This story was originally published on Them.
This week, the Women’s Pro Baseball League revealed the official details of its first four teams: the Boston Hunters, the Los Angeles Queens, the New York Heights, and the San Francisco Firebells.
Founded in 2024, the league had announced the first four host cities last October, but began rolling out names, logos, and jersey designs on July 8. In addition, each team is named after an important figure in women’s history from their respective cities — including the cigar-smoking, pants-wearing firefighter Lillie Hitchock Coit, a.k.a. “Firebell Lil,” who sometimes dressed as a man to gamble at men’s-only stores.
While Coit serves as the namesake for the San Francisco team, Boston’s club is named in honor of Harriot Hunt, a trailblazing female physician who was the first woman to apply to Harvard Medical School in 1847, nearly a century before the school admitted its first female students. The New York Heights draws its name from civil rights activist Dorothy Height, who received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 honoring her decades of advocacy, and the Los Angeles Queens pay tribute to baseball player Lizzie Murphy, known as the “Queen of the Diamond,” who played in women’s leagues — and even competed against men —in the early 20th century.
The league also rolled out designs for jerseys and fan replica jerseys on social media, and while I hate to pick favorites, I have to say that the osprey on the Boston Hunters kit is particularly fetching.
As you might expect from a professional women’s sports league — given the queerness of the WNBA — the WPBL is also remarkably gay. According to our sapphic social media detective friends at Autostraddle, the inaugural WPBL roster has at least 18 out LGBTQ+ players, with representation on every team. That’s nearly a third of the entire league, which closely compares to the WNBA, where roughly a quarter of players are out.
The league, which is independent from Major League Baseball, will play its games in Springfield, Illinois, beginning in early August and extending through September. According to Boston.com, this marks the first time a professional women’s baseball league has been founded since the 1954 end of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League featured in A League of Their Own.
The WPBL has a media partnership with production company Fremantle but broadcasting deals have not yet been announced.
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