The Women’s Professional Baseball League is set to kick off its first season at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois. Scheduled to commence on August 1, the league’s debut coincides with the Women’s Baseball World Cup taking place in Rockford, located approximately three hours north of Springfield, from July 22-26.
For the 2026 season, the league comprises teams from Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston. San Francisco has secured the first pick in the upcoming snake-style draft, followed by Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. The draft will consist of six rounds, with each team making five player selections per round.
Anticipated top picks in the draft include former Little League standout Mo’ne Davis, USA Baseball athlete Kelsie Whitmore, and Japanese pitcher Ayami Sato. Robin Roberts Stadium was chosen as the league’s home venue due to its central location among the founding clubs. Notably, Springfield hosted one of the earliest paid women’s baseball games in 1875, as highlighted in a WPBL news release.
The stadium boasts a seating capacity of 5,200 and recently added an LED videoboard to enhance the spectator experience. Co-founded by Justine Siegal, the first female coach for an MLB team (the Oakland Athletics in 2015), the WPBL marks the first professional women’s baseball league since the dissolution of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1954, famously portrayed in the movie “A League of Their Own.”