Updated on October 11, 2026.

Back in July, I read somewhere that a women’s professional baseball league was starting on August 1st. I’m not even remotely what you’d call a sports fan, but I liked playing baseball as a kid, so I thought I’d peep the new women’s league and see what was up.

Well, something was up, because I ended up watching every game of the (far too short) season the Los Angeles Queens played, and they ultimately won the championship series. No one expected the Queens to win (one fan poll gave them only a 7% chance); everyone thought the San Francisco Firebells would win, and it seemed like they had already engraved the trophy. But the scrappy Queens wouldn’t be denied.

It was exciting and lovely, and now we have a houseful of Queens caps, jerseys, T-shirts, autographed and game-used baseballs—it’s all a bit much, and it makes me wonder about why we root for sports teams at all. I mean, I know why; it’s because they’re associated with cities or states, so we feel like we have a vested interest, even if the owners of those teams or even the players on those teams don’t live in the cities they represent. That’s how Ayin and I became Queens fans, because: Los Angeles, baby! But isn’t rooting for a pro sports team just because they’re named after the city you live in (or grew up in) kind of weird?

I should say I often went to Los Angeles Clippers basketball games at the Los Angeles Sports Arena back in the late 1980s/early 90s. The Clippers were a perennial last-place team back then, and very few people went to the games. I guess they gave away a lot of tickets, and that’s how I got mine, from the owner of a bakery next to a print shop where I worked in Pacific Palisades.

It started innocently enough when I took a pair of tickets from the bakery owner, figuring it might be fun to go to an NBA game since I’d never been to one. After that, I guess he saw me as a good way to get rid of tickets, so he gave me a pair almost every week during the season. So, just through exposure, I became a Clippers fan, which was fun because they were so bad. A losing team can be just as fun to back as a winning team. Maybe more fun.

After a few years, the Clippers made the playoffs for the first time, and I was at that first game, though no one was giving away tickets by then. I’ve seen a million arena rock concerts, but I’ve never heard an arena crowd as loud as that Clippers crowd. They were really something. But after that, I kind of lost interest. I don’t know; it’s kind of like, where’s the sport in following a winning team? Anyone can do that. It takes real character to follow a loser. Ha.

Anyway, back to baseball, the Queens were the obvious team for us to root for, since they were the Los Angeles team. But the Queens didn’t play a single game in Los Angeles, and only one or two of their players are even from Southern California. All of the WPBL games were played on the same field in Springfield, Illinois. And there were only four teams: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and New York. Humble beginnings for a professional sports league, you could say.

But the players were women, and I’ll tell you, there is something magical about watching all-women sports teams. Something I’m sure many of you have known forever, but it was new to me, and it was very moving. Every woman on that field was the only girl on their team for most of her life, and if you know anything about being the “other,” you know you have to really want or love something to put up with all the crap that comes along with being the only whoever-you-are with enough nerve and bravery to go out there and do the thing as yourself.

But having a micro-league with only four teams makes you wonder why, and how, we choose a team to root for. When I was a kid, the Minnesota Twins were pretty much the same group of players every year. They didn’t move around much, which made it easier to root for a team because you felt like you knew them. The same players showed up for the same teams year after year. (Well, until 1976, players couldn’t move voluntarily from team to team, so that may have been good for fans, but it wasn’t a great situation for them.)

Of course it’s not like that now. Many players on professional sports teams change teams often, so by the time you feel an affinity for a certain player, they could be gone—off to the highest bidder. And more often these days, teams aren’t owned by a rich person in the city or state they play in, but by teams of investors. So what, exactly, are we rooting for in professional sports? Your grandchildren will probably follow the Amazon Shippers or the Microsoft Clippys or something. Corporations own and put their names on everything else; sports teams won’t escape.

But for now, the Women’s Pro Baseball League is different. Because it’s women playing professional baseball, something we haven’t been able to do in 75 years. And hopefully, when the teams return for the next season, most of the Queens will come back, too. I’ve really become attached to them and their stories. That goes for all the women in the WPBL; in my book, they’re all queens! (But, you know, the Los Angeles Queens are the best queens. 🙃)

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN