For nearly every highlight of Julie Croteau's trailblazing baseball career (all except her time as an acting double in 1992's A League of Their Own), she shared the field with men—frequently as teammates, but always as foes. That's mostly how it's been for generations of female players. So when she recently heard about plans to give today's players the chance to shine against other women in baseball, Croteau had one thought: "It's about time." The Women's Professional Baseball League (WPBL) announced plans last month to launch in 2026 as a six-team circuit for female players. If and when it debuts, it'll 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, per the AP.
Heightened interest in women's sports in recent years made this an ideal time to launch a women's baseball league, said co-founder Justine Siegal, the first woman to coach for an MLB team with the Oakland Athletics in 2015. The consulting firm Deloitte estimated that women's sports will generate a billion dollars in global revenue in 2024 for the first time due to skyrocketing popularity and marketing deals. The WNBA had its most-watched regular season in 24 years thanks largely to a star rookie class led by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. Meanwhile, the inaugural season of the Professional Women's Hockey League brought in record crowds. "Certainly we're standing on the shoulders of the success of the other pro leagues," Siegal said.
Around 1,300 high school girls played baseball on boys teams across the US during the 2023-24 school year, per a survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations. "When I see that number, I think that there's 1,300 people who had to sort of basically buck the system to keep playing the sport that they love," said Croteau, who made headlines in the 1980s by suing her high school for the right to play on the boys varsity team; she lost. Lawyer Keith Stein, another WPBL co-founder, expects the league to become one of the major women's sports leagues in the near future, though he concedes it won't get there without facing some of the same barriers as previous women's leagues—including pay. "We shouldn't gloss over a certain reality," he said. "And that reality is that women baseball players, they probably are not being paid what they deserve." More here.
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