Good morning, baseball fans!
The Women’s Professional Baseball League has announced that their inaugural season in 2026 will feature all teams playing in a neutral location. Unfortunately that location is 2,000 miles away from San Francisco.
Despite the league featuring teams from San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston, it was announced this week that all of the games will take place at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, IL.
Springfield has historical significance, of course, as they featured
one of the earliest paid women’s baseball games in 1875, and briefly had their own AAGPBL team in 1948.
While the decision to play all of the games at a neutral location for the first season makes sense from a logistical and financial perspective, it’s quite a bummer to everyone in the new teams’ regions who were really hoping to get to go to games in person to support their new team.
However, fans can still get in on some of the fun if they head to the WPBL’s social media pages. I saw on their TikTok account that they are soliciting team name suggestions. The most popular suggestion for San Francisco’s team so far has been the San Francisco Sirens, which was my first thought as well. I also thought the San Francisco Sea Lions would be fitting, but decided that I liked the sound of the San Francisco Scorpions the best, so that was my suggestion.
As a reminder, the WPBL draft will take place on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. PT, and the San Francisco team drew first pick, so that’s going to be exciting.
