For anyone who hasn’t seen A League of Their Own or who thinks baseball is only for men, there is a new league forming in town that is going to change the way you think about America’s national pastime. The Southern California Women’s Baseball League is now forming, and organizers are looking for players of all skill levels to come out and take a shot at playing hardball.

“I used to be a player in the old women’s baseball league that was here in San Diego, but that slowly fell apart,” Chris Hill, who is coordinating the new league, told the Gay and Lesbian Times. “What’s happened in the last couple of years is I have managed a traveling tournament team, and this year a group of us decided that we wanted to try to renew the women’s baseball league.”

Chris’ team, the California Sabres, has competed in tournaments nationwide — most recently at the National Women’s Baseball Championship in Fort Myers, Florida. They are hoping that they will be able to get enough new talent out to form four teams to play a short season starting on June 29 and running through the end of August.

In addition to league play, San Diego will also host a women’s baseball tournament on the weekend of July 25-27, the same weekend as Pride, and they will also play exhibition games against a Canadian women’s team Aug. 23 and 24.

“There is not much of a difference on the competitive level in terms of the level of play you see in a lot of the softball leagues that are playing like on Sundays,” Hill said about women’s baseball. “The difference is we go by baseball rules with overhand pitching…. We only play seven innings instead of nine, and that’s only because we don’t have the numbers of skilled pitchers that the guys did from growing up through little league.”

The league is currently conducting workouts so that coaches from the individual teams can get a look at players for a draft that will be held in the coming weeks. The final workout is scheduled for this coming Saturday at Hourglass Park in Mira Mesa on field number 6. With over 30 players already interested in joining the league, they will need a few more if they are going to be able to field four teams.

“You don’t have to have any prior baseball experience,” Hill said about prospective players. “The only thing we would be concerned with is to make sure someone has played something before, only for safety reasons. We don’t want to discourage anyone from coming out and playing; that’s only for safety reasons.”

While more than half of the players in the league are lesbians, it is open to anyone who is interested in playing baseball. More information about the league can be found online at www.playwomensbaseball.com, or you can contact Chris Hill directly by e-mail at Chris.hill@playwomensbaseball.com or by phone at (619) 208-3868.