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This month’s Out of Your League Book Club read is HALF COURT SHOT by Kimani Mae, and we’ll be meeting on Sunday, July 26, at 1 PM ET/10 AM PT. That event is also open to VIP All-Access and Biggest Fan tier paid subscribers. A registration link will be sent out this week, so look out for that!

WPBL’s New England roots run deep

On a very hot Sunday afternoon in late June, the clink of aluminum bat-on-ball can be heard throughout Campanelli Stadium in Brockton, Massachusetts, 25 miles south of Boston. The venue is usually home to the Brockton Rox, an independent professional baseball team. Today, it is hosting the players of the Women’s Professional Baseball League, which will be the first women’s pro baseball league since 1954.

A few hundred fans are in the stands to watch batting practice and fielding drills as part of the WPBL's Countdown Tour to hype the inaugural season. Before the event begins WPBL co-founder and commissioner Justine Siegal greets the crowd. This field holds historical significance for both Siegal and for women’s baseball: in 2009, Siegal became the Rox’s first base coach, making her the first woman to coach men’s professional baseball.

“It's special to come back as a team, versus when I was first here, and I was the only [one],” Siegal tells Out of Your League, sitting in the stands and looking out at the players taking BP while kids run around the outfield trying to catch fly balls. “Now I have a community and a league. That is what every girl has dreamt of.”

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