FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Kelsie Whitmore stood near third base at JetBlue Park and looked around at her new norm.
Women baseball players from around the world tossed balls back and forth, sharing laughs and taking pointers from major league coaches. In less than five months, they will play in the first women's professional baseball league in the United States in more than 70 years.
“I never thought this would ever happen for me in my prime career,” said
Whitmore, a standout pitcher and outfielder who has won multiple medals playing for the U.S. women’s national baseball team. “I never thought it was ever going to happen, truly.”
Reality set in Wednesday for Whitmore and players from the Women's Pro Baseball League. The upstart league is taking part in a two-day event in Fort Myers, Florida, at the spring training home of the Boston Red Sox in preparation for the launch of its eight-week season on August 1.
The Red Sox have hosted women's baseball camps for a decade and welcomed several of the WPBL's stars for drills on Wednesday. Among them were veteran Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato and former Little League star Mo'ne Davis.
Davis, who at 13 became the first girl to earn a win and pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series, stayed close to coaches throughout the two-hour session to ask questions and refine her game. She left with plenty of helpful tips, including how to stay low in her hitting stance to generate power through her hips.
“This is another moment that I take when I go back home — what do I need to work on?” Davis said. “For me specifically is hitting approach. That’s the one I’m really focusing on because I want to be a better hitter. I want be a more consistent hitter. ... I appreciate all the coaches that helped today. Whatever question you had, they were open to answering it.”
The WPBL will also play an intrasquad scrimmage Thursday ahead of the Red Sox spring training game against the Minnesota Twins.
“These athletes have done something that hasn’t existed in 80 years,” said Shawn Smith, Red Sox general manager of Florida operations. “And they’re at the pinnacle of their craft right now only to get better. For us to be here — I feel like a little kid. I can’t describe it any other way.”
The WPBL is launching with four teams — Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York — this summer and will play a six-week regular season and two-week postseason at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.
The U.S. hadn't had a pro women’s league since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League dissolved in 1954, but the WPBL is hoping to create a lasting path for women to play professional baseball. That's a rarity in the U.S., where opportunities beyond youth leagues have so often required girls to take unusual paths, most of them alongside men.
Whitmore is from San Diego and made her professional debut in the Bay Area with a coed team, the Sonoma Stompers, in 2016. The 27-year-old has won two silver medals representing the U.S. at the Women’s Baseball World Cup and won gold at the 2015 Pan-Am Games in Toronto.
Whitmore, the No. 1 overall selection to San Diego in the WPBL's inaugural draft, had grown accustomed to being the only woman on most teams and said she's often dreamt of what it would be like to play alongside other women.
Now that it's a reality, the hope is that this creates a pipeline that didn't exist for Whitmore and many of her peers.
“A lot of us women have created the path and created it without knowing what that looked like,” Whitmore said. “Now there is a path for them, and so these young girls have something to look forward to.”
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