Thank you so much for being here! I am a full-time independent journalist and paid subscriptions to this newsletter allow me to continue to do work like this, as well as support the community that we are building here, which includes events like the book club and our (very active) paid subscriber Discord server.
I want desperately to be able to travel to Springfield, IL for a weekend of WPBL games (more on that below) but I currently cannot afford the trip. If you would like to help me travel to be able to report on the league in person, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
A reminder that this Wednesday, June 15th, at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT, we are doing a virtual author event with Emma Baccellieri and Jordan Robinson, the authors of the new book COURT QUEENS: Celebrate the Players, Teams, and History of Women's Basketball.
This event is only open to VIP All-Access and Biggest Fan tier paid subscribers. You can register here.
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!
Where I’ve been lately:
I was on the Good Sport podcast, talking broadly about my work and women’s sports culture.
I was on the Remember That Guy? podcast, talking about sports and gender and also making the case for the National Women’s Football League and its star halfback Linda Jefferson to be added into the Hall of Guys.
The reason my newsletter has been not as frequent as usual is because I’ve had a bunch of print features I’ve been working on, as well as other longform commissioned pieces. Those will be published over the next couple of months and you will get plenty of BTS content here when those run.
some gay sports news you might have missed
ESPN has announced Life in the W, an original series that follows A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier, and DeWanna Bonner during the 2025 season “as they juggle basketball, love, family and negotiations surrounding a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.” I am very excited about the show but I can’t help but notice how it continues the WNBA’s trend of spotlighting feminine players in their marketing. As with the league’s Sports Illustrated Swim spread in 2022 and its SKIMS campaign last season, all selected players are traditionally feminine in their presentation. As I’ve written before (many times), masculine-of-center players routinely miss out on brand deals and promotional opportunities. Several players, including Natasha Cloud and Courtney Williams, have called the league out directly about this but it seems like the trend will continue.
Women’s Elite Rugby players have asked for a fan boycott this weekend, July 11-12, with no tickets, no streams, and no support for WER in protest of the ban on trans women in the league.
The Women’s Professional Baseball League debuted its team names and uniforms this week, and reception was overwhelmingly positive. The Boston Hunters, New York Heights, San Francisco Firebells, and Los Angeles Queens all have a story behind their names (you can read those here) and its clear a lot of thought went into choosing branding for the league. Over at Them, they have declared the WPBL as “gayer than the WNBA.”
For folks who don’t know, I started my career as a baseball writer over a decade ago, and women’s baseball was the first sport I wrote about in-depth when I pivoted to covering women. Some of the players who have been drafted into the WPBL are athletes I met when they were just kids. I have spent the last several months building my sourcing and reporting on the league, and have several stories already in the works. Please stay tuned for those! I’ll also be running a “WPBL 101” explainer prior to the season.
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