Women’s Pro Baseball League begins inaugural season

The GIST: The Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) makes its long-awaited debut in front of a sold out crowd tomorrow at 6 p.m. ET, airing on ESPN Select in the U.S. and on YouTube for those outside the States. Here’s everything you need to know ahead of the historic first pitch.

✅ Four inaugural teams will compete at neutral site in Illinois: Although the league’s four debut teams — Boston Hunters, NY Heights, LA Queens, and San Francisco Firebells — are connected to home cities, all season one games will be played at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.

• Each team will play 15 regular-season games starting tomorrow through early September, battling to determine matchups for the inaugural WPBL playoffs. The first round will be best-of-three, followed by the best-of-five WPBL Championship. Hey, batter, batter.

🤩 LA’s Mo’ne Davis, San Francisco’s Kelsie Whitmore headline talent: Sixty players will compete in the inaugural season, including 2014 Little League World Series darling Davis and No.1 overall pick Whitmore, the first woman to play in an MLB Partner League and the first to pitch in Banana Ball.

• A couple other names to know? LA pitcher Ayami Sato, the first woman to play in a men’s pro league in Canada, and NY catcher Kylee Lahners, a softball-turned-baseball player and standout for Team USA.

♥️ Bigger than sport: Tomorrow’s opener between LA and New York is a moment years in the making. Women have always had a place on the diamond, a fact that was on full display during the AAGPBL’s heyday in the 1940s and 50s. Now, after a long road filled with firsts, women finally have a league of their own. That certainly merits a little crying in baseball.