In October 2024, plans for the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) were announced, marking the first pro women’s baseball league since the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).
The league, set to play in 2026, comes at a time when women’s sports are the biggest they’ve ever been: the popularity of female athletes such as Caitlin Clark and Ilona Maher, the rise of new pro women’s leagues like the Professional Women’s Hockey League (which debuted in 2023) and the record viewership achieved by the WNBA in the 2024 season showcase its recent popularity. A women’s baseball league seems like a natural continuation of the trend, especially given that, according to a study carried out by Major League Baseball (MLB), 46% of MLB fans are women.
America’s last experiment with women’s pro baseball, the AAGPBL, was made legendary by the 1992 hit classic “A League of Their Own.” Though the movie’s protagonists, Kit Keller, played by Lori Petty, and Dottie Hinson, played by Geena Davis, are fictional and the movie dramatizes historical events, the film is largely based on the true history of the league. Most importantly, it’s a story that continues to resonate with people, continuing to make weekly appearances on cable television 32 years after its release.
To me, “A League of Their Own” is an homage to the hard work and sacrifices made by the women of the league directly from the heart of director Penny Marshall, making up for the lackluster recognition granted by the Baseball Hall of Fame. On the surface, the story is a heartwarming movie about sisterhood with a feel-good ending, but what sticks out to me is that it asserts that women belong in the centuries-long story of American baseball.
Baseball is more than a sport to America: it’s a slate where national tragedies and triumphs are projected. It’s certainly a part of our national identity, so including and highlighting women in baseball becomes all the more meaningful.
Baseball players are athletes, but beyond that, they’re ballplayers; the ballplayer’s dedication to their craft, their toughness and their ability to work hard all contribute to their praiseworthy title of ballplayer. The reverence held for ballplayers, at least within the world of baseball, is highlighted in scenes where Jimmy Dugan, a fictional washed-up baseball player and reluctant manager of the Rockford Peaches — the team Kit and Dottie play for — played by Tom Hanks, emphasizes that the women on his team aren’t ballplayers. Yet, at the end of the film, Dugan’s view of the women he’s managing changes and he’s persuaded that they, too, belong to this class of players. This is the impact that a league all about women can have: it can legitimize these ballplayers to the rest of the world.
Beyond the elite players that make it to the big leagues (and, with the WPBL, elite female players will finally have a big league to make it to) there’s the whole world of non-professional baseball. Kids playing stickball (a street game based on baseball, consisting of hitting rubber balls with broomsticks), or uncles placing last in their recreational leagues are just as much a part of baseball culture in America as pro leagues.
Because the faces we see racing around the base paths, hitting dingers in the batter’s box or throwing curveballs on the mound trickle down into the lives of us ordinary folks, women’s pro baseball means girls everywhere get the chance to participate in the sport aptly nicknamed America’s pastime and to believe that they belong in the sport. It will open doors for women’s baseball at all levels, as currently, no state offers girl’s baseball as a high school sport. Although the little league baseball bird has flown for me, it makes me happy to think of future generations of little girls participating in the baseball play of childhood and youth.
In one of my favorite scenes in the movie, Dugan says (on baseball), “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” And no one knows it more than the women who loved the game so much that they found ways to play, even without teams or leagues existing for them.
These women have always existed in baseball: Dottie and Kit represent all the girls playing in invisible fields. At 17 years old, Jackie Mitchell faced three batters (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri), struck out the first two and had her contract voided after making a fool of baseball’s finest; Mo’ne Davis pitched a shutout game in the Little League World Series in 2014; Kim Ng was the first woman to serve as a general manager in the MLB. There are countless other stories of women who prevailed in this male-dominated sport. Now, with a women’s pro league that is hopefully here to stay, they won’t be footnotes or freak attractions — the story can finally be all about them.
