Camden Yards was bursting with pride gear, drinks and music during the Orioles Pride game in June 2024.

Kel Raleigh remembers spelling out the words for Chappell Roan’s “HOT TO GO” with their friends, some of whom they met through playing recreational baseball. Maybe it was the energy in the stadium. Maybe it was the drinks. But that’s when Raleigh let it out — they wanted to start a Baltimore women’s baseball team.

It landed as a joke that wasn’t, tinted with a sense of opportunity. In Baltimore, where people idolize Cal Ripken Jr. and Brooks Robinson, a women’s baseball team feels like a natural fit. The city is known for its creativity and authenticity. And this new team could be a place for players to be unapologetically themselves.

Less than a year later, Raleigh and their friends Kathleen Lynch and Katlyn Drescher, had done it. They founded the Charm City Lemon Sticks, the newest addition to the Eastern Women’s Baseball Conference. Organizers say it’s the longest-running recreational league for women in the sport.

“In times like these, where there are pressures to be not exactly who you are, or maybe look for a place to hide, it is so important to have a space where you can be unapologetically yourself,” Raleigh said. “This goes beyond baseball. ”

The conference was founded around the same time the film “A League of Their Own” was released in the early ’90s, and has ebbed and flowed in membership over the years.

Bonnie Hoffman, who founded the conference, said the organization is all about promoting women’s baseball, regardless of skill level. Every day women play baseball — a sport dominated by men — is a good day, she said.

There hasn’t been a professional women’s baseball league since 1954, when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was dissolved. But interest and investment in women’s sports, particularly basketball and soccer, have grown exponentially in the decades since.

Title IX, which in 1972 outlawed sex-based discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding, forced schools to open up more sports to women. Despite being recognized as separate sports, softball became accepted as the female equivalent of baseball.

In recent years, however, the growing popularity of women’s sports has helped propel the launch of a new Women’s Pro Baseball League, co-founder Justine Siegal, the first woman to coach a major league baseball team, told NBC News. The league will host tryouts this summer and is expected to have six teams by 2026, according to NBC News.

Players in the Eastern Women’s Baseball Conference aren’t actively aspiring to go pro. The league, though competitive, is recreational.

For years, young girls were directed into softball — and it could be a testament to women, Hoffman said, how they made sure it’s just “as competitive and as high caliber” as baseball.

But America’s pastime, Hoffman said, is baseball.

Sweet and tangy lemon sticks

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were three teams in the Eastern Women’s Baseball Conference: the Virginia Fury, the Virginia Flames and the Baltimore Blues, which play in Anne Arundel County.

Raleigh, Lynch and Drescher — the eventual head coach of the Lemon Sticks — met while playing for the Blues and formed a fast friendship. Raleigh began contemplating forming a new team in the city, but didn’t give that idea a voice until a group of friends attended the Orioles Pride game in June 2024.

A Baltimore-based team would mean more games in Maryland, Raleigh said to Drescher. It would be an opportunity for more women to play baseball.

The two of them began talking about it more seriously. During a Blues practice, Lynch saw Drescher and Raleigh in the dugout, speaking in hushed tones.

“What’s going on? What are you two whispering about?” she joked. Raleigh, whose partner is a designer, showed the prototype for the new team’s uniforms.

She was so in, Lynch said.

The name, Raleigh said, had to be “so uniquely Baltimore” that it embodied the spirit of the city. The Flower Mart staple, a sweet and tangy treat that can make some scrunch their nose, came to mind.

The team’s uniforms also embrace the treat. Red stripes on the white Charm City jersey make up the peppermint, the yellow sleeves the lemon. Their caps have their logo melding it all: a red and white bat stuck in a halved lemon.

Recruiting wasn’t difficult. Some of the players knew Raleigh, who Drescher said is the “Kevin Bacon of Baltimore,” while others were looking for a queer-friendly pastime and community.

“Everybody on our team is encouraged to come exactly as they are,” Lynch said.

‘Keep it light’

Dandelions and speedwell peppered the baseball field behind a Locust Point school in late April, as springtime coated the city. About 10 players in their 20s and 30s were scattered across the bases, their tattoos out in the open and ponytails swaying.

The players were warming up with throws a few weeks before their first game. Raleigh, the team captain, said they were focused on gearing up their baseball IQ. That can be challenging for those who did not grow up playing baseball, Raleigh said.

Lynch, who is a social epidemiologist by training and the team’s “chancellor of vibes,” said the team is about building strong social connections. That is particularly true for people who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community, she said.

As a vibe chancellor, she reminds people why they are part of the team. She has a jar full of peppermint candies with a little sticker on it that says “sour puss.”

If someone needs an attitude adjustment, if someone is being too hard on themselves, she places a mint in their glove.

Keep it light, she says.

That morning, Drescher ran them through dynamic stretching, starting at a distance of about 20 feet from each other, then increasing by ten feet after seven throws until they were 60 feet apart.

“I know I said ‘last one,’ but it’s never the ‘last one’ for coaches,” Drescher said during outfield practice.

The Lemon Sticks have played two games so far, both in Maryland. Their next game will be at McLean High School in Virginia on June 22. The season runs through mid-August.

At their first game, they had a dance party before the dugout was unlocked. They didn’t win, but weren’t upset. Raleigh and Drescher felt they had fulfilled their goal.

They were playing baseball. They cheered each other on and didn’t let pressure or fear of failure hold them back.

The team had lemon sticks ready to enjoy after the game. They shared them with the team that beat them.