400 years ago, New York City was New Amsterdam—outpost of the Dutch West India Company. 100 years ago, Babe Ruth experienced the bellyache heard round the world. It marked a forgettable season with the New York Yankees. That very year, Mrs Dalloway was published. In it, Virginia Woolf writes: “But cricket was no mere game. Cricket was important. He could never help reading about cricket. He read the scores in the stop press first, then how it was a hot day; then about a murder case.” Priorities! (BTW, August 9, 2025, 100 years later—400 into NYC—MLB debuts its first female umpire: Jen Pawol. And don’t forget Jackie Mitchell.)

Dateline: August 1, 2026. The Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) kicks (if that’s the right word) off. It will run to September 6. Its predecessor, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), formed in 1943, ran to 1954. All-white, it came out of the culture of World War II, when many male players were overseas or otherwise engaged in the effort. AAGPBL clubs were: the Racine Belles, the South Bend Blue Sox, the Kenosha Comets, and the Rockford Peaches. A League of Their Own is well-known homage. Today, WPBL becomes a reality on the edge of a possible MLB lockout, when “the men” will again “be away.”