I first heard about the Women’s Pro Baseball League this summer in The Week Jr, the kids’ news magazine my eleven-year-old receives every Saturday. The league, which has been in the works for a few years, attracted more than 600 players when it called for tryouts last fall and ultimately launched in the summer of 2026 with four teams: the Los Angeles Queens, San Francisco Firebells, Boston Hunters and New York Heights.
In the pages of my daughter’s magazine, I read about the league’s commissioner Justine Siegal, a pioneer in women’s baseball. After being told by her youth baseball coach that girls play softball, not baseball back in the 1980s, Siegal vowed to play baseball forever. She became the first woman to coach professional men’s baseball and the first woman to coach in the MLB, and now she’s giving other women an opportunity she never had: the opportunity to play baseball professionally.
My first instinct was to be outraged at Siegal’s childhood coach, then outraged that her story hadn’t been made into a children’s sports movie like the ones I loved in the ‘90s. Off the top of my head I can think of three movies about fictional boys who somehow end up playing for pro baseball teams.
My second thought was that Siegal is often a Jewish name, and if it was, Kveller readers needed to know about this remarkable Jewish woman.
“I put being Jewish on the backburner as I got older,” Siegal wrote in a 2014 essay published in conjunction with “Chasing Dreams,” a Skirball Cultural Center exhibit on Jews and baseball (confirming that yes, she is Jewish). “That was until I had my daughter, Jasmine. And then I knew I was Jewish. It came to me as a feeling, as a connection both to my family and to a greater understanding of how my new daughter and I related to the overarching Jewish story.” But this renewed Jewish connection, Siegal wrote, would be on her terms. It would be rooted in her spiritual beliefs. “Those beliefs supported my notion of an empowered Jewish woman, even if that meant stepping outside the box of tradition.”
Siegal’s daughter was born in 1998. Four years later, Siegal formed a youth baseball team called the Sparks, who became the first all-girl baseball team to compete in a national baseball tournament intended for boys.
From there, you can see her values in action throughout her career: Siegal coached college baseball, taught PE at a Jewish day school, and got her Masters and PhD in sports studies and sports psychology, respectively. In 2009 she was hired as a first base coach for a team in the American-Canadian independent professional baseball league, making her the first woman to coach a professional baseball team.
“I lived in a teetering state of baseball bliss and discrimination,” Siegal wrote in the 2014 Skirball essay. One night while coaching, she was being harassed by drunk male fans — “They were shouting things like ‘What’s your bra size?’” With no one else on the team willing to stand up for her, Siegal felt profoundly alone. At the next night’s game, there happened to be a significant number of Orthodox Jewish fans. As she was leaving the field that night, Siegal heard clapping.
“I looked up, and I saw a Jewish man clapping for me,” Siegal wrote. “His two young children looked on. He had purposefully waited for me… so he could show his support. I assumed he knew I was Jewish… There was just something about him being both Orthodox and a man that made me feel validated in a way I didn’t even know I needed. In that moment I knew I was not alone.”
In 2015, Siegal became the first female coach in the MLB when she coached the Oakland A’s instructional league (the arm of the organization that trains prospective players.) The next year, Siegal was hired as a mental skills coach for Team Israel in the 2017 World Baseball Classic, an experience that she says helped her feel connected to her grandfather, Alvin Siegal, an ardent supporter of Jewish causes, longtime fundraiser for Israel bonds and the man who brought Siegal to countless baseball games as a child. (He passed away in 2018.)
Siegal also founded the nonprofit Baseball for All to empower girls to play baseball. She has said that 30% of the women drafted for the Women’s Pro Baseball League were part of that organization.
Siegal’s trailblazing journey has led her to this moment, where women’s sports are soaring in popularity (but, let’s be honest, still not popular enough) and the first season of the Women’s Pro Baseball League has reached its championship series.
“It’s an honor to make history, but it’s much more important we build a better future,” Siegal told Kent State University, her graduate alma mater. “With the WPBL and Baseball for All, I know there’s so much more for the next generation.”
New Year, More Kveller. A few dollars keeps Kveller joyfully, honestly free.
