‘Since When Were Women Allowed’: Inside Their Push to Break Into Baseball

MLB loves the praise that comes with hiring Rachel Balkovec, Kim Ng and other trailblazers, but the sport still has a long way to go to fix its representation problem.

Katie Krall has a secret, she says. Something no one outside her family, no one in baseball and no one she has talked to in the whirlwind of the seven weeks knows. As a little girl, Krall could not make it through a baseball game. Three strikes would be thrown, and Krall would head out with the batter, too full of energy to make it past a few pitches at Wrigley Field.

Today, the 25-year-old is all about the sport she used to skip, and on Jan. 13, the Red Sox hired Krall as the development coach for their Double A team, the Portland Sea Dogs. Her hiring made history as the Red Sox became the first organization in affiliated baseball to have two women on their coaching staff: Krall and Bianca Smith, the first Black woman to land a coaching role in professional baseball when she was hired at the start of 2021.

Krall at her desk at the old MLB office at 245 Park Ave in Manhattan / Courtesy of Katie Krall

As she grew up, Krall’s love for baseball grew with her. Her passion for the sport first clicked when she attended the 2003 All-Star Game at U.S. Cellular Field. But it wasn’t until she reached double digits and read Moneyball that Krall realized she could challenge the convention of the sport. From there, it became clear that a career in baseball was the goal.

One day before Krall’s hiring, the Yankees officially introduced Rachel Balkovec as the first full-time woman manager in the history of affiliated baseball, with the Low A Tampa Tarpons. Teams have received a lot of praise for these recent hirings, and justifiably so. However, that publicity also speaks to just how much progress organizations have left to make; professional baseball is still overwhelmingly dominated by men, especially in positions of authority. According to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, 22 women held on-field coaching or player development roles in MLB during 2021. A run-through of the 120 minor league organizations, on the other hand, shows multiple women general managers but fewer women coaches than at the major league level.

In the same way that the minor leagues are a training ground for players, they are also a place for coaches and front office candidates to start their careers. If baseball truly wants to address its lack of women representation, the fix starts in the minor leagues.

For Krall, the goal has always been to one day be the general manager of an MLB team. In fact, she wrote a letter to Sports Illustrated (in response to an essay about former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino), detailing that exact dream when she was 15 years old.

“While I have always known that this is a lofty goal, I had hoped the playing field would be level on all fronts. The Petrino scandal was a stark reminder that even in 2012, my being a woman could still influence how I'm judged in the workplace,” Krall wrote.

Her exposure to working in the league began with Kim Ng, the Marlins general manager and first woman to hold that role in the majors. Less than six years after Krall wrote that letter, she interviewed with Ng for a spot in MLB’s new Diversity Fellowship program and began working for the commissioner’s office in the summer of 2018. From there, she joined the Reds’ front office before a short stint at Google pulled her away from the sport. It lasted less than three months, however, because it was competing with the dream.

That’s the thing about working in baseball. There are 10 times as many games in a year than in the NFL, and while the minor league season does have fewer games, working for an affiliate team means spending long hours at the park and filling multiple roles.

“You don’t work in this industry because you need a job, you work in this industry because you love it,” says Stephanie O’Quinn, director of community relations for the Inland Empire 66ers.

Jill Gearin, director of broadcasting and media relations manager for the Low A Visalia Rawhide, juggles a number of day-to-day responsibilities. The 25-year-old creates game notes, compiles statistics for coaches and media, interviews players and schedules social media posts—all before she sits down to take on her true role as the voice of the team for each game’s broadcast. Before this season, Gearin also was in charge of marketing.

Gearin has taken it upon herself to make affiliate baseball a more welcoming place for anyone else trying to make it in the industry. Just her presence alone is challenging the norm for players who see mostly men in front-facing positions.

Upon walking into a visiting team’s clubhouse, she knew immediately that she was the first woman to step foot there, with one player going as far as to ask her: “Since when were women allowed in the locker rooms?”

Gearin was one of just three women broadcasters in minor league baseball when she started in 2018. She says that has never been a problem with the Rawhide, and comments like that come up just occasionally with visiting teams. But being the only woman in the room can be exhausting, to the point of driving women from the industry.

“I'm tired. I have been tired,” Gearin says. “My first broadcast, I was sick to my stomach, because I felt the pressure of all the women in the world on my shoulders.”

Women are already burdened with carrying the torch in the industry, and that’s before they have to consider responsibilities away from the office or the diamond. Working in Minor League Baseball in any position is a grind, and, fair or not, women traditionally are tasked with being the default caregivers when it comes to raising a family. This all combines into a force that, without a support system, can lead to women leaving for a different industry.

Ng became the first (and still the only) woman general manager in MLB when the Marlins hired her in November 2020 :: Brad Mills/USA TODAY Sports

Jennifer Reynolds was the general manager in Visalia when Gearin was hired, but she—along with former assistant GM Jill Webb—is no longer with the organization. The two made Visalia the only team in the minor leagues that featured women working both the GM and assistant GM jobs. Emily Jaenson, who was part of the Minor League Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, left her role as the general manager of the Reno Aces at the start of the calendar year. The reasons behind their leaving the industry are unclear, but Gearin says both Reynolds and Jaenson have kids, which often puts pressure on women to work fewer hours or find a less demanding job.

“Even some of my friends, we've talked about having kids. And I've said, ‘I don't know if I want to do that, because I don't want anything to get in the way of my broadcast dreams,’” Gearin says. “And I know people who have vocalized that they're nervous when they have kids, how that's gonna change things.”

At a virtual roundtable of women leaders in the minor leagues in November 2020, Jaenson cited the hours required to work and physically be at the stadium as one of the biggest challenges.

“I'm a mom of two young boys, but I'm also a career professional and somebody who wants to continue to be a leader in the sports industry. And I think you can do both,” Jaenson said then. “We can find a great balance so we don't lose the very talented women that start in this industry.”

Laurie Schlender’s children were already grown up by the time she joined the Triple A Omaha Storm Chasers, but she has witnessed other longtime employees leave the industry to spend more time with their families. That’s why when Schlender, now vice president and general manager of the Storm Chasers, worked her way from corporate accounting to the top role, she made sure to foster an environment that allows her employees to do both: have a family, if they want, and also have a career in baseball.

The Storm Chasers are making changes to how they staff their games this year; especially on weekdays, they want to implement a more flexible game schedule, with employees that can help in different roles so that others can take a game off if they need to catch their kid’s soccer game or simply take a break from being at the ballpark late into the night.

“I do feel that if we can do it in Omaha, then it'll help in the industry itself. I used to feel like I really couldn't change the industry. I felt like it was kind of hopeless,” Schlender says. “But I do feel that there are enough me's in the industry that are trying to do things like this, that it will change. It's just going to take a little time.”

Krall agrees women need to feel supported in their roles to want to stay in them, and if they see other women in similar jobs, they are likely to feel more welcome. That’s the main lesson Krall learned in her time away from baseball: culture is created, intentionally structured every day from the top down within a company.

Allowing new perspectives into baseball is paramount to meaningful change. Christine Kavic, co-general manager and CFO of the Lake Elsinore Storm, also came into baseball from a corporate job and now stands as the only woman GM in the Low A West. At first, Kavic did not think about the role gender might play, but she learned soon enough that it would be more difficult for her to be taken seriously, especially when making suggestions about issues that needed to be addressed. The stereotypes of being whiny or dramatic that are often attached to women came into play, she says.

It wasn’t until this year that Kavic, 43, began to take pride in being a woman leader in the industry. For a while, she felt the focus should be only on whether she does her job well, not on her being a woman.

“It was a little bit naive for me to think that everybody should just see me for my skill or my knowledge,” Kavic says. “I couldn't believe that it was an issue.”

In January, the Storm had two front office openings, and though 90% of the applicants are men, Kavic was happy that even 10% of potential candidates are women—women that saw leaders like her and maybe thought, If she can do it, I can do it, too.

It’s true that sometimes things just fall into place—Kavic joined Lake Elsinore after seeing a listing on ZipRecruiter—but having women in leadership or front-facing positions is crucial.

“We need to have our face be different, and diverse,” Schlender says. “If it's not a white male talking to you about working in sports, then maybe it starts to change a little bit.”

For Schlender, it was a friend who did the books for Omaha that encouraged her to look into working with the team. Krall was inspired by the first woman president of the Cape Cod baseball league, Judy Walden Scarafile, whom she met when she was 12 years old and has stayed in contact with since. O’Quinn, 30, has always been a big baseball fan but has a distinct memory of telling her mom, “I want to do that,” after seeing a woman who was clearly in charge during fan photo day at Dodger Stadium. Gearin looks up to Suzyn Waldman, the longtime radio broadcaster for the Yankees, and already has people looking up to her as well: when she was 22, a Rawhide coworker’s fourth-grade daughter said she wanted to be just like Gearin and go into broadcasting.

“To be that visible representation to a little girl who could go to a Sea Dogs game this summer and see a woman on the field, that is so powerful,” Krall says. “And that's something that I just couldn't say no to.”

Krall with Walden Scarafile, mentor and former commissioner of the Cape Cod Baseball League, at the MLB office in 2019 / Courtesy of Katie Krall

Apart from representation, there are concrete changes that must be made to keep women in the industry once they’re in the door. Krall points to the need for more generous family leave policies for new parents and caretakers. Baseball could look to the WNBA for a solution; in 2020, its players' association successfully advocated for full salary while on maternity leave, an annual child care stipend, housing for families and progressive family planning reimbursement. MLB, on the other hand, implemented a paternity leave policy for players in 2011, but it only allows a maximum of three days off. For front office members and coaches, each team sets its own family leave policies. The Astros’ careers site, for example, lists benefits for full-time employees such as life insurance and access to an “on-site gym with instructor-led classes” but fails to mention any family leave policies.

Within the minor leagues, policies also vary. Schlender says her front office’s family leave includes one paid week off after birth or adoption. After that, employees can use either short-term disability or paid time off to take up to 12 weeks—the maximum time off required by the Family and Medical Leave Act. If employees do not have enough paid leave to cover the time off they need, they must take it as unpaid instead. Leave policies for coaches and field staff, on the other hand, are controlled by the larger Kansas City organization.

Aside from the limited benefits, salaried members of front offices and coaching staff are not compensated well. Because the sports industry is so competitive, employees often expect to make financial sacrifices at the start of their careers, and organizations take advantage of that to keep salaries low and benefits small. Men more than women are encouraged to pursue their dream of working in baseball, so this idea of penance for the love of sports is well established, working as a weed-out system to benefit those who can afford to work for little pay.

The women who make it to a coaching role might still be making less than a living wage, according to a Baseball America study done in 2010 (one of the most recent analyses done on minor league pay). Most coaches make less than $35,000. Managers typically make anywhere between $20,000 and $60,000. Employees starting as an intern with a minor league team might expect to earn between $600 to $1,000 per month over a season.

Higher-level executives are paid slightly better, with assistant GMs earning between $35,000 and $80,000 and GMs receiving a starting salary of $45,000. Triple A GMs are compensated the best, with most bringing in at least $100,00 per year, but it’s nothing compared to GM salaries in the majors. Yankees GM Brian Cashman, for example, signed his most recent contract extension for an average of more than $5 million a year. Combine this all with the fact that 40 minor league teams were dropped by their affiliates after the pandemic began, and the work can feel like a constant test of endurance.

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Gearin says the minors would also benefit from adopting a zero-tolerance sexual assault policy, one in which the accused would immediately be placed on administrative leave while the allegations are investigated.

“It just still feels like the woman’s on trial,” Gearin says. “They have it at schools with drugs and alcohol. Why don’t we have that in the workplace?”

The Rawhide host sexual harassment training every year as a front office, and MLB announced in March 2021 that the same training will be mandatory for all executives. The league also announced the introduction of an anonymous tip line to report sexual misconduct; those reports are then investigated within the league itself, either by the team or the commissioner’s office.

The other curveball to consider in all of this is MLB’s recent contracting of the minor leagues. The details of this are convoluted—and its impact holistic—but the basic premise is that MLB has absorbed control of the minor leagues and therefore taken over a bulk of its operations. It’s unclear how integration will affect the two leagues’ functionings; before the restructuring, each league had its own separate efforts, and there is no answer as to whether regulations and policies in the majors will trickle down. This year is the first one with the new structure, so the statuses of individual programs—among them the aforementioned Diversity Fellowship and Minor League Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee—are up in the air. MLB’s efforts to blend the two today has left any pipeline or program dedicated to the minor leagues in limbo.

“We're still trying to develop fully from a standpoint of strategically how that can all work,” says Tyrone Brooks, the senior director of MLB’s Front Office and Field Staff Diversity Pipeline program. “Obviously minor league baseball had certain things they were doing that time before the merger but now we're still trying to figure out how we're going to connect certain things to it that can help.”

Any attempt to navigate to the Diversity Fellowship’s home tab through MLB’s website goes straight to an error page, with OOF! We dropped the ball written across the screen. Some strategic Google searching leads to the About page for the program, but even the link there tracks right back to that same error message.

Screenshot/MLB.com

In a broader sense, it seems MLB (and now, in turn, the minors) has dropped the ball, allowing diversity efforts to fall to the wayside as even integration strategy takes a back burner during the sport’s lockout. The league continues to highlight the progress that has been made to increase women representation in the sport (mainly on social media for things like National Girls and Women in Sports Day), but it fails to address the root of the problem and do the grunt work necessary to keep the issue at the top of the to-do list. Only once the league does this—and makes it a priority to increase transparency and accountability—can there be effective change that empowers women to see baseball as a secure place to stay and work.

“If you love baseball, you want everyone to feel welcomed by it,” Gearin says. “And right now there‘s some women in the industry who don't feel welcomed.”