{"id":413,"date":"2025-06-03T09:09:59","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T09:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=413"},"modified":"2025-06-03T09:09:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T09:09:59","slug":"rounding-third","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=413","title":{"rendered":"Rounding Third"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2026, professional women\u2019s baseball will return to the United States for the first time since the World War II\u2013era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). The Women\u2019s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) is more than a nostalgic revival\u2014it marks a pivotal cultural moment to rethink who belongs in sports, how identities are expressed, and what true visibility means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For decades, women\u2019s baseball was erased or sidelined. The 1992 film A League of Their Own<\/em> gave us a beloved but simplified story, largely overlooking the complex intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. The recent Amazon Prime reboot pushes beyond nostalgia, centering queer and BIPOC experiences that have long been excluded from baseball\u2019s history. While characters like Max Chapman\u2014a Black, gender-nonconforming, lesbian pitcher\u2014and their transmasculine Uncle Bert remain supporting figures, their stories bring crucial visibility to the layered identities navigating the sport.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The show also honors the Negro Leagues, weaving Black baseball history into the narrative and underscoring that baseball\u2019s story is inseparable from America\u2019s ongoing racial realities. It doesn\u2019t shy away from systemic oppression, depicting police brutality during a raid on an underground speakeasy and contrasting it with a Black queer house party held out by the train tracks\u2014in a neighborhood neglected by law enforcement\u2014reminding us that sports exist within broader social struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A recurring motif is the players\u2019 fraught relationship with gender norms and appearance. Players are fined for wearing pants in public and trade creative methods\u2014like using ration cards to buy boxer briefs under the guise of purchasing for a brother\u2014as small acts of rebellion against rigid expectations. This tension extends to the AAGPBL\u2019s strict emphasis on femininity: the league made significant investments to ensure players appeared stereotypically feminine, enforcing rules on makeup, hairstyles, and playing in skirts. The show includes candid reflections from players grappling with these contradictions\u2014athletes forced to perform toughness on the field while conforming to delicate societal ideals of femininity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The series also honors quieter legacies, like Maybelle Blair, an AAGPBL player who courageously came out as a lesbian at age 95. Blair\u2019s story highlights the historic invisibility of queer athletes and challenges us to acknowledge those who paved the way without recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In stark contrast, men\u2019s professional baseball has seen only three openly queer MLB players\u2014and all came out post-retirement. The WPBL\u2019s launch offers a bold alternative: a league where queer athletes are not exceptions but woven into the fabric from the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To grasp the WPBL\u2019s transformative potential, it helps to think in terms of assemblage\u2014the way race, gender, sexuality, history, culture, and social forces dynamically intertwine. Women\u2019s baseball is shaped by this complex interplay: gendered uniforms, coded queer communities, racial exclusion, and ongoing struggles for visibility. The WPBL can create a space where queer, trans, nonbinary, disabled, and BIPOC athletes\u2019 identities are not sidelined but central to the league\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This vision aligns powerfully with Jos\u00e9 Esteban Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s concept of queerness as utopia\u2014a future-oriented horizon that doesn\u2019t yet exist but offers hope and possibility. Queerness here is not about present perfection but about moving toward a world where all forms of gender and identity coexist without conflict or erasure. The WPBL doesn\u2019t have to be flawless at the start, but it can be a vital step toward a future where athleticism and gender expression are celebrated together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2026, professional women\u2019s baseball will return to the United States for the first time since the World War II\u2013era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). The Women\u2019s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) is more than a nostalgic revival\u2014it marks a pivotal cultural moment to rethink who belongs in sports, how identities are expressed, and what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,36],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-league-of-their-own","tag-baseball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}