From Banana Ball to the WPBL, these out athletes are changing the baseball landscape
Out LGBTQ Banana Ball historymakers Kelsie Whitmore, Ashton Lansdell, Val Perez and Denae Benites are ready for the WPBL kickoff Aug. 1.
Mark
Women’s professional baseball makes its comeback next month when the Women’s Pro Baseball League kicks off its inaugural season on Aug. 1. The current landscape of professional women’s sports positions the new league in a great spot to gain attention and build a sustainable landscape for women to build careers in baseball.
And, like every other major women’s sports league, the WPBL boasts a bevy of out LGBTQ players that add further representation at its very foundation.
Some of the league’s most notable and highest drafted players proudly rep the rainbow, including including San Francisco Firebells starting pitcher and WPBL Draft No. 1 overall pick Kelsie Whitmore, Los Angeles Queens infielder Ashton Lansdell, New York Heights catcher Denae Benites and shortstop Valerie Perez.
“I didn’t think it was going to happen in my lifetime,” Perez said during an appearance on the official WPBL podcast last month. “I’m so grateful. Again, another reason why things happened in the perfect timing because if I never retrained again to try out for USA [Baseball], I would not be in a position to go play in WPBL right now.”
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All four women have played with USA Baseball, but all have another common characteristic that helped construct their paths to the WPBL’s first pitch. They all have become respected and celebrated stars in Banana Ball.
As the WPBL was being created in 2024, the wildly popular, tradition-snapping barnstorming offshoot of baseball synonymous with the Savannah Bananas began a concerted effort to incorporate female players. What started with the signing of current AUSL star Jocelyn Alo in 2024 expanded into every Banana Ball team counting a woman on its roster during the 2026 season.
Lansdell became the first woman to start a Banana Ball game. Whitmore became the first woman to record a strikeout in Banana Ball history. Perez became the first woman to manage a Banana Ball team and squared off with Lansdell in the sport’s first at-bat to feature a female pitcher and hitter. Benites became Banana Ball’s first female catcher ever.
The pedigree for historic firsts is undeniable as they prepare to break new ground for women in baseball on the modern stage, and several of them credit their time in Banana Ball with helping prep the stage for the WPBL.
“This year is the most prepared that I’ve been baseball-wise in my whole life,” Benites told Lansdell on the official WPBL podcast in June. “Just having a place to train and people to push you every day and do it consistently, I think that’s the biggest thing.”
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“When we got to [USA Baseball], we just felt like a leader, in a sense,” Lansdell said. “We could just be on the field and you could tell how people really respected and kind of looked up to us, especially the young ones. We hold this status now, and it comes with a lot of responsibilities.”
Representation remains a throughline for what the WPBL and its players put into practice. The new league isn’t the first of its kind in American history, and it wears that history on its sleeve, literally. All of the teams don nicknames inspired by female trailblazers in the sport and beyond, including Lizzie Murphy and Dorothy Height.
That spirit continues under the LGBTQ lens as well, and the stage provided by Banana Ball provided the most recent evidence that baseball’s view on gender and sexual orientation is widening.
“Being in Banana Ball, I think the amount of representation that we’re able to get out into the world is huge for WPBL, honestly,” Lansdell said. “We fit in so perfectly with our guys, and that just allows us to feel accepted and be ourselves. That’s what we need to do. We need to feel the freedom to be able to do that.”
Whitmore reflected on the journey to get to this point and the importance of being a presence for female and out ball players through her own odyssey through pro and independent baseball prior to her time with the Bananas and the WPBL during her own turn on the official WPBL podcast in March.
“I remember telling myself, ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks. I’m going to make this happen because I want it so badly.’ If I need to run through a brick wall that feels impossible, I’m going to find a way through that brick wall,” Whitemore said. “It may not be the way that I want it to be, but I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to find something, even if it’s unconventional, which is so our lives. We’re so unconventional. I think that’s the beauty of it because that makes you realize it’s not all perfect. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
“I think we have to have these struggles in order to really overcome and to feel, understand and grow from things. Yes, I look back and a lot of times I question why do we have to go through this … but, now, I look back and say thank you. I’m glad we did because I don’t think I’d be able to get through certain life situations without the way that baseball taught me about life.”
All four out Banana Ballers-turned-WPBL stars will help kick off the league’s inaugural season when Lansdell’s Los Angeles Queens face Benites, Perez and the rest of the New York Heights on Aug. 1 at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Ill.
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