Six Months to the WPBL!

Today is February 1, 2026; in six months, on August 1st, the Women's Professional Baseball League -- the first professional women's baseball league since the 1950s -- begins its inaugural season. For those of us baseball fans who came of age with "A League of Their Own", the 1992 movie about the earlier All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and the more recent Amazon reboot, it's great to see another women's league emerging.

I've spent a fair amount of time with the AAGPBL, ranging from making paintings with player cards to visualizing the accomplishments of its notable players (like Joanne Weaver, who had the highest season batting average in the league's history, even higher than Ted Williams's .406 and Rogers Hornsby's .424). You can click on the Tableau Public visualization below to examine comparative data for the rosters of the two leagues. There are separate tabs for team locations and player hometowns for each league. 

There are some important differences between the two leagues:

• Ownership and team structure: AAGPBL teams were owned by separate owners or ownership groups, and the number of teams fluctuated during the life of the league. Teams played in several midwestern US cities including Chicago and smaller cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and others. In contrast, the WPBL is beginning with a single entity ownership model to promote stability, and for the first season is playing all games in Springfield, IL.
• Player origins: there are big differences here. While AAGPBL players came mostly from the US and Canada, with a handful from Cuba, WPBL players are from the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the UK, France, Venezuela, Mexico, and Curacao.

I'm really looking forward to play starting in six months and having comparative performance data to visualize. In the meantime, take a look below and let me know in the comments what you think!