Former UConn softball standout Lexi Hastings is about to start playing hardball. The Boston franchise of the new Women’s Professional Baseball League made Hastings the 20th overall pick in the inaugural draft Thursday night.
The new league will begin play with four franchises — Boston, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco — but will play its seven-week season, beginning Aug. 1, entirely at 5,200-seat Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Ill. Exhibition games could be played in the namesake cities.
Hastings could also be drafted by the year-old AUSL, the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, on Dec. 1. She will weigh her options after that.
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Hastings, an outfielder with power and speed, played 211 games for the Huskies, who in 2025 reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 24 years. She set school records in runs scored and stolen bases (128) and runs scored (198), hitting 18 homers and driving in 114 runs.
She played in a baseball tournament in Durham, N.C., near her home, last summer and then attended the WPBL’s tryout camp in Washington, D.C., playing in the showcase game at Nationals Park. Hastings was then included in the league’s draft pool.
Later in the draft, Boston chose Danbury native Sadie Zion, a junior first baseman at Penn State, with the 101st pick.
The four franchises each picked 30 players from all over the world. Kelsie Whitmore, 27, an experienced co-ed and international player, was the first pick, by San Francisco. Whitmore played in the independent minor leagues and performed with the Savannah Bananas last summer.
Mo’Ne Davis, 24, who pitched in the 2014 Little League World Series, was taken 10th by Los Angeles.
The new league was co-founded by Justine Siegal, the first woman hired to coach in Major League Baseball. It’s an historical descendant of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which folded in 1954 but was brought back to public consciousness by the 1992 film, A League of Their Own.