Soon there will be new opportunities for women who want to play baseball: By the summer of 2026, the newly announced Women’s Pro Baseball League (W.P.B.L.) aims to have six teams ready to compete. The league, based in the Northeastern United States, will be the nation’s only professional women’s baseball league in operation. It’s not the first, however: The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League gave women a chance to play from 1943 to 1954, when many male players were getting drafted during World War II and the Korean War. That league inspired the popular 1992 film A League of Their Own. Now, 70 years later, the explosive growth of women’s college and pro basketball, along with the decades-long popularity of women’s soccer, has helped make the new baseball league possible, W.P.B.L. co-founder Justine Siegal told NBC News. “This is definitely a great time for women’s . . . pro sports as men and others have finally figured out how great women are as athletes,” Siegal said. “So it’s just a great time to showcase our baseball players.”