Denver Bryant steps to the plate in groundbreaking women’s baseball league

Dougherty graduate chasing childhood dream as WPBL prepares for 2026 launch 

ALBANY — Denver Bryant was too young to remember the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She was born decades after the league folded in 1954. She saw the story the same way most of us did — through Hollywood, in A League of Their Own, the film that turned Rockford Peaches and Dottie Hinson into household names.

Now Bryant, a Dougherty High School graduate, will write her own script. She will be one of the first players in the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL), a six-team circuit set to debut in May 2026 as the first professional women’s baseball league in the U.S. in more than 70 years.

“Baseball is my first love,” Bryant said. “I miss the sport so much. I miss the atmosphere and everything surrounding baseball. I’m hoping it rekindles those childhood feelings I had when I was younger.”

Bryant’s road back to baseball started on Albany’s fields. She played both softball and baseball at Dougherty before signing with Auburn University out of high school, later transferring to South Carolina. She went on to play professional softball with the Texas Smoke, but the chance to return to baseball has brought her full circle to the game she grew up loving.

The tryout that put her on this path drew more than 600 women to Washington, D.C., in August. It was the first open professional baseball tryout for women since 1943 — the very year the league dramatized in A League of Their Own began. From that crowd, Bryant earned the right to enter the league’s inaugural draft this month.

The WPBL’s blueprint is ambitious: regulation 90-foot diamonds, seven-inning games, rosters of 15 to 25, and national television coverage through a deal with Fremantle. The season will last seven weeks, capped by playoffs, and salaries will be tied to draft position and revenue-sharing. Unlike its 1940s predecessor, which mixed softball rules into the game, this league will be baseball — and women-led from the boardroom to the dugout.

For Bryant, the parallels to the movie are flattering but not the point. A League of Their Own kept alive the memory of women’s baseball; the WPBL is offering her a chance to make new history.

“Denver represents more than herself,” one WPBL organizer said. “She represents every girl who grew up dreaming of baseball and being told it wasn’t her game.”

Back in Albany, she’s working out with former teammates while waiting for October’s draft to find out where she’ll land. She knows this moment is about more than a roster spot. It’s about showing the next generation that girls who love baseball don’t have to stop playing it.

If the movie gave us “there’s no crying in baseball,” Bryant is proof that there’s no stopping it, either.