Sitting at Robin Roberts Stadium on Friday, watching the Boston Hunters take on the San Francisco Firebells, I asked my mom what I thought was a simple question: “Would you have played baseball instead of softball if given the chance?”
My mom grew up a Cubs fan and admired players such as Ron Santo and Ryne Sandberg. During the ’70s and ’80s, she watched some less-than-stellar Cubs teams and listened to Steve Stone dissect their play from the broadcast booth. Her love of baseball developed into a love of playing
softball, and she spent her summers on the field with her dad as her coach. Sandi wasn’t half bad at the sport, either. She went on to study physical therapy at Saint Louis University, where she also had the privilege of playing Division I softball.
When the time came to answer my question, she thought for a moment and said she wouldn’t have. When she turned the question around on me, I gave a similar answer. We could have left it at that, but there I was, watching women compete in the first professional women’s baseball league in the United States in more than 70 years. It got me thinking: Why would I have chosen softball over baseball?
I had simply assumed baseball was never an option. During all my years on the softball diamond, I never stopped to consider whether I could play baseball. The common understanding seemed to be that after one year of coed T-ball through my suburban park district, I had to move on to softball. It never occurred to me to ask whether I could play baseball because baseball wasn’t considered a girls’ sport. My mom shared a similar sentiment, drawing on her experiences as both a player and a parent.
The reality, though, is that some girls might have preferred baseball to softball if they had been given a path and role models who had made the same choice. So there I sat on a perfect Friday evening, watching the inaugural season of the Women’s Professional Baseball League and considering the significance of what these women were doing.
Putting history aside for a moment, the WPBL is fun. Its mascot is inspired by Maybelle Blair, who pitched in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) in 1948. The mascot sports Blair’s iconic sunglasses and big white hair, along with a cane resembling a baseball bat. It is exciting to discover a new organization to support and a new team to root for until Chicago gets one of its own. Go, Hunters!
The field dimensions may be the same as those in MLB, but the WPBL has developed its own style of play. The contact-oriented approach keeps the defense involved and gives plays more time to develop, creating plenty of action on the field.
However, there are areas for improvement. Having only a home-plate umpire and one base umpire is not enough. I would have loved to see a pitch clock and a screen displaying the pitch type and velocity. I also wished more people had been in the stands. Springfield may be centrally located, but it is not a major city with a population large enough to consistently draw thousands of fans. The games should also be more widely accessible rather than available only behind an ESPN Select paywall. Still, everything has to start somewhere, and the league has room to grow beyond these early shortcomings.
At its heart, though, the league is about the little girls discovering the sport and seeing people who look like them play it at the highest level. It’s about those who have sought a place in baseball for so long but never found one in MLB or alongside the boys on the Little League field. It’s about the couple I sat next to Saturday who traveled from Alabama. This wasn’t merely a stop on a larger trip; the WPBL was the reason for their trip. And it’s about the women on the field creating the place they wished had existed when they were growing up in the sport.
That may sound dramatic, but frankly, it is that serious. Having a space where girls can explore and learn the sport and a professional league they can aspire to reach is important. Inclusivity is vital. I would have loved to have had the choice between baseball and softball when I was a girl, and now the next generation gets to have it.
So, if you haven’t checked it out yet, seek out the WPBL. Supporting the league could be as simple as following it on social media, choosing a team to root for or taking a last-minute trip to the state capital to catch a game. Maybe your new favorite player will be Kelsie Whitmore, the first overall selection in the inaugural WPBL draft and the league leader with nine home runs entering the final weekend. Or perhaps it will be Maggie Meidlinger, who has posted a 2.70 ERA over 13 1/3 innings. And for all you stat nerds, Baseball-Reference offers plenty of data to explore.
The league will play its final regular-season games over Labor Day weekend before the postseason begins Sept. 9.
