#wpbl

Come on, #WPBL! Post the lineups before gametime!

You may think you've experienced joy before, but you had previously never seen a mascot version of a 99-year-old woman with a cane dancing and cartwheeling around a baseball field in Springfield, Ill., which ushered in the inaugural weekend of the first professional women’s baseball league in nearly 30 years. I have never been happier than I was witnessing that moment. Our lives are all downhill from here. That mascot is modeled after Maybelle Blair, a former pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, honorary chair for the new Women's Pro Baseball League advisory board, and wearer of iconic sunglasses. As was mentioned several times on the broadcasts of the WPBL's first two games, she broke four ribs and still made sure she was in Springfield for the occasion. Because I risk writing 1,000 words about everything I love about Maybelle Blair, I will put it succinctly: She is cool as fuck. The mascot Blair is not dressed in the human Blair's sensible slacks, nor the WPBL's uniform. Instead, mascot Maybelle wears the skirted uniform of the AAGPBL that many will recognize from A League of Their Own. The AAGPBL was everywhere during the new league's opening weekend. Springfield, the location for all of its games this season, was chosen specifically to reference the historic league. Former players came to watch. Fans wore Rockford Peaches merchandise and shirts that read "There's no crying in baseball." And commentators made reference to the famous "dirt in the skirt" line from the movie when talking about sliding. But the women of the WPBL wear pants, and they don't have to perform a rigid version of femininity. That's a big deal, even now.

1943: Philip Wrigley starts a women's baseball league to fill seats while men fought in WWII. 1954: it folds. Three more attempts fail over the next 70 years. This month, it finally worked — and Mo'ne Davis, once a 13-year-old LLWS phenom, scored its first run. #AureFreePress #Journalism #MLB #WPBL #BreakingNews New deep dive on Patreon: 👉 https://www.patreon.com/Free_Press_Forever

It appears there is a women's professional baseball league, and Boston has a team. Unfortunately they have the unoriginal name of "Boston Hunters". https://www.womensprobaseballleague.com/teams/boston/ #wpbl #baseball #BostonMA

@DemonHusky@mas.to @thomasconnor@mstdn.social @my_roxbury@better.boston Choosing “home cities” for the #WPBL teams from the major sports media markets—even though all games are in Springfield, IL—is kind of cheesy. But I hope it is successful in generating fan interest. I’d be happy for ESPN to move the games to their “ESPN zone” ballpark here at Orlando Disney World though. It’s a beautiful little park and much more convenient to me!

1943: Philip Wrigley starts a women's baseball league to fill seats while men fought in WWII. 1954: it folds. Three more attempts fail over the next 70 years. This month, it finally worked — and Mo'ne Davis, once a 13-year-old LLWS phenom, scored its first run. #AureFreePress #Journalism #MLB #WPBL #BreakingNews New deep dive on Patreon: 👉 https://www.patreon.com/Free_Press_Forever

#WPBL let’s GO! (friendly reminder that my non-baseball friends should probably mute this hashtag)