Baseball pioneer Mo’ne Davis blazing more trails for women’s sports | On Sports

Mo’ne Davis was scrolling the internet last summer when she stumbled upon an Instagram post about the formation of a new professional women’s baseball league. She initially dismissed it as fake news, figured it was just another example of click-bait misinformation polluting the cyberspace cesspool.

But, try as she might, Davis couldn’t get the tantalizing post out of her head. Upon further review, she discovered the news was indeed legit and that the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) would begin play this August.

Although it had been 11 years since she had taken the sports world by storm by becoming the first girl to pitch a shutout at the Little League World Series and five years since she played competitive baseball, Davis started hemming-and-hawing about attempting a comeback at age 23. A part of her felt it was time to put her master’s degree in sports management from Columbia University to use and keep the national pastime in the past tense. But conversations with her old Little League/travel league baseball coach Steve Bandura, and her agent, Clinton Reyes, convinced her otherwise. Their message: Go for it while you still can.

“I was all set to pursue other things; felt like I was done with baseball,’’ said Davis, who be the headliner at Women In Sports Night at the Rochester Red Wings game at ESL Ballpark on May 29. “But then, I started thinking about how, years from now, I might have regrets. I didn’t want to wake up one day and look back and say, ‘You know, you really should have given that a try.’’’

And, so, she pulled her glove out of mothballs and is now on the verge of making history once more.

“It’s funny, but once I slipped that glove back on and started practicing, my love for the game started rushing back,’’ she said. “Being out there, playing ball, surrounded by so many encouraging teammates and coaches, reminded me what I loved about the game and how I had missed it.”

She’s grateful to Justine Siegal, another female trailblazer who created the WPBL and is serving as the league’s first commissioner. Siegal holds the distinction of being the first woman to coach a men’s professional baseball team, as well as being the first woman to serve as a Major League Baseball team instructor (Oakland A’s in 2015).

“Justine reached out and said they would love to have me in whatever capacity I wanted,’’ Davis recalled. “She said, ‘We know you’ve done some broadcasting, so if you want to do that, we can make that happen. Or you can coach. Or you can work in the front office of a team or the league.’ I think when I told her I wanted to play, she wasn’t expecting that at all, but, in her head, that was probably what she was wishing for. It obviously was what I was wishing for.”

After participating in last summer’s national tryouts, Davis was drafted in the 10^th round as a centerfielder by the Los Angeles franchise. In preparation for the WPBL’s inaugural season opener in three months, Davis recently signed a contract to play for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Banana Ball League, which will see her compete against several teams, including the immensely popular Savannah Bananas, the baseball equivalent of basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters. The Clowns are the revival of a famous Negro League/barnstorming team from the 1940s and 1950s. Its alumni include the likes of Hall-of-Famers Satchel Paige and Henry Aaron, as well as Toni Stone, the first woman to play in a professional men’s league.

The WPBL harkens memories of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s, which was immortalized in Penny Marshall’s classic 1992 film, “A League of Their Own.” The current league is starting small, with just four teams (Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Boston) playing a 15-game regular season, plus playoffs, on a neutral site (Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Ill.) The idea is to expand to more cities in the coming years and play a home-and-away schedule similar to established sports leagues.

Davis believes the approach is a sound one, and thinks the timing is right for the WPBL, given the success of women’s professional leagues in basketball, soccer, and hockey, and the growing popularity of female youth, high school, and college sports programs.

“With this being a new league, obviously we know there are going to be challenges,’’ she said. “The WNBA is flying high with Caitlin Clark’s impact and the players’ new collective bargaining agreement, but they, too, had their challenges for a long time. We’re looking at the WPBL as a stepping stone. We are going to take all the hits and bruises, but that’s only going to make it 10 times better for the generations of women baseball players who follow us.”

Davis said she doesn’t remember ever visiting Rochester but is looking forward to her trip here. It will provide an opportunity to reconnect with Wings outfielder Robert Hassel III, who Davis struck out in that historic LLWS game in 2014. They have kept in touch through the years, occasionally texting one another, and hooked up last summer when Davis threw out the ceremonial pitch to Hassell before a Washington Nationals home game.

“I’ve followed his progress, as well as the progress of some of the other guys I played against who’ve gone on to have professional careers,’’ she said. “I’m a fan of these guys. I root for them. It’s been fun watching them climb the baseball ladder.”

Davis enjoys her role as a baseball ambassador and is looking forward to signing autographs and mingling with fans during her appearance at ESL Ballpark.

“When I hear kids come up to me and say I was the reason they started playing baseball, that is so cool, so gratifying,’’ she said. “While growing up, I had some people tell me I couldn’t do what I wanted to do because girls weren’t supposed to be able to play baseball. But I also had people who believed in me. They taught me to pay no heed to the naysayers, to be my authentic self. And I think that’s what these girls and their parents have taken from my story. You can be who and what you want to be.”

Down the road, Davis would love to work in the front office of a professional women’s sports franchise or maybe even become part of an ownership group. But that journey will have to wait at least another year. An unexpected opportunity she originally thought was an internet hoax has rekindled her love for playing baseball. A dozen years after blazing one trail Davis is teaming with other women to blaze more trails by forming a new league of their own.

Best-selling author and nationally honored journalist Scott Pitoniak is the Rochester Business Journal sports columnist.