Copyright cleveland.com
The Women’s Professional Baseball League will begin play in 2026 with teams in four cities: New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, the league announced Tuesday. The WPBL said it chose those four cities based on each city’s “deep baseball roots” and “passionate fanbase,” according to a news release. “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,” WPBL co-founder Justine Siegal, who became the first woman to coach in MLB with the Oakland Athletics in 2015, said in a statement. The WPBL was founded in October 2024 with competition set to begin in May 2026. In August, the WPBL hosted open tryouts for more than 600 players – including former Little League World Series star Mo’ne Davis – at the Washington Nationals Youth Academy in Washington, D.C. About 130 of those players will be eligible for the inaugural WPBL Draft in November, which will be held virtually. Each WPBL team will select about 15 players for its roster, according to the league website. WPBL games will be seven innings long and all games will take place a neutral venue. The inaugural WPBL season will be about seven weeks in total, including four weeks of regular season play, one for all-star competitions, and two weeks of playoffs. Each team will play two games per week from Thursday to Sunday. The WPBL is the first professional women’s baseball league since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which operated in the U.S. from 1943-54 and was the inspiration for the 1992 film “A League of Their Own.”
