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The new Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) just established its four inaugural teams, and their names are all inspired by trailblazing American women of the 19th and 20th centuries. The league’s first season starts next month. It’ll match up the San Francisco Firebells, New York Heights, Los Angeles Queens and Boston Hunters.
The four teams “honor the legacies of specific women who chose to forge new paths for themselves and generations of women who followed,” league commissioner Justine Siegal says in a statement. “The WPBL stands on the shoulders of these incredible women who fought for their place in history and on the diamond long before us.”
San Francisco’s team name, Firebells, is inspired by Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who “challenged convention and never accepted the status quo,” according to a video from the WPBL. In the mid-19th century, as a young girl, Coit began volunteering with the San Francisco fire department. Exactly how Coit got involved with Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5 remains unknown, reports the Saturday Evening Post’s Barbara Noe Kennedy. But within a few decades, she’d become an “honorary member” of the squad: Coit fundraised, represented the department in parades and celebrated the fire company’s anniversary with its men each year. In 1895, the San Francisco Chronicle called Coit the “most original woman California has produced.”
Behind the New York Heights’ moniker is Dorothy Height, the “godmother of the civil rights movement.” Born in 1912 in Richmond, Virginia, Height earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in New York City. There, she joined the Harlem Young Women’s Christian Association and began rising through ranks of leadership. In 1957, Height became president of the National Council of Negro Women—a post she’d hold for four decades, speaking out against sexism in the movement for African American rights.
After the March on Washington, Height lamented civil rights leaders’ reluctance to allow women to address the crowd at the demonstration. “Nothing that women said or did broke the impasse blocking their participation,” Height wrote. “I’ve never seen a more immovable force. We could not get women’s participation taken seriously.”
The Boston Hunters’ team name is also inspired by a women’s rights activist: Boston physician Harriot Kezia Hunt. Inspired by the physicians who cured her sister of a deathly illness, Hunt eventually learned and practiced holistic medicine. She was accepted into Harvard Medical School then blocked from attending because of her gender. Though Hunt never possessed a medical degree, she’s often called America’s “first woman physician.” She believed that “the female physician is the physician for the female patient,” and emphasized women’s health—as well as their political rights. Hunt was a vocal suffragette.
Only one of the WPBL’s four teams is named for a baseball player. The Los Angeles Queens borrow from the nickname of Lizzie Murphy, known as “Queen of the Diamond.” Murphy was born in 1894 in Rhode Island and was a promising athlete from childhood, playing on local boys’ baseball teams. By age 21, she’d gone semipro as a first basewoman. “She knocked down hard-hit grounders, gobbled up poor throws that would get away from many players, and at every time showed she knew the game,” reported Fall River’s Evening Herald in 1915.
In 1922, Murphy played at Fenway Park, on an “all-star” team, against the Major League’s Boston Red Sox. The all-stars won. According to the WPBL’s video, Murphy was “the first woman to play against major league players, who never waited for permission. She earned her place.”
The WPBL’s first season arrives more than seven decades after the shut down of American baseball’s last (and only other) female league. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL)—immortalized by the 1992 film A League of Their Own—operated between 1943 and 1954. More than 600 women played for the league.
Like the Women’s Pro Baseball League, the All-American Girls’ inaugural season involved four teams. But unlike the WPBL, whose teams are on the coasts, the AAGPBL was a Midwest enterprise. Team monikers reflected the league’s commitment to “femininity.” They were essentially synonyms for “girls,” like the Rockford Peaches, Kalamazoo Lassies, Grand Rapids Chicks and Fort Wayne Daisies.
Each All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player was issued a skirted uniform.
“Femininity is the keynote of our league,” AAGPBL president Ken Sells told United Press Sports, according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “No pants-wearing, tough-talking female softballer will play on any of our four teams.”
The WPBL players wear pants. And their team names “represent the grit, audacity and excellence that our athletes will bring to the field this August,” Siegal says in the statement.
In spring 2026, the new league held a scrimmage in Fort Myers, Florida near where the Boston Red Sox were training. League coach Bree Nasti told the Associated Press’ Alanis Thames that she hopes fans will be impressed by the level of play.
“I do think we’re in a really exciting period in women’s sports where we are seeing in real time how we fill stadiums and how passionate people are about watching women compete at a high level,” Nasti told the AP.
This article was originally published on Smithsonian Magazine. Read the full story here: New Women's Pro Baseball League Teams Are Named for These Pioneering American Women, Giving Female Players Another League of Their Own © 2026 Smithsonian Institution.
