A league of their own: Women’s Professional Baseball League

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress Life/Flickr

Former Little League World Series sensation Mo’ne Davis is set to make her return to the game, joining the inaugural Women’s Professional Baseball League as the sport enters a new era of opportunity and equality.

For the first time in more than 70 years, women will have the opportunity to play professional baseball in the United States. The Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) is set to start its inaugural season in Spring 2026, marking a historic milestone for America’s national pastime and a new chapter for gender equity in athletics.

This past week, the WPBL announced the locations of its four inaugural teams ahead of the season's start on the national stage. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston will serve as the founding cities, each preparing to host one of the league’s first professional women’s baseball teams.

The cities were chosen based on their market size and those who already have large sports fan presences. In a statement to ESPN, WPBL co-founder and the first woman to coach for a Major League Baseball (MLB) team, Justine Siegal, said, “Each of these cities are storied sports cities… and we can't wait to connect with the fans who live there and baseball fans across the country.”

Siegal announced last year the plan to officially launch the league in 2026, with a six-team circuit in the regular season, playoffs, and an all-star game. This set-up aims to mirror the structure of the MLB, while also providing enough flexibility to accommodate changes in the first couple of seasons. 

Each team will consist of 15 players per club, following the summer tryouts held in Washington, D.C. this past August. The top 100 players from the tryouts will be eligible for the draft, which will take place later this year. The list, which is live on the WPBL website, features a diverse mix of athletes, from college standout players and international stars to players who stunned scouts at tryouts.

Some of the most notable names included former Little League star Mo’ne Davis, who has continued to evolve her game both on the mound and in the field well beyond her early fame. Other players of interest include United States Women’s National team and Savannah Bananas player Kelsie Whitmore and Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato, one of the sport’s most accomplished international talents.

Davis, who completed a graduate degree at Columbia University this past year, thought that she no longer had an opportunity to play sports at the competitive level. She said to MLB.com, “Just talking to people around me when I found out about the league and them just encouraged me to go out, like, ‘You're still young, you're still active, why not give it a chance?... I never wanted to have a regret of not trying… And the league came up, and it was just perfect timing.”

Opportunities like this one are few and far between—especially in women’s sports. The WPBL is only the third women’s professional baseball league in United States history, following the legacy of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) in the 1940s and 1950s, and the very short-lived Ladies League in the 1990s. 

The AAGPBL intended to keep baseball fields active while many American men were fighting in World War II. The founder, and previous Chicago Cubs owner, Philip K. Wrigley put women in the field, and it was successful up until the league’s end in 1954.

With the season set to begin in 2026, the WPBL aims to build both a sustainable business model and a lasting place for women in professional baseball. This is more than just another professional sports league; it represents progress and opportunity for players, coaches, and fans to prove that a passion for baseball knows no gender.