Former Oakland A's coach Justine Siegal is co-founder of the Women's Professional Baseball League set to launch in 2026. She is currently seeking advice from women leading other professional leagues and studying what made them successful.
If and when the Women's Professional Baseball League debuts, it will be the first pro league for women since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — the one immortalized in A League of Their Own — dissolved in 1954.Former Oakland A's coach Justine Siegal is co-founder of the Women's Professional Baseball League set to launch in 2026. She is currently seeking advice from women leading other professional leagues and studying what made them successful.
Back then, Siegal remembers scrambling to find babysitters for her daughter while she coached and pulling her daughter out of school and bringing her along to the field in some cases. Around 1,300 high school girls played baseball on boys' teams across the United States during the 2023-24 school year, according to a survey done by the National Federation of State High School Associations.
More than 471,000 high school boys played baseball, while 473,000 girls played softball. The NCAA doesn't offer women's baseball, but nine women played on men's baseball teams in 2024, according to the NCAA's demographics database. Around 21,000 women played college softball.Keith Stein, a lawyer and businessman who co-founded the WPBL with Siegal, said the hope is to help establish a solid women's baseball culture in the U.S.
"These were largely elite players," Stein added. "Some of the best players in the world -- from the United States, of course, but there were players from Japan, Canada, Great Britain."The league will hold a scouting camp in spring 2025, with a draft happening in the last quarter of the year. The WPBL will initially launch with six teams, though Stein estimated that number could later increase to eight.
Stein said he believes compensation will be suitable for players hoping to participate in the league, including those who must relocate from different countries or leave their current jobs.
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