Ghiroli: Major League Baseball needed this. Jen Pawol deserved it

New York Times

18 hours ago

By the time you read this, Jen Pawol — who became the first female umpire in Major League Baseball's history on Saturday — will already be back in Triple A, and the buzz of the national media attention and the celebratory champagne poured in paper Gatorade cups will have mostly subsided. There aren't many fancy glass options in the belly of baseball stadiums, though the no-frills celebration with more than a dozen family and friends — following Game 2 of the doubleheader between the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins — suits Pawol, who has perfected the fine line of simultaneously understanding how important her gender is and not wanting her ponytail to define her.
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Major League Baseball, in recent years, has had all-female broadcast teams and data analysts. It's seen women ascend to become general managers, scouts in the stands and coaches on the field in full uniform. But never, in the sport's 100-plus-year history, had a woman called balls and strikes in a regular-season game until Pawol raised her right arm Sunday at 1:38 p.m. and called a game-opening strike on Xavier Edwards. The ball was immediately procured and thrown back to the side for authentication, another slice of history in a weekend full of them.
Pawol donated her hat to the National Baseball Hall of Fame after Saturday's game. Sunday's ball will probably end up there, too. Pawol, who has been in pro ball since 2016, is still uncomfortable living in a spotlight where rehabbing big leaguers wish her luck, security guards tell her they're pulling for her and autograph requests have become a regular occurrence. (She often makes her entire crew sign with her.)
'Go Braves and all,' read a sign at Truist Park on Sunday, 'But I'm here for Jen.'
This story of an interaction between Jen Pawol and Adam Wainwright is amazing 🥹 pic.twitter.com/OrjTTfPXky
— MLB (@MLB) August 9, 2025
Everything the 48-year-old Pawol has done this past decade has made headlines, an unusual paradox in a profession where anonymity typically means you're doing the job right. (How many other umpires find their promotions on a minor-league scoreboard like Pawol did at the New York Mets' Syracuse affiliate?)
But baseball badly needed Pawol. A sport that boasts itself as the national pastime, one that is so rich in history, can sometimes be suffocated by it. It's been more than a decade since the NBA and NFL introduced female officials and every other woman before Pawol who tried to get promoted to Major League Baseball was run out of the game. Bernice Gera, Christine Wren, Pam Postema, Teresa Cox (Fairlady), Shanna Kook and Ria Cortesio — the sport's last female umpire before Pawol arrived — a group who Pawol counts as mentors and friends, whose only crime was being ahead of their time.
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A female umpire was one of baseball's final barriers. But the sport didn't just need a woman; it needed the right one. Pawol is a baseball lifer, a former softball player who texts highlights of games to other umpires so they can break them down. She has a vigilant workout routine to keep up with the demands of a physical job. In the offseason, Pawol writes umpire workbooks, participates in clinics and paints one of her favorite things: the strike zone.
For years, Pawol has been viewed as baseball's best shot at a female umpire. When she was promoted to Triple A in 2023, she was the only female above A-ball. Male-dominated professions don't change overnight. It would have been easy for baseball to fast-track her, to prop Pawol up for positive press and to quiet the discontent with, 'A woman is here!'
To baseball's credit, it didn't. Pawol has methodically moved up. She umpired more than 1,200 minor-league games before getting the call. Like any successful woman in a male-dominated profession, she will be heavily scrutinized. There will be people who can't be convinced that she's here on merit, fans who berate her for no reason other than her ponytail. (Pawol, it's worth noting, welcomes players and managers voicing their discontent with what she's doing on the field.)
MLB knows this. The league knows that every missed call Pawol makes — like that first strike to Edwards — will bring a small, loud subset of the population out, convinced that Pawol's every misstep is not because she's human, but rather because she's a woman.
But know something else, too. Pawol, who lost her mom, Victoria, to an aneurysm at 13, can handle anything thrown at her on and off the field. She is, in the words of crew chief Chris Guccione, 'incredible at her job,' a female who reached baseball's pinnacle because of her toughness and talent and because she has what those before her never did: support.
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'This is one of the proudest moments I've been a part of in all my career,' Guccione told reporters in Atlanta of working with Pawol. 'I've been blessed with working playoffs, I've worked two World Series, All-Star Games, and this one is right up there. It gives me chills just thinking about it and the magnitude. … I was just sitting here going, it just kind of hit me, the magnitude of this whole thing and how hard she's worked.'
If Pawol's presence inspires women, one can only hope Guccione's words elicit a similar response in men. It's not hard to be an ally.
Pawol, who initially thought her gender precluded her from being an MLB umpire, is a visible sign of progress, her dream a significant step forward for the sport. Maybe someday, female umpires will be normal. Until then, Pawol will keep pushing the ball forward, working and waiting for another chance at the big leagues. Baseball needed this. Pawol deserved it.
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