Kelsie Whitmore made extra historical past on Thursday evening when she was picked first general by the San Francisco franchise within the Girls’s Professional Baseball League inaugural draft.
Lower than an hour later, Livermore’s Arwen McCullough had her dream come true when she additionally turned a part of her new hometown workforce’s history-making draft class.
Whitmore, 27, already has sturdy Bay Space ties and has lengthy been a pioneer for ladies in baseball. In 2016, she and Stacy Piagno performed for the impartial Sonoma Stompers on the Pacific Affiliation, changing into the primary feminine teammates in a males’s league for the reason that Nineteen Fifties. Two summers in the past, Whitmore turned the primary lady within the historical past of the impartial Pioneer League to start out a sport as a pitcher, enjoying for the Oakland Ballers. Final season she performed for the barnstorming Savannah Bananas.
The four-team WPBL, which additionally contains Los Angeles, Boston and New York, will likely be based mostly out of Springfield, Illinois, this summer time. However Whitmore wasted no time reaching out to the growth workforce’s Bay Space fan base.
“In the event you requested a six-year-old model of me (about) this chance and that it’s occurring proper now, she would one, most likely not consider you, however two, simply be so so so so excited for it,” Whitmore stated on the stay stream of the draft. “I’m simply grateful for the chance. And I’m excited to be representing town of San Francisco. And the place all of it started for me. The primary skilled workforce I ever performed for was within the Bay Space, for the Sonoma Stompers. I’m actually excited to have the ability to return there and type of simply signify town of San Francisco.
“And y’all be prepared as a result of we’re going to win a championship for you guys.”
Along with Whitmore, San Francisco chosen two different members of final summer time’s Workforce USA ladies’s baseball workforce amongst its first six picks. With the No. 9 general choose, they chose shortstop Joely Leguizamon, who performed for the Dominican Republic within the Pan American Video games.
Los Angeles took Japanese ace Ayami Sato with the second general choose. Sato, 36, has led Japan to 5 Girls’s Baseball World Cup titles and was the primary lady to play in a males’s league in Canada. Los Angeles additionally drafted Mo’Ne Davis, the Little League hero in 2014 from Pennsylvania, with the No. 10 general choose.
With the a hundred and fifth general choose, San Francisco chosen McCullough, a right-handed pitcher who grew up enjoying baseball in Livermore — and idolizing Giants stars Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey. After two seasons on the Granada Excessive softball workforce she enrolled at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the place she helped set up the college’s first ladies’s baseball membership workforce. This spring the Mustangs received the nationwide championship. Thursday evening, McCullough was her hometown workforce’s twenty seventh general draft choose.
“I’m excited not just for my technology, however particularly for the youthful ladies,” the 21-year-old McCullough stated earlier this week. “It offers them gamers they will look as much as. Present them they will play baseball.”
San Francisco grabbed one other Northern California product, Sebastopol shortstop Kaija Bazzano, with its twentieth general choose.
The WPBL was co-founded by Justine Siegal, who turned the primary lady to educate in MLB with the Oakland A’s in 2015. That is largest try at a full-scale ladies’s league for the reason that All-American Women Skilled Baseball League that existed from 1943 to 1954 and was immortalized within the 1992 movie “A League of Their Personal.”
Every of the 4 groups chosen 30 gamers on Thursday, however lively rosters will go simply 15 deep. The seven-week season is scheduled to start out August 1, together with an all-star competitors and two weeks of playoffs.
There have been greater than 120 gamers eligible for the draft, representing ten nations. That draft pool was diminished from greater than 600 gamers who participated within the league’s tryouts this summer time at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. Different gamers had been recognized via movies and in-person scouting.
San Francisco chosen gamers from six completely different nations and will probably area a United Nations Opening Day infield of Canada’s Andreanne LeBlanc at first base, Workforce USA veteran Amanda Gianelloni (their second general choose) at second, the Domincan’s Leguizamon at shortstop and Japan’s Ayaka Yamamoto at third.
Thursday’s draft consisted of six rounds, with every workforce choosing 5 gamers per spherical. The San Francisco franchise acquired the primary general choose after a random draw. Los Angeles picked second, adopted by New York and Boston. The draft operated in a snake-order format – the workforce that picked final in a single flip picked first within the subsequent.
The draft was streamed stay on the WPBL’s web site in addition to the social media platform X and the league’s Instagram, TikTok and YouTube channels. There additionally had been a number of a number of viewing events across the nation, together with at Rikki’s Bar in San Francisco and the Milestone Tavern in San Luis Obispo, the place McCullough additionally served because the host.
The primary season of the WPBL will likely be performed at 5,200-seat Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield. The league stated the league most popular a central location for its first season. Springfield additionally hosted one of many earliest paid ladies’s video games in 1875, in accordance with a WPBL information launch.
“I discovered baseball when the Giants made the World Sequence (in 2010, ’12 and ’14) and I all the time needed to play it,” McCullough stated. “It’s been my coronary heart and my sport.”
San Francisco’s draft class
1st choose — Kelsie Whitmore, RHP (27) — San Diego, CA, USA
2 – Amanda Gianelloni, 2B (28) — New Orleans, LA, USA
3 – Joely Leguizamon, SS (26) — Dominican Republic
4- Jill Albayati, RHP/UTL (21) — Anaheim, CA, USA
5 – Samantha Gutierrez, C (22) — San Diego, CA, USA
6 – Ayaka Yamamoto, 3B (21) — Fukuyama, Japan
7 – Niki Eckert, LHP (22) — Tarrytown, NY, USA
8- Andreanne Leblanc, 1B (24) — Mont-Saint-Hilaire, QC, Canada
9 – Jua Park, SS (20) — Hadong, South Korea
10 – Alexia Jorge, C (22) — Lyndhurst, NJ, USA
11 – Ela Day-Bedard, IF (20) — Gatineau, QC, Canada
12 – Rosa Del Castillo, CF (26) — Puebla, Mexico
13 – Elizabeth Gilder, LHP (24) — New Westminster, BC, Canada
14 – Skylar Kaplan, LF (24) — Glen Burnie, MD, USA
15 – Hinano Beppu, 2B (29) — Kitakyushu Metropolis, Japan
16 – Jordan Eyster, CF (21) — Royal Oak, MI, USA
17 – Katie Reynolds, RHP (24) — Watertown, MA, USA
18 – Peyton Coria, RHP (19) — Perris, CA, USA
19 – Hanna Miura, 2B (22) — Sapporo, Japan
20 – Kaija Bazzano, SS (23) — Sebastopol, CA, USA
21 – Kaelei Kajitani, 1B (21) — Madera, CA, USA
22 – Kiley Ingram, RHP (18) — Ontario, CA, USA
23 – Scrappy Hopkins, C (27) — Fort Walton Seaside, FL, USA
24 – Flor Elena Valerio Montoya, RHP (23) — Tijuana, Mexico
25 – Esthela Segovia, C (31) — Tijuana, Mexico
26 – Bella Espinoza-Molina, RF (23) — Ladera Ranch, CA, USA
27 – Arwen McCullough, RHP (21) — Livermore, CA, USA
28 – Allie Lacey, 2B (31) — La Crescenta, CA, USA
29 – Micaela Minner, 1B (40) — Akron, OH, USA
30 –Kailyn Bearpaw, 1B (22) — Sapulpa, OK, USA
