The Women’s Professional Baseball League will hold its inaugural season in Springfield, Illinois, the league announced Nov. 17, as its four teams will contest games at 5,200-seat Robin Roberts Stadium in the state capital.
Earlier this month, the league announced that the four teams in the league will represent Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. The rosters will be populated with the league’s first player draft on Nov. 20, which will be broadcast live on the league’s YouTube, Instagram and TikTok channels.
Choosing Springfield as the site for 2026 games — scheduled to begin Aug. 1 — was both logistical and symbolic, according to league organizers. The league desired a centralized locale for its first season. And Springfield, according to the league, was, in 1875, the site of the first game in which women were paid to play baseball. Springfield was home to a franchise in the World War II-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League – the Springfield Sallies, who played during the 1948 season.
The women’s baseball coming to Springfield will, of course, be far more modernized, with players hailing from the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and other countries; many are already familiar with one another through years of international competition.
Now, the league hopes Robin Roberts Stadium — named for the Hall of Fame pitcher — and the inaugural season will set the league on a path toward growth and sustainability.
‘Robin Roberts Stadium not only offers a central, strategic location, but is a first rate venue where WPBL teams will be the only baseball played during our season,’ says league co-founder Keith Stein in a statement. ‘This will provide the kind of exclusivity that we wanted for our players.’
Tryouts for the league drew more than 600 hopefuls to Washington, D.C., where the four-day process eventually culled the group to around 100 in advance of the draft. The WPBL will also launch a developmental league in 2027, to be based in Springfield.