Before Justine Siegal decided anything else about the Women’s Pro Baseball League, she decided that it would announce itself to players with a big, open tryout.
That was about practicality as much as principle. Siegal felt she had to cast a wide net: For every woman already on her radar, each one who had been among the only girls at the Little League World Series or had been invited to play for USA Baseball’s women’s national team, there might be half a dozen others who remained totally unknown. Siegal, 50, understood that dynamic better than anyone. She made her name in men’s baseball—which she has spent her life arguing is not interchangeable with “baseball.” She was the first woman to throw batting practice for a major league team (Cleveland in spring training in 2011) and the first woman hired as a coach for a major league organization (Oakland in the instructional league in ’15). But she feels most strongly about her work around girls and women. She runs a nonprofit, Baseball For All, focused on keeping girls in the game, and she still spends so much time explaining what that means.
