Savannah Bananas star Ashton Lansdell eager to make WPBL history

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Ashton Lansdell is tattooed with reminders of her faith in herself. Her birthday, Feb. 22, makes the angel number 222 her “birthright,” she said. She also has a large leg tattoo that reads “dream until it’s your reality” that she got when she was 19.

She saw a Pinterest post with the saying during her first year in junior college and it resonated with her. She always dreamed of being a baseball player and truly believed it would happen.

The tattoo even has a crown on it, strengthening her belief that she’s right where she’s supposed to be, debuting for the new Women’s Pro Baseball League’s Los Angeles Queens.

“That’s just who I am,” she said. “I’m a dreamer, big believer in manifestation and all that stuff. So like, once I think I felt that at a very young age, I was like, this is what I’m gonna do. I don’t care what anyone says. No one’s gonna stop me.”

Lansdell, who was named the captain of the Queens before their opening day on Saturday, has had several viral moments in the last year, from her walk-up dances with the Savannah Bananas, a Harlem Globetrotters-esque traveling baseball team for whom she was one of the first women to play, to a fruit roll-up eating contest with her Queens teammates that reached millions of viewers.

The WPBL, though, is what she’s been waiting for, and where she always believed she would find herself. She was drafted seventh overall in December, right as her college softball career had come to a close and she was looking for ways to play baseball.

“The fact that this all is coming true just goes to show that I’m on the right path,” she said. “I’ve always trusted my gut and my intuition, and I always knew that I was going to be a professional baseball player of some sort. But the fact that we now have our own league for women in baseball again is just so special.”

A baseball player since age 4, Lansdell was the first girl to pitch at the 7A level at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Ga., and led them to a regional title in 2019. She made the U.S. women’s national team in 2018 and played junior college ball her freshman year but tore an anterior cruciate ligament. . Then COVID-19 hit, wiping out the season. She eventually decided to switch to softball because it was the only way to get a college scholarship. She played two seasons at Florida International before finishing her career at Mississippi.

“She has D1 college experience, and even though it’s softball, that’s huge,” Queens outfielder Brittany Apgar said. “I’m honored to learn from someone like her; like, getting the chance to be around an athlete like that is amazing.”

Lansdell is coming off one of the best women’s baseball World Cup appearances ever, hitting 11 for 15 with two doubles and two home runs for the tournament-winning U.S.

A natural third baseman, she played the outfield last week for the Americans, something she hadn’t done in years. She expected to be back at third base for the Queens, where she will be their leader in the infield.

Her longest period of time with one women’s baseball team that she can remember is three weeks with the national team a few years ago. Women’s baseball has been so fragmented that she usually sees other players only at national tournaments and occasionally when some, like Mo’ne Davis, have a stint with the Bananas.

Ashton Lansdell fields a grounder during a Women’s Pro Baseball League drill.

(Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press)

“There’s mutual respect there,” Davis, the former Little League star, said of Lansdell. “I think it’ll be really cool to play with her. I didn’t do that with Banana ball, but she’s obviously great.”

There are few WNBL players who were known outside of women’s baseball before this weekend. Lansdell is one of them.

On media day before the first games, Lansdell emceed much of the news conference. As a young, social-media-savvy slugger who had a platform before the WPBL, she seems primed to be one of the faces of the league — which features four teams, each playing 15 games over the next month at Robin Roberts Stadium, the league’s home in Springfield, Ill.

She didn’t predict the fame or even how good she would be but finds herself a professional, exactly as she knew she’d be.

“This is the most baseball-prepared I’ve felt in my whole life,” she said. “I’ve learned so much about what works physically and mentally in women’s baseball, and now I can do it for a longer time.”