Over 70 years after the end of the first professional women’s baseball league, a new league is emerging with a reimagined, inclusive mission where “every girl deserves the dream.”

Milwaukee native Yaz Rodriguez grew up watching her brothers playing baseball while her father tossed her a ball in friendly games of catch. “When I was able to play in middle school,” she said, “I did softball until my freshman year of college.”

Baseball had always been her passion, but playing it simply wasn’t in the cards for many young girls.

Last month, Rodriguez joined dozens of other players who were trying out for the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL), set to begin its first season in May as only the second women’s professional baseball league in the United States. It follows in the footsteps of the historic All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s and ’50s. Its founder, Philip K. Wrigley, previously the owner of the Chicago Cubs, intended to keep baseball fields active while many American men were fighting in World War II, so he put women to play. His solution gained a strong following, which held on until the league’s final year in 1954.

The Women’s Professional Baseball League is reimagining the legacy of Wrigley’s all-American girls with a more inclusive mission.

Though the United States has not had an active women’s baseball league in decades, USA Baseball does oversee the Women’s National Team, which was established in 2004. Players like Kylee Lahners, who has played third base for the team since 2018, showed up at the WPBL tryouts, hoping to expand her talents.

There was also Mo’ne Davis, a former Little League Baseball pitcher and Hampton University softball star from Philadelphia. Davis made history in 2014 as the first girl to throw a shutout — a game where the opposing team scores no runs — during her time as a Little League Baseball pitcher.

After coaching Major League Baseball’s Trailblazer Series, securing a graduate degree at Columbia University and excelling in Hampton University’s softball program, Davis believes now is the time for her to return to baseball.

“I just feel like I can never get away from” baseball, she said in an interview with Major League Baseball. “No matter how hard I try, somehow it’s always going to pull me back in different directions.”