Maybelle Blair had once been a star pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1948. The AAGPB formed the basis of the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, as well as the 2023 prematurely canceled TV adaptation of the same name. As the first-ever and most successful women’s baseball league in U.S. history, the All-American Girls closed in 1954 and would be followed by several unsuccessful attempts to relaunch a women’s baseball league.
Thirty years after Ladies League Baseball shut down, on Aug. 22 of this year, six hundred eligible players stepped onto the National Park baseball field in Washington, DC, for the first tryouts for a professional women’s baseball team in over eighty years. The initial 600 prospective players had been whittled down to a final 100 players, who will be included in the first official draft in October.
Now 98 years old, Maybelle Blair pitched for an audience of spectators one last time on the final day of tryouts for the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WBPL) on Aug. 25.
Slowly but surely, women’s sports have been seen as more and more profitable. Viewership has begun to match that of men’s sports, and almost every major tournament across different sports has seen record-breaking audiences and a higher demand for tickets every year. Forbes estimates that women’s sports have brought $2.3 billion in revenue in 2025 so far, up 25% from last year. Recent statistics from Major League Baseball found that 46% of MLB fans were women, and 53% of women considered themselves MLB fans.
A total of ten countries were represented at WPBL tryouts, including Japan, Australia, and the Dominican Republic. The WPBL is expected to kick off its first season in May of next year with six teams that are yet to be announced, but will mostly be based in the Northwestern United States. Based on the performance of the first season, there are plans to expand the league to eight teams in 2027. Unlike men’s baseball’s usual nine innings, the WPBL will only play seven innings and will play with aluminum bats instead of wooden ones. The first season will consist of seven weeks, including four weeks of a regular season, one week of all-star competitions from each team, and two weeks of playoffs. Each team will play two games a week between Thursdays and Sundays. Unlike the previous women’s leagues, housing will be provided for players, and they will receive extra payment for participating in clinics and media days. Salaries to begin the first season will be capped at $95,000.
The receiver of Maybelle Blair’s pitch, Mo’ne Davis, became a women’s sports icon after becoming the first girl to achieve a win and pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series in 2014. Her participation in the semi-final brought record-high viewership for the Little League on ESPN. She transitioned to softball to play for Hampton University, but stopped playing after graduating in 2013. She announced her comeback to the sport after showing up to the WPBL tryouts, where she made the final 100.
Like most of the other prospective players, it was Davis’s first time playing on teams made up of other women. No high school or college in the United States has a women’s baseball program: instead, anyone interested in baseball fights for a spot on the men’s team. According to the NCAA, only nine women played college baseball in 2024, as most female athletes transition into softball, like Davis did.
Both Davis and Blair stepped onto the baseball field on Aug. 25 to represent the beginning and the future of women’s baseball, surrounded by an audience full of young girls just as excited as every player trying out about the possibility of a future in baseball beyond watching the MLB on TV. “It reminds me of when I was playing ball and had the opportunity,” Davis said in an interview with Major League Baseball. “I’m reliving my life again through these girls. I think every girl should have an opportunity to play the sport that they love.”
Contact the editors responsible for this story: Finley Tipton, Katie McCabe
