August 9 will be a day that goes down in sports history. Jen Pawol will be the first woman to umpire a Major League Baseball game. She’ll begin her career at Truist Park, umpiring the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves’ doubleheader. According to Major League Baseball, Jen’s worked more than 1,200 Minor League games and will make it to the big leagues at age 48. This marks a huge moment for Jen Pawol and for baseball. When she learned the news, it touched her heart.
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“I was overcome with emotion,” she told the Associated Press. “It was super emotional to finally be living that phone call that I’d been hoping for and working towards for quite a while, and I just felt super full — I feel like a fully charged battery ready to go.”
Jen Pawol Loved Umpiring From The Start
Jen Pawol told the AP she got her start in the 1990s umpiring in high school. From the moment she hit the field, she fell in love.
“It was a one-umpire system. I had no idea what I was doing, but I got to put gear on and call balls and strikes, so I was in,” she recalled.
Ted Barrett approached her at an umpire camp in Binghamton, New York, in early 2015. He invited her to an MLB tryout camp in Cincinnati.
“I warned her: `Look, this is what you’re up against. It’s going to be 10 years in the minor leagues before you sniff a big, big field,’” Ted told the AP.
Undeterred, Jen Pawol showed up and got to work. She made her way through the minor leagues and was called up to big league spring training in 2024 and 2025. She is among eight female umpires in the minors and the first to go big.
Jen Powal thanked her female umpiring predecessors like Christine Wren, Pam Postema, and Ria Cortesio. She saw Pam in Las Vegas just before she received the call-up, and her friend gave her a big challenge.
“The last thing she said to me when I saw her was: Get it done!” Powal explained. “So I texted her yesterday and said, `I’m getting it done!’”
This Story’s Featured Image Is By Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images.
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