WASHINGTON, D.C. — For more than 25 years, Justine Siegal, the trailblazer of modern women’s baseball, has been pushing her sport up the hill.
That journey has pulled her all around the globe, from Cleveland to Korea, from Massachusetts to Dubai. In 2011, Siegal became the first woman to throw batting practice to an MLB team when she threw to Cleveland hitters in spring training. Over the years, she has held more coaching gigs than she can remember, sacrificing financial and professional security along the way.
That thankless, grueling endeavor has molded the battle-worn co-founder of the newly launched Women’s Professional Baseball League. Siegal, whose pioneering foundation Baseball for All has revolutionized the sport by organizing opportunities for young girls to play baseball, will admit that her path has often been one of solitude. There were days when she couldn’t summon the strength or the motivation to peel herself out of bed.
“It's been such a lonely path ... having done this for the last 26 years,” Siegal said.
But Monday at Nationals Park was a different type of day.
Perched on a panel and surrounded by peers, business partners and fellow women’s baseball luminaries including Mo’ne Davis, Maybelle Blair and Kelsie Whitmore, Siegal could see the future she has spent her life imagining and manifesting.
And, at long last, she felt a sense of peaceful belonging.
“With the Women's Professional Baseball League, I no longer feel alone,” she shared, her voice thick with the emotion of a long road trodden. “I feel like now I'm part of my family. I'm with my peers ... I don't have to stand there and wonder what's next — because I know what's coming. What's coming is a women's pro baseball league that's going to be here now, forever. My grandchild is going to play in this league, and I'm just so grateful.
"The future is very, very bright.”
That future began to actualize over a whirlwind weekend in Washington, where more than 600 women from 10 countries arrived for open tryouts ahead of the WPBL’s inaugural season next summer. Those hopefuls included heralded vets of the international circuit, such as Whitmore and Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato. Others, including a few women in their 40s and 50s, attended the tryout as a shot-in-the-dark bucket-list item, a chance to see how they would fare or what they have left.
For many, it was the first time they had ever shared a ballfield exclusively with other women. According to Baseball for All, roughly 100,000 girls play youth baseball each year in the U.S., but only about 1,000 continue into high school ball. Participation gradually dwindles throughout Little League and then plummets once girls reach middle and high school. Many of the most talented players are incentivized to switch to softball, which offers ample travel ball and scholarship opportunities.
Baseball for All — founded by Siegal in 2010 — was designed to change that. And now, Siegal’s newest project, the WPBL, is meant to serve as the capstone: a league for all young girls and women to strive toward.
That league took its most important step forward on Monday, once the original pool of 600 had been whittled down to 100 players. Those finalists were split into four squads that played a pair of scrimmages at Nationals Park. The turnout for a weekday morning was strong, but the symbolism was stronger still. The stands were dotted with young girls clutching baseballs and pens, eagerly seeking autographs from their new heroes. Co-founder Keith Stein said the league has sold more than $20,000 worth of hats in just the past week.
All of it provided a glimpse of the pipeline Siegal has spent her life trying to build.
“Parents will often tell me they had no idea how much their daughter was holding in when they were the only girl,” Siegal told Yahoo Sports. “And when they saw her interacting with other girls and just being a player, it was like a whole new personality. One dad said he'd never seen his girl sing [on the field], you know, until the other girls were singing.”
That sense of belonging reverberated throughout Nationals Park as the league began to turn its attention toward the future.
Stein announced that team names and host cities will be determined within the next four weeks. The dispersal draft, for which all 100 players in Monday’s games are eligible, will be held in October. An unidentified number of international players, unable to make the trip to D.C., will also be included in the draft pool. Notably, athletes still competing at the collegiate level, such as Brown’s Olivia Pichardo, will not participate in the league so as to not jeopardize their NCAA eligibility. Stein also shared that a number of high-profile ambassadors will be added to the league’s leadership group in the near future.
Current rumblings point toward an inaugural season featuring six clubs playing in one central location. That would ease the financial and logistical lift of organizing city-to-city travel. Identifying the right area — an easy-to-travel-to metropolitan center with multiple suitable venues and sufficient interest in women’s baseball — is crucial. Games are likely to be held exclusively on weekends in order to maximize attendance. That schedule would allow many of the athletes, who will be compensated relative to their draft position, to still work during the week.
The league has already partnered with Fremantle, the production company behind the “Got Talent” series, “Family Feud” and “The Price is Right,” to develop content around the league. That includes a documentary series that was clearly in the works during the tryouts Monday. Ensuring that the league has a path to financial sustainability is a massive point of emphasis in its nascent days.
There remains a great deal of work ahead for Siegal, Stein and the rest of the league’s leadership team. But those are tomorrow’s problems. Monday, above all, was a celebration. A celebration of what was and what will soon be, the groundwork laid and the rewards to be enjoyed.
There truly is a league of their own on the way.
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