Forward Movement

I've spent my career thinking about the girls. The girls who were told they should quit baseball. The girls who were told softball was "close enough." The girls who just wanted the same opportunity their brothers had to play the game they love.

On August 1, that work reaches a milestone I wasn't sure I'd ever see. For the first time in more than 70 years, women will once again have major league baseball in the United States. The Women's Pro Baseball League will open its inaugural season with four teams—New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco—and for countless girls, professional baseball will no longer be an impossible dream.

It will be real.

Lately, more people want to shake my hand. More people want to talk about the league. More people want to celebrate.

For me, though, it's always been about the work.

I think about that every time I walk through a Baseball For All tournament. This year we had 400 more girls than we did a year ago. That's what progress looks like. Sometimes it feels like we're taking two steps forward and one step back, but when I look at those fields, I know we've changed what is possible.

Not long ago, I asked one of the girls if she wanted to play professional baseball someday.

She looked at me and said she wasn't sure. She was also thinking about track. Maybe basketball. When I was growing up, we didn't really have a choice. We were lucky just to play baseball. This generation gets to choose. They can dream about professional baseball because now that dream actually exists.

That may be my favorite part of all of this.

The league didn't appear overnight. Baseball For All has spent years building opportunities one tournament, one clinic and one player at a time. Today, about a quarter of the players drafted into the WPBL came through Baseball For All. Nearly one-third of the draft is made up of international players, which tells you this movement has become much bigger than any one country.

And the appetite is there.

Before we've even thrown our first pitch, we've built an Instagram community of more than 150,000 people. For years, it felt like we were pushing a giant stone uphill by ourselves. Now people are helping push. They're investing. They're paying attention. They want this league to succeed.

When I go to sporting events like an NWSL match, I pay attention to the atmosphere as much as the game. We're thinking about that, too. We want to create a fan experience that keeps people coming back. Some fans will come because they already love baseball. Some will come because they've always wanted to see women playing this sport at the highest level. And sure, some will come because they're curious.

They want to see if we're any good.

I promise you, we are.

For me, that's never been the question.

The question has always been whether girls would finally get the chance.