Women’s Pro Baseball League Announces Its Four Inaugural Teams - GO Magazine
What are the logistics of a league with four teams on opposite sides of the country
It sure increases early costs doesnt it. A smaller regional league would have made more sense perhaps? We shall see!
I think they may actually start with 6 or 8 teams, this is just the first 4 announced. Chicago and New Orleans or Indianapolis might be good locations not on either coast.
Bring back the Milwaukee Chicks
I was thinking that a San Francisco sports franchise should be named something that fits with their costal location, as well as ties in with local culture. I know San Francisco is known for having some of the best clam chowder anywhere, and the beaches have lots of clams. So I was thinking the San Francisco Clams night be an appropriate name. #Clamball
And they have a ready to go chant, “Clam Bam, Thank You Ma’am!”
6 teams with 3 w and 3 e that can bus AA style and rent minor league parks? seems completely doable.
They’re professional sports franchises. They should/will have their own parks/stadiums.
tons of teams lease their space
edit : tons is hyperbole LOL
You mean like the A’s… But most teams have their own fields. Even minor league franchises, like the River Cats, and San Jose have their own fields. I see no reason why the WMLB wouldn’t. Even their minor league teams should have their own stadiums. I don’t see why anyone would assume otherwise, unless they’re just not taking them seriously.
As well as other teams in other leagues. Probably a bunch of expansion teams? A women’s baseball league would probably have a pretty short season to begin year 1.
I am hesitant to agree with you that they are going to build their own parks since they are still have investment information on the footer of their website. https://www.womensprobaseballleague.com/franchise-information/. It does not give me the feeling that they are flush with cash.
Lets rent some AA parks one day at a time and get some butts in seats. Lets worry about new shiny parks another day!
I think it’s Ludacris to expect a new professional Major League sports franchise to not have their own parks. Really I think that attitude is just coming from the fact that they are women, and people have stereotypes.
A women’s baseball league would probably have a pretty short season to begin year 1. - Possibly. But why exactly do you assume that? Just because they’re women… You said it yourself. As you imply that they don’t deserve to have their own parks/stadiums. Smh
Why would Ludacris have his own stadium? Is he an investor in the league?
This isnt men/womens sports issue… This is a business issue for a sports league with (what appears to be) limited funding. Spend that money on the field product. Not on the land. I think its good business to only rent a field 20-30 nights a year until you can figure our your attendance and location/ticket sale strengths.
edit - press release says neutral venue anyways….so it all doesnt matter heh
Professional sports teams in leagues this size don’t have their own stadiums. Especially not women’s teams.
The NWSL has been around 14 years now, and only one out of 14 teams has their own stadium. Most share with the local MLS or USL team.
Flights just aren’t that cost prohibitive, especially between major coastal cities.
if it’s like the cricket league, they basically just have a round robin mini tournament with all the teams in town for a week to play their games and then they fly to another city to do the same. Everyone flies at once, they get all the logistics done at once, and expenses are pretty much just shared equally at once.
Part me of does wonder if these are 4 teams “from” distinct cities, playing in the same location? Like how the USFL 2.0 used 4 sites for 8 teams, rather than 8 unique stadiums.
Michigan and Philly both had “home” games at Ford Field, New Jersey and Pittsburgh both used Tom Benson (Canton, OH - where the NFL hosts the HOF Game), Birmingham and New Orleans both played in Birmingham, Houston and Memphis both played in Memphis.
It is on a neutral site per their site
To me it just seems like the all star game is on a neutral site, but the grammar is ambiguous.
Where will the teams be located? The season will take place at one or two venues for the inaugural season. The location will be announced shortly.
So I actually took a few minutes to look into this…
The guy behind this thing is Keith Stein who was a VP of Magna International.
It’s the largest automobile parts manufacturer in North America.
So he definitely must have a lot of logistics knowledge.
It’s actually not as bad as you might think the California teams fly out to New York and Boston. Let’s say 20-25 people on a flight per team, tops. That’s not that crazy. One plays in ny, the other plays in Boston. Then they swap and take the train or a bus between the cities.
Then the four teams fly back to California and do the same.
You can basically have at least two teams sharing a flight, or even have all four traveling by plane together from one side of the country to the other and then take a train or bus or even cheap plane for NY-SF.
The travel costs aren’t that crazy. They can probably cut deals and have sponsors to help with travel costs.
I’d imagine they could find some wealthy folks to buy into the league.
If they’re smart about it they can keep the costs relatively low.
Only 15 players per team. Probably 5 other people on each team including coaches and trainers. That’s only 20 people per team traveling.
The news story I saw says “games will take place in a neutral venue,” so that could mean there’s not even any traveling at first and they’re not actually playing games in those cities. At least not all them.
So they could start this thing having games in one location or maybe they rotate around 2 or all 4 of the cities.
They aren’t going to be crisscrossing back and forth all over.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the goal is to try and get major league teams to partner with a woman’s team and try to get the dodgers to own the L.A. team and yadda yadda.
At least that’s the angle I’d go with if I was starting a league.
But yeah, if they can maybe get some of these rich female former athletes to get involved like a Serena Williams or maybe some rich businesswomen, they can fund this thing for a while.
Probably do it banana ball style at least at first. Just barnstorm around the country playing each other.
Whatever they are they’re necessary. If you want a new professional sports league to be taken seriously you want both of the coastal population and media centers buying into it from the get go. With the bare minimum of teams they’re already leaning into established regional and national rivalries by selecting these 4 cities.
Also not to mention that if you want to be THE league, you don’t want to only cover one coast and have a competitor league pop up on the other coast. There’s rumors that that’s part of why the PWHL (women’s hockey) is expanding from only East Coast teams to Seattle and Vancouver, to avoid a second league forming in the west.
Although given that it’s baseball we’re talking about, maybe two leagues that eventually merge would be appropriate…
I’m wondering how many leagues/divisions they have.
Sick cant wait. I already hate the New York team
Yankettes Suck!
I get those metro areas are huge markets but a 4 team league of NYC, Boston, LA and San Francisco seems like a logistical nightmare.
It can be managed by having long series on alternating coasts. Like Boston @ SF and NY @ LA for a week, then Boston and NY swap over, then they all come east
Even better, while the east teams travel home the west teams start a series, then when that’s done they fly east while Boston and NY finish up
you need a fan base and a large group of casuals. Those are arguably the 4 largest metro areas in the country, which is why it makes logical sense to apply for them- you get the most access to the most people who might actually care about the sport enough to go. Once you get a semi-profitable league going, then you can expand out to lesser cities
And a great way for nobody in “flyover states” to give two shits.
Great, reciprocates the shits people give about some corn fields and cattle lots.
(I’m from Germany so I don’t have a horse in this race, but for women’s baseball to be successful, it needs to be near major, progressive, reasonably sponsor friendly population centers, and AFAIK flyover states are literally nothing from that list.)
You’re right, there are no cities outside of NY and CA, and everyone else in the US is a sod-busting yokel…
“I don’t have a horse in the race, but here’s my hardline opinion about everything. I am very intelligent”
Come to the midwest you cowards!
They can’t handle these farm girls.
I wanna see farm girl banana ball
Yeah give us Peach Ball
Addison out there with them hay moving muscles banging out homers all game long.
“Hey remember how the last successful women’s baseball league was based entirely in the midwest?”
“Yeah we can ignore that region entirely this go around”
I never understood why there was the baseball softball distinction, especially when considering the mound is closer in softball so it’s not like it’s much easier to hit than a baseball
I think it’s to shrink the field as a whole?
My baseball team absolutely teed off on our softball team one day in high school. You will hit routine pop flies over the fence with ease.
The reality is that the average softball player does not have the amount of pop needed to hit a ball deep like the average baseball player does.
You could probably make up for that by changing the bats/ball though, and still play on a baseball field. The WNBA plays on the same court, but they use a ball that’s significantly smaller and easier to shoot.
softball would be a better professional sport cause it’s a different sport than baseball.
Yeah, exactly, that’s why the National Ringette League is so much more popular than the PWHL and the Netball World Cup is out there breaking viewership records.
Yeah it’s always been the weirdest gender divide to me. It’s not like there’s any physical thing that would make baseball impossible for women to play
There are a couple of those version-for-women sports (ringette, netball) but softball is the one that’s stuck the most, so to speak? I assume it has something to do with the NCAA because it seems disproportionately popular in the US. Bizarre! It dilutes the entire female bat-and-ball sport talent pool when they’re divvied up between women’s baseball and softball, the WPBL and the AUSL, the softball world cup and the baseball world cup, or having to switch between the sports. I wonder what kind of arguments the Olympic committee had choosing softball over baseball for the 2028 Olympics.
was basically a positive feedback loop. Women started playing more softball–> becomes a positive sport for women in college so now there are scholarships –> more girls are taken out of baseball to go to softball because there’s no baseball scholarships for women –> girls get funneled into softball after little league to have a chance at athletic scholarships –> more women play softball and fewer women play baseball –> Softball professionally had a league and women’s baseball doesn’t, so now there’s even more reason to funnel girls into softball pre-college –> girls see softball players and no women baseball players –> girls go into softball
The only one weirder to me was during my secondary school days when the girls could only play netball and basketball wasn’t an option for them.
Biologically men can throw overhand significantly harder would be the main thing I’d imagine? But also speed/agility/power between men and women are not comparable at the highest levels.
I’d imagine the preference for the respective sports diverged the way they did because the play style suited these differences better over time more than anything else. I could be completely wrong about this since it’s not based in any thing other than a quick gut check, but I’d love to know if anyone can truly point to the why.
I think there’s that, and also power at the plate.
Still, I’ve always thought Baseball was a prime candidate to be the first of the big four sports for a female to play in, and to do so without having to change the rules or standards in order to accommodate the ladies. I could see a gal playing gold glove defense and being a slappy contact hitter, even if 40+HR power and pitching is off the table.
As we learned in the steroid era testosterone only has a marginal impact on player performance!
Honestly I could only see gold-glove level defense at catcher and maaaaybe 1B but in order to be a good enough hitter, they’d have to be slashing over .300 because you’re not going to see many triples (speed) or HR (power). It’s hard to imagine a woman would be a replacement-level player but maybe one day.
I almost think it’d be more likely for a lady to excel in the OF or Infield than catcher, just because of the physical toll that position takes and the arm strength needed to control the running game. But who knows, maybe having birthing hips makes squatting for 9 innings easier, lol.
The only chance is a knuckleball pitcher. I hope to see one someday.
I agree, I think there’s definitely some women out there who can be a Steven Kwan / Luis Arraez type of player.
The mound is standard in banana ball and it works just fine.
There are many differences, starting with the ball itself…
Definitely a smaller ball to allow proper pitch movement. Leave the rubber where it is. Move the bags in a bit? Leave the walls where they are so you dont have to spend money setting up every park you go to. Show up and setup 4 bags. Play baseball.
so you dont have to spend money setting up every park you go to - They’re professional sports franchises, they should/will have their own parks/stadiums.
What is your ideal capacity for these parks?
That’s not up to me, I don’t make those decisions. Probably the same as any other professional major league sports franchise. I can tell that you’re not taking them seriously. I get it. But maybe you should be.
Im just saying theres lots of parks you can lease for one evening around SF…instead of trying to build a 2-3k park around the bay area….
0 chance any of this makes it 5 years.
To keep 12 year old girls from playing with 12 year old boys.
I think it’s because of sport origin more than anything else. Softball was created to be an easier indoor sport.
Seriously? Do you actually not understand?
Fuck yeah! Women’s cricket is awesome, stoked to have women’s baseball too.
Ok but can we please have team names?
LA Traffic would be fun if only for situations with runners on
Can’t wait for this! My great-grandma Fern was kicked out of her house in the early 50s because she loved to drink, smoke, and play baseball. Her mother was disgusted at how ‘unladylike’ she was and kicked her out at 17. She was an awesome grandma and was always sad when she talked about how she had to quit playing, not because of injury or age, but because it was outlawed for women to play. She’d be proud of this day!
Wish me Luck for next year. Was supposed to go this year but a knee injury put me out
I’m giving you good vibes! It would be really cool for a baseball player to represent Reddit.
Aww hope you heal up soon and get out there for next year! If it all works out you should definitely post about it on here, it’d be cool to get updates about what it’s like
As someone who actually went to the WPBL “tryout” games at Nationals Park this summer, I have a few thoughts about the league. They played two 7 inning games open to the public that consisted of players that already made the league.
The actual baseball is not very good. Imagine boys high school baseball except pitchers rarely top 75 and hitters almost never hit it over the outfielders (even playing extremely shallow compared to men’s baseball). The games will be decided largely by who makes less errors. I saw a lot of bad defensive play. But because hitting is so limited, the 7 inning games only took about 2 hours.
Depth is going to be extremely important. Stars like Kelsie Whitmore dominated, but towards the end of game 2 the pitching started to get bad. There will be a lot of innings that go to pitchers that can’t locate 60 MPH fastballs. On a side note, a lot of the players are Japanese or Korean because women’s baseball is bigger in Asia.
There was a lot of PR at Nationals Park, but their biggest issue is definitely going to be the on field product. The vast majority of female ballplayers in the US are steered towards softball by high school so there are very few women with significant baseball experience. The league is doing the best they can, but there’s only so many baseball playing women that are willing to play in this league for presumably peanuts. We will find out very soon how serious WPBL ownership is and how much money is behind them.
That photo looks badass
Kind of funny that it’s cofounded by the CEO of a Toronto baseball team and there is no Toronto team.
New York, Boston, LA, San Francisco
Are they swinging lumber?
Metal bats. I’m not sure if it’s BBCOR only or USSSA bats are also allowed
Good stuff, should be fun to watch
Maybe they’ll trade off every week. Traveling cross-country once a week doesn’t seem so bad.
Rumor has it the Boston and New York teams already have a bitter rivalry and hate each other. As is tradition.
You know, I’ve only known about this Boston team and this New York team for a few minutes, but I gotta say I feel a primordial urge to hope that everything goes wrong for the former team and their prospective fans. Just instinct I think.
Are women going to watch this?
Any word on how many games they’ll play or anything like that?
Immediately watched more than wnba.
Rika better be jumpin ship to play
If one came to Denver, I’d be an inaugural season ticket holder
I’m not shocked at the cities that were chosen. But given the demographic of Seattle. Both with baseball and women’s sports I am a little disappointed and think this league missed a big marketing opportunity. The Seattle Storm are off on top of the league in attendance regardless of how the standings are doing. Seems like their goal is to build an east and west division so hopefully things take off and we get more teams soon.
Boston Peaches
What is the Toronto maple leafs baseball team? Slo pitch team for the leafs?
I find it funny that every NY women’s team has used that Statue of Liberty-esq aqua/seafoam green. The Liberty have it of course, the soccer side Gotham FC uses it, and the Siren’s hockey team use it as well. NY sports has one solid look in the NYC Metropolitan area it seems.
Hope they add a couple more teams.
I think Chicago and someone else in the Midwest should have been the 2 more teams.
This is like ESPN’s dream, a league where Boston and NY play each other every day.
I think the San Francisco team should have a name appropriate for a coastal city, that reflects the culture of San Francisco. San Francisco is known for, among other things, having some of the best clam chowder. I think if they named the team the San Francisco Clams it would be fitting.
Wow, people really seem to hate the idea of a city known for some of the best clam chowder in the world, with beaches filled with clams, having a sports franchise named the ‘Clams’. I wonder why that is? Down with clam hatred! #Clamequality! #Clamball
Ok then. It appears that maybe sexist bigots who hate the idea of women playing professional sports are gonna continue to downvote anything relating to what the team’s name should be. That’s weird imo, but people will be people lol.