Ayami Sato may be the most decorated player in women’s baseball. The Kagoshima, Japan, native has three Women’s Baseball World Cup MVP Awards. No other pitcher has more than one. She held multiple records in the Japanese Women’s Baseball League before it shuttered in 2021 and became the first woman to play for a men’s pro team in Canada when she joined the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Intercounty Baseball League last season.
But Sato struggled after being selected second overall by the Los Angeles Queens in the inaugural Women’s Professional Baseball League Draft. There were encouraging signs – the mid-to-upper 70s fastball that could get players whiffing up in the zone, the hooking curveball that she learned from former Seibu Lions pitcher Hiroshi Shintani. But she also posted a 6.09 ERA in the regular season and often took to Instagram, where she expressed frustration with herself.
On Tuesday night, pitching in the winner-take-all WPBL championship against the San Francisco Firebells, she looked like the ace the Queens were hoping for. Facing the league’s strongest offense, one that put up 17 runs on Sunday afternoon, Sato threw the first complete game in the league’s history in LA’s 2-0 victory.
“I felt today’s game went really slow because I just wanted to feel every single moment,” Sato told the crowd through her partner and translator, Mayo Hirano, after the game. “I wanted to enjoy my baseball with the best teammates in the world. My mind and my pitching connected successfully, and we won.”
The performance also helped earn her MVP Award honors, Sato revealing a wide smile when she lifted the silver trophy above her head.
“First of all, I’m very relieved right now,” Sato said.” Every time I show up on the mound, I see every teammate’s face and every fan’s face and that gives me energy and encourages me. Thank you so much for supporting me.”
“She shut the door right there, and, I mean, just look at those numbers,” said closer Meggie Meidlinger after being given the night off thanks to Sato’s dominance. “I'm just so proud of my friend. I’m just overjoyed. Such a hell of a job by her tonight, and I'm just utterly thrilled – not only for the pitcher that she is, but the human that she is.”
When Queens manager Eric Young Sr. was handed the trophy, he thought back to the start of the season.
“In the first meeting we had together, Sato said, ‘I want to be a champion,’” Young said. “And now she’s a champion.”
***
The Firebells -- who finished first in the regular season with a 10-5 record -- can certainly feel unlucky. After falling behind in the series, 0-2, San Francisco battled back with an offensive explosion, pushing across 27 runs in two games to force Tuesday’s do-or-die contest.
After missing a few weeks this season with a hamstring injury, Firebells ace Jill Albayati took the ball and more than held her own, limiting the Queens to just one hit across 4 2/3 innings. Unfortunately, that one hit came after a walk and an error, allowing the Queens to score their first run of the game on former Little League star Mo’ne Davis’ RBI single.
Two batters and another error later, Queens captain Ashton Lansdell smashed a hard grounder to short. Joely Leguizamon made a nice play to get the force at third, but a second run came in to score.
With the way Sato was throwing on the mound, that was more than enough for the victory.
“All I can really think about is heartbreak,” Firebells second baseman Amanda Gianelloni said. “I was truly heartbroken. A lot of emotions came up. From day one, we came out here to win a championship, and to put together a team that had camaraderie, that loved each other, that played for each other, that represented San Francisco well, and we did that all season.”
“Pretty painful for the group, and it always is,” Firebells manager Matt Williams said. “It's as if you go 100 miles an hour and everything just stops. But that's the nature of this game. So painful, yet proud of the great camaraderie. All of the things that you would want from the group we had, just weren't able to win the final one.”
Kelsie Whitmore, the first overall pick in the Draft, looked at the bigger picture.
“I was telling the girls that the win tonight wasn’t the only and biggest thing from this whole season,” Whitmore said. "It was the fact that we had a league of our own and we were able to compete. … What a way to finish up the season, just to represent what women’s baseball is. If there was anyone watching tonight for the first time, they were going to see some good baseball.”
The first WPBL season may be over, but its larger impact can't be overstated. There in Springfield, Ill., over 60 women gathered for the last two months to play baseball -- the first women’s pro league in America since the AAGPBL. This was a dream that many of these athletes had harbored for years, but few thought would ever happen in their lifetime.
The New York Heights’ Denae Benites, who tied Whitmore for the home run title during the regular season, was playing men’s rec league so that she could keep playing baseball.
“I’ve never wanted to do anything else except play baseball,” Leguizamon said after earning Player of the Game honors in Game 3. “I’m living my dream right now and I’m pushing forward – because I love baseball.”
Some players, like Firebells pitcher Niki Eckert, who works for the New York City Department of Education, could play over the weekends only, having to fly back and forth each week. She received special permission to work remotely for the playoffs, allowing her to take the mound and end the Queens’ threat in the fifth.
Others, like Gianelloni – who is expecting a baby with her partner in a few months – left everything behind to play the game she fell in love with as a kid.
“Back home, I’ve got to go back to work. We’ve got baby showers, I’ve got to go and start my business back up,” Gianelloni said. “There’s all kinds of real-life things that are happening back home and I got to pause that for two months – I got to pause my business, work, this stress of normal, everyday life, and I got to play my favorite sport. This has been everything to me."
After years of squeezing onto men’s teams or being told that they should go play softball, these athletes got to play in their own league -- one that came complete with a scampering giant mascot version of women’s baseball lifer Maybelle Blair dancing on the concourse.
"I think all of us have had the feeling of being the only girl on the field, and that's something that I don't think anyone understands, but that one girl on the field," Lansdell said. And the fact that we're all down here together, all girls on the field, it's pretty surreal. It's the thing that we've all been waiting for."
They worked with big league coaches and managers and were able to train every day, rather than getting a weekend of at-bats here and there at a women’s tournament before returning to everyday life.
“Being the only woman on my team for so long in the past, I stopped allowing myself to enjoy the game because I was so busy trying to fit in and seek approval from others that I lost sight of why I even started playing in the first place,” Whitmore wrote on her Instagram earlier this year. “If you really take a moment to notice these photos. It’s moments capturing myself finally feeling like a kid again on a baseball field. I honestly don’t think I have ever laughed, smiled, and enjoyed this game as much as I do in my career in this very moment.”
The WPBL season may be over, but for the young fans from around the world who tuned in or showed up to Springfield, it was much more than that.
"I remember before the season started and and pausing, even on Opening Day, [and thinking] 'This is the moment that they've dreamed of since we were 4 or 5 years old, getting to play professional baseball,'" Meidlinger said. "Here we are now at end of the season, and we can soak it in that moment that we've all dreamed of since we were little girls. That's so freaking cool."
“This is for everyone who fought for us on and off the field, including the women of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, and those women who played in the Negro Leagues,” league commissioner Justine Siegal said before the trophy presentation. “Our championship trophy is for our fans, for all the girls who dream big, and for the L.A. Queens.”
The Queens' captain summed it up differently: "Women can play some dang good baseball,” Lansdell said. “That’s all I got.”
Of course, we should leave the last words with Sato, the MVP and 16-year baseball veteran.
“I want to say one more thing,” Sato shouted to the crowd after accepting her trophy: “Enjoy baseball!”