At 13 years old and the only girl playing in her local baseball league, Justine Siegal was told by her coach that he didn’t want her on his team—girls only played softball. She decided she’d play baseball forever. “The more everyone told me to quit, the more I loved the game,” she says.
She continued to play—pitcher and third base—while dreaming of playing for the Major League team in Cleveland. But the older she got, the more difficult it was to break through the noise. She sat on the bench a lot, where coaches would ask her to keep score. She lied and told them she didn’t know how. “I always had to work harder than everyone around me, because I always had to prove myself,” she says. “I could not quit because they wanted me to. The merge of stubbornness and the love for the game kept me going.”
Justine never set her sights on being the first woman to do anything; she just was. She was one of the first women to play high school baseball in Ohio, and later became the first woman to coach men’s professional baseball, and the first to throw batting practice to a Major League Baseball team—her Guardians—during spring training. She’d decided as a teenager that she wanted to coach, and her own coaches told her that no man would listen to a woman on the field. She set out to prove that wasn’t true.
Looking Ahead: "One day there’ll be a generation that never knew that girls and women didn’t play baseball."
“I’m proof that a man will listen to you on a baseball field when they realize that you can make them a better ballplayer, that you can help the team win, that you care about them as people. And then you just become part of the team,” she says. Sure, some would come to her with their relationship woes more than they would other coaches, but she didn’t mind, because they also came to her with hitting questions. “And now there’s dozens of women who have now coached professionally, proving those same points.”
Justine has a PhD in sports psychology, which comes in handy when communicating with players. She can quickly identify how someone learns, what type of feedback they prefer, and what motivates them. Her motivation for securing higher education for coaching was partially that she had noticed issues in her own mental game. “If I made a mistake, you could see it in my body language,” she says. “I equated failure with my worth.” But she also wanted to outlearn the men who would be up for the same jobs as she was.
Her biggest career shift, though, was spurred by her daughter, Jasmine, who inspired her to expand her mission. “When she was born, it turned on the lightbulb that if she wanted to play baseball, I had to make it so she didn’t face the discrimination I faced. I had to make it better,” she says. “I began to think in terms of ‘What can I build for others?’ vs. ‘What’s good for my path?’ ” Growing up around baseball, Jasmine is a direct product of the hard work and sacrifices made for the game by her own mom, whose daughter never questioned whether she could do something because she was a girl. “I doubt she even thought about it,” Justine says. “And that came from growing up in a place where she saw that it’s possible.”
Justine founded her nonprofit, Baseball for All, in 2010 to expand access for girls to play, coach, and lead. The organization helps communities start girls’ baseball leagues, offers leadership programs, and runs a summer tournament that draws more than 700 players. Justine’s sports psych degree is again critical in helping her understand what’s needed to support young athletes and also how to communicate those needs to parents.
“Telling a girl she can’t play baseball is a social justice issue,” she says. “We want our girls to know that yes, they can play, and that they are perfect as they are. Their dreams matter as much as their brothers’ do.” (For the record, Justine does not have beef with softball: “This is not about softball or baseball,” she says. “It’s just about having a choice to pursue your passion.”)
In 2024, lawyer and businessman Keith Stein approached Justine for help in starting a baseball league for women. As the Women’s Professional Baseball League prepares to begin play in August, they’ve been hard at work on both the big and small details. “As soon as you think you have something, you realize there’s 30 more things to do just in that little section,” Justine says—everything from clubhouse nameplates to rugs to snack offerings. “Even though we’re not the players, we’re still working as a team.” Everything they’re building puts the players first, because Justine is aware that when the players are able to perform at their peak, it creates the most entertaining product on the field.
The WPBL wants to do right by those who came before them—like the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the league in the 1940s and ’50s that inspired the movie A League of Their Own—while also setting up a future generation of modern baseball stars for success. “Yes, I love coaching. Yes, I love baseball. I love helping people achieve their dreams,” Justine says. “But I can love all that knowing that I’m building opportunity behind me, and I think for that, it gives you strength.”
Now, Justine adds, a 12-year-old girl doesn’t have to be discouraged when she hears that she can’t play baseball. Because of the WPBL, she knows her dreams are within reach.
Justine’s Winning Strategies
1. Say It With Your Shoulders
Justine is a self-described quiet and nervous person, but the advice she always gives her daughter is to “put your shoulders back, keep going forward,” she says. “Your movements don’t have to be loud."
2. Set Boundaries
In her line of work, Justine is always on—even on her days off. So her self-imposed rule is to not take business calls at night. “I’m shut down,” she says.
3. Take a Nap
Justine closes her eyes for about 25 minutes almost every day to turn off her mind and reset. (She’s even been known to do this in her parked car.) “I’m a really big believer that if you can get a short nap in, it helps make the day stay fresh,” she says.
Amanda Lucci is the director of special projects at Women’s Health, where she works on multi-platform brand initiatives and social media strategy. She also leads the sports and athletes vertical, traveling to cover the Paris Olympics, Women’s World Cup, WNBA Finals, and NCAA Final Four for WH. She has nearly 15 years of experience writing, editing, and managing social media for national and international publications and is also a NASM-certified personal trainer. A proud native of Pittsburgh, PA, she is a graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Follow her on Instagram @alucci.
