#Shortstops: Pawol breaking umpiring barriers
Even before baseball cemented itself as America’s National Pastime, women were a part of the game. Some were fans who attended games, others banded together to create barnstorming teams, and still others would play on otherwise all-male teams.
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Fast forward 150 years, and women have slowly expanded their role in baseball. They had their own professional league during World War II. They have become prominent figures in ownership, front offices, and in the construction of new ballparks. They have shattered the unofficial “no girls allowed” rules by playing and pitching in college and minor league games. And in the last 50 years, women have worked to become umpires in professional baseball.
In 1972, a year after successfully completing umpire training school, Bernice Gera won the right for women to umpire in organized baseball. While she worked only one game, Gera paved the road for other women to follow in her footsteps. Almost 45 years later, Jen Pawol graduated from umpire school and earned a job in the Gulf Coast League, becoming only the seventh female umpire to work professional baseball. In 2017, she was promoted to the short season Class A New York-Penn League and is working MiLB games during Spring Training while awaiting her 2018 assignment.
Pawol bought her mask when she decided to transition away from playing to umpiring as a way to still be involved in the game and on the field. For about four years, she umpired baseball and softball part-time near her home in upstate New York. Then in 2011, she decided to turn it into a full-time job. So Pawol resigned from her teaching position, packed a pop-up camper with some necessities, including her mask, and drove to Florida. While there, she got involved with the Florida Professional Officials Association and began calling games from behind the plate for NCAA Division I softball.
In between game assignments, Pawol would attend baseball umpiring clinics which is where a major league umpire saw her working drills and recommended that if she wanted to be a professional, she should tryout for Major League Baseball’s umpiring program. This took her by surprise since she thought she had gone as far as she could on the umpiring path because of her gender. After completing umpiring school, Pawol began her professional baseball umpiring career the same way all new graduates do.
“It’s one pitch at a time,” Pawol said. “It’s really a very old-school ladder system, and you can’t take a play off.”
Pawol spent the 2017 season in Class A ball, but of course her ultimate goal is Major League Baseball. However, when she does reach that pinnacle, it will be without the mask that has been with her ever since she took up umpiring. The Baseball Hall of Fame asked that Pawol donate her trusty piece of equipment at the end of the 2017 season as a way to tell her story since she is the first woman to umpire professional baseball in nearly a decade.
Women have been a part of baseball since before it was considered a professional sport. Today, women like Pawol are still making history and ensuring they get be an integral part of America’s Pastime – whether they’re in the office, on the field, or calling strikes behind the plate.
Gabrielle Augustine is the assistant curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
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