The History of Women’s Professional Softball
In 2025, the launch of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) will expand upon the success of not only the past five years of professional softball growth in the United States but also the sport’s 137-year history.
Softball’s recent history is a glimpse into what the future holds. From its early days as an indoor pastime to its inclusion in the Olympic program, softball has thrived by embracing innovation and change.
Not just a women’s version of baseball
It all started with a boxing glove and a broomstick.
These might be unlikely instruments in the formation of a new sport, but in the fall of 1887, they were pressed into service by a group of Harvard and Yale football fans to create the sport of softball. The men had gathered in a Chicago gymnasium to follow the annual Harvard-Yale Thanksgiving football matchup. When Yale won, an excited fan tossed the boxing glove into the air and a disgruntled Harvard fan swatted it down with the broomstick. The group soon realized they had a new game on their hands. Indoor baseball — soon to be renamed softball — was born.
It didn’t take long for softball to travel throughout the continent, spreading north to Canada and throughout the United States. Two versions developed: fastball, the more athletic of the two, and slow pitch, which was seen as a childhood pastime and is still played in recreational leagues today.
Fastball was the version that could draw a crowd. A 1936 thesis, “Amateurism in Sport: Origin, History and Present Status,” about women’s sports noted that crowds for women’s softball games in Toronto had brought in $60,000 in gate receipts — at 10 cents each — over the course of a previous season. Translation: that’s a lot of tickets.
Women’s softball leagues, not exclusive to Canada but also present in the United States, were summer sporting outlets.
“They were created to provide working-class women an opportunity to excel at sport,” said Dr. M. Ann Hall, author of The Girl and the Game, a comprehensive look into Canadian women’s sport history. Especially during the Great Depression, softball was a low-cost sport and women were welcome.
Women played an early role in professionalizing softball through industrial leagues. As women joined the workforce in the 1920s and 1930s, holding positions as factory workers or clerks, employers recognized a powerful enticement for employees was a winning company softball team. Women were recruited to work for different employers specifically for their softball acclaim. Industrial leagues helped early softball players achieve a degree of professionalism.
“Professionalism happened very early in women’s sport,” Dr. Hall said. “People think there were no professional women athletes until modern times, but that’s not true. They began quite early in industrial leagues.”
While softball initially began as a sport that both men and women played, men’s interest in participating waned over time. The sport wasn’t added to the Olympic program until the Atlanta Summer Games in 1996 and without the pull of an Olympic dream to guide them, talented men who were interested in earning money as professional athletes gravitated to baseball. This option was never available to women who clung to softball and now dominate the game today.
Softball has developed as a distinct sporting avenue for women, not as a stepping stone toward baseball.
“The ultimate goal is to make women’s professional sport as viable as men’s professional sport,” Dr. Hall, who has studied the history of how women’s sport develops, said.
“There’s a danger [thinking playing men’s sports is the ultimate goal] because you always place women’s sport as second to men’s sport. Until we break this mindset that the only valuable sport is men’s sport, we’re not there.”
A modern era of constant improvement
As softball continued to develop after World War II it received two major, historical boosts.
Title IX, the federal civil rights law implemented in 1972, created opportunities for female college athletes where there previously were few. Softball has been a sanctioned NCAA sport since 1910, but in response to Title IX colleges further developed their sporting programs for women, providing access to better coaching and high-level competitors, which helped softball accelerate its athleticism and popularity.
The first-ever Women’s College Softball World Series was held in 1969 and was sponsored by the Amateur Softball Association. The NCAA took over the championship in 1982.
In the last decade, college softball has exploded. Collegiate stars have taken the sport to new levels and audiences with the 2024 NCAA Women’s College World Series Finals reaching a record 2 million viewers.
The second major historical advancement for softball was its inclusion in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games.
“There were so many athletes that were trying to make that squad for Team USA,” said Michele Smith, who pitched for Team USA from 1992 to 2002. “It was an incredible experience making the team, and walking into that stadium for that first-ever Olympic softball game.”
The United States won gold in that event and ushered in a new era for women’s softball. The sport remained on the Olympic program until 2008.
“The Olympic Games give any sport credibility,” Smith said. “When our sport was on the Olympic program, it took the respect level of not just the sport, but the athletes playing the sport, it took everything to that next level.”
The culture of softball has always been about innovation. As the sport experimented with the distance of the pitcher’s mound from home plate — extending it to 43 feet before the Athens Olympics — it inadvertently created an uneven playing field, leaving some countries scrambling to adjust to the new realities of pitching from a further distance. While the international softball community developed under these changes, softball was removed from the Olympic program — not to be added again until the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Undaunted, softball athletes and supporters pressed on to continue to improve the game.
“We are willing to change and do what we need to do to become the best version of ourselves,” Smith said. One particular change she noted is the increase in offense in today’s game.
As players have experimented with titanium or composite softball bats, hitters have improved, changing the game for spectators and players.
“We’re not married to tradition,” Smith said. “I think the sport has changed for the great for the fans.”
Looking toward the future with an understanding of the past
In the spirit of constantly innovating, a new chapter for women’s professional softball opened on August 29, 2020, with the first pitch of the inaugural Championship season of Athletes Unlimited Pro Softball.
The league took up the mantle left behind by National Pro Fastpitch (2004-2019), which had revived the Women’s Pro Softball League (1997-2001).
AU Pro Softball, built on the foundation of empowering athletes to take control of their own careers, looked at the sport through a new lens. It brings together a group of all-star athletes to one city for playoff-intensity competition to crown an individual Champion.
In 2022, AU introduced AUX – a short, intense, and exciting competition that built upon the same foundation as the Championship season. It brought together 42 athletes to compete for two weeks in June with an individual champion.
In eight seasons, three of which were AUX, AU Pro Softball took pro softball to San Diego, Wichita, and home to Chicago. The league welcomed sports veterans, like Cat Osterman, who completed her career with the league in 2021 after being crowned its inaugural champion in 2020, while providing an opportunity for new and emerging talent, like Alabama’s Montana Fouts, to take the field at the professional level for the first time.
The innovative concept proved successful, and now it was time to tackle the unsatiated desire to grow the traditional game.
In June 2024, Athletes Unlimited announced the launch of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL). In its first season in 2025, the AUSL Regular Season will feature four teams – the Bandits, Blaze, Talons, and Volts – playing a 30-game season in a traditional format that will tour to compete in 6-8 different cities. The league will become city-based in 2026.
“Athletes Unlimited has been building on the momentum in women’s pro sports since our launch five years ago,” said Jonathan Soros, Athletes Unlimited co-founder. ”We’ve been growing steadily in softball, and the AUSL will be our biggest expansion yet to create more opportunities for fans to watch the world’s best athletes.”
The season takes the place of the AUX competition and is complemented by AU’s existing format through the AUSL All-Star Cup (formerly known as the Championship Season).
The league is led by Senior Advisor Kim Ng, who is joined by advisors Jennie Finch, Jessica Mendoza, Cat Osterman, and Natasha Watley who consult with AU leadership and current athletes on the strategic direction of the new league.
“The AUSL will continue the mission that Athletes Unlimited began in 2020 to elevate professional softball,” said Watley, a two-time Olympic medalist. “The AUSL not only gives players another platform to showcase their talent at the highest level but allows many athletes to extend their softball careers past college and professionally. It also inspires millions of young girls to follow their idols and aspire to be a professional athlete one day.”
Now, they’ll continue to have opportunities to play as the softball history books welcome their newest addition.
