A League More Than 70 Years in the Making
When the first pitch is thrown in Springfield, it will be the first professional women’s baseball game in the United States since 1954.
That year marked the end of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a structure that existed in a completely different baseball era and then disappeared without a direct successor.
What follows now is not a continuation of that league. It is a separate professional system built decades later, with players arriving from established baseball environments across the women’s game.
Four teams. Seven weeks. The frame is simple. The backgrounds inside it are not.
How the WPBL Is Built
Seven-inning games
Aluminum bats
Fifteen-player rosters
All games played in Springfield, even as teams carry city names like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco.
There is no home-and-away rhythm here. No travel schedule spread across a season. No gradual expansion of environments.
Everything is compressed into one setting, with a roster structure that leaves very little room for specialization.
The Infrastructure and Leadership
The league is built around a single-entity model, a financial blueprint designed to bypass the immediate volatile overhead of multi-city travel and disparate ownership groups. Instead of four teams managing individual stadium leases and separate operational budgets, the league controls all four franchises centrally, with revenue going directly into player compensation and a unified production hub.
The structure is guided by people who have spent decades operating in the gaps of the sport.
Justine Siegal (Commissioner and Co-Founder): A pioneer who became the first female coach of a professional men’s baseball team in 2009 and the first woman to coach in Major League Baseball with the Oakland Athletics in 2015. As the founder of Baseball For All, her career has been centered on building institutional access where none existed.
Keith Stein (Co-Founder): A lawyer and businessman who structured the initial capital framework, anchoring the project to the financial realities of modern sports entertainment rather than relying on pure novelty.
Maybelle Blair (Honorary Advisory Chair): A direct bridge to the past, Blair pitched in the original AAGPBL in the 1940s and has spent her later years advocating for the return of a permanent, professional platform.
Dates, Schedule, and How to Watch
The inaugural season operates on a compact, seven-week tournament timeline.
The Timeline: Regular season play begins on Saturday, August 1, 2026, and runs through Sunday, September 6, 2026. Games are scheduled from Wednesday through Sunday, with each team playing a 15-game regular season schedule.
The Postseason: Regular season standings dictate the seeding for the first-ever WPBL Playoffs. A three-game semifinal series begins on September 9, resulting in a best-of-five WPBL Championship Series to crown the inaugural league champion by late September.
How to Watch: For fans outside Illinois, the WPBL will stream every single game of the 2026 season live and for free on their official YouTube channel (@wpbl_official). In-person tickets for games at Robin Roberts Stadium are available through the league’s ticket portal.
Ten Players to Watch Early
Kelsie Whitmore- THE Number One Draft Pick. There was no never much doubt as to who they would build the league around. One of the most consistent figures in modern U.S. women’s baseball. Independent leagues. International competition. Savannah Banana. Whitmore has been part of the sport’s structure long before any single league tried to define it.
Ayami Sato-The GOAT. The greatest women’s pitcher in the history of the sport. Before the WPBL draft she was selected as an advisor for the WPBL. Years of international pitching sit behind her. Championship runs. MVP-level tournaments. A long stretch of being the pitcher others prepare for first. She enters this league as a reference point, not an introduction.
Rakyung Kim- Still early in her international visibility, but not early in her development. She has been the first female baseball player at every single level she has ever played in Korea, single-handedly shifting her country’s domestic boundaries. Now fully recovered from her historic Tommy John surgery, her pitching relies on command and tempo. Springfield presents the ultimate narrative circle: she is on a collision course to face her longtime mentor and former teammate, Ayami Sato, on Opening Weekend.
Natsuki Yonetani- Her presence provides a direct connection to the Venus League’s Saitama Seibu Lions Ladies, where she previously anchored the lineup alongside former teammate Rakyung Kim and current Lions teammate turned WPBL opponent, Ayami Sato. Yonetani remains a cornerstone of the Lions’ offense, coming off a dominant campaign where she posted a .375 batting average and a .455 on-base percentage over the full season.
Mo’ne Davis- Now pitching with the Indianapolis Clowns in Banana Ball. Her name has carried through baseball for more than a decade, starting with the Little League World Series and extending through every stage since. She has never really existed outside visibility, and she knows exactly how to perform inside it.
Alli Schroder- A standout power arm for Team Canada. She made history as the first female player in the Canadian College Baseball Conference. Her career is built on high-pressure execution, whether closing out international medal rounds or managing her offseason work as a wildland firefighter. She brings uncompromising grit to the mound.
Ashton Lansdell- Already experienced in Banana Ball with the Party Animals, where the game moves fast and the crowd is part of the rhythm. That background matters here. She is used to playing in environments that never slow down for adjustment. From her days at Ole Miss to playing for the US Women’s National Team, she is battle tested and ready.
Denae Benites- Also out of Banana Ball, playing with the Loco Beach Coconuts. Same ecosystem. Different team. Same pace. And just like Ashton, she’s a first round pick for a reason. Do not mistake her vibes as a knock on her skills. She’ll catch you trying to steal second before you even begin your slide into the base.
Sabrina Robinson- One of the toughest competitors on the field, and that’s not just a generic line… she’s as fierce a baseball player as she is a hockey player. But she knows and loves baseball more and it shows. Part of the league’s early visibility layer as much as its competitive layer. She has already been present in how the WPBL is introduced to fans, not just how it is played. A Baseball For All Coach and a consistent presence in the Maria Pepe Series, she’s readying the next generation of baseball stars.
Claire O’Sullivan- An Australian player traversing the globe in search of the world’s best competition. She’s currently found it in Japan’s Venus League system where last year she helped the Zenko Beams become the All Japan Hardball Women’s Champions. Her path has been shaped across multiple international environments rather than a single domestic pipeline. That kind of career arc is becoming more common in women’s baseball, and it brings a deeply adaptable skill set to Springfield.
Where Did These Players Come From?
Unlike established men’s professional leagues, there has never been a single destination for the world’s best women baseball players. Many built careers in Japan’s Venus League, others through national teams, independent leagues, collegiate baseball, Banana Ball, or organizations like Baseball For All. The WPBL brings those paths together for the first time under one professional banner.
Why This Season Matters
This is not a finished product league. It is a foundation year.
The first season functions as:
a talent consolidation point for global women’s baseball
a visibility engine for professional viability
a testing ground for roster construction and competitive balance
a proof-of-concept for long-term league expansion
Winning the inaugural championship is not just a trophy moment. It becomes a reference point for how future WPBL eras define legitimacy.
What This Means for Girls and Women Who Want to Play Baseball
This is the part that matters beyond Springfield. Because the WPBL is not just a league starting in one city. It is a signal that the pathway no longer has to end in adolescence, or get rerouted into something else entirely.
For years, girls who played baseball had two choices. Step into softball, or step out of competitive baseball entirely. Even the most elite players were forced into detours that did not match their training, identity, or ambition.
That structure is starting to break.
What this league does, even in its first season, is create visibility at the professional level that did not exist in the United States before now. Not as an exhibition. Not as a one-off showcase. A full season. A standings table. A championship. That matters for recruitment, but more importantly, it matters for imagination.
A 10-year-old playing Little League does not need to wonder anymore if baseball “ends” for her at a certain age. She can see a version of the sport where it continues. And that changes how early development works. How parents support it. How coaches frame it. How players measure progress.
The WPBL does not fix the entire system. Not even close. But it creates a reference point that younger players can now point to and say: this exists, and it is real, and it is ongoing.
That is the shift.
Not completion. Continuity.
Want to Know More?
* Sabrina Robinson: Creating Visibility In Women’s Baseball
* Rakyung Kim: Destiny Awaits in Springfield
* Justine Siegal: The History Maker
* Ayami Sato: The First One on the Mound
* Claire O’Sullivan: When I Grow Up I Want To Be An O’Sullivan
Way to keep us informed. Thank you. Your right. This is only the beginning. A beacon of hope. I'm so glad we will be able to watch the games on Youtube. I'm way too far away from Springfield. One month away and counting. YAY!
It’s cool that they’re playing at Maybelle Field too!