Timeline of women's sports in the United States the ban on the signing of women to contracts, a ban that had existed since 1952. 1992 - Manon Rhéaume, from Canada, became the first woman to play in a National Hockey League game, which also made her the first woman to play in any of the major professional North American sports leagues; she played for the Tampa Bay Lightning against the St. Louis Blues, and stopped seven of nine shots. 1993 - Sherry Davies became the first woman public address announcer in major league baseball, working for the San Francisco Giants. 1993 - USA Boxing officially lifted its ban
Saori Yoshida regularly appears in their commercials. In December 2008, the wrestling singlet which Yoshida wore in the Olympic final bout earlier that year, was sold for 551,000 yen (ca. US$6,123) at an internet auction, and the money was donated to the Japanese Red Cross society. In 2013, when the International Olympic Committee named wrestling as a candidate for exclusion from the Games, she became an active part of the Japanese lobbying team that persuaded the IOC to retain wrestling at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In May 2014 Yoshida made a cameo appearance in the Japanese television drama "Tokyo Metropolitan Guard Center",