By JOE McFARLAND

We are on the cusp of history.

In just a few short months, the Women’s Pro Baseball League will make its much-anticipated debut with four teams suiting up for a four-week, 30-game season.

All games will be played at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois, with two weeks of playoffs set to start in September.

We’ve watched with excitement as 20 Canadians were chosen during November’s inaugural WPBL Draft, including two from Saskatchewan (Braidy Birdsall and Addie Ziebart) and two from Alberta (Madison Willan and Sydney Barry).

Not only is this going to be a monumental occasion for the female game with league play, but it’s also providing an opportunity for young girls around the world to have professional baseball aspirations.

“If you can see it, you can be it” is going to be lived in real time.

With that in mind, it’s had me thinking about what we can do here at home to capitalize on that momentum and foster the game’s continued growth in the years to come.

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

In my mind, now is the time to start thinking about how that “pipeline” from the smallest community association to the WPBL will work.

Decision-makers need to take a step back and walk through the process from an athletic perspective to figure out how best to make those dreams come a reality.

And step one, in my book, is to get out of each other’s way and work together.

Much like in the male game, we all know you start with blast ball and t-ball then move your way up through the community associations, then maybe into an academy, before heading off to college with the hope of one day getting drafted and entering professional baseball.

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It needs to be this easy for the female game as well.

That will start with putting to bed some of the belief that still exists around “softball is for girls and baseball is for boys.”

Every athlete is different and we should applaud them for chasing whatever dream it is that they want to chase, and in some cases like Kelsey Lalor, Zoe Hicks, and others, it could be both.

Beyond that, I hope we can see provincial organizations working together to grow the game.

As an example, in Alberta, we have Baseball Alberta and Little League Alberta doing their own thing in the female baseball arena.

How great would it be to see the artificial borders get erased and see more “inter-organizational” play to expose the athletes to more competition and, potentially, more opportunities to be seen for provincial and national teams?

A WOMEN’S BASEBALL ACADEMY?

This might sound a little “out there,” but I would personally love to see one of the many great academy programs in his neck of the woods take on female baseball as the next frontier.

As athletes get older, they will need opportunities to train and focus on the game they love.

Imagine a day where they can do exactly as the boys do by going to school during the day as a teenager before heading to the gym or the field in the evenings to work on baseball.

This becomes even more valuable for those athletes looking to make the 16U or 19U national teams, which have become important springboards to the Baseball Canada Women’s National Team.

Even beyond the academy idea, one of the things that I’ve spoken with many young women about is how the opportunities to play against other women as they get older seem to dwindle.

They’re still playing on boys’ teams when they’re 14 or 15, which they don’t view as fair and, as a result, leads to more girls leaving the game altogether.

I think we’ve done a good job of building up the game at the grassroots with new initiatives aimed at letting girls play against other girls, but it starts to fall apart later in childhood and into their teen years.

INVESTING TIME AND MONEY

The bottom line on all of this will probably boil down to one thing: investment.

Yes, money is going to be the name of the game here, as it always is.

My one fear is that, especially in these tougher economic times, baseball organizations look at female baseball as an easy target to cut because the uptake might not be the same as some of the other programs.

Remember: it’s an investment.

This is where I think we can be a little more creative in how local and provincial organizations attract sponsors, especially at a time when the female game is finally being elevated.

You can look at the success of women’s hockey, basketball and soccer as prime examples of where there’s some new attention and with it comes new fan bases and new business opportunities from potential sponsors who want to get in on the ground floor.

Add in the “Blue Jays Bump” from the 2025 playoff run and interest in baseball hasn’t been higher, so why not try to capture that lightning in a bottle?

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The other thing here is investment in time.

Whether it’s managers, coaches, trainers or umpires, we are going to invariably need more people to step up for these athletes.

We have a wealth of great baseball people across Canada, including Alberta and Saskatchewan, who have the expertise and experience to be valuable assets to the young women wanting to play the game. Let’s welcome them with open arms and support them in any way we can.

I like to say that “we are living as the history books of tomorrow, so what do we want those words to say about us?”

We’re living at a game-changing point in women’s baseball, and we can be leaders in Alberta and Saskatchewan (and frankly across Canada) if we are willing to be bold, invest our time and money into it, and hopefully build a strong pipeline to the new Women’s Pro Baseball League.