After being chosen by San Francisco with the first pick in the first-ever Women’s Pro Baseball League draft on Thursday night, pitcher and outfielder Kelsie Whitmore is going back to her familiar surroundings.
In contrast, Los Angeles had to wait until the tenth round to grab Mo’ne Davis. At the age of 13, the 24-year-old Philadelphia native Davis participated in the 2014 Little League World Series and made history as the first female player to win a game and pitch a shutout.
Whitmore, a native of San Diego, debuted professionally in the Bay Area in 2016 with the Sonoma Stompers, a coed squad. The 27-year-old won gold at the 2015 Pan-Am Games in Toronto and two silver medals while playing for the United States at the Women’s Baseball World Cup.
“You ask a 6-year-old version of me about this opportunity happening right now, she would, one, probably not believe you, but, two, just be so, so, so, so excited for it,” Whitmore said. Whitmore became the first female player in the Atlantic League of professional baseball when she signed with the Staten Island FerryHawks in 2022. This season, she was a member of the Savannah Bananas.
Whitmore was one of 120 players chosen in the six-round selection, which also included Boston and New York clubs.
Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, began the draft by congratulating the WPBL on its debut. Play in the league is set to start on August 1.
Every round, each team made five selections, and a random draw was used to decide the order of selection. At the beginning of the season, teams will reduce their rosters from 30 players to 15.
Ayami Sato of Japan traveled to Los Angeles in second place. The 35-year-old right-hander is the first player to win three tournament MVP awards and has won five World Cups.
Kylee Lahners, an American infielder, was chosen by New York with the third choice. Hyeonah Kim, a catcher from South Korea, was selected by Boston at number four.
Over 600 candidates attended the upstart league’s four-day tryout camp in Washington this summer.
All of the league’s games will take place at Springfield, Illinois’ Robin Roberts Stadium. Teams will be stationed there for the entire seven-week season, which will be divided into two weeks for the playoffs, one week for all-star events, and four weeks for the regular season.
Justine Siegal, who co-founded the WPBL, was the first female MLB coach when she joined the Oakland Athletics in 2015. It will be the first women’s professional baseball league since the 1954 dissolution of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which is featured in the movie “A League of Their Own.”
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