Another league of their own

For the last 34 years, women’s baseball has been known primarily for one thing: A movie.

The 1992 hit film, A League of Their Own, paid homage to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which played from 1943-54 and briefly had a team in Springfield, the Sallies.

There was no baseball boom for women after the film, however. It was a look back at a time when the women wore skirts and makeup on the field, to a time when team and ballpark owners such as the Chicago Cubs’ Philip K. Wrigley needed to fill the stands with something, while many Major League male players were off fighting World War II. But when the Major Leaguers came back, the AAGPBL started to fizzle out.

Even if young women wanted to be the next Maybelle Blair or Jeneane “Lefty” Lesko – two of the AAGPBL’s former stars – there was no place for them to play. Sure, one might make a boys’ high school team here or there, but the only avenue for girls growing up who wanted to pitch or swing a bat was to play softball.

On Aug. 1, the crack of bats hitting baseballs from pitchers throwing overhand will reverberate throughout Robin Roberts Stadium. Only this time, women will be doing all the hitting and pitching, when the first women’s professional baseball game in 72 years takes place.

Welcome to the new Women’s Professional Baseball League, which will play all of its inaugural season in Springfield. Four teams – the Boston Hunters, New York Heights, Los Angeles Queens and San Francisco Firebells – will compete in a 30-game, six-week regular season, followed by a two-week playoff to determine the league’s first champion. All games, starting with the Aug. 1 one between Los Angeles and New York, will be played at Robin Roberts Stadium.

For Los Angeles Queens pitcher-outfielder Brittany Apgar, it will be an emotional moment when the umpire yells, “Play ball.”

“It will be a moment that, as a woman, I never thought I would be able to have,” Apgar told Illinois Times. “When I first got drafted into the league, all the people who helped get me there, my parents and my best friends and some others, were right there with me in my apartment. It was just an incredible moment. The thought of standing on that field in Springfield as a professional baseball player? I mean, it’s going to be an emotional moment for all of us because we’re the very first of what we all think will be a long line of players to come.”

A phone call started it all

Jamie Toole, principal owner of the Springfield Lucky Horseshoes of the Prospect League, is always thinking of other interesting events he might bring to Robin Roberts Stadium. The ‘Shoes’ season only runs as a summer league, and Toole wondered how he might be able to bring at least one exhibition game from a new league in the works he’d heard about – the WPBL – to Robin Roberts.

The WPBL’s commissioner, Justine Siegal, was someone Toole knew from his own days working in Major League Baseball. On Feb. 21, 2011, the 36-year-old Siegal became the first woman to throw a MLB batting practice session, in spring training with the Cleveland Indians. She later became the first female coach for a Major League team, with Oakland.

Siegal had already been a pioneer of sorts in women’s baseball, when she founded the nonprofit Baseball For All, which worked toward gender equity in youth baseball. But softball became the only sanctioned sport for girls in youth or high school sports, not baseball.

Toole phoned Siegal one day, asking her what the odds might be of a women’s pro baseball game from the budding league being played at Robin Roberts Stadium?

The odds were good, Siegal replied, and there might be more to it than just one game.

“I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I might have something more for you.’” Siegal told Illinois Times. “We got to talking more, and that’s when the idea of playing our whole first season at Robin Roberts became more of a real possibility.”

The WPBL wanted to play a first season at a neutral site, where all four teams could play and costs could be centralized. The league’s first season reportedly will have a salary cap of $95,000 per team for player salaries, with 15 players per club. Some of the higher-drafted players will make more than others, but most players can expect to receive in the neighborhood of $800-$1,000 per week for the roughly eight-week season.

Players also receive free room and board, with meals provided on game days and other snacks and beverages on practice days. Players will live in a residential-style hotel, with kitchens and the like, and every player will live with another teammate. Some players also make extra income playing in professional softball leagues, such as the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, which has a national television contact with ESPN.

The league’s principal owner is Keith Stein, a Toronto-based attorney and businessman, who also owns a professional paddleball league. Muse Capital is a financial adviser. With women’s sports proving itself more and more in the marketplace and with leagues such as the WNBA getting big crowds and high TV ratings, Stein saw women’s baseball as a potential growth opportunity.

The league is starting small, with only the four teams, low payrolls and no national TV contract, but that’s OK for players such as the 22-year-old Apgar, who played one year of college softball in 2022 in her native Greensboro, North Carolina.

“I quit after one year because the coach just wasn’t what I had anticipated. If the coach is just living for putting down players and talking bad about them, then that’s not something I wanted to be a part of,” Apgar said. “My dream was always to play baseball anyway. And, to suddenly have the chance to be a professional baseball player, I mean it’s just a dream come true. I’ll be getting paid to play pro baseball. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.”

For Toole, who stepped down recently as CEO of the Lucky Horseshoes but will stay through the summer to “help out” with the WPBL and maintain an ownership stake of the Horseshoes, Springfielders will get to see the best female baseball talent in the world in a pioneering league.

And unlike the old AAGPBL, the new league is truly international. Players from seven countries (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Curaçao) make up the current rosters. At 28 players, the U.S. is the country with the highest representation.

“I think this is just so great for Springfield. It’s a big deal. Believe me, these women are good athletes. They can throw in the 80s, they can hit the ball out of the ballpark and they can run like crazy,” Toole said.

“We stand on their shoulders”

The old AAGPBL is getting another well-deserved shine of the spotlight with the advent of the WPBL.

Few players are still with us from the old league, but Lefty Lesko is one of them. As part of the WPBL’s rollout, she and another star player, Maybelle Blair, have been traveling to various events, such as the most recent MLB All-Star Game in Philadelphia.

Lesko, 91, who pitched for two seasons (1953-54) in the AAGPBL for the Grand Rapids Chicks, still carries her old right-handed glove when making an appearance. When the league folded after her second season, she believed women’s pro baseball would make a return. But she didn’t expect it to take this long.

“I’ve spent my entire life trying to make it happen. We always thought it would happen, but not everyone made it that long,” Lesko told Illinois Times. “I just happened to stick around.”

Lesko’s best moment came as a pitcher, when she took a no-hitter into the final inning before finishing with a two-hit shutout. She never got to play in Springfield, because the Sallies played only one year in the AAGPBL, in 1948.

The Sallies played at the old James Fitzpatrick Memorial Stadium. The team name was selected in part to honor former Springfield resident  Mary Todd Lincoln, whose younger years were full of liveliness and excitement – such women were referred to as “sallies.”

After just six weeks marked by poor attendance, the Sallies left Springfield to become part of a barnstorming team in Chicago, though a developmental team, still named the Sallies but not part of the AAGPBL, stayed in Springfield until 1950.

Players in the AAGPBL had to adhere to physical appearance standards that today would be labeled sexist. Players wore skirts as part of their uniforms, and every player had to follow a “charm school guide” that mandated such things as wearing rouge lipstick, wearing lots of moisturizer, smiling a lot and always having nice, freshly washed hair.

While there were some gay players in the AAGPBL, they remained in the closet, unlike today’s WPBL, where at least one-third of its players are LGBTQ, according to some reports.

While Siegal certainly doesn’t want to go back to the days when women players wore skirts and lipstick, she said the WPBL is proud of the A League Of Their Own time.

“We stand on their shoulders and want to honor that history,” Siegal said. “We want to bring that history forward with us. We know that the WPBL players are not just the best players of today, but they’re also creating systemic change that allows more girls to play baseball.”

Will it sell?

The WPBL has developed a good amount of buzz, but the league faces plenty of challenges. Not having a TV contract is one. As of now, though, Fremantle – a production company responsible for shows such as “America’s Got Talent” and “Family Feud” – has teamed up with the league to develop content on various platforms, along with documentaries and possibly a reality show.

On July 30, the WPBL announced a new streaming deal for the first season with ESPN and the Scripps Sports Network.

“ESPN Select will exclusively stream 19 regular-season games in the U.S. and carry an additional 11 games co-exclusively with Scripps Sports Network. ESPN Select will also exclusively carry the WPBL postseason in the U.S., including the Championship Series,” the release said.

While the WPBL has talented players well-known within the parameters of the sport, it’s a long ways off from having a female version of Shohei Otani, or the name recognition of a Caitlin Clark in the WNBA. The sporting landscape is full of dozens of pro leagues, so standing out in such a crowded marketplace figures to be a challenge for a league starting its first season in a small-to-medium size city such as Springfield.

But there are very interesting life stories of players, such as Apgar herself. She was born with a right arm that had nothing past the elbow. She had 11 surgeries by the age of 4, and doctors eventually were able to construct a right forearm made from bone from her left fibula, a wrist that could flex and fingers made from bones in her toes.

Much like former Major League pitcher Jim Abbott, Apgar has proven she can pitch with just one real hand. She keeps her glove on her smaller right hand, pitches with her normal left hand and quickly switches the glove back to her left hand for fielding. When she throws from the outfield, she catches with her left-hand glove and quickly moves to ball to her bare left hand with help from the right.

“I love playing the outfield because my favorite thing is gunning people out at home when they think they can run on me,” Apgar said. “Honestly, I’m really thankful for my difference because it made my mental game so much better because I knew that baseball was a game of mental strategy, too. It’s the underestimation card that’s the easiest to play. Give me a challenge, please.”

Another player with a compelling story is Lexi Hastings, picked 20^th overall in the first round by Boston. Hastings was orphaned at age 4, but was adopted into the Hastings family and settled in Lynchburg, Virginia. She became the Big East Player of the Year in 2024 for the University of Connecticut in softball, and has gone on to play professionally in softball. Now, she’s a pro baseball player, too.

Hastings credits her parents and two siblings for her success, but in particular her mother, Dawn.

“She’s superwoman to me,” Hastings said. “She’s willing to drive me five hours here, eight hours there, making sure I’m always where I need to be. She does it all without me even asking. It’s just second nature to her.”

Echoing Siegal about the AAGPBL, Hastings said, “It’s important for us to be connected and to understand those who fought so hard for us to be where we are now.  We’re going to bring a ton of energy because women continue to do that in any sport that they’re at. We’re going to be strategic, and we’re going to be students of the game and people are going to be excited to watch us because, you know, we’re going to be dynamic. The camaraderie atmosphere in women’s baseball is unlike anything anyone has really seen because we have this shared experience in something really unique.”

Neither Apgar nor Hastings knows much about Springfield, but it will be their home the next two months. When Apgar was told she’ll probably get to learn more about Abraham Lincoln than she might ever have, her voice over the phone got a bit louder.

“Oh really?,” she said, when told the former President called Springfield home for 16 years. “Oh, as a history nerd, I’m definitely going to see all there is with him.”

Said Hastings, “I can’t wait to see Springfield. We’ve been told that the people there are very nice and welcoming. We want to really give them their money’s worth when they show up to the ballpark.

“And I know we will.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include WPBL’s announcement of a new streaming deal for the first season with ESPN and the Scripps Sports Network.

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This article appears in July 30 – August 5, 2026.