Four teams will debut in August 2026.
There will be a women’s sports league that will make its debut in August 2026. The Women’s Pro Baseball League has four teams and will play an abbreviated schedule in one central location at a stadium in Springfield, Illinois. The games will be seven innings and players will use aluminum bats. New York, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles have been awarded franchises but will not play any games in those cities in 2026. This is not the first time that entrepreneurs have attempted to build a women’s baseball league.
Following the United States declaration of war against Japan, Germany and Italy in December 1941, hundreds of Major League Baseball players ended up fighting in the war. President Franklin Roosevelt told Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis the game should go on and it did. The Chicago Cubs franchise owner Phil Wrigley wasn’t sure how long MLB could continue without good players and decided to form a women’s baseball league as a way to keep the industry going. Wrigley founded the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League with teams in the Midwest and players coming from amateur teams throughout the Midwest. The league began play in 1943 and the “Belles of the Ball Game” delivered high quality talent. There were some rules that would roll people’s eyes today. On the field, the women put on lipstick and played in short skirts. Off the field, “the girls” endured mandatory charm-school classes and were forbidden to wear trousers or drink alcohol. Wrigley’s women’s baseball league folded in 1954. Many Minor League Baseball teams and the women’s league died because baseball could not compete with the new medium television. The movie “League Of Their Own” is based on the league.
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