WASHINGTON — Happy Baseball Wednesday, presented by The BIG EAST Conference. We’ll return to the never-ending drama of the WNBA next week, but we’re taking a detour this week to a moment for women’s baseball more than 70 years in the making: the WPBL tryouts.
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Friday through Sunday, more than 600 women participated in a tryout process run by Alex Hugo at the Nationals’ Youth Baseball Academy. But by Sunday night, that list had been whittled down to 150 of the very best women’s baseball players in the world, who gathered around one another to excitedly discuss their Monday plans: to play in a pair of final showcase games at Nationals Park ahead of the planned October WPBL Draft.
I have often said that women’s baseball is an everyday story, but it has long been a segmented one. Women’s baseball receives so little sunshine and water from so many powerful entities who could, with just a little time, attention and investment, turn it into the behemoth those long-timers in that world know it could be. As a result, the growth is often isolated, though those who survive and reach to the sky are among the strongest people you’ll ever meet.
This weekend, you could find them all in one place for the first time.
I exited my car and ran right into Justine Siegal, co-founder of the WPBL and the creator and driving force behind Baseball For All. The genius of the structure behind Baseball For All, opportunities for young girls to get regular reps from their youngest years, clear through college, is why there is a sufficient American talent base for this new league.
“It’s been such a lonely path, even starting Baseball For All, which has changed the landscape of baseball for girls in America, giving them an opportunity to play with other girls, getting Major League Baseball to acknowledge that girls play baseball,” Siegal said on Monday, sitting on a stool at a press conference between games, surrounded by figures in the game past, present and future. “And I love those kids. I call them all my kids. But I’m still alone, still alone at the top, having done this for the last 26 years, and now with the Women’s Professional Baseball League, I no longer feel alone. I feel like now I’m part of my family.”
Indeed, family reunion was the vibe. I got to the lobby and caught up with Mo’ne Davis, fresh off of throwing the first pitch at a National game to Robert Hassell III. Many outlets noted that Davis, back in the 2014 Little League World Series, struck out Hassell. Few stopped to consider why, in the 11 years that followed, Hassell received countless opportunities to play the game, while Davis was forced into a wandering journey that took her away from baseball, away from sports entirely, only to finally return to the field thanks to the WPBL opportunity.
Just down the hall were players with stories — it is not possible to play baseball as a girl or a woman in this country or, really, around the world, without a story of overcoming a system built to stop you. There’s Sabrina Robinson, who Montclair State tried valiantly to keep from starting a club team eligible to play in the College Cup Championships with Baseball For All, a choice so illogical they quickly retreated from it as soon as a reporter emailed them asking for an explanation.
She played this weekend with a pitcher who made her varsity team — the only girl — who found out the days she was pitching only after everyone else, since her head coach posted the lineups … inside the boys’ locker room.
But this was not a weekend for the struggle. This was a weekend to reap the reward. This was the time for Ayami Sato, who took time out of her schedule, making history with the Toronto Maple Leafs (the baseball team), pitching against men, to show her talents to the WPBL. She told me how much regular work with the Maple Leafs had sharpened her skills, a daunting prospect for opponents, but she looked forward to deploying her fastball even more against her opponents in the WPBL.
As she said with a wide smile, through her translator: “An attractive point for the future for sure.”
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Kelsie Whitmore, the greatest player of this generation, never really stopped smiling all weekend. She, too, has pitched against men, played with men, needing to prove herself again and again in small samples, so much work just to reach the starting line. Like Sato, the question of just how great she can be with regular reps remains an unanswered one… for now. It’s a question opportunity has not allowed women to answer since, depending on how you measure it, the demise of the Colorado Silver Bullets in the 1990s, or the end of the AAPGBL back in 1954.
“I think with competing with men, I had to make the transition of throwing a lot more offspeed,” Whitmore told me. “I ended up adding a lot more different pitches, mixing up my timing, different holds, quick pitches, all that different stuff. Maybe, you know, changing arm slots, a lot of different things to change.
“And when I come here, I feel like I can be more conventional. In baseball with men, they try to sometimes, if you’re not a male throwing above 90 miles an hour — at this point, 95 — they want you to be different, and they want you to find something that makes you unique, but taking you out of who you are. And so being here, I could be that conventional pitcher I grew up being, which was, if I want to throw 70% fastballs rather than the flip side of 70% offspeed.”
Having watched Whitmore in those male-centric leagues and playing against women for USA Baseball, the difference is significant. Seeing her take the mound in the early game, get ahead of one hitter, then throw the four-seamer by her upstairs was classic. Whitmore was a master, toying with an opposing hitter, and that hitter is one of the 150 best women’s players in the world.
Imagine getting to see that regularly. Except you won’t have to imagine it soon. It’ll be happening, regularly, in the WPBL.
Whitmore isn’t the only star in this constellation, with so many familiar faces showing out all weekend. But so did the talents Hugo said later she hadn’t yet known about. I took particular pleasure in watching 19-year-old Isabella Villareal, who describes herself as an infielder first, a pitcher second, take the mound and throw three different pitches for strikes in her work on Monday. Her mom, Tonya, told me through tears the night before about how many times since Bella was 4 and first discovered baseball that coaches and other adults alike asked her when Bella was going to switch to softball. She played baseball with boys until three years ago, when she discovered Baseball For All. And now?
“I’ve heard that so many times,” she said of the softball question Sunday evening at her hotel, just moments after getting word that she’d made the cut and would be playing Monday, proudly sporting her WPBL shirt, her mother beaming in her “My Daughter Plays Baseball” shirt. “And when I’ve heard it, I’m like, ‘I’ll never touch that field or that ball. Like, ever.’ Baseball has always been like my passion, my dream, my job. So hearing it from everybody, I just take it and I just brush them off.”
Massive credit for this weekend goes to Keith Stein, someone who has navigated the WPBL in the right direction through an incredible sped-up process. As reported here at The IX, Stein and Siegal announced the league last October. A year later, they plan to have the dispersal draft, and the uniformity of players who have bought in, who have decided this is the opportunity to pursue, not softball or another profession altogether, is remarkable. By next summer, they’ll be playing.
You cannot name a key women’s baseball player who isn’t part of this endeavor, with the lone exceptions being those like the elite pitcher Elise Berger, who are, by dint of still playing baseball in college, forgoing the WPBL for now to maintain their amateur status. (Hopefully, some lawyer can help them get around that absurd sticking point at a moment when college athletics has never been more professionalized.) The builders are here, too, Siegal and giants of the sport in documenting it like Kat Williams and Leslie Heaphy, and yes, even Maybelle Blair of the AAGPBL, who threw out the first pitch to Davis, acquitting herself with her delivery in a way I hope to when I am 98 years old.
“There are always going to be skeptics out there,” Stein said at Monday’s presser, “when you launch a new league. [Well], there’s nothing to be skeptical about anymore.”
The WPBL has hit every benchmark so far, and fully. Stein pointed out that the league sold $20,000 in hats alone in its first 24 hours with a merchandise shop open. The league’s engagement with Fremantle has ensured that a veteran player in the media game will be securing the vital media rights deal for those eager to watch the league.
There are no guarantees when a new league begins. The WPBL can do everything right, and still it will need the buy-in of fans, a critical mass of viewers, sponsors to join and, as in every business endeavor, timing. But for 70 years, no one has been brave enough (or, from this view, smart enough) to do what Stein did, putting his bankroll and his planning skills behind an effort to unite an often fractious women’s baseball world in pursuit of a league so many have yearned for over these past decades.
All that will unfold in due time. But this weekend?
Meggie Meidlinger, the veteran of USA Baseball at 38, found herself pitching in the same stadium she attended the 2019 World Series in as a fan. Her father, Rick, sat next to her that night. They watched Max Scherzer warm up in the bullpen as they sat in the right field stands. Meidlinger is an architect by profession. Baseball was something she loved, her three-pitch offering and ability to sequence beautiful to behold, yet not something she regularly got to show the world.
On Monday, Rick sat along the first baseline and cheered as Meggie took the mound and pitched. Next year, in the WPBL, that will be a regular occurrence.
“I know I am one of the older ones, right?” Meidlinger told me as we sat and chatted in the stands during the second game on Monday, her parents next to us, Whitmore right nearby holding court for a group of young players. “And so you know, how lucky am I, maybe towards the end of my career, to still get to be a part of this when it’s been a dream for 33 years to get an opportunity to play professional baseball?”
Whitmore, who is finally getting the chance to play regularly in MLB stadiums now that she plays for the Savannah Bananas, took her younger WPBL teammates out to dinner on Sunday night, held up her hand to get their attention, and pronounced: “I’m just so excited to go have dinner with you guys. It’s the first girls’ night out, and we’re in a professional women’s baseball environment.”
The next day, she reflected on it.
“It was just a moment that gave me chills, because being a woman that’s been in a male environment, you know, trying to make friends, trying to know how to make conversations, not knowing how to hang out with them … just the little things like that mean a lot,” Whitmore said postgame. “And being able to have this league, it just brings freedom. It just allows you to feel so free with yourself, with what you love, with who you can be. And I’m really, really, really grateful for it.”
| Mondays: Soccer |
| By: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer |
| Tuesdays: Tennis |
| By: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer |
| Wednesdays: Basketball |
| By: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports |
| Thursdays: Golf |
| By: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports |
| Fridays: Hockey |
| By: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden |
| Saturdays: Gymnastics |
| By: Lela Moore, @runlelarun, Freelance Writer |
