The women’s professional baseball league began its inaugural season at Robin Robert’s Field in Springfield, Illinois, where current stars of women’s baseball get the opportunity of a lifetime.

The first women’s professional baseball league started 76 years ago as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, immortalized in the film “A League of Their Own.” Women’s baseball also touched the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center’s field of dreams on May 27 as the SQ Giants hosted the perennial visitors known as the SF Dealers. 

The Dealers traveling team included 32-year-old Rose Marston, the starting pitcher of Saturday morning.

“I’m doing what I did as a kid,” said Marston. “I pitched against a team of men in what had been a predominantly male sport, until now.”

Marston allowed ten hits and three walks while striking out three players in four innings. The right-hander gave up one run this year, compared to shutting out the Giants two years ago.

“As momentum builds, there’s strength in numbers, [and] the concept is less intimidating and becomes more mainstream,” Marston said, speaking about the league’s August debut.

Marston has stayed in baseball as an automated balls and strikes system operator for Major League Baseball at Oracle Park in San Francisco. When the Giants are out of town, she provides remote technical assistance to ABS.

Her next off-season will be spent in training for the second season of the new women’s baseball league. 

“Women’s baseball is more accepted now, [because] there’s not fake encouragement,” said Marston.

The WPBL consists of four teams from four major cities, as the league incorporated cities with structured rivalries throughout all of sport — San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston.

Six hundred hopefuls will vie for positions on the four teams before the league begins. 

The season runs for seven weeks and is split into a four-week regular season, while featuring a week for all-star activities and two-weeks for playoffs.

Marston said she will try out for the WPBL next year because of the increased popularity of women’s sport. “I didn’t think there’d be enough interest in the sport, but I’m so glad there is,” said Marston.

SQ Giant coach Greg Snyder sized up Marston’s chances of making it in the WPBL. “She comes in here and in two outings she gives up one run, averaging almost a strike out per inning; I think she’ll do fine and she’ll have the support of the SQ baseball community.”

The WPBL is staffed with current legends of women baseball players who have persevered in a male dominated industry. These legendary players include Mo’ne Davis and Kelsie Whitmore, both whom Marston hopes to compete against next year.

Davis became a national phenom at just 13 when she threw a 70 mph fastball and tossed a shutout during the 2014 Little League World Series. There, Davis “took the nation by storm,” according to USA Today’s Steve Gardner, as the first girl to win a game at the series. 

Davis, a 24-year-old Philadelphia native, became the tenth player selected by the Los Angeles WPBL team in large part due to her pioneering status 12 years ago.

San Diegan Kelsie Whitmore is a pitcher and outfielder returning to familiar grounds after being selected by the league’s San Francisco team as the first pick in the inaugural WPBL draft.

According to the Associated Press, the 27-year-old made her professional debut in 2016 with a co-ed Bay Area team called the Sonoma Stompers. Whitmore has won two silver medals representing the United States at the women’s baseball World Cup and won gold at the 2015 Pan-Am games in Toronto. She also was the first woman to compete in pro baseball’s Atlantic League, with the Staten Island FerryHawks. 

Whitmore told the AP, “You ask [my] 6-year-old version about this opportunity happening right now, she would, one, probably not believe you, but, two, just be so …  excited for it.” 

Marston said she is readying herself for the WPBL by competing against male dominated teams in the Bay Area, working for the SF Giants, and getting ready to compete against the best female baseball players in the world.

Intimidated?

“If I’m there, I’m pitching,” said Marston.

— Martin Keith DeWitt contributed to this story