On Saturday evening, the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) made its long awaited and highly anticipated debut when the NY Heights faced off against the LA Queens in the first game of the league’s inaugural season.
And despite the rain, the sold-out game, and the debut weekend as a whole, was a huge success.
The WPBL fields four teams- the Heights, Queens, Boston Hunters and San Francisco Firebells- and all games are played at Robin Roberts stadium in Springfield, Illinois (no, not that Robin Roberts. It’s named after 7x All-Star, Baseball Hall of Famer and Springfield, IL native, Robin Roberts).
The league’s first game was both historic and thrilling, as the Queens and Heights battled all night. After the former took a 2-0 lead, the latter went off and made it 7-2 in the bottom of the second. But that lead evaporated to 8-6 and in the top of the seventh, the final inning, the Queens pulled ahead and won, 10-8.
The game featured historic firsts, including the first run scored in league history, achieved by baseball history-maker, Mo’Ne Davis.
Davis, well recognized for being the first girl to win a game and throw a shutout in the LLWS, is now all grown up and a member of the LA Queens after the team selected her with the 10th overall pick in the WPBL’s inaugural draft last November.
On Saturday evening, Davis scored the league’s first run, which means the WPBL’s first run scored was by a Black woman.
That’s important based on the makeup of the league, the history of Black women in baseball and the glaring overall decline of Black participation in professional baseball over the past two decades.
In the cult classic “A League of Their Own”, there’s a memorable scene where a Black woman fires a ball well past Dottie Hinson (played by Geena Davis), the superstar player for the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). That moment brought attention to the talented Black female baseball players who were racially excluded from playing in the AAGPBL.
Instead, they organized baseball and softball teams in the factories where they worked.
Three of those women- Toni Stone, Mamie Johnson, and Connie Morgan– ended up playing with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues in the 1950s, a team which, ironically, was revived this year as part of the Banana Ball world tour.
The exclusion of Black women from professional women’s baseball is why the WPBL is so important, and why it must right the wrongs of the past and become a welcoming home for Black players like Mo’Ne Davis.
If you look at the team rosters, there are very few Black women, mirroring the same issue of low participation rates of Black women in NCAA softball (roughly 8%).
But the WPBL can change that.
The four teams are made up of 60 players from 11 countries, predominantly hailing from the U.S., Japan, Australia, and Canada. They play 15 regular-season games and then postseason games, all housed at Robin Roberts Stadium, proving management has learned from the mistakes committed by other leagues in expanding too quickly and starting with high operational costs like venue fees and travel.
And, maybe by no coincidence, it launched with the same number of teams as the AAGPBL did in its inaugural season in 1943 (the Rockford Peaches, South Bend Blue Sox, Racine Belles and Kenosha Comets).
The teams, according to Front Office Sports, have a cap of $95,000 for the first year and, per a WPBL spokesperson, will “cover living costs over the six-week season and give players a percentage of sponsorship money: which will help ease the burden of the low initial pay.
The WPBL is backed by investors and signed distribution deals with ESPN and Scripps Sports Network. Its also secured primary sponsorships with companies like Horace Mann insurance and financial services, Dick’s Sporting Goods, New Era and others, so it’s in a good starting position.
But having a cultural focus, which the league has definitely taken to heart, is just as important to the league’s longevity, especially as it relates to Black female athletes.
The team identities are all based on inspirational, powerful and successful women from the cities they represent and the New York Heights is tied to Black history, taking its name from Civil Rights icon, Dorothy Height.
This shows the WPBL understands the importance of appealing to a diverse group of players and fans. So now their outreach efforts should include youth teams, HBCU programs, sororities and also professional groups to appeal to athletes who, like the current players, are working and have played/are playing softball and/or baseball.
Through these efforts, the WPBL can right the wrongs of the past and give Black female players the opportunity to play pro baseball, a right Toni Stone, Mamie Johnson, and Connie Morgan and so many others were long denied.
So instead of a banned Black woman throwing the ball to a Dottie Hinson, she will be throwing it to her teammate.
