Sound of a baseball hit and cheers
REPORTER: A bunch of kids are playing baseball at the Silver Terrace playground in San Francisco. It’s a hot sunny day, and these nine- and ten-year-olds are locked in, and they’re looking undeniably cool in their ball caps and sunglasses.
But what’s so special about this particular game? Every kid on the field is a girl.
And all of these girls are part of the Bay Sox. It’s run by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department. And it’s the biggest baseball program for girls in the country. It’s open to trans and non-binary kids and has about 150 girls playing year-round.
SA’MAYA HAMPTON: I really love everything about baseball, because I love hitting, I love fielding…
REPORTER: Ten-year-old Sa’Maya Hampton has been playing with the Bay Sox for three years.
HAMPTON: I love the team, like, everyone on the team here, and they're all my friends.
REPORTER: She hopes to play baseball in middle school, high school, college…
HAMPTON: I wanna be a professional in the women's league baseball when I grow up, and I wanna be in any team really. I just wanna play baseball when I'm older.
Sound of the coach giving Sa'Maya positive feedback on her playing
REPORTER: Well, Sa’Maya’s in luck. The Women’s Professional Baseball League, or WPBL, makes its debut this summer, and girls like her have a chance to play professionally. Besides a short-lived effort in the 90s that lasted one season, this is the first league for women since 1954.
The league is starting small — just four teams. San Francisco is one of them, along with LA, New York, and Boston. They’ll play all their games on neutral territory in Illinois throughout August and September.
San Francisco got the first overall draft pick…
WPBL DRAFT: With the first overall pick in the Women’s Pro Baseball League Draft, San Francisco selects Kelsie Whitmore!
REPORTER: Twenty-eight year old Kelsie Whitmore is widely considered one of the best female baseball players in the world.
KELSIE WHITMORE: I'm so excited that this league is happening during the core part of my career, which I never thought would happen. So super excited for it, for it all.
REPORTER: Kelsie made history as the first woman to play in a Major League Baseball Partner League when she signed with the Staten Island Ferry Hawks in 2022. But there have been a lot of low moments in Kelsie’s career, like when she got cut from a team because of her gender.
WHITMORE: They were like, "You know, we're not ready for a female, and we don't want you to get hurt competing against the men."
WHITMORE: I thought that was the end of my career.
REPORTER: But last year, a door opened for her and she got signed to play with the Savannah Bananas, a barnstorming exhibition team.
WHITMORE: I'm now living out the dream of being able to play in big league stadiums, which is what I've always dreamt of. Got to pitch at Petco Park in front of my family. Like those little things, it made it feel like everything, all the lows, were worth it in the end.
REPORTER: Kelsie grew up in San Diego, so she used to watch the Padres play at Petco Park.
But she’s excited to return to the Bay Area, where she got her start as a professional. Here, she competed on two independent pro teams, the Sonoma Stompers in 2016, then the Oakland Ballers in 2024.
But this time around with the WPBL feels different.
WHITMORE: The thing I'm looking forward to the most is just being able to feel normal on a baseball field.
Sound of the girls cheering for each other and a baseball hit
REPORTER: As I watch the Bay Sox play, I wonder why sights like this are so rare, why so few girls and women play baseball.
Rachelle Henley, who the players call “Coach Rocky,” co-founded the Bay Sox in 2015 with her best friend, Alex Oglesby. Rachelle explains that it’s because girls are pushed from a young age into a different diamond sport entirely, softball.
RACHELLE HENLEY: Parents kind of think, "Oh, well, my girl wants to play ball. She might play softball." Or we, a lot of times, get the question, "Why don't you play softball?" after they see you in Little League.
REPORTER: Softball was invented as “indoor baseball,” so you could still play when it was too cold outside. It has a bigger ball, a smaller field, underhand pitching, and fewer innings. They’re similar, but at the same time…
HENLEY: It's just two different games.
REPORTER: So, how did it come to be that boys play baseball and girls play softball?
In 1972, a 12-year-old girl from Hoboken, New Jersey named Maria Pepe tried out for a Little League team. She pitched three games before Little League’s national office threatened to take away the charter for her team unless she was kicked out.
HENLEY: Baseball is America's pastime. It's been around for many, many years, and I think it was sacred, and maybe the people that were the administrators of that sport didn't really want girls participating.
REPORTER: Here’s one of those Little League administrators from the 70s.
LITTLE LEAGUE ADMINISTRATOR: I don’t want my 10-year-old girl sliding into second base and having your 12-year-old boy tagging her on the breast! I don’t want my 10-year-old girl rounding third base or second base and having your 12-year-old boy tagging on her on the rump!
REPORTER: The National Organization for Women took up Maria Pepe’s case and filed a civil rights complaint against Little League. The judge ruled that girls have the right to be included in America’s pastime. But instead of encouraging girls to play baseball, Little League created a separate softball league for girls.
High schools and colleges followed in the wake of Title IX, creating girls’ and women’s softball teams but not baseball teams. Fifty years later, this continues to put girls who love baseball in a tough spot. Should they stay in baseball where they’re likely to be the only girl or should they switch to softball where there’s more opportunity for them?
HENLEY: People don't wanna keep on hearing the same question, and then they question themselves, "Oh, yeah, how come I'm not playing softball?"
REPORTER: Rachelle grew up in South San Francisco in the 1970s, around the same time Little League created its softball division. She remembers being eight years old and the only girl on her baseball team.
HENLEY: For the most part, the boys were welcoming. I was kind of a shy kid and I didn't really speak that much. But there was this one boy who just teased the heck out of me and I didn't like that. He was not including me in the group huddles and he'd always stand in front of me and make sure that I was behind him.
REPORTER: That experience stuck with her… and is part of why Rachelle has dedicated so much of her life to the inclusion of girls and women in baseball.
HENLEY: I can't stand leaving anybody out.
REPORTER: Rachelle means this wholeheartedly. It shows up in how she coaches. It shows up in how any girl can play with the Bay Sox, even if her family can’t afford it.
HENLEY: We will never turn a family away.
REPORTER: The Bay Sox are rare in that they have public funding, which allows them to offer free baseball clinics and scholarships.
All of this means that Bay Sox players don’t have to worry about their gender or whether or not they can afford a glove or a bat.
HENLEY: It's all just freeing. They all get to just be out there and play, and that's what, when you're a child, that's what should happen, is just go out and play.
REPORTER: And when they’re free to play and be themselves, they carry that confidence from the field into the rest of their lives.
HENLEY: These girls get to do what they wanna do, and they're not changing for anybody. And this is the sport that they wanna play, and I'm so proud of them for taking a stance and doing something that they love.
REPORTER: She’s proud of 23-year-old Kaija Bazzano, who was one of the first Bay Sox players and who was drafted to the WPBL as a reserve player.
And Rachelle’s looking forward to girls finally being able to see themselves as having a place in professional baseball.
RACHELLE HENLEY 16: So we see the Giants, we see the A's, but now girls get to see themselves on that baseball field and say, "I can do that. I can be her.”
Sound of girls chanting in the dugout and a baseball hit
REPORTER: Back at the Bay Sox game in Silver Terrace, I meet 15-year-old Rio Alcantar. She’s volunteering as the first base coach.
RIO ALCANTAR: My first fond memory about baseball is like just hitting in the backyard with my dad and playing catch with him.
REPORTER: Rio’s been playing organized baseball since she was four. And she comes from a baseball family. Her dad coaches baseball. Her older sisters played baseball. Her mom helps manage the Bay Sox. And even though she’s aged out of the program, she’s found other ways to keep on playing.
ALCANTAR: I'm really proud of being able to be a starter on my varsity high school baseball team.
REPORTER: And before anyone asks, no, Rio doesn’t play softball. She doesn’t have anything against the sport -- she’s just never played it.
ALCANTAR: I used to get annoyed because I was like, "Well, why can't I just play baseball? Why can't you just, like, let me play the sport that I wanna play?” and like why do you, like, say that?" There's always like, "Oh, why don't you go do that?" instead of what I'm doing now.
REPORTER: Rio lives and breathes baseball. When she’s not playing for her school, she’s coaching. She’s playing for different city teams. She’s traveling to tournaments. She’s getting invited to elite development events with Major League Baseball and Team USA Women’s Baseball.
ALCANTAR: Whenever I put on my cleats, then, like, I know who I am and, like, I can't wait to like play on the field.
REPORTER: But some of the hardest moments of her baseball career are when she’s been made to feel like she doesn’t belong.
ALCANTAR: I wouldn't be, like, be told that directly, but I could feel it, like, wherever I went. Like, just getting eyeballs at me, like, straight, like, when I would step on the field. Like, I just feel like everyone just would look at me because of how my hair was long.
REPORTER: It can be lonely being the only girl on your team.
ALCANTAR: 'Cause sometimes you feel like you don't really, like, bond with your teammates as much as they bond with each other.
REPORTER: And it can be a lot of pressure being the only girl on the field.
ALCANTAR: I feel like I always need to be perfect. Like I feel like I can't make an error, I feel like I can't strike out, I feel like I can't give up a hit.
REPORTER: Like any misstep would prove the haters right, that girls don’t belong in baseball.
But baseball is changing, largely because of programs like the Bay Sox. Unlike when her older sisters played, Rio’s not the only girl on her high school team. Next season, she’ll have two teammates who are girls – both former Bay Sox.
And she still plays with the many friends she’s met through the small but tight-knit girls baseball community, both nationally and internationally. This is when she plays her best, when she’s just having fun with her friends.
ALCANTAR: I feel like I play more loose when I'm playing with girls.
ALCANTAR: I feel so happy when I'm with them because, like, I feel like that's like my other family.
REPORTER: What’s Rio dreaming of next? Unsurprisingly, more baseball.
ALCANTAR: I feel like being a starter and playing D1 college baseball, I would just be, like, immensely proud and probably have like no words to explain the way I feel.
REPORTER: She knows there will be plenty of challenges on the road ahead, but she believes she can do it because of her role models. Like Olivia Pichardo, who is the first woman to play D1 baseball.
ALCANTAR: Definitely her and Kelsie Whitmore.
REPORTER: Rio can’t wait to watch Kelsie play for the WPBL’s San Francisco team.
ALCANTAR: She's definitely, like, an inspiration, I feel like, to me, but to also other girls around the world.
Sound of the girls chanting “Bay Sox! Basically us!”
REPORTER: The Bay Sox game ends in a tie: 5-5. I see high-fives and smiles all around. Surrounded by her teammates, Sa’Maya Hampton tells me she feels great about how she played today.
HAMPTON: I'm really proud of me catching the fly ball, when I caught the fly ball in the maybe the first or second inning when I was in center field.
REPORTER: But she’s also proud of how all the girls here – her “sisters” – played. And she wants them to watch the WPBL games together.
HAMPTON: When I see girls doing something that boys say it's only a boy sport, I feel so happy for them 'cause they're like saying that, "I can do whatever I want. You cannot tell me what to do."
REPORTER: Sa’Maya dreams of playing someday in San Francisco’s iconic Oracle Park.
HAMPTON: If I was where the Giants game are, I would wanna hit the ball over the fence to get, like, those home runs, and that's really my dream hit.
Sound of the girls chanting “Head, heart, hustle! Bay Sox!”
