They asked why she wasn't playing softball. Now this high schooler is playing pro baseball

On Aug. 27, 18-year-old Addisyn Baird was in Hartford, Connecticut, preparing to play in a hockey tournament when she received a life-changing phone call.

The call was from Justine Siegal, commissioner of the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL). The Los Angeles Queens needed another player after one of their outfielders left to play for Curaçao’s national team and the team wanted to sign Baird as a replacement for the remainder of the season.

“How fast can you get here?” Siegal asked.

The next morning, Baird played in one hockey game. Then she and her dad jumped in the car and drove more than 20 hours to Springfield, Illinois, where the WPBL plays all its games. On Sept. 3, Baird made her professional debut for the Queens, whose roster includes former Little League World Series phenom Mo’ne Davis.

Baird is the only current high school student playing in the inaugural season of the WPBL, which launched in August with four teams. The WPBL playoffs are underway this month, with two best-of-three semifinal series preceding a best-of-five championship series scheduled to begin Sept. 16.

Whenever the Queens’ postseason run is over, Baird will begin her final year of high school at The Hill School in Pennsylvania and continue narrowing down her options for college, where she hopes to study medicine and play softball or hockey.  

“It was mind blowing,” Baird told USA TODAY Sports while reflecting on her pro debut. “You dreamed of it as a kid, and it’s just huge being in between the lines and really seeing all those people out there. You’re like a role model and you’re paving the way.”

The WPBL’s future beyond this season is uncertain, as the league has not yet confirmed its return for 2027. Baird, a fifth-year high school senior who reclassified to the class of 2027, said she would love to keep playing in the league if it continues.

For now, Baird is ecstatic to live out her dream of being a professional athlete, even if the lifestyle isn’t quite as glamorous as in more established leagues. Each WPBL team operates under a $95,000 salary cap and players are paid between $300 and $500 per game. The WPBL pays for Baird’s game fees, her hotel room and some of her meals, but Baird also sometimes uses her dad’s credit card to buy food from DoorDash and Chik-Fil-A. She doesn’t have her own car in Springfield, so she hitches rides to practice and games with a teammate.  

Just being there is a win for her, and girls like her.

“I feel like in making this new league a special place for girls to play, I do think it proved a lot of people wrong,” Baird said. “A lot of people thought there’s no place for girls in baseball, but obviously everyone can see now there is. There always has been.”

Whenever Addisyn Baird stepped onto the baseball diamond, like clockwork, Travis Baird could predict what would happen next. The questions about his daughter were always the same, usually in the same order.

Is that a girl?

She plays baseball? Don’t you mean softball?

When is she gonna play softball?  

Baird grew up playing baseball primarily with boys in Granger, Indiana, starting with tee ball at age 4 and progressing to elite-level travel ball. From the under-9 to under-14 age groups, she was the only girl on her travel team and never saw another girl on an opposing team.

“I thought it was special for me to be unique and I just thought that was great for me and being different is OK,” Baird said. “But I also think there are some hard things about it. There’s a lot more pressure. You’re the only girl on the field. Everyone’s watching you. So I think that was a little rough in my earlier years.”

Baird initially started playing baseball because her brother Bentley, who is just 18 months younger than her, also played. They pushed each other in everything they did, and while Baird also played soccer, hockey and tackle football, she especially loved baseball.

Baird prides herself on her versatility. She plays middle infield utility and pitches – her arsenal includes a fastball, curveball and changeup – and regularly slugs extra-base hits. In her WPBL debut, she started in left field, batted eighth and went 1-for-3 with a single, a walk and one run scored.

And because she’s been scrutinized all her life, she doesn’t shrink from pressure. Her father admits he’s biased, but says Baird is the most clutch athlete he’s ever coached.

“When Addisyn goes out there, every game is like a World Series Game 7,” Travis Baird said. “Even at 9 years old, 10 years old, all eyes are on her and they’re waiting for her to make a mistake. So every game she showed up to, she had to be dialed in, locked in. Because if she has a bad game, it’s not that a baseball player had a bad game. It’s that she’s a girl, right?”

Eventually, a family friend connected Baird with MLB’s youth development programs and Baseball For All, WBPL commissioner Siegal’s nonprofit organization focused on opportunities for girls in baseball. 

As a member of Siegal’s Baseball For All USA teams, Baird traveled to play in Japan in 2023 and the Philippines in 2024. In Japan, she hit so well that she earned the nickname “Triple.” In 2025, she played in the All-American Women’s Baseball Classic, a showcase event with teams named after the four original pro women’s teams of 1943: the South Bend Blue Sox, Racine Belles, Kenosha Comets, and Rockford Peaches.

Last August, Baird was one of more than 600 women from 10 countries who attended WPBL tryouts in Washington, D.C. She’d played in tournaments before with some of the American players, and she knew famous names like Davis and Kelsie Whitmore.

“When you’re young, you feel like you have to prove yourself and you really got to trust your abilities on the field,” Baird said. “(I was) definitely nervous coming into a huge group of girls really wanting to pursue their dreams and do the best they can.”

It all culminated in Baird, then 17, being selected with the second-to-last pick in the inaugural WPBL draft (round 6, pick 19) on Nov. 20, 2025. She wasn’t immediately signed to a contract, so she returned to her normal life. Until pro baseball came calling for her again.

The WPBL has faced its fair share of struggles in its first season. The Boston Hunters fired their manager, former MLB player Keith Foulke, three games into the season after a dispute over his commute from out of state. In July, a WPBL board member filed a legal petition demanding access to the league’s financial records. In August, Defector reported that many drafted players were frustrated by a lack of communication from the league about contract status and schedules. There’s no guarantee the league will return for a second season.

“I would love nothing more than to see it succeed and hopefully it will, but at the end of the day there’s a long road ahead,” Travis Baird said.

In the meantime, Addisyn Baird is preparing to finish high school and attend college. She’s received multiple scholarship offers to play NCAA Division I softball and hockey, but uncertainty clouds that path, too.

Travis Baird said he has not received clarity from the NCAA on whether Addisyn’s participation in the WPBL will affect her eligibility to play college softball. The Bairds also don’t know if there’s a Pennsylvania law or prep school conference rule that prohibits a professional athlete from playing high school sports.

“We’re in all this uncharted territory,” Travis Baird said. “We don’t have all the answers.”

In the WPBL, Baird has started a new tradition of wearing an armband on her left wrist. She lets people at home choose the color. For her first game, she chose pink in honor of her three nieces and her softball coach’s daughter.

“You’re playing but then if you look down, you’re representing more than yourself,” Baird said.

Travis Baird described watching his daughter play in a professional game as “surreal.” Now, when people ask if they misheard which sport Addisyn plays, he can tell them: She’s a professional baseball player.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: They asked why she wasn’t playing softball. Now this high schooler is playing pro baseball