{"id":255452,"date":"2026-07-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/31\/womens-pro-baseball-league-begins-inaugural-season-the-gist\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T00:00:00","slug":"womens-pro-baseball-league-begins-inaugural-season-the-gist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/31\/womens-pro-baseball-league-begins-inaugural-season-the-gist\/","title":{"rendered":"Women\u2019s Pro Baseball League begins inaugural season | The GIST"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>The GIST: <\/strong>The Women\u2019s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) makes its long-awaited debut in front of a sold out crowd tomorrow at 6 p.m. ET, airing on ESPN Select in the U.S. and on YouTube for those outside the States. Here\u2019s everything you need to know ahead of the historic first pitch.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2705 Four inaugural teams will compete at neutral site in Illinois: <\/strong>Although the league\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/Dalt5XJjWL-\/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">four debut teams<\/a> \u2014 Boston Hunters, NY Heights, LA Queens, and San Francisco Firebells \u2014 are connected to home cities, all season one games will be played at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Each team will play 15 regular-season games starting tomorrow through early September, battling to determine matchups for the inaugural WPBL playoffs. The first round will be best-of-three, followed by the best-of-five WPBL Championship. Hey, batter, batter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\ud83e\udd29 <strong>LA\u2019s Mo\u2019ne Davis, San Francisco\u2019s Kelsie Whitmore headline talent: <\/strong>Sixty players will compete in the inaugural season, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.littleleague.org\/videos\/mone-davis-2014-pitching-highlights\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2014 Little League World Series darling<\/a> Davis and No.1 overall pick Whitmore, the first woman to play in an MLB Partner League and the first to pitch in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/aDFglbNFPWY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Banana Ball<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A couple other names to know? LA pitcher Ayami Sato, the first woman to play in a men\u2019s pro league in Canada, and NY catcher Kylee Lahners, a softball-turned-baseball player and standout for Team USA.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2665\ufe0f <strong>Bigger than sport: <\/strong>Tomorrow\u2019s opener between LA and New York is a moment years in the making. Women have <em>always<\/em> had a place on the diamond, a fact that was on full display during the AAGPBL\u2019s heyday in the 1940s and 50s. Now, after a <a href=\"https:\/\/baseballforall.com\/baseball-for-all-story\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">long road filled with firsts<\/a>, women <em>finally<\/em> have a league of their own. That certainly merits a little crying in baseball.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n  !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n  n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;\n  n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n  t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,\n  document,'script','https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n  fbq('init', '1716705275141133'); \/\/ Insert your pixel ID here.\n  fbq('track', 'PageView');\n      <\/script><script async defer src=\"https:\/\/platform.instagram.com\/en_US\/embeds.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thegistsports.com\/article\/womens-baseball-league-begins\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The GIST: The Women\u2019s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) makes its long-awaited debut in front of a sold out crowd tomorrow at 6 p.m. ET, airing on ESPN Select in the U.S. and on YouTube for those outside the States. Here\u2019s everything you need to know ahead of the historic first pitch. \u2705 Four inaugural teams [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":255453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6805],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-255452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-womens"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}