los angeles and san francisco are playing for the first title in women's pro baseball, which tracks

via MLB.com and the Women's Pro Baseball League.

The first championship in the history of the Women's Pro Baseball League comes down to Los Angeles against San Francisco, and the Los Angeles team is called the Queens. Nobody planned this. It is simply what happened.

Game 1 is tonight at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois, 7 p.m. Eastern, on ESPN+. Best of five, seven innings a game, and every game of it in the same ballpark, because this league is one season old and does not yet have the luxury of home field.

how both teams got here

San Francisco finished the regular season 10-5, the best record in the league, and then did not make it interesting: the Firebells swept the Boston Hunters two games to none. Los Angeles finished 8-7, went the distance with the New York Heights, and took Game 3 by a score of 15-11, which is less a baseball game than a weather event.

The two of them split the season series with San Francisco taking it 3-2, and MLB.com notes the tidy detail that eight runs was the winning margin in every one of those five meetings. So either these teams cannot play a close game against each other, or they are saving it.

who to watch tonight

For San Francisco: Kelsie Whitmore, 11 home runs and a 1.669 OPS, plus Jill Albayati and a 1.40 ERA and Skylar Kaplan hitting .490, a number that looks like a typo and is not. For Los Angeles: Ayami Sato, a three-time World Cup MVP and the best pitcher in this sport by most available measures, with Ashton Lansdell at a 1.441 OPS and Meggie Meidlinger at 1.83.

why this is our business

Because, as we wrote when the playoffs started, by Autostraddle's count 18 of the roughly 60 players in this league are publicly out, which makes it, per capita, the queerest thing going in American professional sports. That is not the reason to watch a baseball game. It is a very good reason to want this league to still exist in five years.

Games 2 and 3 are Thursday and Saturday, with a Game 4 on Sunday and a Game 5 on Tuesday if it gets that far. A trophy nobody has ever held is sitting in Springfield, Illinois this week, and the team with the best possible name for it is two wins short.