⚾ Batter up! Hear that call! The time has come for one and all to play ball. The Women’s Pro Baseball League finally plays its first games, bringing women’s professional baseball back to the United States after more than 70 years. The new league features four founding teams, and each name was chosen with real thought: the Los Angeles Queens honor baseball pioneer Lizzie Murphy, the New York Heights honor civil and women’s rights leader Dorothy Height, the San Francisco Firebells honor the fearless Lillie “Firebelle Lil” Hitchcock Coit, and the Boston Hunters honor trailblazing physician Harriot Hunt. The sold-out opener features the Queens against the Heights on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET, followed by the Firebells against the Hunters on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Both games will stream on ESPN Select. For every girl who dreamed of playing professional baseball, there is finally a league of their own. I will be watching with my head buried in a Kleenex box.
⛳ The final major of the women's golf season has arrived. The AIG Women's Open, celebrating its 50th edition, takes over Royal Lytham & St Annes, a links course so unforgiving it packs 166 pot bunkers into 18 holes. I have no idea what that means but it sounds intense. Nelly Korda and Haeran Ryu have split all four majors this year, so this week decides whether one of them will get to talk trash for the remainder of the season. Charley Hull and Lottie Woad will have the crowd behind them chasing a first major on home soil, and Lydia Ko, a past champion at this very course, is never one to count out. Round one tees off Thursday, July 30, with the trophy handed out Sunday, Aug. 2. Watch on Golf Channel and NBC.
🥍 The Nissin Foods 2026 World Lacrosse Women's Championship is down to the final four. Canada faces the Haudenosaunee at 4 p.m. ET, followed by the United States taking on Israel at 7 p.m. ET on Friday in Tokyo, with the winners advancing to Sunday's gold medal game. Catch the games on World Lacrosse TV. Worth knowing before you watch: lacrosse itself traces back to the Haudenosaunee, who call it the Creator's Game and were playing it for ceremony and community long before Europeans ever picked up a stick. The Haudenosaunee Nationals compete as their own sovereign nation. Their story is unlike anything else in sports, and I'll be pulling for them all the way to Sunday.
