Ayami Sato makes Canadian baseball history becoming the first woman in a pro men's league

Naama Weingarten · CBC News

· Posted: May 11, 2025 7:38 PM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Ayami Sato's first pitch marked a batch much than the commencement of a shot crippled — it besides opened a caller section successful Canadian shot history. 

The 35-year-old Japanese pitcher is the archetypal pistillate to play successful a nonrecreational men's league successful Canada.

She made her debut with the Toronto Maple Leafs connected Sunday arsenic they played against the Kitchener Panthers successful the Intercounty Baseball League (IBL) of confederate Ontario (certainly not the lone Leafs vs. Panthers lucifer to ticker retired for this weekend).

The league is much than a period old, with Sato's accomplishment breaking boundaries for women successful Canadian baseball.

Young girls walked up to her up of the game, baseballs successful hand, asking if she could motion them. 

"Baseball is the benignant of athletics that anyone tin play careless of their age, gender. So by playing much with this team, I wanna marque definite everyone's much encouraged to play shot and bask it," Sato told reporters via a translator aft the game. 

WATCH | Ayami Sato volition interruption sex obstruction successful Canadian baseball: 

Sato struck retired 1 batter without allowing anyone connected basal successful the archetypal 2 innings. 

Despite precocious hopes, the Leafs ended up losing to the Panthers 6-5. 

Sato moved to Toronto from Japan, wherever she helped its nationalist squad triumph satellite championships and was crowned MVP 3 times. 

Sato said she was a small spot bittersweet astir Sunday's loss, but that didn't spoil the joyousness of her debut. 

"When I was connected the mound and conscionable looking astatine each the crowds, the large crowds cheering, that was a precise memorable representation for me," she said. 

New section for women's baseball 

Keith Stein, a Toronto businessman who is 1 of the Maple Leafs' owners, is moving connected a Women's Pro Baseball League (WPBL) with American shot trailblazer Justine Siegal.

"We deliberation the WPBL is going to beryllium the catalyst for the instauration of a full caller shot ecosystem and civilization for women, not lone successful the United States but passim the world," helium antecedently told CBC News. 

The league is acceptable to commencement with six U.S. teams successful 2026, with hopes of perchance expanding it up north.