that served in the war returned to the playing fields.

15 teams played in the A-A GPBL and their home cities and nicknames were: Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles, Rockford Peaches, South Bend Blue Sox, Milwaukee Chicks, Minneapolis Millerettes, Fort Wayne Daisies, Grand Rapids Chicks, Muskegon Lassies, Peoria Redwings, Chicago Colleens, Springfield Sallies, Kalamazoo Lassies, Battle Creek Belles, and the Muskegon Belles.

12 teams were crowned league champions over the course of history of the league. The Rockford Peaches won four of those titles with the South Bend Blue Sox taking home two trophies as did the Racine Belles and Grand Rapid Chicks. The other champions were the Milwaukee Chicks and the Kalamazoo Lassies who were the last champions to e crowned.

The Rockford Peaches were the most successful team winning those four championships and appearing in three other title series. There is a National Women’s Baseball Hall of Fame with nine inducted members:

• Claire Schillace
• Faye Dancer
• Dorothy Ferguson (Dottie Key as she was known)
• Joanne Winter
• Dorothy Kamenshek
• Jean Faut
• Doris Sams
• Peper Paire
• Sophie Kurys

So as we wait for this new league to make history, some may remember Mo’ne Davis who made headlines when she became the first female to play in the Little League World Series. She will be trying out for the new women’s professional baseball league next spring. There will certainly be a curiosity factor in effect and many will be pulling for the league to be a success just as it was with the WNBA.