#natitude

denae benites hits the first home run of the wpbl

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The big stretch the first baseman has to do to catch the ball and remain on base

When a pitch rolls away and the catcher has to look all threatening at the base runners when he gets it

When the batter strikes out so bad and he can tell

When the fielder gives up trying to catch the home run ball

When the second baseman tries to catch a ball twenty feet above him

And while national team opportunities have improved in recent years, here is an excerpt on what it was like for former Team USA veteran player Malaika Underwood to train with the team (source)

“After the national team trials in June, Underwood invited teammates who also lived in the Southeast to spend weekends at her house in Jacksonville so that they could practice together. They also met up in Atlanta. All the training and travel happened on their own dimes. When they could, players sent videos of their pitches and swings to their coaches, who would try to make adjustments remotely.

“It’s all on us,” Underwood says. “In terms of time and personal investment, we’ve all given up a lot to be here. Guys make sacrifices to play baseball, too, but there’s just a much clearer path for them.”

Basically I say this because I know there’s a lot of people coming over from being recent wnba/pwhl/nwsl fans, and particularly if you watched the latter two leagues, understand that the WPBL is coming at it with significantly less infrastructure in place in America. There’s no ncaa programs, no high school programs, the only previously attempted league after the AAGPBL was the amateur league, North American Women's Baseball League, which existed for five years. The nwsl and PWHL all had several attempted leagues before if, several overseas leagues, college programs, and stronger national team programs that appeared in major tournaments like the Olympics they were building off of. I also don’t want to entirely compare to wnba, because I think the time period and how it came about puts it in a different cultural context, but even they had a few attempts at pro leagues and several decades of organized college play.

- Milan Cortina 2026 -

#21 Hilary Knight & #10 Laila Edwards

Art by @belovcd with Procreate

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