On Saturday evening, the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) made its long-awaited and highly anticipated debut when the NY Heights faced off against the LA Queens in the first game of the league’s inaugural season.
And despite the rain, the sold-out game and the debut weekend as a whole were a huge success.
The WPBL fields four teams- the Heights, Queens, Boston Hunters, and San Francisco Firebells- and all games are played at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois (no, not that Robin Roberts. It’s named after 7x All-Star, Baseball Hall of Famer, and Springfield, IL native Robin Roberts).
The league’s first game was both historic and thrilling, as the Queens and Heights battled all night. After the former took a 2-0 lead, the latter went off and made it 7-2 in the bottom of the second. But that lead evaporated to 8-6 and in the top of the seventh, the final inning, the Queens pulled ahead and won, 10-8.
The game featured historic firsts, including the first run scored in league history, achieved by baseball history-maker, Mo’Ne Davis.
Shout out to the LA Queens' Mo'Ne Davis on continuing to make baseball history.
— First and Pen (@firstandpen) August 2, 2026
Already known for being the first girl to win a game and throw a shutout in the LLWS, Davis made history again Saturday night by scoring the first run in WPBL history. ⚾️✊🏾✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/kPuO3Cy2T5
Davis, well recognized for being the first girl to win a game and throw a shutout in the LLWS, is now all grown up and a member of the LA Queens after the team selected her with the 10th overall pick in the WPBL’s inaugural draft last November.
On Saturday evening, Davis scored the league’s first run, which means the WPBL’s first run scored was by a Black woman.
That’s important based on the makeup of the league, the history of Black women in baseball and the glaring overall decline of Black participation in professional baseball over the past two decades.
In the cult classic “A League of Their Own”, there’s a memorable scene where a Black woman fires a ball well past Dottie Hinson (played by Geena Davis), the superstar player for the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). That moment brought attention to the talented Black female baseball players who were racially excluded from playing in the AAGPBL.
Instead, they organized baseball and softball teams in the factories where they worked.
Three of those women- Toni Stone, Mamie Johnson, and Connie Morgan– ended up playing with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues in the 1950s, a team which, ironically, was revived this year as part of the Banana Ball world tour.
The exclusion of Black women from professional women’s baseball is why the WPBL is so important, and why it must right the wrongs of the past and become a welcoming home for Black players like Mo’Ne Davis.
If you look at the team rosters, there are very few Black women, mirroring the same issue of low participation rates of Black women in NCAA softball (roughly 8%).
But the WPBL can change that.
