The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Play a kid’s game today. Inside:
3️⃣ Best small habits
Hi, My Name Is: A new league with a simple premiseIt’s the bold idea at the heart of a new league: baseball, played by women. The past few years, the business momentum around women and bat-and-ball sports has focused on softball. With MLB’s backing, the Athletes Unlimited Softball League started up last year. This year, in the AUSL’s second season, it grew from four to six teams. The league is aiming to capitalize on a growing college game and the looming 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.Women also have a long history playing the game with the smaller ball and overhand pitching. It’s just distant history at this point, at least professionally speaking. The United States has not sustained a long-term pro women’s baseball league since 1954, when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League folded amid financial difficulties.Now comes a new venture, the Women’s Pro Baseball League, which launched this month with four teams. The basics:
The teams are the New York Heights, Boston Hunters, Los Angeles Queens and San Francisco Firebells. The city names are mainly for show this year. Every game is at a neutral site in Springfield, Ill. (The league has expressed hope that it will move teams to other cities in future years.)
