Kelsie Whitmore is no stranger to the spotlight. She knows what it’s like to be the first, to be the only, to break ground so she can live out her dreams.
So next year, when she becomes one of the first to play in a professional women’s baseball league in the U.S. in this century, she figures the feeling will be familiar, another first to add to her collection, but different in a key way — she won’t be alone.
“What I’m looking forward to the most is experiencing this with those girls,” she said in an interview Thursday about her teammates and opponents. “No one in the world can understand how we feel other than the ones who’ve been through it.”
Whitmore, a 27-year-old pitcher and outfielder from Temecula, Calif., was taken with the No. 1 pick of the first Women’s Pro Baseball League draft Thursday night and will play for San Francisco in the league’s inaugural season next year.
Co-founded by former baseball player and coach Justine Siegal and lawyer and businessman Keith Stein, the league plans to begin play Aug. 1, 2026, and run through September, with four teams representing New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Games will be played at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Ill.
Whitmore, pitcher Ayami Sato (Los Angeles), third baseman Kylee Lahners (New York), catcher Hyeonah Kim (Boston) and pitcher Alli Schroder (Boston) were the first five picks. Mo’ne Davis, the first girl to pitch a shutout and win a game at the Little League World Series, went to Los Angeles with the No. 10 pick; 120 players were selected in all.
Whitmore is familiar with being the only female player on her team; it’s been happening since Little League. Her dream has always been to play professional baseball, and before the WPBL, realizing that dream meant being the only woman on men’s teams. When she was reflecting ahead of the draft on Wednesday, Whitmore said she realized what she was feeling was relief — that young girls who want to play baseball professionally now have an option that doesn’t involve playing with men.
“It made me just feel like it was all worth it in the end. Like all the late nights, all, you know, whatever, (the) tears, struggles, stress, conversations with my family … and trying to just find like that validation and belongingness and opportunity,” she said.
Whitmore has been a member of the U.S. women’s national team since 2014, winning multiple medals with the team, and in 2022, she was named USA Baseball Sportswoman of the Year.
“Kelsie has consistently elevated the standard for women in baseball both on and off the field. She continues to create a runway for the next generation to see what’s possible and pursue it with confidence in a traditionally male landscape,” said Makenzie Kelly, the US women’s national team director, in a statement.
“Her influence extends well beyond her own game — she’s empowered a rising generation of female athletes to see themselves in this sport and pursue it with intent.”
Whitmore attended Cal State, Fullerton, and played Division I softball, an experience she said in a 2022 Players’ Tribune essay was fun, but playing softball was never her ultimate goal.
The WPBL draft is on November 20th at 8 PM EST on their social channels! @wpbl_official pic.twitter.com/O4ENHyMIWX
— swilly ☻ (@swillysports) November 20, 2025
She made her debut in men’s pro baseball in 2016 at 17 years old, when she became one of two female players, with Stacy Piagno, to play for the independent Pacific Association’s Sonoma Stompers (the Stompers are now part of a collegiate summer league). According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, they became the first female teammates in professional baseball since the 1950s, when women played in the Negro Leagues.
She became the first woman to play in the Atlantic League (an MLB-affiliated independent league) in 2022, playing for the Staten Island FerryHawks for two seasons, and the first woman to play in the Pioneer League in 2024. While with the Oakland Ballers, she was the first woman to start a game as a pitcher in Pioneer League history. This year, she was one of four women who played with the Savannah Bananas, an independent exhibition barnstorming team. (You have almost definitely seen them in videos on social media.)
She said she feels blessed to have had those opportunities, but she had to work for them. She researched teams and reached out to see if they would give her a shot. And then if she got a gig, it became a matter of trying to keep it. Along the way, she said, she started to lose sight of who she was as a person and player.
In the Players’ Tribune essay, Whitmore explained that she grew up playing baseball with her dad. Up until she started high school, she was often one of the best players on her teams, and no one batted an eyelash.
But then teammates started sizing her up. People started telling her, unbidden, that she would never be as good as the boys she was playing with. She started feeling like she didn’t belong.
“I chose to use that negativity as fire to play and work harder. But at some points, I let it affect me. Sometimes I felt like there were so many eyes on me, so many people just waiting for me to mess up so they could point at me and be like, ‘See, I told you so,’” she wrote.
While she saw all the opportunities she received as ways to grow as a person and player, she was also getting overwhelmed by the input she was getting from the people around her. She was a pitcher, playing with men, trying to reach the same gold standard of hitting 90 or 95 mph on the radar gun.
“I would blow my body out just with lifting and trying to see this body image I needed to have in order to feel like it was a right fit,” she said.
Kelsie Whitmore said she had to learn to pitch in a way that made sense for her body type. (Jess Rapfogel / Getty Images)
She said she was trying to cram herself into a specific mold to compete with men, and it was draining her.
After years of trying not to stand out too much and searching for her place in male-dominated spaces, her mantra, one she has turned into a clothing brand, is “be you.” It’s how she approaches baseball, acknowledging what she can do (be crafty on the mound, focus on limiting hard contact when playing against men and power pitching when playing against women) and not what she can’t. It’s how she approaches her personal style, wearing what she wants, when she wants.
“I’m comfortable and confident being myself because over the years of not being myself, it was the most, oh man, it was the lowest time of my life. And I just don’t care to be in that place anymore.”
That, she said, is how she plans to approach being one of the faces of this new league — being the best version of her authentic self, on and off the field.