This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian’s Cubs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
After the Cubs’ players were done with their daily work at the team’s Arizona complex during Spring Training, Sami Williams would head to the weight room to get in a workout in the evening. She would then move to Chicago’s state-of-the-art indoor batting cage to work on her swing.
Williams’ mornings in Arizona were filled with her duties as a senior software engineer in the Cubs’ baseball operations department. She is part of an internal software team for that arm of Chicago’s front office, helping design systems related to scouting, analytics, projections and other facets of the team’s decision-making processes.
The other half of her day was used to train for her season with the Chicago Bandits in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League.
“The setup is really nice,” Williams said. “When I got back to Chicago, I was like, ‘Dang, I should’ve stayed longer.’”
When Williams did get back to Chicago, though, she turned in an incredible season with the Bandits, earning the 2026 Hitter of the Year award in her first year in the AUSL. This came a year after she was named the Cubs’ recipient of the Katy Feeney Leadership Award from Major League Baseball for her work behind the scenes for the ballclub.
That second honor meant a lot to Williams.
“It’s an awesome award,” Williams said. “Coming from an athletic career, there are a lot of awards and recognition for jobs well done. But in your professional life, there’s not a lot of opportunity for recognition like that. So, it was kind of a surprise to be recognized. It was really cool.”
This past season for the Bandits, who finished as the runner-up to Utah in the AUSL championship game, Williams hit .427 with a league-leading 67 total bases, while setting single-season AUSL records for doubles (12) and RBIs (34) in 25 games. She posted a .495 on-base percentage and .893 slugging percentage, trying for the league high in hits (32) and recording a dozen multi-hit games.
“I really didn’t have a ton of expectations and I think that helped me,” Williams said. “Going into it, I was like, ‘I have no idea what role I’m going to play, but I’m going to play it to the best of my ability. I’m going to let go of any expectations that I think people have or that I have, and just try to enjoy the moment and live in it.’ I think that really helped me play free and relaxed."
That performance came after the Bandits selected Williams – a standout star in her collegiate career at Iowa State (2017-21) – in the fourth round of the AUSL Allocation Draft in December. Williams played for the New York Rise in the previous two years and Oklahoma City Spark in ‘23, but was excited about the chance to join the Bandits and the AUSL.
“It was really cool to see AU build this,” Williams said. “It’s been really cool to see that evolution from where they first started, their format and the responsiveness to what the players’ wants were. That was really cool to see. And I was really hoping to get drafted, but had no idea whether or not my name was going to be called.
“I was just at home watching the Draft on my TV, sitting on the couch with my boyfriend and hoping. I was a little nervous. But, I was really excited when the Bandits called my name.”
Out of college, Williams was trying to find a way to pair her degree in software engineering with sports and discovered the Cubs were hiring for a role in their department. While her family moved to California when Williams was young, she was born in Park Ridge, Ill., and raised to root for Chicago’s teams.
That included the Cubs, who just “felt right” throughout her interview process.
“I felt really comfortable,” she said. “I felt very, very calm. I was like, ‘This feels like a really good spot for me.’”
That has certainly been backed up since the Cubs added Williams to their department and found ways to help her still pursue her softball career. This summer, the organization allowed her to reduce her hours to play for the Bandits and now the ongoing AU All-Star Cup. Come September, she will be back in the office at Wrigley Field.
“They knew I wanted to keep playing,” Williams said. “It’s really nice to be able to focus all that energy on softball and then being able to come back and fully focus on my software role.”