The Women’s Professional Baseball League opens its 2026 season Saturday, Aug. 1, at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield. All 30 regular-season games are scheduled here.
In a sense, the league’s location is a return home. According to The Athletic, a sports website supported by the New York Times, Springfield “was the site of the first recorded women’s game with a paid crowd.”
The reference apparently is to a game played Sept. 12, 1875, at a field on North Seventh Street. The Illinois State Register’s game story, typical for the time, devoted almost as much ink to the women’s appearance as to their on-field performance. (The story’s headline is shown above, courtesy State Journal-Register.) Here’s the full article:
The female base ball club, to which reference has been made from time to time in the press of the city, played their initial exhibition game on Saturday last, in the presence of an assembly of perhaps two hundred people. The grounds were surrounded by a canvas in order to secure privacy, about three hundred feet square being embraced in the enclosure.
At the hour for the game to commence the girls “came to the scratch” clad in a neat and rather showy uniform, and at once proceeded to business. The nines are known respectively as the “Blondes” and “Brunettes.”
The uniform of the former consists of a jaunty white hat, blue pants trimmed with white, reaching a little below the knee, blue jackets similarly trimmed, confined at the waist with a black belt, and white hose striped with blue. The uniform of the Brunettes consists of white hat, white suits trimmed with blue, and red and white stock – beg pardon; hose, we mean.
The toss was won by the Brunettes, and the Blondes went to the bat. The game proceeded at once, with varying results, and soon a little nervousness, under which it was manifest some of the girls were laboring, wore off, and they entered into the spirit of the occasion with considerable vim. The batting was not characterized by any great degree of vigor, nor was the pitching and catching hardly up to the standard of some of the crack male clubs, yet the contest seemed to be greatly enjoyed by the spectators, and an unusual “pose,” a home run, or a fly-catch, was certain to provoke a burst of applause.
Everything, however, was done decently and in order, and there was nothing save, perhaps, the exhibition of female anatomy, to which exception could be taken, and even that is frequently discounted in first-class theaters. For about two hours the game went on, and finally victory perched on the banners of the Blondes, by a score of 42 to 38.
The game was umpired by Elliott Drummond, while “Reddy,” (newspaperman J.H.C. Irwin – ed.) of the Journal, occupied the proud position of scorer.
The girls have already started on a tour. They played today, we believe, in Decatur. They will attract attention, doubtless, in consequence of the novelty of the organization, rather than through skill in the field.
The Register account included a rudimentary box score. Winning pitcher for the Blondes was Jennie Wyman; Mollie Broden of the Brunettes took the loss. The offensive star, however, was a Brunette, centerfielder Anna Wilson, who seems to have scored all seven times she came to bat.
Tickets, price unreported, for the six-inning game were sold at Frank Simmons’ bookstore.
The teams were sponsored by an unnamed area businessman, according to an Illinois State Journal story published a few weeks earlier. Only one or two of the players, at most, came from Springfield; most apparently were recruited in the St. Louis area.
“The females are mostly from a distance, but one is believed to have originally hailed from town and another parted company with Barnum’s show here,” the paper said.
“Matters have been managed with such secrecy,” the Journal added, that it was “difficult to obtain further information at present. …”
Meantime, the females, who are boarding at a hotel in the east part of town, attract considerable attention. They were out driving yesterday, and in the evening had a sing and dance at a hall on North Sixth street, and attracted quite an audience to the opposite side of the street, among whom were those who declared some of the females really fine looking.
Original content copyright Sangamon County Historical Society. You are free to republish this content as long as credit is given to the Society. Learn how to support the Society.