Ladies Professional Baseball League

The Ladies Professional Baseball League was a short-lived women's professional league started in the wake of the success of the film A League of Their Own which created a resurgence of interest in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The league played one season in 1997 and part of a second one in 1998 before suspending its operations definitively. It was also known as Ladies League Baseball its first year.

The league was based in the southwestern United States. The San Jose Spitfires won the original championship in 1997, defeating the Los Angeles Legends in the finals, with five teams competing that first year. The league originally planned a 60-game schedule, but two weeks into the season on July 18th, the San Francisco team was merged into the San Jose team and the four remaining teams' schedules were reduced to 30 games.

The league then had ambitious plans for 1998, expanding eastwards, with the Legends moving to Homestead, FL to become the Florida Legends, and expansion teams added in Buffalo, NY and Augusta, NJ. However, this also raised costs and in the face of low attendance and the lack of a television contract, the league announced on July 30th that it was suspending operations for the remainder of the season. Its final game pitted the Long Beach Aces defeating the San Jose Spitfires, 7-0. Teams had only played 16 of their scheduled 56 games at that point. The league never resumed play after that. Long Beach and Buffalo were declared co-champions and were scheduled to meet in a playoff series in September, which never materialized.

The league used existing college and minor league ballparks to stage its games. Among figures associated with the league was Don Barbara, who was manager of Long Beach. Mike Ribant, a stockbroker from San Diego, CA, was the league president and its main investor. In November 1998, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Ribant, for allegedly misappropriating $3.3M from 67 customer accounts to partially fund the league. Ribant invested $1M in the league.

Cities Represented

• Augusta, NJ: New Jersey Diamonds 1998
• Buffalo, NY: Buffalo Nighthawks 1998
• Homestead, FL: Florida Legends 1998
• Long Beach, CA: Long Beach Aces 1997-1998
• Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Legends 1997
• San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Bay Sox 1997
• San Jose, CA: San Jose Spitfires 1997-1998
• Scottsdale, AZ: Phoenix Peppers 1997-1998

Further Reading

• Bob Rohwer: "Women’s League Folds After 16 Baseball Games", Los Angeles Times, August 4, 1998 [1]