The Women's Professional Baseball League will begin its inaugural season on Saturday, August 1. Two people from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan were drafted into the new WPBL: Braidy Birdsall and Adelaide Ziebart.
"The first time I even thought it was an opportunity was as soon as they announced the WPBL and they said they were going to have open tryouts. I thought, 'This could be my opportunity, this could be my chance to play pro ball.' Which is something that obviously anyone playing a sport hopes to go pro. It was a really cool opportunity," Ziebart said on The SportsCage.
"Once I got the email saying that I got invited to tryouts in Washington, D.C., then probably the most surreal moment was playing in Nationals Park, standing in a pro stadium and feeling what it would feel like to be a pro."
For Birdsall, her experience getting involved with the WPBL was different from Ziebart's.
"I was actually injured that year, so it took me out through the whole summer. I wasn't able to go to nationals and I wasn't able to go to the tryout. When I first heard about it, I thought that was more of a goal in the future when I was getting older, coming back to sport, and I'm healthy," Birdsall recalled.
"I decided to submit a video that I created for Team Canada originally and they ended up selecting me based off of that. I was really excited to even be considered. I was hoping to be kept in the loop, but I made it a lot farther than I thought."
Initially, Birdsall's parents had her in different sports when she was growing up, but that didn't dissipate her love for baseball.
"I was really lucky. My parents put me in a bunch of different sports, so I was able to develop a bunch of different skills. It's really given me a well-rounded view on sports," Birdsall said.
"There are so many different aspects that you can enjoy and I think that it made me appreciate baseball a lot more because baseball is so unique. I fell in love with a sport where you fail so much. It's tough, but I absolutely love it. Coming into baseball a little later in life didn't change my love for the game, so I'm excited about it."
Birdsall was selected by Boston in the fifth round, and Ziebart was selected right after her by New York.
There hasn't been a women's pro baseball league since 1954. One of the more well-known ones was the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Four ladies from Regina participated in the inaugural season: Mary "Bonnie" Baker, Catherine Bennett, Ethel Gould, and Mildred McAuley.
Both Birdsall and Ziebart were part of a panel led by Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame curator Robyn Jensen, SportsCage's Teagan Witko and Maureen Ulrich about diamond girls to draft day: women in Saskatchewan baseball past, present and future. Jensen shared the importance of preserving the history of women in baseball.
"My job as a historian, my job as a curator, is to bring those stories into life. We talked about our African descent baseball team that played in Indian Head. The All-American girls baseball team is pretty well known, but we have to expand on that. We have to keep telling those stories like Maureen Ulrich in our conversation said, 'We're such a visual culture.' Those baseball games that the women played back in the day were not recorded," Jensen detailed.
"They weren't on the radio. You have a few little newspaper clippings about them. The history that you find, you have to keep telling it, so the next generation can come up and learn about it. A perfect example is the Indian Head Rockets tribute game out at Currie Field. We had a whole new generation of kids come up and meet Nat Bates and Willie Reed, learn about that history and walk away being proud of that in our province. We need to keep telling those stories."
For Ziebart, it is not lost on her the responsibility that she and Birdsall have for younger girls who will look up to them.
"That's honestly the most exciting part about it, that you have the opportunity to pave the way for these girls growing up. I know coaching them and being around them, you see what an influence it is to them and encourage them to keep in baseball because they see a path somewhere that they can go with it," Ziebart explained.
"Instead of having to switch from baseball to softball because softball has a pro league and softball has college. Now we're seeing baseball create college programs and we have the WPBL. It's definitely super important to be able to influence those young girls and pave the way for them as well."
