Considering how successful women’s professional hockey and women’s pro basketball have become, it seems about time for women’s pro baseball to join the parade.
Or is it rejoin the parade?
The game that inspired one of the great sports movies of all-time, “A League of Their Own,” is getting back in the business of women’s professional baseball. The commissioner of that new league will be at Polar Park on Saturday.
Justine Siegal is scheduled to speak in the DCU Club as part of the Larry Lucchino Writers Series as part of a program that goes from 12:30-2 p.m. She is the also the co-founder, along with Keith Stein, of what is officially named the Women’s Pro Baseball League.
Four cities have teams representing them for the inaugural season. Boston is one of them. Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco are the others. However, the teams will not play games in their respective cities. The schedule is being held at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Ill.
It run from Aug. 1 through Sept. 6. Each team is slated to play 15 games and playoffs will follow. Games last seven innings. Rosters consist of 15 players and aluminum bats will be used.
The heyday of professional women’s baseball was the “League of Their Own” era. The movie version was about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League which was in business from 1943 through 1954. The National Girls Baseball League ran from 1944-54 and the International Girls Baseball League played in 1952 and ’53.
The early 1950s were tough years for men’s professional baseball, also. The minor leagues shrank drastically as Americans could get big league baseball for free on television or stay home at night and watch “I Love Lucy.”
Ladies League Baseball had a short run on the West Coast in 1997 before folding. That has been the only try at the pro game for women since the All-American league and its contemporaries and the new WPBL.
Siegal was born in 1975 and grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio as a fan of the then-Indians. She played baseball in high school and from there went on to break several barriers for women in the game, several of them in New England.
Some of those milestones included Siegal becoming the only coach in college baseball when she was an assistant at Springfield College from 2008-10. While there, she he earned a Ph.D. Siegal was an assistant director of sports partnerships at Northeastern from 2011-15.
In 2009 Siegal became the first woman to be on the staff of a professional baseball team when she worked for the Brockton Rox of the Can-Am League. The Worcester Tornadoes were also in the Can-Am circuit at that time.
When she was 37 in 2011 Siegal threw batting practice to the Indians during spring training, another first, and went on to throw BP to several other major league teams. The Athletics later hired her for a two-week stint as a guest instructor for their team in the fall instructional league.
Siegal is also the founder of Baseball for All, Inc. a nonprofit dedicated to advancing girls participation in baseball. During Saturday’s event, Siegal will share her journey and talk about the cultural and structural shifts needed to break barriers for women in all sports.
The Summer Series honors Lucchino, its founder, and his desire to bring dynamic conversation about the history of the game and the changing nature of the sport. The talk will begin at 1:00 P.M. A Q&A will follow and precedes the 4:05 game. Admission is secured with a ticket for the game (general admission or season).
A complimentary light luncheon is also served.
Funding has been provided by The Larry Lucchino Family Foundation.
