Women baseball coaches cracking the glass ceiling

There are 11 women across the major and minor baseball leagues in on-field coaching positions this season. As recently as 2018, there were none

Rachel Balkovec is in charge of New York Yankees affiliate the Tampa Tarpons

Katie Krall didn’t grow up aspiring to be a professional baseball coach. She thought the best way to pursue a career in the sport she loved was as a front-office executive. The idea of directly working with players on the field was inconceivable.

That’s because, for most of Krall’s life, the people who landed those kinds of jobs were all the same: They all played the game at a high level. And they were all men.

“If you had told me at Northwestern (University) that I was going to be a coach, I would say I had a better shot of being a mascot,” Krall said. “I had never seen a female coach before, so I didn’t think it would be possible for me to be on the field.”

Krall, 25 years old, is now one of the women trying to ensure that nobody ever thinks that way again. She is a development coach for the Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.

In the role, Krall is responsible for synthesising data analytics and communicating that information to players and other coaches in a way that they can use on the field.

She isn’t alone. There are 11 women across the major and minor leagues in on-field coaching positions this season, according to Major League Baseball. As recently as 2018, there were none, a sign of progress in an industry that is slow to embrace change.

In January, the New York Yankees promoted Rachel Balkovec to manager of the Single-A Tampa Tarpons, making her the first female boss in the history of affiliated baseball. This month, San Francisco Giants assistant coach Alyssa Nakken became the first woman to coach on the field during an MLB game when she filled in at first base following an ejection.

There is still a long way to go. Veronica Alvarez, who started as a catching instructor in the Oakland Athletics’ farm system during spring training in 2019, was discussing the “flood” of female coaches during a recent interview before pausing to correct herself.

“It’s not a flood,” she said. “It’s a small drip.”

But for more than a century, the message to baseball-loving girls everywhere was clear: The game is not for you. The 11 women coaching in 2022 are proof that it is.

“If I was a young girl in the stands that game and then I saw, ‘Oh, there’s a girl coaching first base?’ then maybe when I was seven I would’ve had this thought that I could be a coach in the big leagues one day,” Nakken said.

Women had already started to make inroads within front offices, a trend that reached a significant milestone in November 2020 when Kim Ng became the first female general manager in baseball history with the Miami Marlins. Jean Afterman and Raquel Ferreira are assistant GMs for the Yankees and Red Sox, respectively, and Eve Rosenbaum is the Baltimore Orioles’ director of baseball development. Before this season, Sara Goodrum joined the Houston Astros as director of player ­development, while the Mets brought on Elizabeth Benn as director of major league operations.

Garnering consideration for on-field positions, however, has been slower. Balkovec says she was “blatantly discriminated against” because of her sex throughout her journey from strength and conditioning co-­ordinator in the St Louis Cardinals’ system to minor-league manager.

Ahead of the 2020 season, Balkovec finally broke through, when the Yankees hired her as a minor-league hitting coach. Around the same time, new Giants manager Gabe Kapler plucked Nakken from the front office and added her to the coaching staff.

“The fact that the change has been so sudden tells you everything you need to know about what justification there was for it not happening earlier, which was none,” said Chaim Bloom, the chief baseball officer for the Red Sox. Boston is the only team that has two women coaching in the ­organisation, with Krall joining Bianca Smith, who is in her second season as a minor-league coach.

Ronnie Gajownik remembers seeing a notification on her phone when the Chicago Cubs hired Rachel Folden as a minor-league hitting coach ahead of the 2020 season. She went on to participate in MLB’s “Take the Field” program, designed to provide networking opportunities for women interested in working in baseball.

This season, Gajownik is a minor-league coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks. It quickly became clear to her she belonged, when players started telling her: “Man, you know your shit.”

These stories demonstrate the importance of visibility for women in coaching, which is why Kapler believes that Nakken coaching first base was so meaningful.

“It was important for Alyssa to be present on the field, in uniform, actively coaching in a way that felt familiar for fans,” Kapler said.

“We need more, because the game is better with more women in the game.”

These women already look forward to a future where they don’t generate attention for their presence alone, but for their accomplishments. They didn’t set out to be trailblazers — it was a responsibility foisted upon them.

“Hopefully the floodgates open,” Krall said. “But I don’t know if it will necessarily happen organically. There really has to be a full-force effort across all rungs of the ladder.”

The Wall Street Journal