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There is a new baseball league coming. In 2026, the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) will begin play. But first, the league has to find some players. Which is why from August 22 through August 25 the WPBL will be holding tryouts in Washington, D.C.
The tryouts will take place at Nationals Park and the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy. So far, over 600 women have signed up.
The final evaluation will take place after some live game play at Nationals Park on August 25. On that day, out of those 600-plus women, up to 150 of them will be eligible to be a part of a draft that will fill out the rosters of the six teams in the WPBL’s inaugural season.
“We want to see the best of the best, and that’s what we’re looking for. The best players around the world,” Women’s Pro Baseball League co-founder Justine Siegal, the first woman to ever be a coach for a Major League Baseball team, told CBS Mornings on Wednesday. “I’m looking for people who can hit the long ball. I’m looking for strikes, blow by the batters. We’re looking for those who have played baseball, have a good baseball acumen and people are gonna come out and watch them play.”
“They need to work on their mechanics, their training regimens. But I think just bringing the passion that they have for baseball, that’s what this league is all about,” said Alex Hugo, the only two-time USA Baseball Sportswoman of the Year Award Winner and a silver medalist at the 2024 Women’s Baseball Cup where she was Team USA’s captain. “Show us what you have in terms of how special baseball is to you.”
The Women’s Pro Baseball League will be the first all-female pro baseball league since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League held games from 1943 to 1954. That league, however, played under different rules than men’s baseball. They, at first, used a larger ball and had shorter distances from the mound to home plate and between the bases. The WPBL will follow the same rules as men’s baseball.
In 2016, the Sonoma Stompers, a pro baseball team in the independent Pacific Association of Professional Baseball Clubs signed two players from Team USA women’s baseball team, Stacy Piagno and Kelsie Whitmore, and had them play in a game. They were the first women to play professional baseball since the Negro Leagues in the 1950s.