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The Women's Professional Baseball League will play its inaugural season at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.
The WPBL plans to begin play on August 1st. The Women's Baseball World Cup will be held in Rockford, about three hours north of Springfield, from July 22-26.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Boston are the league's four teams in the 2026 season. San Francisco will select first in Thursday night's draft, followed by Los Angeles, New York and Boston. The WPBL said there will be six rounds, with each team selecting five players in each round.
Former Little League star Monet Davis, US baseball player Kelsey Whitmore and Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato are among the top players expected to be selected in the draft.
The WPBL said the Robin Roberts Stadium “offers a central location” among the four founding clubs. Springfield also hosted one of the first paid women's games in 1875, according to a WPBL press release.
The stadium seats 5,200 and recently installed an LED video board.
The upstart WPBL was founded by Justine Segal, the first woman to coach the MLB Oakland Athletics, in 2015. When it debuts, it will be the first professional women's league since the All-American Women's Professional Baseball League, immortalized in the film. A league of their own – disbanded in 1954.
From the launch of the PWHL and NSL to the stunning success of the WNBA, women's sports have become big business in recent years.
