Firebells at Heights Early Preview: New York Has Found Its Swing
San Francisco’s response since the first meeting has not helped its case. The Firebells followed the 13-8 loss to New York with a 12-3 defeat against Los Angeles on August 7. That result makes the defensive and pitching questions heading into the August 15 rematch even more important.
New York spent opening night doing everything right and losing anyway. They put twelve hits on Los Angeles, led by six, and then watched the Queens score four in the seventh and take the first win in league history off them. That one stung, and the players said so.
Four days later they got their answer. The Heights beat San Francisco 13-8 on August 6 in the first meeting between the two clubs, scored in five of their seven innings, and led by ten at one point. It was their first win as a franchise and it did not look close to being an accident.
They do it again on August 15, and this time New York has the home slot, so the Heights bat last. The two sides then meet three more times before the regular season ends, on August 19, August 30 and September 4. Whatever this rivalry turns into, it is being built right now.
One note on the calendar: this is a 1:00 PM start, the earlier half of a doubleheader day, with Los Angeles and Boston playing the evening game. Different light, different heat, and, as it turns out, the light matters here more than it does at most ballparks.
Early-preview note: This article is based primarily on the August 6 head-to-head and information available on August 8. Both teams have additional games before August 15, so current records, recent form and probable starters should be refreshed closer to first pitch.
How New York took it apart
Liz Gilder started for San Francisco and was not bad. The left-hander from Port Moody, British Columbia gave up three runs in two and two-thirds innings, only two of them earned, and she walked nobody while striking out two. The trouble was that New York simply kept putting the barrel on her. Seven hits in under three innings will do it.
The third inning was the turn. Val Perez beat out an infield hit, Natsuki Yonetani followed with a single, and then captain Denae Benites drove one off the wall in left to tie it. Kylee Lahners punched a two-run single through the left side and took second on a throw that got away, and New York had a lead they never gave back.
They added four more in the fourth against Jua Park, who came in from third base to relieve and lasted two outs. She walked three, gave up three hits and was charged with four runs. After the bases loaded, Alyssa Zettlemoyer took a pitch off the elbow to force one in, Ela Day-Bédard came in from center field to pitch, and Zettlemoyer got her again with a sacrifice fly.
Two more came in the fifth on a two-out Diana Ibarra single, and then the sixth belonged to two hitters. Keira Izumi turned on a pitch at eye level and drove it out for her first WPBL home run. Three batters later Benites hit a three-run shot to make it 13-3, her second of the season, making her the first player in league history to reach two home runs. Day-Bédard wore both of them.
Opening line score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | R | H | E |
| New York Heights | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 13 | 15 | 2 |
| San Francisco Firebells | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 8 | 7 | 2 |
August 6, 2026 · Robin Roberts Stadium · Heights 13, Firebells 8
Denae Benites is having a week
It is early enough that a hot week means very little in the standings and everything in the room, and Benites is having one of those weeks.
She hit the first home run in WPBL history on opening night and went 4-for-4 doing it. Against San Francisco she went 4-for-5 with five RBIs, three runs, two stolen bases and another home run. That's eight hits in nine official at-bats across two games. Asked afterwards what her approach was, she said line drive, right side, because if she gets too big she starts rolling over on ground balls. Asked what her mentality was, she said nobody is beating her right now.
She also has a plan for the celebrations, which she explained in some detail. First base gets a ride-it-out. Second base gets the Heisman. Third base is undecided because, in her words, she is not fast enough to get there often. A home run gets an H and then the whole line dances through the tunnel. She reserves the right to change it if she hits enough of them.
Away from the ballpark she is a volunteer firefighter and an EMT, she was the first female catcher in Banana Ball history, and she drove herself from Savannah to Springfield rather than fly so she could bring her two cats. Her father David has been at nearly every stop of the year and only missed this one because he had to go back to work.
Yonetani was perfect, and the 19-year-old did everything
The line of the night actually belongs to Natsuki Yonetani, who went 4-for-4 and scored four runs out of the two hole. Three singles and a double, on base every time she came up, and she was standing on a base in front of Benites for most of the damage. Behind her, Val Perez scored three times on a single hit, which tells you how relentlessly this lineup moved runners.
Then there's Keira Izumi. She started at second base, went 3-for-4 with her first WPBL home run and two RBIs, and finished the game on the mound.
She came in from the infield with the bases occupied in the sixth and recorded the last five outs, giving up one hit and no runs. She looked entirely comfortable, which is the part that should worry people.
She is 19, studies mechanical engineering at USC, plays club softball there, and started the university's first women's club baseball team by rounding up friends, some of whom had never played either sport. She said the hard part was asking people to spend two hours being bad at something, and that by the end of the first season they were good and having fun. That's a decent description of what this whole league is doing.
What San Francisco still have
Down 13-3, the Firebells scored five in the sixth and needed only a third of an inning from London Studer to do most of it. Studer got one out, walked three, gave up a ground-rule double to Skylar Kaplan and a two-run double to Jill Albayati, and was charged with all five runs. Andreanne Leblanc drove in two more off Izumi with a double of her own.
Leblanc had the best all-around night of anyone in that uniform: three hits, two RBIs, and then a perfect inning on the mound in the seventh with a strikeout and no hits allowed. She was playing through back spasms in the opener, wore a heating pad under her uniform, and looks like a different player now that she's healthy. Albayati's two-run double was part of San Francisco's five-run sixth and reinforced how dangerous she can be in the middle of the order.
Their dugout has the best celebration setup in the league, which sounds trivial and is not. There is a gold chain hanging on the fence for whoever hits the first home run, a big orange bell and a big purple bell for runs, and small gold cowbells for every single hit. It was loud in the sixth. It has not been loud for a home run yet.
The one thing they need to sort out is Kelsie Whitmore. The number one overall pick started as the designated hitter, got exactly one at-bat, and then came out of the lineup entirely when Park moved from third base to the mound and Samantha Gutierrez took the DH slot. She was still looking for her first WPBL hit through the August 6 game, and Matt Williams has said openly that the two-way juggling is one of the hardest parts of managing this roster.
The people around the game
Rocky Henley manages New York and is the only woman managing a team in this league. She spent more than 25 years in youth baseball, co-founded the SFBA Sox girls baseball program, and played third base for the Colorado Silver Bullets. Her son Jackson coaches first base for her and calls her Rocky in the dugout, which is very likely the first mother and son coaching pair in professional baseball. She has said walking onto the field with him was her favorite moment of the season so far.
Matt Williams manages San Francisco after 17 seasons in the majors, a World Series with Arizona, an All-American career at UNLV and a Manager of the Year award with Washington. He is a girl dad several times over and named that as part of why the job appealed to him. His wife Jennifer runs his social media from the stands.
Before the game Ashton Lansdell of the Queens came out to catch her mother's ceremonial first pitch, a day after being named player of the game against Boston. Kelsie Whitmore's father Scott was in the stands and said the thing every parent in that ballpark seemed to be feeling, that his daughter's dream coming true was his coming true too.
A documentary called Fire Starters is being made about the league by Abby Cannon, a student at American University, following three players from draft day through opening weekend. Springfield itself has a claim here that is easy to miss: some of the earliest paid women's baseball games in the country were played in this city as far back as 1875.
What I'd watch for on August 15
The light towers. They sit low, and once a fly ball climbs above them the outfielder loses it completely. Alexia Jorge, Jua Park and Claire Eccles all had balls disappear on them in this game. A 1:00 PM start takes that out of the equation for most of the afternoon, which quietly helps the defense on both sides.
Jaida Lee against this lineup again. Five innings, four hits, three runs and not one of them earned, with three strikeouts and over a hundred pitches. She did that against hitters who know her well from Team Canada. Leblanc said her scouting report was simply to sit on the fastball. It didn't help much.
Whether anyone gets Benites out. Eight hits in nine at-bats, two home runs, seven RBIs and two stolen bases across two games. San Francisco tried pitching her inside and she golfed one into left anyway. At some point a staff has to find something, and I'd watch what Williams and pitching coach Sam Unger come up with.
New York's bottom third. Izumi, Zettlemoyer and Eccles hit seven, eight and nine, and the first two combined for four hits, a walk, a hit by pitch and a sacrifice fly. Zettlemoyer did that in her first WPBL start and reached in three of her four trips. Lineups that produce down there are hard to plan against.
The free passes. Park walked three in two-thirds of an inning, Studer walked three while recording a single out, and there were two hit batters on top. Both teams handed over bases all night and both were punished for it. The one that stops first probably wins.
The call
San Francisco has already shown a high offensive ceiling: 11 runs on 15 hits against Boston and eight more in the August 6 loss after falling far behind. The Firebells can create pressure throughout the order, and the sixth-inning rally against New York showed that a large deficit does not automatically take them out of a game.
Through its first two games, New York looks like a team beginning to understand its identity. The Heights scored eight and 13, Benites was one of the league's hottest hitters through August 6, and Izumi showed the kind of multi-position flexibility that can change a short game. Rocky Henley has a group that plays fast and takes the extra base whenever it is offered.
Heights by three, batting last, and I'd expect Benites to be involved in whatever decides it.
First pitch is 1:00 on August 15.
Frequently Asked Questions
When do the San Francisco Firebells and New York Heights play again?
They meet on Saturday, August 15, 2026, with first pitch at 1:00 PM at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois. New York holds the home slot this time, a flip from August 6. The two sides then meet three more times before the season ends, on August 19, August 30 and September 4.
What happened the last time these two teams played?
New York won 13-8 on August 6, 2026, in the first ever meeting between the two clubs. It was the Heights' first win in franchise history after they lost the league opener to Los Angeles. New York scored in five of their seven innings and led by as many as ten.
Who is Denae Benites and why is everyone talking about her?
She is New York's captain and catcher, and she was one of the league's hottest hitters through the Heights' first two games. She hit the first home run in WPBL history in the opener, went 4-for-4 that night, then went 4-for-5 with five RBIs and another home run against San Francisco. She is also the first female catcher in Banana Ball history and works as a volunteer firefighter and EMT.
Who else stood out for New York?
Natsuki Yonetani went 4-for-4 and scored four runs, and Keira Izumi, who is 19, went 3-for-4 with her first WPBL home run and then came in from second base to pitch the last five outs. Away from baseball Izumi studies mechanical engineering at USC and started the school's first women's club baseball team.
What WPBL firsts happened in this game?
It was the first meeting between New York and San Francisco, and it produced the league's first sacrifice bunt, laid down by Ela Day-Bédard, and its first pickoff, when Andreanne Leblanc caught Rakyung Kim leaning off first. Denae Benites also became the first player to hit two home runs in the league, and Keira Izumi hit her first.
Why do outfielders keep losing fly balls at Robin Roberts Stadium?
The light towers sit low. Once a ball climbs above them the fielder loses it completely, the same way a ball can disappear into the sun, and by the time it comes back down it is often too late to make the play. Several routine fly balls dropped for that reason in this game.
Where are WPBL games played and what are the rules?
Every game of the inaugural season is at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois, from August 1 to September 6. Games are seven innings and official after four, the designated hitter is optional, two-way players are allowed, and hitters may use metal, composite or wood bats. Rosters carry 15 players and all four teams reach the playoffs in September.
