![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26214056509003.png\")
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New York Heights’ Natsuki Yonetani celebrates while Los Angeles Queens’ Amira Hondras fails to tag her during the inaugural Women’s Professional Baseball League game on Aug. 1 in Springfield, Illinois.Lexie Knight\/AP<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n Admittedly, I don\u2019t know much about baseball\u2014but I do know that watching the first home run of the Women\u2019s Professional Baseball League on Saturday night was incredibly cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n You have to watch the New York Heights\u2019 Denae Benites smash it out of the park during a rain-filled game against the Los Angeles Queens:<\/p>\n I love the spin and jump from the pitcher, Ayami Sato\u2014the starter for Japan\u2019s national women\u2019s team\u2014in following the hit as she watches the ball sail above everyone\u2019s head. At the same time, Benites runs around the bases and then through a tunnel of her jubilant teammates. <\/p>\n Yes, it\u2019s a historic home run, but it\u2019s also a familiar scene to any sports fan\u2014the celebration from Benites\u2019 team, the disappointment from the Los Angeles Queens (that disappointment didn\u2019t last long though\u2014the Queens responded with six unanswered runs in the last two innings to win). Even though I had never been much of a baseball fan, the long-overdue debut<\/a> of the WPBL has me excited about the sport for the first time (I even learned what an RBI is!). If you missed the first game, I\u2019d urge you to check out the league\u2019s inaugural season, which runs through mid-September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York Heights’ Natsuki Yonetani celebrates while Los Angeles Queens’ Amira Hondras fails to tag her during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-312016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}