A professional women’s baseball league aims to begin competition in the U.S. in 2026, according to a news release issued Tuesday.
The Women’s Pro Baseball League will feature six teams, based in the northeastern United States, and will be the only professional women’s baseball league in America, the release says.
The league’s co-founders are Keith Stein, a lawyer and businessman, and Justine Siegal, founder of Baseball For All, a nonprofit that provides opportunities for girls to play and coach baseball. In 2015, the Oakland A’s hired Siegal as a guest instructor for their club in the Arizona Instructional League, and she became the first female coach in Major League Baseball. She has also pitched batting practice for a handful of MLB teams.
Decorated Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato and former MLB manager Cito Gaston, who won back-to-back World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays, will serve as special advisors.
Sato was featured in “See Her, Be Her,” a two-hour documentary that premiered on MLB Network last Sunday and tells the stories of several top female baseball players. The film features a cameo by Maybelle Blair, 97, who played for the Peoria Red Wings in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1948.
The story of the AAGPBL was also told in a…
